"You could go and keep beating up people on top of buildings" forever in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, but devs say "we're not making GTA" because even vampires need to sleep

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Vice City? No, no, you're in vampire country now

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 screenshot showing the bloodboil ability being used against an enemy who's completely red and their heart appears to burn
(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)

Some people – like the crabby criminals in Grand Theft Auto – are so unprincipled, even the vampires that yearn for the sour blood running through their necks really want nothing to do with them. Or, it seemed that way in an interview GamesRadar+ had with Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 developers during Gamescom 2025, where they told us their RPG may have enough violence to fill a millennium, but it's definitely not a Rockstar game.

"The story will always progress forward," narrative designer Ian Thomas says about how most players will spend their time in Bloodlines 2. It's ultimately "up to them" if they'd rather explore or focus on the primary questline, and "you could go and keep beating up people on top of buildings, couldn't you? Forever, actually," but current developer The Chinese Room is "not making GTA."

"We are trying to tell a particular story," Thomas continues, in which there are what he describes as "a series of nights" with their own "particular story beats." Players will need to rest in the Haven, which was usually a nondescript apartment in the original Bloodlines game, in order to avoid the killer sun and make it to the next night. They'll get to dream while they rest – though vampires typically don't, says Thomas – while sharing consciousness with Malkavian detective Fabien and his sensitive, psychic mind.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is not the faithful sequel I'd hoped to see, but maybe that's a bigger marker of progress than it seems.

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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