The publisher Paradox is confident of the release date, but whether the new developers can live up to expectations is questionable!

At PAX West 2023 this weekend, we reported that Paradox Interactive had once again unveiled the sequel to the 2004 game, which was then running on the Source engine after several years had passed since the original announcement (and even the planned release at the end of 2020 had failed). The first studio had dropped out of the mix. However, Paradox is optimistic, as Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is already in an alpha state in its development.

In an interview with Digital Trends, Sean Greaney, Paradox Interactive’s Vice President of World of Darkness, the universe in which the game is set, was optimistic about the target release date: “If we weren’t confident in the new release window, we wouldn’t be starting the new marketing campaign. There’s a reason we haven’t been out there communicating and marketing this title for a while. We wanted The Chinese Room to have the opportunity to get this baby, grow it with some uninterrupted development time, and clear alpha [during development]. Now that we’re through alpha, it’s time to start talking to our fans.

Hardsuit Labs is a great studio, and they did a lot of good work on this project. We just had a very different vision for the final product, and we couldn’t align on that vision. And so, the right thing to do was to end the collaboration and find a studio that shared that vision. The work done on the game was very important for getting us to a certain point, so the themes, Seattle as the setting, and a significant degree of the art and character art has been carried over,” Greaney said.

The Chinese Room, which has also changed its engine from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 (Nvidia DLSS and ray tracing have not yet been confirmed; Hardsuit Labs promised these earlier), will still be a first-person AAA action-RPG, but instead of a “thin blood” vampire, you will control an elder one who has come back to life after a long sleep.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will be released in autumn 2024 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC.

Source: WCCFTech