Latest VtM: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Dev Diary Explores Core Goals

Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

The latest developer diary for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is out and about. This time Creative Director Ka’ai Cluney takes the stage to explore the pillars of development. “Pillars are one way of focusing the entire team on what is important about a project,” Cluney writes. These core fundamentals are instrumental throughout the development process from its earliest days to the completed project. Most notably, they become “beacons and waypoints” as the process goes along.

So, what is the Bloodlines 2 team focused on? Let’s take a look!

Be a Vampire – From a practical standpoint, this means how a player interacts with and moves through the game world. Bloodlines 2 will feature unconventional movement, so the dev team needs to communicate how this happens “through, for instance, lighting or the User Interface”.

Show the World of Darkness – The World of Darkness is the “hidden world that lurks under what most people consider the “real world”.” Because of that, every component of the game touches on it including level design, NPCs, missions, and events. “There should be a constant and deepening sense of discovering more, of digging deeper.”

Reactivity & Player Choice – Developers are vested in providing players with “morally gray” choices that have no “right” answer. “Sometimes they’re forced to choose between two equally unsavory options.” As a result of choices made, the game world itself shifts, sometimes through dialogue, story events, or how a player grows their character. “Players should never get the sense that they’re making a choice that will lessen the game experience, even if they make a “wrong” choice.”

Be a True Descendent of Bloodlines – “The tone of the narrative and dialogue, the balance between the familiar and the otherworldly, and the treatment of disturbing and mature subject matter (and the conscious decision to occasionally wink and nod at that subject matter,) are all crucial to maintaining that feel.”

All in all, the dev diary is a fascinating read and a peek inside game development. It’s worth the time to head over to the official forum to check out the full post.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is due out in March 2020 for PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One.

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