Hi, I’m Michele Nucera, Senior Concept Artist. I’ve been looking forward to showing you the hard work that our art team has done to bring life into our game. We’re using a relatively new technique in concept art to help us. Normally all the screenshots you see are fully finished levels with lighting and details in-game. But today I’ll be showing some of the earlier versions that we use to visualise what that final product will look like.

The first thing we keep in mind is the Bloodline 2 art direction. We want to create a foggy, dark, and neo-noir environment where the player can hide and attack from the shadows. The perfect setting for a vampire!


Paintover, View of Seattle – Art: Jordan Grimmer

Our goal is to provide the 3D team with a few images to show them our idea for a location or a character. We try to keep our concepts grounded to the real world, but we try to push reality up to 11 (as our Art Director John McCormack always suggests) so the player can experience something unexpected and never seen before.

Building worlds directly in the game engine is incredibly easy and fun. Thanks to our experience on other TCR titles, we had the chance to learn Unreal and experiment with a Concept Art pipeline to add this piece of software to our workflow.

Bloodlines 2 was the perfect game to push our skills in Unreal to the next step. We had a huge asset library available in this game, including props, characters, and materials. The most logical step forward was to use Unreal to create our concepts rather than creating everything from scratch.

The fog system and the lighting in Unreal are much closer to reality than other real time engines, especially with the recent update to UE5. So this was the perfect tool to visualise our version of Seattle. We have built these underground scenes in Unreal 5, using a fog volume and lights with volumetric options active. Once the composition is approved we then rendered them and quickly painted over in Photoshop.



Paintover, Underground area – Art: Jordan Grimmer


Before working on an environment, we usually receive a brief from Ben Matthews, Associate Art Director, who provides us with a rough idea of the environment he needs, together with some references. After spending some time searching for references we jump on Unreal and start working from a block-out scene done by the Level Design Team where we import our 3D assets and give “life” to their level.

As always when designing, we start from the big shapes first and then place some provisional lighting and fog. Traditional concept art generally captures the world from one perspective and you have to start from scratch if you’re painting something from another angle. Choosing a good camera angle early on is important and we usually set up a few cameras so our art director can choose what shot works better for him and then we are good to go with the final touches.

Once the first pass gets approved, we then move onto detailing our scene and this is the most fun part. This stage feels like playing a real-life simulator game where you can create little dioramas and add storytelling to the scene. If needed, we create additional assets with Blender and then import them in Unreal Engine. For example, in this bathroom piece we have modelled the toilet and bath using Blender and then imported the assets in Unreal where you can easily assign materials to them.


Paintover, Abandoned Building Bathroom – Art: Isobel Hine

Finally, we render our scene using the high-resolution screenshot tool in Unreal, import the render passes in Photoshop, compose the scene and paint over it adding more details and pushing the mood even further.

We are also lucky that we can easily import 3D characters and plug specific animation loops onto them so our environment will instantly come to life! Here we have used our 3D model of a Hunter done by Kjartan Tysdal, Senior 3D Character Artist, to populate the scenes and add storytelling elements.


Paintover, Radio Tower Callout – Art: Jordan Grimmer




Paintover, Hunters Entering an Underground Area – Art: Michele Nucera

If you are in a rush, you can skip the thumbnailing process and do it directly in 3D, also you can show a real-time 3D scene rather than one single image so it’s easier for Directors to have the right feeling of the space. Lastly, you can provide the 3D art team with your scenes so they have a base to work with when building the scenes for the actual game… if they can figure out how to deal with our very messy layers!

The below concept shows the police looking for you in an abandoned building. To showcase this, we have built a few rooms and a corridor using our assets in Unreal Engine and then rendered a few shots to follow the story of this policeman looking for you. Since the scene was done in Unreal, the Art Director could easily navigate the space and experience the flow and mood of it.





Paintover, Abandoned Building – Art: Michele Nucera

Obviously this game contains a LOT of blood. We were lucky enough that the 3D Art Team provided us with a few blood decals to use directly in Unreal. We placed them in our scenes and lit them in an interesting way to enhance their shiny property, adding a slight hue of red light so the blood colour is not affected by the mood of the scene!

These pieces show a vampire haven under attack. We placed a lot of corpses and blood directly in Unreal and then did a paintover to add all the extra details we needed to sell the story and mood.


Paintover, Vampire Haven – Art: Jordan Grimmer

I think that creating concepts in Unreal is the future of Concept Art. A lot of Concept Artists are expanding their skill set to learn this fantastic tool. Being able to create a real-time scene that your directors can navigate and give you live feedback is priceless and it makes the game better.

We’ll be back in another two weeks, but this time with a Video Diary where we will summarise the content from our latest Dev Diaries. If you have any questions relating to the first four dev diaries, feel free to send them to us on Discord and we’ll try to answer as many as we can.

Good evening Kindred,

Today we shared some very exciting news on our Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 news stream! We were joined by Sean Greaney (EVP of Darkness) and Ian Thomas (Narrative Director at TCR), who discussed some of the game’s features relating to both narrative and roleplaying. In case you missed it, you can find it below.



In the stream, we were introduced to the protagonist of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2; Phyre, an Elder vampire at odds with the voice in her head, who confronts Seattle’s powerful elites at war over the City’s fate.

Players choose Phyre’s clan and gender and begin exploring a reimagined Seattle filled with compelling characters while maneuvering through complex relationships. Choices and conversations (even outfits!) shape how the environment and characters react to Phyre, changing how the story unfolds.


Render of Phyre as a female character.

We are happy to share that over the coming weeks we will reveal the four clans playable at launch. The first will be revealed next week. In addition to these four clans, an additional clan will be made available via DLC. A sixth clan will appear in a unique, standalone DLC. Details on the DLCs will be shared during 2024. Some of the clans will be familiar to Bloodlines players, but some will surprise!

If you still want more, we can recommend checking out our live-play chronicle Seattle By Night season 2, as Jason Carl leads our Coterie on a journey through Seattle, encountering challenges linked to the events that will unfold in Bloodlines 2.

Premiering on October 31st, Seattle by Night season two will include eight episodes that air every Tuesday at 5:00 PM Pacific / 8:00 PM Eastern on PennyArcade Twitch channel.

The events unfolding in season two set the stage for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2!

Hello, I’m Ben Matthews. My job is Associate Art Director on Bloodlines 2. A couple of weeks ago Sarah talked about the narrative themes of Neo-Noir and how it fits into our game and now I’m here to give you the artist’s perspective.

Neo-Noir is a revival movement of Film Noir from the mid 20th century. Artists focus on modern day cities, painting them in bright neon lights and deep shadows. It’s very moody and evokes places that harbour sinister characters. Think Blade Runner or John Wick. Subversive, Dark, and Threatening, are all Neo-Noir conventions we’re focusing on for our game. VtM is all of these tones and so naturally it worked hand in hand when it came to creating the seedy underbelly of our Seattle. From Locations to Characters our vision is about showing a side of Seattle at night that goes deeper than what you see on the surface. Whether it’s dark-cornered alleyways to roam or interiors that host Machiavellian politics behind closed doors. Neo-Noir puts atmosphere and contrast at the centre of its palette and that’s something that works perfectly with our Vampire fantasy and ultimately Bloodlines 2.



The haven of a vampire can be a good insight into their mind.

As an Elder thrust into a modern and unfamiliar world we’re playing on all of the visual elements of Neo-Noir to paint a picture of Seattle through the eyes of our Vampire. Contrast is very important to this visual identity in lots of different ways. A classic of Neo-Noir is light and dark. We use this to split the world into two. Vampires inhabit the dark, it’s a place you need to use for safety but dark places feel more dead because of this. The darkness becomes the place where we feel the most secure, the most in tune with the world around us.



You need to be able to see where you’re going even in the dark so that’s why we’ve used a very cold colour pallet for these places. That lets us use warm colours to add life to the rest of the world that’s lit up. Humans live in the light and because you need to maintain the Masquerade, that makes the light more dangerous for you. Whether it’s delving into the depths of Seattle's nightlife or stalking your prey for the next feed, leaving the darkness and entering the light, warm human world should be a calculated risk but one we ultimately need to take. Vampire senses are stronger than a mortal person’s so we have very a vibrant style juxtaposed between the dead Vampire world and the dangerous, energetic human world. All of these elements are accentuated in Neo-Noir’s unique use of colour and tone; the changes between light and dark have always been sudden and stark.



No Neo-Noir world would be complete without an eclectic mix of miscreants and personalities. The characters we meet throughout the game themselves have of course also taken a lot of influence from Neo-Noir aesthetics, each having their own visually striking home in Seattle creating a world of vibrancy and contrast.



It’s not a 1:1 scale replica but we’ve created our Seattle by spending a lot of time researching with Google Earth, maps and real life visits. We haven’t taken things verbatim but we have tried to capture the soul of the city and give it a Vampire Skew. The focus is on creating a world that lives in between the living world. Dark places just outside of the streets and high rises of the living world. We also looked at other American cities like New York and San Francisco. References on alleyways, pipes and fire escapes have helped us make it feel lived-in.

Snow is a big feature of the city’s look. It organically changes the shapes and feel of streets, rooftops and buildings. It fills the air around you to create a beautiful mood. Noir is famous for its rain but we love the look of how it covers everything.

We’re always learning about art of every type. Movies, books, fine art and even dance have given us inspiration. Neo-Noir Photography and Cinema visuals have been big influences. Whether it’s Nicolas Miller’s eerie elemental cityscapes or the visions of cultures hidden in plain sight in movies like John Wick and the works of Nicolas Winding Refn. We’ve worked hard on painting a picture of a dark, otherworldly underbelly hidden in the recesses of modern Seattle. Nicolas Miller’s work focuses a lot on the environmental atmosphere and the effect weather can have on people to make impactful images. We’re leveraging UE5’s atmospherics in the same way, creating dense scenes thick with warm glows and cold spotlights. Snow and fog play a large part of that in our Seattle helping to create layers of texture and visual storytelling.

Next Dev Diary is in two weeks! We will be talking about creating concept art.

Hello! I’m Sarah Longthorne, Senior Narrative Designer and Writer. Today, we’re discussing the narrative in Bloodlines 2 from a sky-high perspective. What are the conflicts and challenges in Seattle’s Court and, how will they affect you?

The story of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 is, at its cold, unbeating heart, about control: the amount and kind of control you have over others, the control they exert over you in turn, and the control you lose—and slowly regain—over yourself… and your fate.

You wake trapped in Seattle, the full extent of your power artificially suppressed—diminished to a mere pawn, to be used and exploited. After all, what are others if not our most disposable assets?

And what better asset than a leashed and muzzled Elder?

Our main NPC characters like Lou, Ryong, and Tolly all have their own agenda that your involvement could greatly advance.

It might not be in your best interest to bite every hand that seeks to bring you to heel, but to pick and choose, to play along—to bide your time. Or not. That much, darling, is down to you.

Neo-Noir blurs the lines of morality and explores themes like revenge, paranoia, alienation. All of which perfectly encapsulate a Kindred’s existence, especially when you consider that neo-noir stories are often driven by nihilistic, morally gray antiheroes. Hello, Kindred!


We love Tolly. There is nothing sinister about this man.

We focus on character, who knows what and who has the power in any given situation, and how the player can use that to their advantage. No one in Bloodlines 2 knows everything about everything, as much as they might pretend. So, how the player navigates these alliances and goes about learning new information makes the player feel like they are investigating a complex web of lies. We try to ensure that the player feels in control of the information that they know, who they share those secrets with, and why.

One of our early design decisions was to make the player character into an Elder Kindred. This was interesting to us because it means that we can play with how this established vampire knows things about being a Kindred already and how we can create gaps to let the player learn this type of information firsthand. Balancing the opportunity and the history it entails with the desire to allow players to still roleplay and make the character their own. It was extremely challenging but fun!


Kindred do not relate to each other the way that we do, especially extremely old Kindred, like our protagonist. They don’t have ‘friends’, for instance – everything is about power and possession, which are the antithesis of any genuine connection. It’s a challenge to try and disconnect from how we might view a thing and step into that mindset in order to properly represent it. You have to lean first on making that character interesting to learn about and spend time with – you cannot expect players to initially identify with them, or maybe even like them. It takes finesse to balance that, to zoom out and find the broader, more universal entry points that might encourage players to feel like they can identify with that character.


Humanity is something distant, so what does that make humans to you? Centuries of existence can be tough on a person who can only feed on others. Are they just something to be consumed, or is it possible to have trust and kinship? Is everyone just a chess piece or a trophy?

All these questions and more are what we’re asking about your character and the NPCs that star in Bloodlines 2.

We’ll see you back in two weeks for our next Dev Diary when we’ll explore the Neo-Noir art style.

This is Studio Design Director Alex Skidmore from The Chinese Room; excited to finally be able to say this out loud. I'm writing today to introduce you to our studio, its history and, in the future, the people behind making Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.

The Chinese Room is the award-winning studio focused on telling grounded, believable and rich stories - these are the traditions behind our ground-breaking games in our portfolio, like Dear Esther and the internationally acclaimed Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. Over 100 talented game developers were all drawn here by a passion for the kind of storytelling we do. We also have a strong history of supporting diversity in our development team and our games.

In early 2020, we moved to our studio in sunny Brighton and built our award-winning mobile game Little Orpheus… a warmup for the ambitious titles ahead. Later the same year, the company moved to two narrative-focused projects, Still Wakes the Deep and V:tM - Bloodlines 2. Still Wakes the Deep builds on The Chinese Room’s heritage, and Bloodlines 2 is about looking to the future for our games, taking a big leap forward into the action role-playing genre while bringing our narrative expertise to bear.

Check out this introduction video for a behind-the-scenes look at The Chinese Room and the people making Bloodlines 2.

A look at TCR's portfolio shows believability is the basis for any of our game worlds, allowing greater immersion. Vampire: The Masquerade’s origins as a TTRPG and broad transmedia portfolio gave us this foundation of believability from the get-go. We love how it lets you express your monster in a world full of supernatural secrets. That just fits our style of storytelling. Bloodlines 2 asks us to believe that blood-sucking monsters could inhabit our world, that you are one of them and how would you deal with that world while navigating the darkness within. Bloodlines 2 is designed with a balance of roleplaying game and adventure story. A compelling and rich plot you’d expect from an adventure game, but with RPG agency allowing you to act out your vampire fantasy.

The city of Seattle will open up lots of opportunities.


Throughout development, we’ve been regulars in Stockholm at World of Darkness HQ to discuss and align the opportunities for stories, characters, gameplay and crossovers that this IP gives us as creators and fans. We’re thrilled to bring World of Darkness off the page and character sheets and into an Action-RPG video game.



While making decisions about Bloodlines 2, one constant reference is our first game pillar: “Feel like a Vampire”. Everything you do in this game should make you feel like a predator of the night.

In video games, we often get to be a mighty hero fighting against the darkness. Vampires, especially as playable characters, are underrepresented. We’re building the game around the experience of doing things only a Kindred can. With non-combat gameplay, we found early on we were doing the RPG tropes: find a keycard to open a door, turn on a generator to restore power to a lift. We put in a rule that the non-combat gameplay should be about something only a vampire could do; keep it aspirational.

When we were exploring combat, it started off playing like Dishonored (which we love), but that didn’t feel right for a vampire: players were very cautious and afraid of the enemies they encountered. To us, a Kindred should stalk its prey and strike fearlessly like a predator. We want to build an action experience where players feel confident, almost trolling the enemies with their disciplines. Testers use the phrase “playing with your food,” which we love and illustrates how we think a Vampire: The Masquerade ARPG should feel has come up in playthroughs.

The look of a powerful vampire.


Most action games offer a power fantasy; I like to call ours a confidence fantasy. When you have a supernatural edge and immortality to back you up, there should be a sense of “I know what is going on and, I can control this situation.” We want to give you the tools to do that in combat, conversations, or travelling across the city. When they come together, you should be immersed in the feeling of being a Vampire.

We have two more game pillars. “Visceral, Immersive Combat” and “Exploring the World of Darkness”. We’ll explore these in-depth later down the line.

We look forward to telling you more. Until then, good night!
Alex Skidmore, Studio Design Director

We’re all working hard to make this game amazing because we love Vampire: The Masquerade and the chance to tell impactful stories. We know you’ve been waiting a while, so we’re dedicated to honesty and keeping you informed. Together with Paradox, we will give you as much info about the game as we can without spoilers and always tell you when the next update will happen and what it will be about.

Our next Dev Diary will be about the “Narrative Themes and Atmosphere.” You will learn more about our Neo-Noir thriller story and how the World of Darkness threatens to spill over into the mortal world… In just two weeks!

Dear Bloodlines fans,

It’s been quite a while between updates while we’ve had our heads down working on the game. We remain just as dedicated to delivering a great Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines game as we were when we announced, and are looking forward to showing you more in September this year.

We acknowledge it was a long time ago that many of you pre-ordered Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. As development continues, we will be updating the game’s editions and bonus content, and we want to provide the best value to those of you who supported us via digital pre-order after all this time. We are thus offering refunds to anyone who has pre-ordered any edition of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. As part of this process, we are proactively refunding all pre-orders of physical products, including the Collector’s Edition. The digital versions of the First Blood Edition, Unsanctioned Edition and Blood Moon Edition remain, but can be refunded if you choose.

We’re excited to show you more and hope to have all of you with us in September when we reveal more. We know you are eager to see how the game is coming along so we’ve put together a fresh batch of screenshots to share with you.

For more information about refunds and how to submit your request, please visit our FAQ.

Until then,
The Bloodlines Team
Stay tuned to the Bloodlines 2 website, and Bloodlines 2 Discord server for more news.