The upcoming RPG Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2, the long-awaited sequel to Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, promises to make its vampire-centered gameplay more enticing and perilous than ever before, but what threats could make even an immortal, bloodthirsty creature of the night tremble in fear? By basing their new game on the updated 5th Edition of the Vampire: The Masquerade roleplaying game, Paradox Studios has access to a number of new concepts, lore, and antagonists which have the potential to be quite dangerous for undead players, despite their vampiric abilities.
As detailed by Polygon, the franchise started with Vampire: The Masquerade, a roleplaying game released by White Wolf Studios in the early 1990’s. While other tabletop roleplaying games had players in the role of heroes killing monsters, Vampire put players in the shoes of monsters struggling to retain their humanity despite inhuman appetites and gruesome powers. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, a video game adaptation released by Troika Studios in 2004, embraced these themes with a story of a newly “embraced” vampire trying to survive the bloody politics of Los Angeles.
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The latest 5th Edition Core Book for Vampire: The Masquerade shook up the game’s setting with new mechanics to capture the essence of the struggle between man and monster, coupled with updates to the story which destabilized the vampire’s societies and gave them new threats to contend with. Paradox Studios has publicly drawn from this new edition to refine the flawed gameplay of the original Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines… and it’s likely they’ll also be taking cues from the game’s metaplot as well, introducing or highlighting new and returning enemies and threats in the story of Bloodlines 2.
Bloodlines 2 Will Likely Have Supernatural Creatures
Vampires are predators who move among the herds of humanity, but they’re not necessarily at the top of the food chain. The World of Darkness setting which Vampire: The Masquerade characters live in is a darker, more dangerous version of normal Earth, filled with feuding supernatural societies. In the first Bloodlines game, players had to contend with tormented ghosts and a nigh-unstoppable Werewolf. Bloodlines 2, while focusing on the Vampire stories, may also brush up against the narratives of reality-warping Mages, two-faced Changelings, and undying Mummies – out-of-context beings who literally don’t play by the vampire rule books.
Bloodlines 2’s Vampire Factions Could Be Dangerous
There’s no honor among thieves, and there’s little mercy among Vampires. The political squabbles between the varied Vampires societies, including the the feudal Camarilla, the rabble-rousing Anarchs, and the diabolical Sabbat, can be deadly games of courtly politics at best, or brutal street wars with supernatural powers at their worst. To make matters worse, the main character of Bloodlines 2 is part of a group of people who are forcibly transformed into vampires by a mysterious faction, meaning they’ll have to deal with the disdain and hostility of Elder vampires and the chaos sewn by other neonate vampires who don’t know what they’re doing.
Bloodlines 2 Could See Second Inquisition Vampire Hunters
In Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition, the vampire world is shaken up by two events: the disappearance of ancient vampire elders and the rise of the Second Inquisition, an alliance of old-school vampire hunters and the intelligence agencies of several nations. In the first Bloodlines game, the Catholic Church’s “Society of Leopold” would show up to hunt player characters who broke the Masquerade with torches, blades, and crossbows.
The alliance of old-school exorcists with state security hints at greater perils for vampires who flaunt their power in Bloodlines 2, and surveillance cameras and drones which can track vampires across Seattle, coupled with black ops squad toting cutting-edge anti-vampire weapons, could make for a very dangerous environment for players to travel through.
Of course, the single greatest threat to a vampire’s existence is always the vampire themselves. Trapped between the twin compulsions of empathy and blood-thirst, the vampire characters in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will walk a fine line between acts of humanity and the moral transgression of drinking human blood. Judging by the footage seen so far, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will build on the first game’s morally-grey quests with new skills, supernatural abilities and mechanics for blood-drinking which will keep players invested in a narrative struggle between human decency and monstrous power… if they survive long enough to enjoy it, that is.
Source: Polygon
