The Chinese Room wants to make sure that there is no easy way to find the right dialog options.

Now that the release date for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, the developers (who took over development from Hardsuit Labs a few years ago) have revealed more about the long-awaited RPG sequel in an exclusive interview published in the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine. Talking about the game’s dialog, game director Alex Skidmore emphasized that it will be figuratively a maze, in part to keep people from just going straight to the usual good choices.

“Ultimately we want narrative exploration, so each of these dialog trees is kind of a maze. So we didn’t want people to kind of tune out and go, ‘I’m looking for the good choice or the Paragon choice. Because the moment you do that, you’re always going to hit top right or whatever,” Skidmore said.

The Chinese Room has also changed its protagonist (it will be Phyre, rather than a newly created Thinblood), and the team has also made sure to leave plenty of room for players to interpret the character as they see fit: “We’re intentionally leaving space for the player. If we were to say, ‘Here’s your character, he’s like this, he’s done this, he’s done that,’ in a way it’s not really important for them to know all that backstory – at least at first, because we’re throwing them into a new and unfamiliar situation. How we show the status of the character is in other people’s reactions to that character. So instead of saying you’re a legend at the beginning, we build that through people’s reactions to you. Then there’s the power level, which I think would be very strong early on. The first time you accidentally punch a guy across the room, which I think is very different from the beginning of Bloodlines 1,” added Ian Thomas, the narrative director.

At the start of the game, Phyre, awakening from a long sleep, are bound and have lost most of their strength, but even in this state they are a force to be reckoned with: “They’re much quieter. Their foley doesn’t make as much noise, because even without their powers, even when they’re nerfed, they’re much quieter than everyone else. You can feel how strong and powerful they are. Even if you can’t use all of their powers, when they’re climbing things, they don’t even have to exert themselves to do it. So even in their movements, they’re made to be audibly more powerful, and you can subtly tell that nothing is really difficult for them,” says Tessa Verplancke, the lead sound designer.

So Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will be released in October for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC; it won’t be easy, as the first game was legendary.

Source: WCCFTech