Bloodlines 2 Got An Exciting Gamescom Reveal — Then Immediately Spoiled It With Controversial DLC
Paid in blood.
Just before the start of Gamescom, Team Cherry announced that it had something big to share about Hollow Knight: Silksong later in the week. The most obvious culprit? A release date finally being set for the game. And while that story has overshadowed all else since then, Silksong isn’t the only long-awaited game we may finally get our hands on this year. In 2019, the same year that Silksong was announced, the sequel to a cult hit RPG was also revealed, and after six years, it finally has a release date for this year — but the update was immediately followed by a much less welcome detail about the launch.
Since its release in 2004, Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines has been called one of the best RPGs of all time, despite even its fans admitting that it has heaps of issues. Buggy and unpolished, with clumsy combat, Bloodlines is nonetheless considered a masterpiece, thanks to its fantastic writing and an almost overwhelming degree of player freedom in shaping the narrative.
Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 had its release date announcement spoiled immediately by a DLC controversy.
In 2019, a sequel was announced, and it’s been nothing but trouble since then. It was initially planned for a 2020 release, but issues with its developer led to a series of delays, a near-cancellation, and the entire project being moved to a new studio. Now, The Chinese Room, developer of Still Wakes the Deep, says it’s ready to bring the game across the finish line for a launch on October 21. That announcement came in a trailer at Gamescom Opening Night Live, showing gameplay of its two protagonists — Phyre, fighting her way through modern-day Seattle, and Fabien, the vampire spirit living in her head who’s investigating his own murder in the 1920s.
As exciting as the game’s impending release may be, the mood soured almost immediately when publisher Paradox Interactive revealed its launch plans. Bloodlines 2 will be available for $60 on release, but rather than sidestepping the recent debate about game prices brought on by Mario Kart World’s $80 price tag, Bloodlines 2 stirred up a whole new controversy.
Bloodlines 2 already has its work cut out for it living up to its classic predecessor.
While Bloodlines 2 also costs $60 for the standard edition, a pricier premium edition is also available. That’s pretty common for bigger releases these days, except that one of the bonuses players get for springing for the $90 special edition is DLC that grants the ability to play as two extra vampire clans. In Vampire: The Masquerade terms, clans are essentially character classes, meaning that in a real way, you’re not getting the full game at all unless you purchase the more expensive version. It’s not clear how much Bloodlines 2 will lean into the original’s wild degree of choice, but in the first Bloodlines, events could vary so much based on your choice of clan that some almost make it feel like playing an entirely different game.
Day-one DLC and pricey premium editions are an unfortunate fact of gaming these days, though a $30 paywall for character classes does feel especially egregious. Maybe not entirely unexpected, though, given who’s publishing Bloodlines 2. Paradox Interactive is well-known for publishing incredible strategy games like the Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings series. It’s just as well-known for stuffing its games to the gills with DLC, which can add up to costing far more than the base game itself.
That’s prompted plenty of criticism, but none quite as loud as the backlash to Bloodlines 2’s DLC. In some ways, Bloodlines’ fantastic reputation is already working against its sequel, as a game with a notoriously messy development history will be judged against not just one of the most beloved RPGs ever, but also fans’ nostalgia-tinted memories of it. Putting a $30 barrier between them and getting the full experience of the sequel feels like asking for trouble, and Bloodlines 2 will have to be one hell of an RPG to overcome it.
