In case you weren’t aware, the upcoming Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is based on the tabletop RPG series of the same name by White Wolf Publishing. The latest version of the rules was released back in 2018. This presents a bit of an issue for those looking forward to Paradox Interactive’s upcoming Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, as the first game was released back in 2004, where they tried to adhere to that ruleset as close as they could.
Not to worry, as in the latest developer diary available on the Paradox forums, lead UI/UX designer Rachel Leiker explains how the team drew on those newer rules for the new game, and some of the places they differed.
For example, in the fifth edition ruleset, blood has four emotional ‘resonances’, each of which can affect your characters’ abilities when drunk. For Bloodlines 2, that was bumped up to five, and the bonuses were reworked. “Delirium, Desire, Fear, Pain, and Rage are all emotions that can be discovered and devoured in the game and act as a secondary XP to unlock and activate Resonance-specific buffs, or Merits,” writes Leiker. “The Resonance and Merits in Bloodlines 2 are more rigid in their implementation, but they allow players to quickly hunt for and manage the resource throughout the game.”
When you start the game, you’re a Thinblood, a vampire without access to normal clan disciplines. For Bloodlines 2, the designers wanted to round out the abilities available to them. Whereas in the tabletop game, the Thinblood Alchemy lets players temporarily counterfeit any other clans’ powers, for Bloodlines 2, the designers chose to focus on three skills.
“The three Thinblood Disciplines – Chiropteran (Affinity to Bats), Nebulation (Mist Form), and Mentalism (Telekinesis) have mostly traversal and defensive applications. Thinblood Alchemy in V5 is much the same way – Thinbloods are at the very very bottom of the food chain, so survival is the number one priority. We maintain the core feeling of what it means to be a Thinblood and use those powers but make it more video game friendly by expressing it in familiar ways. Who doesn’t want to glide across the Seattle skyline, travel as mist with the wind, and move objects without touching them?”
If you’re a fan of the tabletop RPG, then you’ll definitely want to check out just what Paradox has done to switch things up to make it more accessible for the non-tabletop crowd.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 hits PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via the Epic Games Store in 2020.
