Paradox Interactive’s CEO Fredrik Wester has renewed hope that Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will finally be released. In fact, he’s hinting it may come as soon as next year.
Wester was interviewed by a Swedish website, and basically said that a 2023 release for the game is not out of the question.
He didn’t confirm it as the release date as the studio has been more careful about such things given the game’s tumultuous development history. This is what Wester had to say about making announcements in general, translated via Google Translate:
“If you look at the pipeline, we’ve been a little cautious about announcing things because we got burned a little bit on Bloodlines 2. We’ve said we’re not going to release anything until we’re pretty sure of an absolute launch date or at least a launch month.”
Originally revealed in 2019, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has been swimming in development hell in the past few years. It’s especially sad when the original Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines itself was originally released all the way back in 2004.
What essentially happened is the game kept getting pushed back beyond its supposed release year of 2020, and then in February 2021, something snapped and a large number of major staff members left the project. This included developer Hardsuit Labs, lead writer Brian Mitsoda, creative director Ka’a’i Cluney, and senior narrative designer Cara Ellison.
Wester had in fact also revealed that the project came very close to cancellation at one point, but the company eventually decided to keep working on it.
Paradox Interactive themselves have not exactly been sitting on their hands. In fact, the company has continued to solder on with other games, with Cities Skylines being their current largest and most active franchise. Just last June, they celebrated hitting 12 million units in sales.
While the development troubles have themselves been troubling to read about, there can be no doubt that there are still a lot of fans eager to see Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 get released. This is the kind of gap that Metroid fans saw between Metroid Zero Mission and Metroid Dread. But even then, those same Metroid fans didn’t think Metroid Dread would even ever get released, and somehow it still happened. So maybe hope springs eternal for the Vampire: The Masquerade fandom too.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 was announced for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: PCGamer
