Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Fingers-On Preview: We have been fortunate sufficient to get an early hands-on with Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 on PC. And the quick model is, I’m positively amazed on the excessive manufacturing high quality of the sport. After the years of delays and going via completely different developer studios, I used to be sceptical, however seeing the sport first-hand made me longing for the completed product.
We received to play the primary few missions. This was on PC in Extremely Settings, and the PS5 efficiency stays to be seen. However extra on that beneath, let’s dive in!
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Fingers-On Preview – From Improvement Hell To Triumph?
Welcome to Seattle
You play as Phyre, an elder vampire who was asleep from the Twenties till trendy instances. You get up in twenty first century Seattle round Christmas time. The sport begins out in a constructing the place you might be taught the fundamental actions, talents, and fight mechanics of vampires. Your motion via the world includes operating up partitions, sneaking via vents, gliding for longer distances, and utilizing your heightened senses to identify factors of curiosity. A white circle in the course of the display will get bigger when interactable objects are close by, corresponding to story goals or gadgets. There are additionally waypoints within the open world, however not a lot whereas inside buildings.
The fight revolves round utilizing dodges, bare-handed assaults, and Telekinesis to throw objects and jank enemies round. For instance, you need to use Telekinesis to choose up weapons dropped by enemies from a distance and throw them again, or use objects within the setting. I threw hearth extinguishers that exploded, knives of disarmed enemies, weapons, and varied family objects that lay scattered round. From my time with the sport it doesn’t seem to be you’ll be able to equip any weapons your self, so the one means to make use of weapons, for instance, is to make use of telekinesis and seize them from defeated enemies.
You’ll be able to then intention weapons and discharge them at enemies. I began each encounter bare-handed, nevertheless. You even have particular vampire talents that allow you to manipulate and overwhelm enemies. You’ll be able to possess foes to remote-control them and switch them towards one another, or command them to kill themselves, or make them neglect you have been ever there. The sport is gore-heavy, with frequent dismemberments together with grisly decapitation.
Your beginning talents depend upon what class you choose – there are 4 lessons and two DLC lessons. There’s additionally a personality creator the place you choose your gender and design your individual character. Extra cosmetics are unlocked all through the sport and may be outfitted at any time from the menu. The sport is in first individual view, so the one time you see your self is throughout dialogues and cutscenes.
Your beginning class additionally impacts the beginning opinion different characters have of you, primarily based on their affiliations. It appears you’ll be able to unlock the identical talents throughout lessons although. There’s a talent tree the place you purchase new talents as you progress within the recreation to earn skill factors.
The Silence of the Blood
The fight is styled extra in the direction of stealth and utilizing your talents. Open battle isn’t too troublesome on simple to regular, however some encounters may be fairly difficult on laborious if you’re noticed. Within the early recreation sections that I performed, the enemies have been people, though maybe there will likely be vampire fights too. You’ll be able to sneak up on foes to carry out stealth kills and skinny them out utilizing your talents earlier than coming into fight. The way in which you restore well being is by “feeding” on enemies. You are able to do this both on stealth kills from behind, or on the ultimate hit in open fight. Nevertheless, throughout fight different enemies can nonetheless hit you whereas the feeding animation is ongoing, so that you may lose extra well being than you generate.
Exterior of mission encounters, you typically should stay unnoticed. You aren’t allowed to interrupt what the sport calls “The Masquerade,” which is you hiding the very fact you’re a vampire. If people spot you utilizing supernatural vampire talents, the Masquerade meter on the prime of the display will rise (i.e. their suspicion). These are issues like utilizing your vampire dash, gliding, feeding on folks, or attacking folks on the streets. For those who break the “Masquerade”, i.e. folks understand you’re a vampire, one of many different vampires will immediately seem to ram a stake via your coronary heart and kill you.
All of the vampires should maintain the key that vampires are actual and if anybody breaks this rule they’re killed. Then you definitely get a recreation over display and respawn on the final checkpoint. However apart from shedding progress for the reason that final checkpoint there doesn’t appear to be any long-term consequence that I noticed.
Maintain ‘Em Speaking
Dialogue selections are additionally an enormous a part of the sport. My finest comparability is that it’s just like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 or Baldur’s Gate 3, the place you at all times have a number of dialogue selections, and what you choose impacts how folks deal with you and the way quests unfold. The dialogues are significant and may have long run influence on the story. When making an vital alternative there will likely be a popup how the opposite character feels about it, whether or not they appreciated it or not. Choosing the “good” dialogues will yield approval, whereas choosing the confrontational dialogues will yield disapproval. This can supply a variety of replay worth to play via all paths and outcomes.
The sport solely has one autosave and no handbook saves, so there’s no fast method to soar again and take a look at different selections. That is maybe intentional to present your selections a sure finality and encourage the sport’s replay worth.
After the preliminary tutorials within the beginning constructing, you go exterior on the streets of Seattle. It’s Christmas time and town is snowy. The way in which I’d describe the world is Cyberpunk 2077 in winter; there are numerous neon lights and the graphics are high-end. It seemed shockingly good and ran completely easy on PC. If PS5/Professional efficiency is something near it we’re in for a deal with!
Clear Up The Streets
The open world is split into a number of districts. The districts are comparatively small. You’ll be able to discover solely on foot, as I didn’t see any automobiles that may very well be used. Most of the buildings may be climbed via parkouring. You’ll be able to run up partitions and climb up pipes. This vertical open world design jogged my memory of the parkouring in Dying Mild 2. There’s additionally a collectable counter on the map for the completionists. The district I performed had three merchandise sorts tracked on the map. There are additionally codex entries scattered across the recreation which may be picked up and supply some backstory.
There are little aspect occasions on the map that get marked when close by. Some civilians in search of a hookup who may be lured into alleys and feed on them, and a few rowdy civilians which are in search of a battle. These are a supply of bonus XP. Important quests are additionally marked with icons on the open world map. Oftentimes you need to use your heightened senses to trace paths to goals, corresponding to scent trails.
It’s also possible to enter among the buildings, that are marked pink on the map. These are vital mission associated locations. Different buildings can’t be entered, however can typically parkour to their roof. The town seems to be very good and is enjoyable to discover, buildings are festively adorned to get you into the Christmas spirit.
General this felt extra like an AAA recreation than I anticipated and fewer like a undertaking that went via improvement hell.
I went into Bloodlines 2 with none prior data of the Vampire video games. I had solely seen the trailers and heard of the delays, however was blown away by how polished the sport seems to be (PS5 efficiency pending). I’d describe it as a mixture of BioShock’s fight, Dying Mild 2’s parkouring, Baldur Gate 3’s dialogue system, and Cyberpunk 2077’s world design. It now climbed to one in all my most anticipated video games for the remainder of 2025 and I can’t wait to play the complete factor.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 releases for PS5 on October 21, 2025.
