Here’s 15 minutes of The Chinese Room’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2

After months of conceptual chatter over on its blog, developer The Chinese Room has whipped back the shroud on its version of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, giving a first proper look at its in-game action courtesy of an 15-minute gameplay reveal.

Prior to today, The Chinese Room – which took over the troubled Bloodlines 2 back in 2021, although its involvement wasn’t announced until last year – has talked a little about the game’s main character vampire elder Phyre, its clans, and its “visceral immersive combat”, all of that comes together in today’s extended gameplay debut.

This first-look features a sequence from relatively early in the game, taking place after Phyre – who in this particular playthrough is part of the Brujah clan, imbuing her with supernatural speed and strength, and a rather short fuse – has established herself in Seattle and made inroads with the court. As she investigates the mysterious mark on her hand limiting her powers, she receives a tip off leading her to a warehouse and a vampire known as Willem who might just have some answers.

It’s all moodily subdued at first as Phyre roams the labyrinthine warehouse interior, chatting with Fabien – the vampire stuck inside her head for reasons currently unknown – and scouting for clues. Eventually, after following the sounds of an aria drifting through the shadowy building, Phyre finds Willem and we get to see its conversation-nudging dialogue trees in action.

Things don’t go well and Phyre is transported into some sort of illusion; initially she takes a stealthy approach, slipping through the shadows to catch – and feed on – the roaming ghouls unawares. She can hoist foes up from below using telekenises, initiate a teleport dash, and claw and punch with abandon, which comes in useful once her cover is blown and combat starts proper – with plenty of throat-ripping, blood-letting, and head-severing along the way.

Things start to get weirder when Willem launches a second surprise attack, catapulting Phyre even deeper into an illusion where, this time, the warehouse is swarming with living mannequins. As the fight continues, we see a number of her other abilities, including a glide and a powered-up dash letting her steamroll through multiple enemies at once, with her heightened vampire senses enabling her to see incoming enemies from behind objects and even slow time.

Another loop and reality warps even further as she attempts to break free of Willem’s influence once and for all – at which point the gameplay portion of today’s showcase reaches an explosive end. But for anyone looking to learn more about what they’ve just seen, The Chinese Room sticks around to chat, singling out some of the sequence’s individual elements and how things like the atmospheric exploration, dialogue, brawling, stealth, “vampire detective gameplay”, and pacing are reflective of its approach as a whole.

One area the studio spends a bit of time highlighting is Phyre’s combat feeding (it says it’ll talk about social feeding at a later date), enabling Phyre to drink enemy blood – either by sneaking up, using telekineses to drag them toward her, or mid-brawl – to recharge her health and power her abilities. Abilities – which include selectable active abilities and a clan-specific passive – can be used once their “pips” have refilled, so blood drinking effectively serves as a means to chain attacks together.

Elsewhere, there’s some talk about how dialogue options will effect your relationships with other vampires, on how players can determine Phyre’s back story based on their dialogue choices, a bit about Phyre’s heightened vampire senses – which have applications across exploration, combat, and puzzling – plus a few additional scene-setting story details.

It’s an intriguing first real taste of a game that at one time looked like it might never see the light of day, and while The Chinese Room isn’t yet ready to share a final release date for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, we do know it’s aiming to release on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S sometime this autumn.