Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a mouthful of a game title, but more importantly, it’s a name that comes with a lot of expectation. The original Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines is a cult classic RPG, often held up as one of the best of its genre, so if your game is supposed to be a sequel to that, it’s a hard act to follow.
This is exactly why The Chinese Room co-founder, Dan Pinchbeck, didn’t want the game to be called that at all. In fact, when the studio took over development of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, Pinchbeck says that the “most important thing” to him early on in development was getting the title changed to knock the “2” out of the name.
The Chinese Room’s Co-Founder Agrees That Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Isn’t Really A Sequel To The First Game
As spotted by GamesRadar+, Pinchbeck made these comments on The Goth Boss podcasts, hosted by Cat Burton. Here, Pinchbeck walks us through how The Chinese Room got put on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, and how he didn’t want it to be seen as a sequel to the first game.
“The tricky question around it with Bloodlines 1 was, are you making a sequel to Bloodlines 1?” Pinchbeck says.
He then recalls his meetings with a publisher from Paradox about how the team would approach the project. “We used to sit there and go and have these planning sessions of how do we get them to not call it Bloodlines 2,” he shares. “That feels like the most important thing we do here, to come at this and say this isn’t Bloodlines 2. You can’t make Bloodlines 2. There’s not enough time. There’s not enough money.”
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Not only that, but Pinchbeck felt that going down the sequel route would make for a worse game. “No one would be happy,” he argues. “You wouldn’t make people who love Bloodlines 1 happy, and you wouldn’t make people who didn’t know about Bloodlines 1 happy because they’d never get Bloodlines 2 and they’d always get a flawed game that was built too fast and with not enough money.”
While that title change never materialised, The Chinese Room was permitted to create its own version of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, even though it bore little resemblance to its predecessor. “We can’t make Bloodlines 2, we can’t make Skyrim, but we can make Dishonored,” he explains.
Ultimately, The Chinese Room ended up taking on a project which anyone would have struggled with, and at least managed to get the game out of the door. Sadly, many were disappointed with the game they had waited so many years to play, and it was met with mixed reviews.
- Released
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October 21, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Sexual Themes, Nudity, Drug Reference, Strong Language
- Developer(s)
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The Chinese Room
