Bloodlines 2 Is Here, and Oh Boy, What Have They Done?
Forget the development drama for a second, some of the actual game decisions here are just… wow.
So, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 clawed its way out of development hell and onto our hard drives. The reception has been, shall we say, less than stellar, bordering on a full-blown peasant revolt with torches and pitchforks. While the troubled history and studio swap are a whole saga, I want to talk about some of the genuinely baffling decisions made for the game that actually shipped.
Forget whether it's a "true successor" for a moment – some of these choices feel like they belong in a game from 2010, not 2025.
Where Are the Settings?
Let's start with the absolute basics. You launch a brand-new, premium-priced PC game. What do you expect? Maybe an options menu with, I don't know, essentials? Apparently, that was too much to ask. Players are reporting no Field of View (FOV) slider. In a first-person perspective game. Okay.
Even worse, the game seems to slather motion blur on everything with no option to disable it. For a significant chunk of players, that's an instant trip to refund city via vomit comet. Basic accessibility options are seemingly AWOL too. How does this even happen in this day and age? Oh, and you need the Paradox Launcher just to get things going? Lovely.
RPG Lite, Maybe?
Then there's the stuff that makes veterans of the original scratch their heads raw. No inventory management? No character stats screen in the traditional sense? No picking up and using weapons, aside from yeeting them with telekinesis like a cheap party trick?
These aren't just minor tweaks; they're fundamental shifts away from the RPG mechanics that defined the first game. It shifts the experience towards something more like a streamlined action game or immersive sim, which is fine if that's what you're selling, but jarring when the box says Bloodlines 2. Even character creation is out; you're playing a predefined Elder vampire.
NO MANUAL SAVE?! WHAT?!
This one deserves its own section because, honestly, what the actual hell? In a game that presumably has choices, branching paths (even limited ones), and potential failure states... no manual save option? This isn't some rogue-lite where permadeath is the point. It's supposedly a narrative RPG.
Relying solely on autosaves in a potentially buggy, choice-driven game is madness. It removes player agency, makes experimentation terrifying, and can lead to infuriating progress loss if the autosave triggers at an inopportune moment. How did this decision make it through any design meeting? It's such a fundamental feature for this genre, its absence is genuinely shocking.
What Was the Plan?
You look at all these decisions together – the missing basic options, the stripped-down RPG elements, the lack of manual saves – and it paints a confusing picture. Was this the result of the turbulent development and studio change? Were core systems ripped out and replaced haphazardly? Was it a conscious decision to make a different kind of game, hoping the Bloodlines name would carry it?
Whatever the reason, the result is a game that feels fundamentally compromised and strangely archaic in crucial areas, right out of the gate. It's one thing to have bugs or performance issues at launch (which it also seems to have), but it's another to be missing features considered standard a decade ago. It's just baffling.