Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2

Very interested in this one and will be keeping a close eye on it as it gets closer to release. A couple of points about what's been discussed so far:


• I'm willing to give the (mostly) first person perspective nature a go as games likes BioShock and Dishonored didn't bother me when playing; and I'm going to be playing Cyberpunk 2075 in a similar fashion anyways.

•At first I was weary of the whole "thin blood" thing, but the more I thought about it, and the more articles I read the more it makes sense. Having your vampire rise up from nothing to ascend the heights (or depths) of the various clans as you amass more power and influence makes such a choice very appropriate.

• I suppose I'm in the minority here, but I actually applaud the lack of PC voiceover. Try and make a game with a quarter of the reactivity this title will demand based on a character's choice of clan, gender, morality, discipline use, etc with a voiced protagonist. Word budgets are a thing in games, and I personally don't want to see over half of it dedicated to essentially hearing my PC saying multiple variations on "I should go", not when it comes at the expense of fleshing out the game world.

• Political talk…. As long as it's tastefully done, and balanced, then I welcome the nuance it can bring to the setting. Vampire wheeling and dealing, back room meetings, etc all of these things are what help define the nature of the Masquerade. However, assigning moral judgments on certain aspects of this world based on real world topics is going to be... problematic to say the least. This is the World of Darkness we're talking about, horrible stuff happens all the time here that's why it's called the World of DARKNESS; normal social/political issues aren't going to fly in a direct comparison here because this is not the real world. And that's even before you get into the supernatural elements this setting has.

• Vampires are monsters in that they are literal parasites that have to feed off the blood and suffering of others to survive. Now this doesn't mean that you can't have a character who struggles to remain as human as possible given the nature of their existence, but the game has to remember who these beings are. Personally, I am hoping that the game will allow us to embrace our nature without morally chiding us for "Being Bad". Human issues are for humans; we're not going to be playing as a human.

I can remember one of my favorite Vampire characters I made for the table top. He was a Tzimice (the flesh/bone crafting clan) and rather than following the Path of Humanity, he instead devoted himself to the Path of the Other, in becoming something alien; outside the experience of what humans and the kindred who still strove to be like them, called normal. This didn't make my character evil however; he wasn't walking around like a mindless monster and/or kicking puppies in his pursuit of ascendance; rather it made him and his goals different to the average Cannite. Orange/Blue morality to Black/White morality if anything.

I hope that something like this is possible in this game. Pipe dream here, but it would be amazing if clan Tzimice was one of the DLC clans Paradox plans on adding to the game.