Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines is one of those games that's remembered so fondly, it's easy to forget what a mess it was when it launched. Developer Troika wasn't able to rectify those issues because sales were not good, forcing it to lay off virtually all its employees before closing down a few months later. But the underlying game was so excellent that fans got involved, releasing unofficial patches that fix bugs and restore cut content.

As Jody explained earlier this year, the Unofficial Patch is an essential part of playing the game—so essential, in fact, that Paradox, the publisher of the upcoming Bloodlines 2, tweeted an announcement of today's release of a new version.

"The Unofficial patch is a must for both new and long time fans of Bloodlines 1," it said. "Highlights in this update include Velvet's lap dance from the Clan Quest Mod and two unused musical pieces from the newly re-released Bloodlines 1 Official Soundtrack."

I love that modders are still finding ways to fix and improve a 15-year-old RPG, but what's even more interesting here is the release of Bloodlines Prelude 1. Developed by Werner Spahl, aka Unofficial Patch maker Wesp5, along with modders EntenSchreck and Hareishan, it's the first part of an episodic prequel that will lead into the events of the original game. The opening chapter casts the player as a human member of the Society of Leopold, an ancient organization dedicated to hunting and killing supernatural creatures; Wesp5 said that players will be vampires through the rest of the prequel chapters.

I haven't tried the prequel chapter myself, but a couple of people in the comments said they liked it, so that's not a bad place to start. Wesp5 said that the mod makers are currently working on the second chapter of the prequel, and in case there's any doubt, you must have the Unofficial Patch installed to play the prequel—but you should be using it anyway if you're playing Bloodlines.

It's cool to see Paradox and Hardsuit getting behind the Unofficial Patch and prequel, and a real feather in Wesp5's cap, but there may be a practical angle to that endorsement too: Bloodlines 2 was initially slated for release in early 2020, but was recently delayed to an unspecified time later in the year.

As well as the Lacuna Coil and Ministry songs blasting out of clubs (and The Deb of Night's radio show), Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines had a memorable original score composed by Rik Schaffer, combining old world spookiness with Mission Impossible beats to hack to. And while you could always grab those mp3s from your Vampire/sound/music directory, now Schaffer's score is getting a proper release on vinyl, CD, and digital.

Schaffer has remastered all of the tracks for this edition, which Milan Records are releasing on October 25. The vinyl version looks especially slick, pressed on blood red vinyl marbled with a black smoke effect, inside a gatefold sleeve illustrated with a rundown cemetery (which presumably includes both a zombie-hunting caretaker and a secret door in the mausoleum leading to the Nosferatu Warrens). It also comes with a download card for the digital version and eight previously unheard tracks.

Schaffer has confirmed that he's returned to compose the score for Bloodlines 2 as well.

Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines was blatantly unfinished when it came out in 2004. Some of the staff at Troika Games scrambled to get a patch together as the studio was closing, but even after that there was still work to be done. 

It's janky, but worth playing today, especially in the wake of the Bloodlines 2 announcement. If you're revisiting Bloodlines or playing it for the first time, here are some tips that'll help you get the best experience.

Download the Unofficial Patch

A modder named Werner Spahl, aka Wesp5, took on the work left unfinished by the developer, and his Unofficial Patch is an essential fix. Now up to version 10.3, it has a changelog longer than some novels. 

Downloading the Unofficial Patch from ModDB is an essential first step if you want to play Bloodlines today. 

Choose a patch version

The second step is deciding between installing the Unofficial Patch's basic version or the plus patch, which restores cut content. (If you got Bloodlines from GOG it will come with the basic version, but without the plus option, so you should still download it from ModDB.)

Some of the things the plus patch restores are questionable, I'll admit. It puts a cop in the tutorial you can talk your way past to learn how the dialogue skills work, and his voice acting is pretty rough. There's an entire sidequest that ends at the library which "never even made it to alpha" according to Bloodlines writer Brian Mitsoda and had to be created essentially whole cloth, with writing that doesn't match the rest of the game. The existing sidequest where a character trades collectibles for sexy posters of the game's lady NPCs—even for a game about vampires, Bloodlines can be pretty thirsty—has been expanded and made even tackier.

And yet, I recommend the plus patch anyway. Some of its additions are rough around the edges, sure, but so is everything about Bloodlines. And among the changes are optional shortcuts that let you bypass some of the late-game combat dungeons that are its weakest points, and a sewer rat who is also a cab driver (though it only appears if you play a Malkavian). It's worth it.

Use the console when needed

It's also worth knowing that Bloodlines has a console you can open by pressing ~. Useful commands are "noclip" for when you get stuck in a door (it happens), "god" for godmode (enter "god" again to turn it off), and "giftxp n" (where n replaces your current unspent xp total). You may not want or need console commands to finish Bloodlines, but there they are just in case.

As for actual full-blown mods rather than patches, there are plenty, but none are the kind of thing you want on your first playthrough. In fact, given how different Bloodlines can be depending which clan you choose, it's worth a second run with the same setup before you even think about tinkering.

Pick a good first-timer clan

Though it's not up-front about this, two of the vampire clans are designed for a second playthrough. The Nosferatu appear so blatantly undead they can't show themselves in public, and you'll spend most of the game travelling via sewer if you play one. They're your hard-mode challenge run choice. The Malkavians have a limited ability to see the future, which means they have a lot of bespoke dialogue options that spoil twists because they know them already. Also, since those insights into the future drive Malkavians mad, playing one means hearing voices and having hallucinations. They're your new-game-plus clan, highly recommended to shake up your second go around.

Any of the other clans are fine for a first-timer. The rebel punk Brujah and animalistic shapeshifting Gangrel are good combat options, the blood magic specialists of the Tremere have the strongest powers, and the artsy bohemian Toreador and power-dressing corporate Ventrue are best at talking their way out of problems. Bloodlines is the kind of game where you can solve things multiple ways, so choose a clan that reflects your preferred play style.

Play it like an immersive sim 

Bloodlines is a vent-crawler, not a full on Deus Ex-style immersive sim, but still the kind of RPG where learning how to pick locks and hack computers is worthwhile. The Bloodbuff power can make you temporarily better at lockpicking and Auspex at hacking, if you haven't got quite enough points in the relevant skills. With a high enough score in Persuasion you can often blue-text your way out of trouble, and stealth is a valid option too. 

You'll want to explore as well. Sidequests are easy to miss if, for instance, you don't stumble into the abandoned hospital in the Downtown hub, or if you don't hang out in nightclubs. There's a weapons dealer in each hub, often someone who needs to be persuaded to do business, and it's worth tracking them down. You'll be stalking the alleys to keep your blood topped up anyway, so poke around any suspicious places you find while sneaking about.

Bloodlines is not always great at being a stealth game, however. Your score in Sneaking is more important than sightlines, and a lot of places that appear well-lit have guards who act like they're in deepest shadow. Maybe those tunnels look so bright because vampires can see in the dark? Yeah, let's go with that.

Learn to fight

While stealth and charm can get you through most of the early game, eventually you'll need to kill a whole mess of people. Chat with Nines Rodriguez, who hangs out at the Last Round, and he'll put it plainly, saying "a speech ain't gonna save your ass when you're staring down the barrel of a shotgun." (He also helps improve your Brawl and later your Melee skill if you ask for some pointers.)

Bloodlines hands out plenty of experience points, especially if you're tracking down all those sidequests, and you'll need to start jamming them into combat abilities eventually. Melee will deal with the first batch of fights (the fire axe is an excellent weapon at this point), but later it'll be worth going for Ranged Combat as well. The plus patch does add shortcuts that'll let you skip past the most boring combats—there's a computer you can hack to unlock a door to bypass most of the sewers, and if you make friends with NPCs Yukie and Chunk then max-out Persuasion they'll offer shortcuts too—but boss fights can't be avoided and they really are some bullshit.

That's because with the right weapons they're trivial, and without them they're ridiculous slogs. They typically come at the end of areas which you don't have any way of backing out of to quickly duck to the shops too, so check in with weapon vendors frequently. Their stock updates after most of the main quest steps. Buy new armor, grab a flamethrower when it appears for sale and, if you haven't looted one from a hunter, get a machine gun. They'll be worth it when you fight the bosses who mutate into warforms like something out of a JRPG.

Bloodlines can be a very 2004 game in some ways, and it still crashed to desktop a couple of times on my last playthrough (F9 is quicksave and you'll need it), but it's worth playing. Its combination of a contemporary setting, so-goth-it-shits-bats atmosphere, and strong character writing make it unique. Until the sequel comes out, there's nothing else like it.

It's likely you'd heard of Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines before last week's sequel announcement, even if you've never played it. It's a cult hit with a vocal following, and often brought up in best-of lists—one of those beloved PC games cited as somewhat broken, but full of amazing ideas. If you missed out at any point between 2004 and now, GOG has it for $5/£3.79 right now in its Spring sale. 

I'll admit it, reader: Bloodlines is on my pile of shame, and I've owned the GOG version for about three years, installing it on various laptops and never quite setting aside the time to give it a try. That'll change in the next couple of (blessedly) quieter months. Chris's preview of Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 really got me in the mood for it, as did Jody's piece on the experience of being a vampire in the first game. Join me in experiencing it for the first time, if you wish. 

The bonus with the GOG edition is that it'll install with the basic version of Wesp5's Unofficial Patch (currently 10.2, though you can download version 10.3 here). 

The sequel, meanwhile, will be out in 2020. 

Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info.

Great moments in PC gaming are short, bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories. 

There are a lot of things you can change about vampires and still have them recognizably be vampires. Not liking garlic? That's pretty optional. Being killed instantly by sunlight? Even Bram Stoker didn't have that. Aversion to holy symbols? Super optional.

But if you get rid of the need for blood you don't really have vampires. There are no scenes in Underworld where a vampire bites someone, and so it ends up feeling like a movie about goths with guns instead. Fortunately, in Bloodlines drinking blood is as important as it should be.

There's a blood meter across from your health, and it goes down whenever you use your cool vampire powers. If it runs out the Beast inside you is unleashed, meaning you'll lose control as frenzy takes over and go on a rampage that's likely to end with cops reducing you to ash. To avoid that you feed whenever you can. Sure, you can suck on a blood pack from the corrupt guy at the blood bank, or you might be able to stomach eating a rat. Most of the time, it means finding a person. 

When you're first let loose on the streets of Los Angeles there are a few warm bodies around. A homeless beggar stands near your front door, a confused yuppie looks lost nearby, a sex worker walks down the road. There's probably a guy pissing in an alley near the nightclub, and inside that club someone you might be able to seduce and leave with a vague memory and one hell of a hickey.

The moment you bite is never underplayed. It's always the most dramatic it can be. Even if you're playing in first-person the camera leaves your body to frame things perfectly, the color drains out of the world and everything goes dark except for a spotlight shining down on you and your victim. You rear back and chomp. The viewpoint spins, the blood meter fills as their health falls, and steadily you unk unk unk away at someone's life. 

Maybe you pull back in time, or maybe you let them die and hear that fatal chord play as they drop out of your grasp. Whatever happens, it's never trivialized or meaningless. In a game that plays almost everything over-the-top and exaggerated for effect, from the outfits to the architecture, feeding is no different. Bloodlines understands that you can't have vampires without blood, and doesn't let you forget it.

The soundtrack for Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines included plenty of licensed songs by the likes of Lacuna Coil, Chiasm, and the Genitorturers, as well as an original track by Ministry and Al Jourgensen, but its score composed by Rik Schaffer was also an essential part of its atmosphere. Fans were obviously concerned about whether he would be involved with the recently announced sequel.

Among them was game developer and streamer Outstar, who contacted Schaffer to ask if he was contributing to Bloodlines 2. He replied, "I contributed an hour of music to the OST and am the main composer. Been working on it for over a year."

Bloodlines' lead writer Brian Mitsoda has returned as well, working as a writer on the sequel alongside Cara Ellison and Chris Avellone.

November of 2004 was a monumental month for games. Half-Life 2, Halo 2, and Metal Gear Solid 3 were all released to critical acclaim and massive commercial success. And crushed in among those blockbusters was Troika's RPG Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines. Due to a contract with Valve involving use of the Source Engine, Bloodlines couldn't be released ahead of Half-Life 2, and publisher Activision was unwilling to push the release date into 2005. And so, Bloodlines came out that same month, forced to compete with those three huge November releases.

While Bloodlines was mostly reviewed positively and gained cult hit status among fans of the deep and engrossing RPG, commercially it just didn't stand up, and technically the game wasn't even fully finished. Most of the staff who had labored over Bloodlines for years were quickly laid off, and the rest would follow a few months later. Troika closed in early 2005, and fans have waited for over a decade with fading hopes of a sequel.

But when it comes to both games and vampires, dead doesn't mean done. Bloodlines is returning, at last, 16 years later. Announced at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 will arrive in 2020, developed by Hardsuit Labs and published by Paradox Interactive. This week I met with members of Paradox and the development team as they showed me a demo that walked (and skulked, and climbed, and flew) through the opening minutes of Bloodlines 2. 

In Seattle, Washington, a disturbing event has taken place. On a foggy night, a group of humans are attacked by vampires, bitten, and forced to drink the blood of the supernatural creatures. It's called a Mass Embrace: the creation of a horde of new vampires, and it's highly illegal in the vampire community (and, I'd imagine, frowned upon by local law enforcement).

The character you play in Bloodlines 2 is one of those newly-created vampires, called a Thin-Blood, and after an interrogation by several members of Seattle's vampire clans, you manage to escape your scheduled execution and slip into the night, forced to come to terms with your transformation into a member of the undead. You have some help: a mysterious phone call directs you to a willing (or at least unresisting) victim to have your first drink of human blood, another friendly vampire sets you up with an apartment and gives you a quick rundown of the vampire rulebook, and naturally you have some new abilities, such as clinging to walls and enhanced night vision.

Choices immediately present themselves in the form of which powers you want to begin your new undead life with, and in the demo they're shown both as ways to navigate the world and as tools for combat. Telekinesis lets you manipulate objects without touching them, useful for everything from moving an obstacle that's holding a door shut to yanking a weapon out of an enemy's hand. Turning to mist will allow you to pass through pipes and vents, and will also let you choke enemies by filling their lungs with fog. Another power lets you flutter through the air on wings while accompanied by a swarm of bats. You get to test out all these powers before having to choose which you'd like to acquire.

Another choice you'll have to make is which vampire clan to align with, though unlike the original Bloodlines this decision comes a bit later in the game, so you'll have a chance to familiarize yourself with the different groups and what they stand for. The developers didn't want to talk specifically about the clans during the demo, only saying they'd reveal more when the game is closer to release. Interestingly enough, more clans will be added to Bloodlines 2 after the game is released.

"The one thing we can say, we will have a good amount of clans in the main game that are really interesting, but we'll support it with more clans after launch," said Christian Schlütter, lead producer at Paradox. "And one thing that you need to write down is that every clan that we release later on will be free. We will never charge you for any clan." I wrote that down.

Along with clans, there are several factions vying for control of Seattle. "In Bloodlines 1, the main story was kind of a linear track," Schlütter said. "In this one the city is kind of divided by factions. You can work for different factions, it's going to color how you feel about certain things, it'll kind of inform the story from that faction's point of view. You can switch factions, and you can piss off factions to the point where they won't work with you anymore."

Also informing the story is your own character and background, explained Brian Mitsoda, designer and writer of the original Bloodlines and lead narrative designer of Bloodlines 2. "For example, in your character creation, you can choose what you were in life," he said. "You can say that you were a cop, or a coroner, and so when you go into a police station that's gonna have a different feel than if you were not a cop. We have lots of those little decisions that you make along the way that build upon and into your experience going through the story." 

Apart from the main story, there are numerous side quests to discover and explore in Seattle. Remember all those other humans who were transformed in the Mass Embrace? Those Thin-Bloods are still out there in the city, somewhere, trying to cope with this situation just as you are. You'll be able to track many of them down.

"It was interesting for us to kind of try to explore how human problems encroach on becoming a vampire," says senior writer Cara Ellison, who created the side quests. "What if you had a family who is still alive, what if you had bonds and relationships with other people? Maybe some of your human problems would just follow you around. So you can encounter several different Thin-Bloods throughout the game who have not been as fortunate as you." (Disclosure: Cara Ellison used to write for PC Gamer.) 

For fans wondering how long Bloodlines 2 has been in the works, it began to take shape from pretty much the earliest moment it possibly could have. 

"We started basically the day that the news broke that Paradox had acquired the World of Darkness IP," said Andy Kipling, co-founder and CEO of Hardsuit Labs, which was founded in 2015. "When our creative director Ka'ai Clooney came running into my office and was like 'Andy, we need to pitch Paradox a game.'"

Fans will, however, have to wait just a bit longer to play the RPG they've wanted for so long. Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 comes out next year, in 2020.

After a few weeks of teases, speculation, and an ARG in the form of a dating app, Paradox finally made things official at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco: it is publishing Vampire: The Masquerades—Bloodlines 2. To be perfectly clear, that's not a remake or a remaster of 2004's Bloodlines, but a proper sequel, developed by Hardsuit Labs. The first-person RPG takes place years after the events of Bloodlines and is set in a new city for the series: Seattle, Washington. There's an announcement trailer above.

In Bloodlines 2, players will inhabit a fledgling vampire and deal with the various vampire clans and political factions who are fighting for control of the city, while engaging in stealth and first-person combat using a number of vampire powers. Brian Mitsoda, designer and writer of the original Bloodlines, is on board again as Bloodlines 2's lead narrative designer.

Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 won't be released until 2020, through pre-orders are already available on Steam, the Epic Store (yes, both!), GOG, and Paradox's store. We got to see a thirty-minute demo of Bloodlines 2 at GDC this week and talk to some of the creators and writers about it. You can read about it here.

Paradox Interactive has been teasing a Vampire: The Masquerade announcement for months via an elaborate dating app alternate reality game, Tender. Today, it gave its clearest hint yet that whatever it's planning could be related to 2004's Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines, releasing a series of images showing locales from the RPG.

From the images, posted on Twitter, we think we can pick out the Surfside Diner, The Ocean Hotel in flames, The Ventrue Penthouse, The Malkavian Mansion, the Nosferatu Sewers, and Fat Larry's van. 

It's all pointing towards either a remake or a follow-up to Bloodlines, and Paradox promises that "something big" is coming next week during the Game Developers Conference.

Joanna reckons that, judging by the photographs, the new game could be inspired by the fifth pen and paper version of Vampire: The Masquerade, which came out at the end of last year. Stay tuned for the full announcement, due on Thursday.

Paradox's dating app alternate reality game, Tender, has continued its vampire-related teases and promised a big announcement on March 21, which has us more excited than ever at the prospect of a sequel to, or remaster of, Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines, the 2004 RPG. 

Tender is a "soulmate algorithm" that asks your blood type before inviting you to match with sick people near you. Romantic, right? The hints that it could be linked to the Vampire: The Masquerade universe—which Paradox has the rights to after buying White Wolf Publishing in 2015—have intensified in the past week. Take, for example, this clip from a recent Tender livestream, which shows Santa Monica Pier, one of the key locations in Bloodlines.

Then there's this memo from Tender CEO Malcolm Chandler, which also happens to be the name of the author of a book called Vampire Brides from Planet Hell. The memo contains plenty of vampire-related references, such as "thrall", "regent" and "hunter".

The memo, send to Tender's chief technical officer, says: "We must be ready for San Francisco on March 21st. 300 Tender users will be invited to a private party, some of them flown from around the world...This will be the biggest announcement in the history of my company." As GameInformer notes, this year's Game Developers Conference takes place in San Francisco, March 18-22. 

We still don't know what any of it means, but it's clear that's something afoot. No doubt we'll find out more over the next month.