Dan Pinchbeck, the co-founder of Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 developer The Chinese Room, has revealed during an interview with Cat Burton that he originally wanted Paradox to drop the ‘Bloodlines 2′ title from the game, as he had doubts that a worthy sequel to the original could be made.
Right from the word go, there was one of the producers, then at Paradox, who I’m still friends with, who’s now with another publisher. We used to sit there and go and have these planning sessions of, ‘how do we get them to not call it Bloodlines 2?’ That feels like the most important thing we do here is to come at this and say this isn’t Bloodlines 2. You can’t make Bloodlines 2. There’s not enough time. There’s not enough money’.
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And Bloodlines 1 came out at a really interesting period in game development, when it was the same time as games like Stalker and Shenmue, when you could ship a really ambitious game that was full of bugs and holes, was totally flawed, but the ambition was really exciting. A lot of those games, they’re real cult games now, but they really weren’t very good when you actually broke them apart and analyzed them. They had great ideas, wonderful ideas, players loved them. But you couldn’t get away with it now.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 endured tumultuous development cycle, having originally been in the works at Hardsuit Labs until around February 2021. The game was delayed numerous times until it was later confirmed that The Chinese Room had assumed development responsibilities. Bloodlines 2 launched in October for PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S, and you can read our full verdict here.
Pinchbeck announced his departure from The Chinese Room in July 2023 following the reveal of Still Wakes the Deep, and served as the original creative director and write for Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 prior to leaving the company.
[Source – Dan Pinchbeck Interview via VGC]