This week is the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2, a game that arguably influenced the modern triple-A landscape more than any other, and whose fans remain the most passionate and dedicated out there, despite knowing deep down they’re never, ever getting a sequel.
That also means this week marks the 20th anniversary of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, a game that flopped so hard it caused its studio to shut down (in an era before that was a monthly occurrence) and one that is getting a sequel, though, from everything we’ve seen of it so far, it probably isn’t going to be the sequel VTBM fans* really want.
*There are dozens of us… DOZENS!
We’ve seen this story play out a few times over the years. A would-be hit is overshadowed by an even bigger hit, causing the former to fall into semi-obscurity, becoming a cult classic that’s only beloved by modders, video essayists, and those with an unhealthy attachment to their childhoods (the only finger I’m pointing is in the mirror).
Titanfall 2 was crushed between Battlefield 1 and Infinite Warfare. Mad Max launched the same day as Metal Gear Solid 5. Alan Wake – though recently redeemed thanks to Remedy’s sheer force of will that produced the excellent Alan Wake 2 – came out the same week as Red Dead Redemption. All critical hits and commercial failures, thanks largely to their unfortunately timed release windows.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines differs from the rest in that the initial critical response was quite poor. A severely overworked studio with unrealistic deadlines (another reason Bloodlines was ahead of its time), the game was released in an unfinished state and filled with graphical flaws, incomplete missions, and game-breaking bugs, many of which weren’t remedied until a 2019 fan patch came along to fill in the blanks. Bloodlines was kind of a mess at launch, but if fans were willing to go back and fix it themselves 15 years later – a project that continued receiving updates until late 2023 – there must be something special there.
There’s no doubt that Half-Life 2 ushered in the next generation of narrative-driven, highly-cinematic triple-A games, but I can’t help but wonder how Bloodlines may have impacted the industry had circumstances been different.
Maybe a more open release calendar would have meant better initial sales for Bloodlines, which would have given Troika the runway it needed to survive long enough to patch it up. Maybe then it would have gone on to be a classic immersive sim that inspired the industry the way Half-Life 2 did, rather than a cult classic entry in a genre that, historically, never sells well anyway.
Bloodlines’ combination of Thief-style exploration and Fallout-style roleplaying remains unreplicated. There are games with elements of Bloodlines, but there’s nothing else quite like it.
We’ll Never Know What Could Have Been
It’s all speculation, but one thing that seems certain is that if the original had been a success, we wouldn’t be getting a sequel that bears so little resemblance to it. Vampire: The Masquerade is a legacy tabletop IP and Bloodlines is a familiar name, so it’s no surprise that the increasingly risk-avoidant game industry would like to leverage the title, but will that game stay true to the original and aim to please its fans (dozens!) with a faithful lega-sequel?
Considering developer The Chinese Room refuses to even utter the term immersive sim, it seems that the answer will be no. It might be a great game, but it probably won’t be a great Bloodlines sequel – definitely not the sequel we would have gotten had Bloodlines been a hit.
We can’t blame Half-Life 2 of course. But it’s interesting to think about how things might have been different for Bloodlines had Half-Life 2 not changed PC gaming forever in November 2004. Then again, Halo 2 launched two weeks earlier, and World of Warcraft the week after, so maybe we should just be grateful that anyone remembers Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines at all.
