When I cast my mind to videogame franchises I’m hyped about, I draw a bit of a blank. I’ve got Diablo 4 already, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is right around the corner, and Fable is still a little too far away to really excite me. The only upcoming game I can genuinely say I’m looking forward to is Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, but even that’s been delayed and pushed into the start of next year, engulfed by concerns that it’s getting axed entirely. During the Paradox Media Day event, my colleague Ken asked deputy CEO Mattias Lilja about Bloodlines 2’s progress, and while the answer partially sates my concerns, it opens up questions about the series’ future.
In our exclusive interviews, Ken discusses Paradox’s somewhat rocky 2023 and 2024, two years marred by several botched releases and the unexpected cancellation of highly-anticipated Sims rival, Life by You. In the life game‘s case, chief creative officer Henrik Fåhraeus tells us that Paradox simply strayed too far from its core principals, noting that they “should have stopped [development] earlier.”
Given Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is also a departure from Paradox’s traditional grand strategy games, that raises questions about the upcoming vampire RPG, which focuses on a narrative-heavy, choice-drive single-player campaign.
Life by You is “an outlier,” Lilja tells PCGamesN, but admits that Paradox itself “will probably not make Bloodlines 3 – we would probably find somebody to license that to. It goes back to the idea of ‘what do we really know?’
“If you look at Paradox after Bloodlines 2 – maybe late 2025 or 2026 – I think you’ll see that the games we’re talking about then are going to look more like grand strategy games, management games, or things that are at least adjacent to that.”
But let’s go back to Bloodlines 2. “I’m very confident that we’re going to release Bloodlines 2,” Lilja states, causing this writer to let out an obnoxiously large ‘phew.’ “I’m actually quite confident that we’re going to release it in the first half of next year.
“Of course when you change developer midway through you’ve accumulated cost, but this time we gave The Chinese Room the game and went ‘this is the vision, this is what’s been done so far, but you own it.’ They have full ownership and many degrees of freedom, and they’re actually delivering a game that’s starting to look like what we really want.
“I’m starting to feel confident about Bloodlines 2, and that’s why it still exists of course; we think it’s doable and it’s worth doing.”
Lilja acknowledges player concerns about the last-minute, Life by You-style cancellation, noting that “changing developer is the step before you stop.” He reiterates, however, that “we will reach the game[‘s release], we think we know when, and we hope people will like it.”
What I’ve seen of Bloodlines 2 so far has made me a little concerned – only four clans at launch leaves me out in the cold, and I’d probably rather have seen a remaster of the original Bloodlines instead. But, unlike most Kindred, I have faith. Perhaps I really am a LaSombra after all.
If you’re sharpening your fangs ahead of the Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 release date, we have a list of all of the Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 clans so that you can choose your predator ahead of time.
Interview conducted by Ken Allsop.