Vampire: The Masquerade sequel has been delayed to avoid the original’s buggy launch

Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 will miss its launch date in the first quarter of 2020. In an open letter penned by series veterans Andy Kipling and Brian Mitsoda, Hardsuit Labs says it’s committed to launching a stable, polished product. They say the game will still launch some time in 2020 for PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One.

The original game, Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines, launched in 2004 and was famously buggy. That’s a mistake that the current development team simply refuses to make.

“For the last three and a half years, we’ve worked hard to bring you a worthy successor to Bloodlines 1,” the team wrote in the letter. “To us, that meant not only making good on the ambitions of this remarkable game, but also a duty to ensure we would not repeat its mistakes. Today, we have to tell you that we need some more time to get you the game you’ve been waiting for. Although Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 will still launch in 2020, we have decided to value quality over making the Q1 launch window.”

Bloodlines 2 takes place in modern-day Seattle, Washington and tells the story of a newly-made vampire left to wander a dangerous and powerful subculture. Mitsoda, who is responsible for the original game’s storyline, has returned as the game’s narrative lead.

The game is a contemporary of the 5th edition of the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop role-playing game, although it doesn’t seek to re-implement its mechanics note-for-note.

“It was pretty much a blank slate for us,” Mitsoda told Polygon in a May interview, “to build up and build out our corner of the World of Darkness.”

“We wanted to take the original Bloodlines as the template,” Ellison added at the time. “We want to make a Bloodlines game, so we’re mostly just focused on what that means to us personally. We’ve created the entire world of Seattle from scratch.”

Fans will be able to learn more in a series of livestreams that kick off Oct. 20 to coincide with the PDXCON fan convention, which begins on Oct. 18.

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