Fresh Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 trailer offers the first proper look at gameplay

Good news, people who were around in 2004, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has finally given you and the rest of us a proper look at what its gameplay looks like.

After it was originally announced back in 2019 and reannounced at PAX last year, people who’ve been waiting for a sequel to Troika Games’s classic RPG about dark and gritty vampires doing dark and gritty things in dark and gritty Los Angeles have been chomping at the bit to see more of what The Chinese Room has been cooking. The answer is vampires, in case you were wondering.

You can get a look for yourself at what you’ll be in for when you fire the game up in the trailer and extended gameplay reveal that’ve just dropped via the official World of Darkness YouTube channel, which surprisingly isn’t dedicated to My Chemical Romance fancams. If you’re looking for big takeaways, the verdict from our resident enjoyer of the original VTMB, guides writer Rebecca, is roughly as follows.

The combat that’s been shown off looks “pretty good”, especially given The Chinese Room doesn’t have a history of producing action games, and it’s important to remember the original Bloodlines’ combat was prone to being pretty janky. That said, for many fans, the question will be more about whether this sequel can capture what made the social stealth, world building and roleplaying elements so beloved, something which is hard to know for sure until people are actually playing it.

What it does look like is that those praying for something that’s basically a total throwback to the first game, but given a fresh coat of paint so it works and looks good on the latest hardware, might end up a bit disappointed. However, if you’re up for something that looks to draw a lot of inspiration from the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 and Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong, you might be in for a treat.

Oh, and Jim Trinca joked about the original being crap, but has since claimed he doesn’t seriously believe that.

Another thing the trailer features is some chat from the game’s Cyberpunk-esque fully-voiced protagonist, which we also got a taste of in November last year.