Long-awaited vampire RPG sequel Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 will offer "vampire romance." Except it'll probably suck to watch (pun very much intended).
Speaking to PC Gamer, Alex Skidmore, project creative director on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, which is finally set to launch in October, more than 20 years after its cult predecessor, was asked what the game's romance situation might look like. The answer is that it's there, but it'll look pretty gnarly.
"There are some romantic options," Skidmore explains, "but vampire romance isn't the same as human romance, and that's also an important plot point." That 'vampire romance', he outlines, is a "kind of romantic feeding," that he acknowledges is as "probably awful" as it sounds.
In the team's defense, vampire fiction's relationship with traditional romance is pretty bitey, generally, often whether it's two vampires sinking fangs into one another or not. Nevertheless, the term 'romantic feeding' is neither particularly sensual, nor particularly illuminating.
Skidmore did provide a little extra context, explaining that there'll be some named vampires who you can feed on. A theoretically intimate moment, it does sound as though it won't always play out like that - Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has already introduced some pretty power-hungry characters, and with emphasis on the hungry, any down-and-dirty vampire behaviour is likely to be pretty risky.
It's been a long, long wait for this particular sequel - one that's only lengthened over recent years thanks to delays and a new studio. Bear in mind that this game was originally planned for release in 2019, before being pushed to 2020 and then 2021 before eventually being shunted several more years down the line, and you can get a sense of how long we've had this one on the horizon. With a release now scheduled for October, however, that wait is very nearly over, capping off a bizarre two-decade history.
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