https://wccftech.com/bloodlines-2-qa-lot-subtleties-to-movement-combat/
Bloodlines 2 Gamescom 2025 Q&A – ‘There’s a Lot of Subtleties to the Movement and Combat’
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has been a long time coming, that's for sure. I first attended a hands-off preview of the original project by Hardsuit Labs at E3 2019. Back then, I hoped to play the full game in 2021, but then Paradox Interactive boldly removed Hardsuit Labs from the project and accepted a brand new pitch from The Chinese Room, adding another four years to the development of this long-anticipated RPG sequel.
Ahead of Gamescom 2025, I
played the game's opening missions and quite enjoyed that slice of Bloodlines 2. During a convention, I got to play even further than that, but that portion is still embargoed until a later date. What is not embargoed, though, is my chat with a few key members of the development team: Design Director Jey Hicks, Level Designer Catarina Martins, and Narrative Director Ian Thomas. As a reminder, the game is
slated to launch on October 21 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X, and publisher Paradox Interactive has
promised to make 'adjustments' to the Lasombra and Toreador clans being locked behind a day-one DLC.
How far is this demo into the game?
Jey Hicks: There's a whole lot more to go. I can't say the exact numbers because right now we're trying to figure out exactly how long it is, because we've been adding in a bunch of new content recently, but currently our estimates are between people who are a fast player who doesn't do any of the additional content, maybe 20-25 odd hours and then up to potentially around 40 hours for more sort of completionists.
Ian Thomas: This demo is just before the point where Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 opens up into a more open world space, if that makes sense. The story is quite linear up to this point, and after you return from this mission, the map opens up. Phyre gets a different role in the city and there'll be lots of different things you can look at from the map and go and interact with. Side missions, if you like.
Are these side missions tied to specific characters?
Jey Hicks: Yes, exactly. Are you aware of the blood resonance system? That's how you unlock the other powers from the other clans. Each clan has a leader, essentially. They will be sending you out on various different missions, which can help you progress along with your unlocks as well. You're going to gain experience, you're going to gain resonant blood, which you can then spend on the new abilities.
Something that I noticed in the previous demo is that when you play with Fabian, you still have access to the blood resonance, or at least the resonance events are still marked on the map. Does that mean you can unlock stuff with Fabian, too?
Jey Hicks: Yeah, there's essentially certain people who are there for Fabian to feed on around Seattle.
But you can't unlock any new abilities, right?
Jey Hicks: Not with Fabian, no.
He already has everything unlocked from the get-go, then.
Ian Thomas: Because it makes sense narratively with Fabian at the end of his life cycle, right? We don't want to boost him further just as he's about to die.
Catarina Martins: And also, Fabian is not as powerful as Phyre.
Ian Thomas: But he still needs to feed. And so I think what you saw were probably the people he feeds upon.
Catarina Martins: Fabian is an interesting one because, as a detective himself, he doesn't want to break the Masquerade by feeding on people randomly. He has people that he trusts and goes back to on a regular basis who allow him to feed on them.
Jey Hicks: It's voluntary. They're allowing him to do this.
Ian Thomas: They're also his own detective's contacts on the street.
How did you come up with this idea of a vampire stuck in the head of another? They are very different, too, because Phyre is ancient and originally from the old world, and of course, Fabian is local, not to mention that he's a detective interested in the workings of the mind, whereas Phyre is much more physical.
Ian Thomas: It started before I joined the company, actually. The idea always was that Phyre would have somebody in their head, but originally, that somebody was written as a very different character, somebody who was still called Fabian but was very different. He was much more modern and much younger than he ended up being. When we tested that, and we tried to make that work, it wasn't working. The two characters were too similar in a bunch of ways, weirdly enough, because the younger vampire was quite upset about everything that was happening, and then Phyre isn't exactly cheerful, either.
And so people found that that pairing wasn't really fun to spend time with. So we did quite a big change later on, we had a lot of extra story we wanted to tell and we also wanted to introduce the Malkavian clan. Suddenly we went, what if the Malkavian was the character in Phyre's head? Suddenly, it really started to work, and we found that having the old vampire who has maybe lost their humanity to quite a big extent and doesn't connect to the humans, along with Fabian, who's fascinated by humans and is really interested in how the world work, it was a really nice pairing, and that just worked for us, along with a really good voice actor. Suddenly, Fabian was brought to life and they went okay, this is the right way to go. It's quite a late change and also a brave change, I think, from Paradox's case, because they said, yes, you're right. We do need to make this change, let's take the time to do it. We are very happy with that.
Jey Hicks: I think it was definitely a worthwhile decision to delay the game and make sure that people actually relate and enjoy the characters. We didn't want Fabian to be just another voice in your head sort of character.
It wasn't playable before, I take it?
Jey Hicks: Exactly, that's exactly so. That took at least a year.
Ian Thomas: Two years, really, to incorporate that change. But it was so we'd get a much bigger game as well, and it's given us more playstyles, because you get to do the detective. And it's brought in Malkavian, and we like Malkavian.
Speaking about Malkavians, they're usually considered to be mad in Vampire: The Masquerade lore, but that doesn't seem to be the case with Fabian.
Ian Thomas: That depends on what you think mad is. They have a twisted view and a different perception of the world. Some people call them mad, and some people call them prophets or visionaries, and that's all part of Vampire: The Masquerade lore. Some may well be crazy, but some just see the world in a very different way, and Fabian sees the world in a very different way. He sees it as if he's a detective in the 1930s or 40s. Is he? Who knows, but that's what he thinks he is.
Speaking about the gameplay balance between the clans, I noticed that half of the clans have two clan affinities, while others have three. Are those with three designed to be more versatile?
Jey Hicks: I'm glad you picked up on that. Yeah, with those kinds of abilities, you essentially get a discount on purchasing the ability. So yeah, you can buy way more abilities with clan affinities.
Ian Thomas: That's coming from the roleplaying game.
Jey Hicks: Yeah, 100%. We tried to be accurate to the roleplaying game with that, and if you look at the mastery rating, it is specified at the top when you're choosing your clan. That gives people just a rough idea of how difficult it is to play as each clan. Because we have the difficulty and then we have the difficulty of playing Phyre as a member of a specific clan.
I wanted to ask about the Masquerade system in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. I noticed that when it's full, if you're completely in the red, someone appears from nowhere and stabs Phyre to death. Who is that character?
Ian Thomas: I can't remember whether you met the character Tolly [a Nosferature vampire].
Yes, he was in the previous demo.
Ian Thomas: So Tolly is very, very efficient. He is not just an information master. He is an enforcer of the Camarilla and he is constantly watching you. When you break the Masquerade, he puts you back into torpor.
I noticed that when you go into the red bar, but it's not full, you can slowly come back before Tolly executes you.
Catarina Martins: If you hide from the police, if we don't do any more things in the eye of the public, then you should be able to just go back and not get dealt with by Tolly.
This system is kind of core to the very IP. It's in the name, right? You can't break the Masquerade.
Jey Hicks: Yes. It gets quite interesting later in the game when you're doing more missions around the city. Let's say you have to go and kill little thieves or someone who's maybe in the park. There will be witnesses, so you've got to figure out the optimal way to do that without upsetting the Camarilla.
So even when you become the Sheriff of Seattle on behalf of the Camarilla, you don't get any more leeway in that regard.
Jey Hicks: No. The Masquerade is the single, hard, sacred law. Right now. No one is above that.
Catarina Martins: And it's not just something that happens in the game. It comes straight from the tabletop RPG. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter how cool you are.
Jey Hicks: It's essential for vampires to remain anonymous; otherwise, they would just get hunted to extinction. They know that they wouldn't be able to win an open war with the mortals.
In terms of RPG systems, I noticed that there isn't that much to loot in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 besides elixirs. Is that correct?
Jey Hicks: The elixirs are the looting, yes. We also have various types of collectibles that give the player lore about the world, so you can go around collecting them. Some of those actually enhance your character as well. I don't know if you have found the blue ones with Phyre's symbol. They actually give you more health as well as giving you a big chunk of experience. You will then use the experience to unlock your abilities, but the health is quite obvious: it's easier to survive with more health.
Catarina Martins: If you take your time to explore the city, then you will eventually find some collectibles that will help you in the long run. And so, if you are one of those players who likes to explore when you're running around (I'm guilty of that), you can actually give yourself a step up because you can increase your health and experience bar. It will help you in the future rather than being the person who goes from objective to objective. I think the game is even more difficult if you go straight from objective to objective without experience, so we promote the exploring part.
Jey Hicks: And it's fun to explore. Did you enjoy just navigating around the city and jumping from rooftops and stuff?
Yes, especially the gliding.
Catarina Martins: But did you dash during a glide?
Nope.
Catarina Martins: It gets you there so fast. So, the moment that you glide and you look like you're just about to miss a ledge or something, if you dash, you can get a natural forward momentum.
Jey Hicks: There's a lot of subtleties to the movement and the combat if you want to master them. Did you discover the additional kicks and stuff like that?
I mean, I noticed that when you unlock the Blink ability, you can aim it at a foe and it will kick them.
Jey Hicks: I saw you doing that, that was cool. But no, actually, if you use dash and a direction and an attack, it's like if you dash backward, you'll do a knee move. If you dash to the right, you do a big sweeping roundhouse kick, and there's some more for you to discover. It's really cool.
Maybe it could be helpful if you would put some tool tips in there.
Jey Hicks: There are some. Also, if you take your time to read the codex as well, there's advanced combat tutorials in there. But yeah, they serve different purposes. The roundhouse kick is really good for crowd control, so if you've got a big group of enemies nearby, do the roundhouse kick, and they'll scatter off.
Personally, I think that the combat of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 captures the feeling of being a vampire quite well. I also like that you have to be tactical when you're feeding because otherwise, the NPCs can kill you. In most games, when you enter those kind of choreographed cinematic animations where you're locked for a few seconds, you are also effectively invulnerable to enemy attacks.
Jey Hicks: We had that for quite a while and the decision to change that made the game so much better in my opinion. We had a similar thing to other games with using a sort of token-based combat system, where only one guy can attack me at once. It just didn't feel right. We wanted this to feel like really fast combat. It was way too easy when we had that. Just making those two changes that I just said made the game so much more fun. It's now about managing the crowd, which is a real thing that, if you talk to people who do like street fighting, the most important thing is making sure your enemies are in your field of view, right? If people get behind you, you're done, you're dead.
Catarina Martins: The thing about it is that you can actually use it to your advantage. If there is an NPC that uses firearms, like the enforcer with the gun, and you line it up with another enemy who is closing in melee, they will hit them as well.
I did notice that, and it felt great. Thank you for your time.
