One other day, one other instalment of ‘Lauren shakes fist at clouds and talks about Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.’ With rumors swirling that Troika’s traditional RPG is getting a remaster, I have been actively unbearable for the previous week or so, and can proceed to be till one seems. Because the World of Darkness works by its annual Month of Darkness occasion, my eyes are on October 31 as a possible remaster reveal date. However, within the meantime, modders ‘Safemilk’ and ‘Sine’ are engaged on an RTX mod that fully overhauls Bloodlines 1, bringing its textures into 2026.
Now it is price noting that Safemilk and Sine’s Bloodlines mod is constructed utilizing NVIDIA’s RTX Remix know-how, which permits “modders to simply seize recreation belongings, improve supplies with generative AI, and remaster video games with path tracing, neural rendering, and DLSS 4.5 with Multi Body Era.” Different classics like Half-Life 2, The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, and Painkiller have additionally been remastered utilizing the tech.
The duo stress, nevertheless, that they “aren’t followers of AI both.” Giving the instance of the enduring Die My Darling poster, Sine tells me that “upscaling the Die My Darling poster meant I needed to monitor down a selected flyer with the proper images from the band’s outdated web site from 20+ years in the past within the Web Archive,” additionally noting that “Safemilk tore his hair out re-tracing the unique sample for the silver platters within the Ocean Home.” Their take care of the sport could be very clear to see.
Beginning out with Santa Monica, the mod’s major focus is on upscaling the sport’s textures and character fashions. The Asylum’s blurry posters have been reworked to be so much sharper, The Ocean Home lodge in some way appears even creepier than it did earlier than (nonetheless some of the atmospheric horror experiences I’ve ever had in a videogame), and The Diner has been totally upscaled too (Doomsayer not included, I hope).
Safemilk and Sine’s first precedence is to enhance the environments, however character fashions are within the works. The duo word that it will seemingly be probably the most troublesome a part of the remaster, as Bloodlines runs on a “pre-Half-Life 2 model” of the Supply engine. “In a perfect world, I might simply transform them from scratch and rig/pores and skin them, then full scale exchange the belongings by Remix (which is my desire),” they write. “However proper off the bat, simply turning on RTX and adjusting some roughness values offers wonderful outcomes.”
I might argue that Bloodlines’ face tech remains to be a few of the greatest within the enterprise, regardless of the sport releasing again in 2004. I hope that Safemilk and Sine handle to maintain that alive with out compromising the texture of the sport – I would not need a ‘yassified’ model of Prince LaCroix or Pisha, for instance. They’re all good as they’re.
Extra typically, the factor that separates remaster from an excellent one is the flexibility to take care of the integrity of the unique recreation. Every time generative AI will get concerned, there will be comprehensible issues that it would not totally perceive what it is upscaling, however Safemilk and Sine have been engaged on this since 2024, and are “doing their greatest to take care of the unique vibes.” What I’ve seen to this point appears to try this, and I am excited to see what comes subsequent. Simply present me Chinatown; it is my favourite.
You’ll be able to obtain Safemilk and Sine’s alpha model of the mod through moddb. As at all times, modding comes with its personal dangers, so security first.
