Saturday Morning Gaming: Bloodlines 2 has been delayed. Again. Indefinitely, this time.

Back in early 2019, we got excited when the trailer for Bloodlines 2 was released. Here, let’s watch it again. (Erm, content warning, I guess. Blood. A lot of it.)

Back last year, the game got bumped from 2020 to 2021. This time around… well, read it from the horse’s mouth:

In case you are unable to access the website, you can read the Bloodlines 2 Development Update right here. pic.twitter.com/kdTp5gpBJe

— Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 (@VtM_Bloodlines) February 23, 2021

If you want something you can copy and paste (or have your text-to-voice software translate for you):

Good morning, everyone

As you have noticed, we’ve been keeping pretty quiet for a while. With this in mind, the first piece of news we have for you is to confirm that Bloodlines 2 is still in development.

Secondly, we have made the hard decision that Hardsuit Labs will no longer be leading the development of Bloodlines 2 – which also means that we will not be releasing in 2021 as previously planned. Since we cannot at this time communicate a new release date, we’ve also decided to stop accepting pre-orders for the time being.

This game is very important to us and it has been an ambitious project from the very start. In order to meet our goals for it, we’ve come to the conclusion that a change is needed and, as a result, more development time is required.

We’d like to take this opportunity to honor Hardsuit Labs for their efforts and thank them for their hard work on the project. The studio has done a tremendous job in laying the foundations for the game and we hope that you, the community, will also appreciate their contribution to Bloodlines 2.

We’re thankful for your continuous support throughout the game’s development. We understand how important this is to you, and we’d love to share more with you. As soon as we can, we’ll let you know what the future development team of Bloodlines 2 will look like.

Okay. So what does this mean? Let’s speculate.

I googled Hardsuit Labs and saw that… huh. They’ve pretty much only done one game. I sort of winced when I saw that. Blacklight: Retribution. I don’t recall it. Oh, it’s a multiplayer-arena shooter. Okay, that explains why it wasn’t on my radar. Of course, that doesn’t make me feel particularly good about a single player RPG. Then I saw that, no, wait. Hardsuit Labs used to be Zombie Studios. Holy cow, they’ve been around forever. Zork Nemesis! That was them?!?!? And Spec Ops! And Spec Ops 2. And Tom Clancy stuff. A lot of Spec Ops stuff. Ooooh, they did Saw and Saw II: Flesh and Blood. Huh. Okay, I played those. They had some good moments, as I recall.

So let’s use that as the baseline. The two Saw games proved that they can do horror and they can do stuff like lockpicking mini-games and they know a good voice actor from a bad one. Okay. Maybe I can feel good about Hardsuit Labs, formerly Zombie Studios, being on board. Oh, yeah. This announcement says that they aren’t on board anymore.

Well, Saw and Saw II were a long time ago, I guess. More than a decade. Maybe it’s just as well.

So are they going to start from scratch? “The studio has done a tremendous job in laying the foundations for the game” could mean anything at all. They hammered on how the game is still being developed, though. They’re not just setting everything on fire. Which is good, I hope.

Remember Cyberpunk 2077’s release? Hoo, doggies. Visually gorgeous, amazing setting, amazing characters, BROKEN GAME. Huge disappointment. Patch 1.2 was scheduled to come out a couple days ago but, of course, CD Projekt got hacked and all sorts of drama has been going on there. So that patch is still up in the air too. And, more importantly, CD Projekt provides a MONUMENTAL cautionary example to every single developer on the planet. Parent developers tell their children developers to be good and obey or else what happened to Cyberpunk will happen to them too.

On the other extreme, there’s Disco Elysium. An RPG that had graphics that wouldn’t be out of place in 2004. It also could easily be the best game I played last year. It did the RPG thing where it gave you a world, gave you a handful of mysteries, gave you a handful of goals, gave you a handful of tools, and had you explore.

I admit to kind of hoping that the powers that be came out and said “We don’t really care if it’s as gorgeous as Cyberpunk 2077. That’s not the end goal. The end goal is to get people to put the game down and say ‘Wow.'”

I look at the trailer again and can’t help but notice how gorgeous it is… but I don’t know anything about the game other than it’s gorgeous. I’d almost prefer an isometric RPG like Disco Elysium punctuated with the occasional absolutely gorgeous cutscene before settling back down into 2004 graphics and dialog choices that have me saving the game as I play because, oh, jeez. I want to say this… I want to say that… and, since it’s World of Darkness, I don’t know who to trust, who is going to stab me in the back quickly, and who is going to stab me in the back at a much more leisurely pace.

The original Bloodlines, as I’ve said a million times, is one of the best games I’ve ever played. I’ve been worried about the sequel in the moments that I wasn’t excited about the sequel. And now it’s been delayed. Again. Indefinitely, this time. I’d say something about this being a good sign but… well, I said that about Cyberpunk 2077’s delay last year too.

Keeping them crossed.

So… what are you playing?

(Featured image is “Vampire’s Dream” by akigabo and is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0)