Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 - Official 2023 Announcement Trailer

Short article with more information:

https://www.pcgamer.com/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2-has-been-quietly-rebuilt-by-dear-esther-developer-the-chinese-room-with-different-gameplay-mechanics-and-rpg-systems/

TLDR: Dev is The Chinese Room, developer of Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. They still won't say what happened with Hardsuit Labs, the OG dev, and the mechanics and system will be totally different.

Instead of a thin-blood (new, weak vampire), you're an Elder (old, scary vampire) fresh from torpor (long VampNap).

Neither of those had any NPCs, did they? I'm not familiar with Dear Esther but from looking it up it says you just explore environments, and I remember Everybody's Gone to the Rapture having like, vague humanoid models but I don't recall them being animated, could be wrong.
- I personally haven't heard of either before, and that's concerning if they don't have experience with NPCs.
Instead of a thin-blood, you’re an Elder fresh from torpor.

Welp, there goes the exploration of the world factor.
- Depends on how long the torpor lasted. If it was for a couple of centuries, a lot of has changed in 200 years. The player is going to have to find out the new political players, guns, vehicles, new clans, etc.
  
  If the player was in torpor for a couple of decades, yeah the world exploration will be dull.
- True, it'll make it more confusing for new people just now picking up the IP, and telling them to play a 20-year old game for context is a hard sell.
  
  As someone who already played VTMB, I'm excited to be playing as an Elder for once instead of the standard fledgling.
- No no see you just woke up from Torpor, so yeah you're an elder, but also you're super weak, and nobody knows who you are so you won't get any respect until you've done some basic bitch errands. But EVENTUALLY, you'll be powerful and respected.
  
  Yeah this "Elder fresh from torpor" angle just completely killed my excitement, shit sounds so... bland now. So typical.
I played the shit out of Blacklight: Retribution back in the day, and saw the whole transition from zombie studios to buildblock to hardsuit labs. The devs were really active on various forums, and all seemed like great people.

I've been waiting so long for them to release something new, but this sort of game was a complete departure from anything they worked on (as the main dev) in the past. I'm not shocked that it didn't worked out.
I hope these new mechanics include a 3rd person option

I should be happy it's getting a sequel, but all I can muster is a terrified oh no.

As much as I would love for this to be a hit, my skepticism is through the roof.

(X) Doubt

Mom come pick me up. I'm scared.

I actually had this game pre-ordered a long while back but with the huge upheaval around the developer I canceled it. I haven't played any other games by this developer but I like the concept art. Still, I remain ever apprehensive.

Yay!

The Chinese room

Boo

Huh why?
- They don’t have a history of developing system heavy games / immersive sims.
  
  They seem to specialize in very linear narrative experience that are extremely light on gameplay systems. Walking sims is what people like to describe them as.
- Because they are a one trick pony and not a very good trick (walking sim)?
  
  Could they actually pull it off? Idk maybe.

I don’t have a good feeling about this game.

I loved vtmb enough to overlook the late game and I'm very nervous about the tumultuous history of this game. But here's hoping.

While I wasn't hugely excited about Mitsoda's thin-blood idea, I'm even less excited about being an awakened Elder. Also, knowing the heart and soul of the original will be missing does not fill me with optimism.

The content of the trailer gives me nothing to work with really, either. It will have first-person action combat, that's about it, and it's the last thing anyone excited for a Bloodlines sequel would care about.

I know characters, writing and atmosphere can be hard to get across in a trailer but I would have liked something more. The previous trailer at least had similar undertones to the first game, you could tell it had some of the same people involved and it gave me some optimism.

It Paradox wanted me to get me on board for this attempt they could have at least used one of Rik Schaffer's new tracks for the trailer, but I assume he has been scrapped too.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2: The Bloodening (The Michael Scott Story Starring Michael Scott, With Dwight Schrute)

A mainstream fairly well funded sequel to a cult classic owned by a company that has yet to develop anything even close to the same quality as a janky pre-release third-party source game that has switched developers at least once now?

...I'm sure it will be fine, it's not like there's at least two other examples of that exact scenario failing miserably.

Please don't suck.

But if you're a vampire that's kinda a requirement, at least usually.
For real. This looks really good.

I really hope they have Malkavian (clan of madmen and prophets) with unique content as a starting option, I would love to run through the game for the first time not 100% sure what's real.

They've resumed development on this? Huh, that's interesting. At this point this game has gone through dev hell so I hope it turns out alright.

Wasnt this announced already? With a trailer too?

Yeah in 2019. But the game got a new developer.
Yep, but then it entered dev hell for a few years.