Fresh news for those who have been trying to keep up with the state of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2’s progress: its current developer, The Chinese Room, has recently bought the rights to their own studio out from under their former publisher, Sumo Digital, and gone indie as reported by GamesIndustry.biz.
Now, of course, The Chinese Room have done more games than Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2. In their resume is cult hit Dear Esther, as well as a sequel to another cult classic in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. So it’s only natural that they’d tackle another beloved underground sequel in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2, and that’s what most people will be interested to hear about. As studio director Ed Daly told GamesIndustry.biz:
We are continuing to work on original IP as well as with partner IP – just as we have been with Still Wakes the Deep developed alongside VtM – Bloodlines 2 with Paradox Interactive,
Many Vampire the Masquerade players are a bit traumatized with Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2’s development cycle, just look at our website for search results regarding it and count how many times the game has been delayed, The Chinese Room’s acquisition of Vampire’s development is, in fact, a fairly recent thing after the previous developer Hardsuit Labs left the project. So, it’s only natural that fans will take any amount of news as bad when Vampire developer announces such a big movement. Luckily, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 is still scheduled to release in October of this year, and the majority of development has hopefully finished by now, whether or not what we’ve seen so far from Vampire is appealing is up to the individual.
Now, instead of looking towards The Chinese Room’s past, we should look towards their future. As explained in the article above, The Chinese Room is working on two new IPs, explaining that one of their future projects weren’t possible while under Sumo Digital’s banner. Of course, going indie had a few significant downsides as well such as layoffs to the studio, the price of losing a publisher. We’ll have to see if this price was worth paying for their newly acquired creative freedom.