Bloodlines 2 Feels Like Two Games — Fabien’s Noir Investigations vs Fyre’s Brutal Vampire Nights

At Gamescom I played a closed-door, hour-long demo of Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2. The demo showed two distinct gameplay modes: dreamlike, investigation-focused sequences played as the Malkavian Fabien, and combat-focused nights played as the elder vampire Fyre. The development team added Fabien about two years ago, and the game alternates between those sequences.

- Fabien’s investigation sequences

Fyre’s combat and powers
Design changes and why Fabien was added
Release date and platforms

Fabien’s investigation sequences

The Gamescom demo lets players control Fabien in dreamlike flashbacks to the 1920s, where he investigates the murder of a cigarette girl at a club that doubles as Elysium, a vampire gathering place. Fabien’s psychometry appears as conversations with objects and the dead; he uses those encounters to gather clues and context.

“Each item he investigates, he assigns his own personality to and he has a conversation with the item,” The Chinese Room narrative director Ian Thomas told me. “Instead of saying, ‘Is this thing covered in blood?’ he talks to a dagger and goes, ‘Hey dagger, have you done a lot of fighting?”

Ian Thomas also said Fabien’s later interactions get sillier, and that the character’s voice actor adopts about 20 different characters, including an exaggerated Spanish accent for the dagger and a New York–style voice for a filing cabinet.

Fyre’s combat and powers

Fyre is presented as a powerful elder vampire and is the player character for the game’s combat-focused sections. After completing the first few missions and major fights, the demo unlocked the game’s full tree of in-clan disciplines. The available disciplines are a smaller selection than those in the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop RPG.

In the demo I tested the Brujah clan. Brujah grants increased strength and speed for melee combat, plus a supernatural presence that can cause enemies to drop weapons. Fyre can then grab those dropped weapons with telekinesis. Fyre cannot pick up weapons directly; instead, telekinesis is used to move weapons and to traverse the environment by leaping between rooftops.

“This is an elder, this is an individual that predates firearms as we know them,” Jason Carl, brand marketing manager for World of Darkness at Paradox Interactive told me. “Of course they know what weapons are, but Fyre has their own way of solving problems, and this is how they choose to do it.”

Design changes and why Fabien was added

The Chinese Room originally planned a different internal character for Fyre, but the team changed course after early audiences reacted to the original pairing. According to the team, early audiences found “it’s just depressing to be around these two people.” Two years ago the studio introduced Fabien and the alternating gameplay loop that switches between Fabien’s remembered investigations and Fyre’s combat-focused nights.

Developers have said the game’s open options expand later: after the demo’s early sections, Fyre can explore more of Seattle and unlock additional powers and approaches to play.