Stellaris is one of those games I've never played, but I'm delightfully confounded by it from afar, as occasionally one of my friends will send me a message about how her robotic gestalt consciousness is doing. And here I was thinking this was about annexing provinces, or whatever! If you'd like to be confounded up close, now seems like an ideal time—the game is free to play this weekend on Steam.

That's good through June 22, but you'll have a bit longer—until next Thursday, June 25—to decide if you'd like to buy it at a discount. Until then, the game is 70% off, bringing it to $15 for the base version or $18 for the "anniversary edition," which packs in the Galactic Paragons, Aquatics, and Leviathans DLCs.

If you want everything, that's on sale too, for the cool sum of just under $148. Hey, it's still a Paradox game. If you want to dip into that lifestyle before fully taking the plunge, you can subscribe to the game for $10 a month to get access to all the DLC instead, but there's no discount on that.

If you can look past the associated shedload of DLC, Stellaris is quite the game. PC Gamer EIC Phil Savage scored it a respectable 70% when he reviewed it back in 2016, saying its superlative early game revealed its potential as an "instant strategy classic." It's only refined things since with each new overhaul, and as Leana Hafer said in a recent story for PC Gamer, "1.0 and 4.3 are almost hard to recognize as the same game." Game director Stephen Muray joked back then that Stellaris is "the Spaceship of Theseus."

As for the new expansion, Nomads? Senior guide writer Sean Martin wrote in his impressions that it could "use some work," but its additions of Mongolian throat singing and nomadic factions are welcome indeed.

After nearly 10 years, Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2's long and convoluted development is finally approaching its end. Its second and final DLC—The Flower and the Flame, releases next week, concluding one of the more dramatic industry sagas witnessed in the last few years.

Announced in 2019 after several years of development, Bloodlines 2 promised to be a full-blooded sequel to Troika's beautiful, if broken 2004 RPG. But a challenging initial development led to original developers Hardsuit Labs being booted off the project in 2021. The baton was picked up by The Chinese Room, which rebuilt the game from the ground up and released it last year.

The result offered an enjoyable enough slice of gothic detective fiction, as Fraser Brown explained in his Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 review. But it didn't really deliver on the whole 'RPG' of it all, lacking many of the systems and ideas featured in Troika's original.

The subsequent expansions have been adding some of that stuff back in—sort of. April's Loose Cannon DLC reintroduced the ability for players to wield guns and melee weapons by hand, albeit only for the DLC and within the constraints of playing as a specific character—the base game's rogue sheriff Benny.

The Flower and the Flame adopts a similar approach, only this time you play as Ysabella, the glamorous Toreador who runs the Atrium nightclub. The DLC's story is difficult to summarise without spoiling it, but the four quests it adds explore Ysabella's relationships with some other key characters in the base game, while revealing the reasons why she, uh, does the things she does in the main story.

As for how it plays, Ysabella's combat is based around the Toreador abilities in vanilla Bloodlines 2, but with a few DLC-specific flourishes. For starters, Ysabella gets a new gizmo called Razor Wire. This is a hook attack a-la Scorpion from Mortal Kombat, with Ysabella lassoing enemies with barbed wire before yanking them toward her, stunning them in the process. She also fights with a rapier in melee combat rather than using her fists, and can dual-wield any guns she picks up in a fight, from pistols to sniper rifles.

It certainly sounds more involved than the base game. It is worth pointing out, however, that the first DLC didn't go down all that well. Loose Cannon has a 'Mixed' rating on Steam with just 43% positive reviews. I haven't played the DLC myself, but PC Gamer's news editor Andy Chalk has, and as someone who enjoyed the base game, he described the DLC to me as "pure garbola", elaborating thusly:

Half of it is just a replay of the boring endgame level, there's no real insight into the character or why he went nuts, the implementation of guns is extremely clumsy to the point that they're not worth the effort, the awful crossover from Bloodlines 1 is back and somehow even more pointless and annoying, and wow, it turns out that Bloodlines 2 was actually heavily dependent on its characters and when you strip them out there's not a hell of a lot left.

It doesn't exactly sound riveting. I'll also say that, while I didn't particularly like Benny as a character, he was more interesting than Ysabella, and I'm not especially convinced by Paradox's summary of the latest DLC's plot.

Bloodlines 2: The Flower and The Flame launches on June 10. There's no price listed for it yet, but since Loose Cannon cost $15 (£13), I imagine you'll pay the same for Bloodlines 2's swansong.

We live in complex geopolitical times. I think. I'll be honest, I've not been paying attention. But it's recently become known to me that a little strip of water called the Strait of Hormuz has—like a wavepool they had to shut down due to a urine crisis—shut up shop.

This has caused a great deal of consternation.

In news that was presumably impossible to know in advance of all this, loads of everyone's favourite stuff came through that Strait: crude oil, natural gas, fertilizers, and more.

America has done its best to calm the situation—first by creating it from whole cloth and then, when the Strait was unforeseeably closed in response, by threatening to do even more bombing, while doing more bombing.

Somehow, the crisis remains ongoing. But I am prepared. I was born for this. The good Lord and a Swedish man named Johan have given me the tools to solve this problem just as they gave me the tools to solve last year's tariff situation. It's my patriotic duty to strap in, fire up Paradox's Europa Universalis 5, and wargame my way to a solution to this crisis. This will be easy.

This is not easy

A thing not many people notice about Europa Universalis 5 is that it starts in the 14th century, which is not the century we currently inhabit. This meant my first task when I launched the game was to engineer a scenario that roughly approximated the conditions surrounding the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, just without drones, nuclear weapons, the mass use of gunpowder, industrial capitalism, Iran, Israel, oil, or the United States of America.

Apart from that, though, it would be basically the same.

My first inclination was to recreate the relative balance of power of our current crisis. Iran vs the USA is not an especially balanced fight in the 21st century, and I felt it was important to recreate that dynamic in EU5. Subbing in for modern-day Iran would be Ormuz, the scrappy little nation whose borders span either side of the now-iconic Strait. It was close enough, though it was technically part of the Ilkhanate—the gaggle of lands under some form of post-Genghis Mongol dominion. We'll say that's a stand-in for… the Comintern? Is modern Iran in the Comintern? Let's assume yes.

For the USA? I needed the closest thing 1337 AD had to a globe-striding colossus—an entity that could project power anywhere in the world and whose economic and diplomatic might was unignorable. Amusingly, this turned out to be Yuan-dynasty China.

The stage was set: China vs Ormuz in the battle of the (14th) century. I fired up a new game and hopped into the Emperor's embroidered shoes.

Problem one: This is the point at which I make you, the reader, aware that I do not have a great deal of time in EU5. In EU4? I've got hundreds of hours, and it's one of my favourite strategy games ever made, but a lot of EU5's systems are still opaque and unfamiliar to me.

Problem two: China and Ormuz are, like, really far apart.

These two problems merged into a single polycrisis. On day one in power, I fulfilled my campaign promise and declared war on Ormuz. The effect of this was nothing. I'm not even sure the letter arrived. All that changed was that, on the world map, Ormuz was now bordered by an angry shade of red, but the simple fact that our countries were so distant meant it was all a drôle de guerre: a paper war, a war in theory rather than practise.

It did also occur to me at this point that, China being so far away from Ormuz, the latter wouldn't really have cause to blockade the Strait. That's its own Strait. It lives there.

The long paddle

These were all secondary issues compared to the vast barrage of domestic notifications that began to crowd the imperial iPhone lock screen. My heir was unmarried. The estates were unhappy. The peasants were dying in droves but still had the capacity to be angry about it. A lot of stuff about the imperial bureaucracy and the Mandate of Heaven that really flew over my head. Where's the food? Who's growing the food? Why is no one growing the food? Humans need the food to live, your majesty. The markets will be upset about this situation concerning the food.

The run was already a wash but I thought I could treat it as a practice session. I dispatched the entire Chinese army—which at this time consisted of 500 men, for reasons I was too distracted to investigate—onto the entire Chinese navy, which was five boats. Off I sent them to Ormuz.

After what felt like several actual, real-life months of travel (it takes a really long time to get around India; why aren't we making a strait to sort that out?) my men arrived at party central. Or, well, what remained of them did. No food, you see. Several of them died on the trip over.

Why dilly-dally, I thought? I debarked them right at the enemy's doorstep: Hormuz itself—the province and capital—and set them to sieging.

Nothing happened. Despite the immense might of the Chinese military, my 342 remaining men were, it turns out, inadequate to the task of besieging my enemy's capital. In addition, for reasons I still don't really understand, the ships that brought them over all began sinking, seemingly of their own will. Probably a Mandate of Heaven issue.

Take two

Enough monkeying around. I'd learnt my lesson. I needed to pick a USA stand-in that was nearer the action, less riven by major internal crises, and that would give Ormuz reason to actually, ah, blockade the Strait of Hormuz.

You might question the extent to which a country matching this description really functions as a substitute for the 21st-century USA, but I am not taking questions.

I settled on Injuids, one of Ormuz's neighbours that actually sits a little further into the Persian Gulf than Ormuz itself does. Its small size made it less difficult to manage and its location meant Ormuz might actually have some cause to blockade the Strait.

I also knew I needed to exercise a stronger hand in setting the scene. Ormuz's navy at the beginning of a true EU5 game consists of two fishing boats and some sort of pleasure barge. If these were the means by which modern Iran were blockading the Strait of Hormuz then I—literally me, videogame man Joshua Wolens—could probably get over there and sort it out.

So I cheated them in a honking great navy: 50 heavy frigates and 50,000 sailors (this many sailors in one place is known colloquially as a Shenmue) to staff them. I declared war and, just to make sure the skittles were set up just the way I intended them, I quickly swapped into Ormuz's shoes and gave their new navy the task of blockading my ports.

Everything was in place. How would the war play out? We were now in the realm of simulation: the solution to my situation that I found here would be the one I sent to the White House. I needed to be operating at peak efficiency, poised to counter whatever dastardly move Ormuz sent my way.

Ormuz sent three men my way.

I'm not entirely sure what occurred here. Admittedly, my attack on Ormuz came entirely out of the blue (I considered this appropriate). I suppose its land forces, which I had not cheated up, were not quite prepared for it. So the response they mustered to my assault was three men, who just, sort of, hung out in the mountains, getting hungry.

Meanwhile, my own land armies—around 2,500 men summoned from my national levies—were merrily trampling through Ormuz's capital. These were not 342 hungry Chinese soldiers conveyed by death-seeking yachts. These were strong, fit and ready soldiers, punishing Ormuz for having the temerity to do whatever it did.

But I wasn't solving the problem. It didn't matter what I did to Ormuz's towns and cities, the fact remained that it had 50 heavy frigates floating happily in the Strait, forbidding me from passage.

I considered, briefly, that perhaps the solution was to never have begun this war at all. Maybe this conflict was the height of foolishness. Maybe I should sue for peace.

I then rightly disregarded this part of my brain as a communist.

I didn't want to cheat myself a solution. You can't pull up the cheat menu in real life. I had to make do with the resources I had at hand.

There once was a country who swallowed a fly

It came to me.

Right next to Ormuz is Makran, another minor state whose chief export is vibes and whose main business is hanging out. I couldn't cheat myself a solution, but what if I were to somehow get another power—one with a mighty navy—to intervene in my conflict? Real-life diplomats accomplish this by posting at their allies on social media websites they own, but I was limited to 14th-century technology: the debug console.

I quickly swapped over to Makran and cheated it a navy. Ormuz has 50 heavy frigates? Meet the beautiful Makran 100. If I could woo Makran to my side and get it to intervene in the conflict, I could have the Strait cleared in a single business day.

I tried everything. Which is to say, I waited for my diplomacy points to recharge several times before sending Makran nice compliments, but the country remained inexplicably unwilling to pull me out of my hole. No matter what I did, no matter how much I grovelled, wheedled or cajoled, Makran had no interest in helping me.

I gave into temptation. I switched over to Ormuz and declared war on Makran. Then I switched back to Injuids and did it again.

The plot was perfect: using a single, tiny Injuid boat, I lured Makran's great hulking fleet deeper into the gulf. There was no chance the nation would pick a fight with Ormuz's navy—the one currently blockading my port—by itself. It'd win, sure, but it was ultimately pointless. A poor source of war score and strategically unnecessary. I had to bait them into it myself.

It worked. My fishing boat was translated to glory, but the Ormuzi and Makrani fleets collided head-on. The view from my ports must have been spectacular: a great conflagration on the water as the two greatest navies the world had ever known smashed into each other. I was a hero, I was a legend, I was a military genius. My enemy was defeating my enemy, the Ormuzi navy would soon be a thing of the past, and so too would their hateful blockade of the Strait.

When day broke, the Ormuzi were in ruins. Their blockade was broken. In their place stood north of 60 Makrani heavy frigates.

Ah. Yes. I'm beginning to see the problem here.

There's still a part of me that thinks of 2016's Stellaris as one of the "new school" Paradox grand strategy games, even though it turned 10 years old just this week. If you were to add all of its 30+ DLCs to your Steam cart right now, it would run you upwards of $200—and that's with quite a bit of it on sale. Paradox has even announced the next batch with Season 10, bringing scenarios and nomads among other things.

When Stellaris launched, it was already clear that this DLC model, funding long lifespans and lots of transformative free patches, was working for Paradox—as 2012's Crusader Kings 2 and 2013's Europa Universalis 4 had proven. But when it began its development life, the idea that a grand strategy game could still be getting DLC for a decade hadn't become so obvious.

"It wasn't exactly clear that it was incredibly successful when I started scribbling down notes for what was to become Stellaris," said original game director and Paradox's current chief creative officer Henrik Fåhraeus. "But I guess sometime during development we realized that this is the model we should go with."

And it's not just how much you can shell out for new features and new spaceships that makes Stellaris notable. Across its lifespan, it's received 41 major free patches and dozens of smaller ones. The current game version right now is 4.3, and each of those bigger jumps to 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 have transformed it in ways more significant than some sequels do. 1.0 and 4.3 are almost hard to recognize as the same game.

"I joke on the forums that Stellaris the Spaceship of Theseus," quipped current game director Stephen Muray.

Much like there have been four major patches, he is the fourth person to sit in the captain's chair as game director. With Stellaris being its own stellar dynasty, I was curious what two of those captains felt were the things that kept Stellaris grounded. If it is a Spaceship of Theseus, what is the shape of the hull?

"I still think it's at its core about the joy of exploring the unknown, seeing new things play out every session or every playthrough essentially," Fåhraeus responded. "So it's a little bit different from other 4X games in that regard, in that it puts so much emphasis on exploration and the events that you experience while venturing forth into the galaxy."

"I'd say that the number of player fantasies is what Stellaris is all about," Muray added, referencing the fact that you can make anything from Star Trek's borg to Starcraft's zerg in its empire builder. "I remember back in the beginning as a player trying all these different things, and then we just keep adding more and more. People say that if you come back six months later, the game is different. We're always trying to give you new things to do."

As for what Muray sees as the triumph of his turn as game director? "My reign is mostly a shift towards more of the narrative and RPG-based content. We started with [expansions such as] Overlord and First Contact and things like that. I took the team in a little bit more of the RPG direction. Stellaris and Crusader Kings 2 were the games that I played before I joined Paradox. That's sort of the style that I have as the RPG gamer. I came here from Dungeons & Dragons Online and things like that. So the stories are sort of my thing."

While Stellaris may be approaching old age in strategy game terms, it's not exactly ancient yet. As evidence of this, I have icons on my desktop right this moment for Warcraft 3 and Age of Empires 2, which are much older games. And the latter is still getting new DLC! I asked both directors if they felt like Stellaris could have that kind of a lifespan, or if we're closer to the end than the beginning.

"I think it still has some mileage left, that's for sure," Fåhraeus said simply.

"I think that there's still a lot of stories that we can still tell and things to explore," Muray elaborated. There are some fantasies we haven't hit yet. But we'll have to be careful not to retread things that we already have."

But it's not easy to maintain such an unwieldy vessel with so many new systems introduced and shiny additions bolted onto the outside of it. Even as a grand strategy aficionado, I don't find myself going back to Stellaris as much these days simply because there's too much to keep track of now. And Paradox is well aware of this.

"It's a classic development [problem] with all of our live games," Fåhraeus admitted. "What started out as our most approachable grand strategy game with a very clean interface is no longer that, let's put it like that. I don't think there are many proper ways around that. At some point you're going to have to start thinking 'sequel' I suppose. You could also do some sort of repackaging UI cleanup pass. But this is what happens after 10 years with so many expansions."

Whether or not we might see a sequel drop out of hyperspace sometime in the not-so-distant future isn't something either game director could answer. But if you want to know what is immediately on deck for Stellaris, check out the other part of this interview where we talk about the upcoming DLC for Season 10.

Most strategy games that make it to 10 years old have already passed the event horizon of their development cycle and are being pulled apart like spaghetti by the gravity of the thousands of new games released every day. Not so for Stellaris, Paradox's spacebound grand strategy 4X. How it got to where it is and is still drawing in intrepid stellar statebuilders is a saga worthy of a Star Wars title crawl. But it's not even done yet, with the newly announced Season 10 finally bringing space nomads to the table.

Nomads, with a current release date of Q2 2026, will finally let you play a species without a homeworld. This is something that Paradox has wanted to do for a long time, but posed significant technical challenges. We got to chat with game director Stephen Muray about what's coming.

"For years, I've always wanted mobile planets," Muray said. "That was always the impossible dream. The programmers would run off screaming and crying anytime we mentioned it... So after [last year's big patch] 4.0, we had an extended period of bug fixing and things like that. And we have the thing called PDT: personal development time. Everyone can basically do what they want to, as long as it helps the project, for a day. And we had pulled all of these days together into a full week of PDT because we were too busy to actually take off a day a month.

"And the team came together and were like, 'We're going to prove to you that we can do nomads.' And I was like, 'Really? Do you really think that you can pull off a successful prototype in a week?' Now, I say that in this sort of, you know, not demeaning way. I was really hoping they'd succeed because I've really wanted to do nomads for a long time. But I had to give them that challenge of, 'I don't believe that you'll be able to do this.'

"And boy, did they step up. By the end of the week, we had an interesting prototype that didn't make people scream and cry. And they were like, yeah, this is how we're going to split the colonies and ships and planets, and integrate the ship into it. And we totally have ideas on how all of this design will work. And then, you know, the next week I was like, 'Well, OK, you've convinced me.'"

The core of your nomadic empire will be a massive vessel called an arkship that basically functions as a mobile planet. You can specialize it for either a military, civilian, or scientific focus and upgrade it in much the same way you do terrestrial worlds in Stellaris now. There are even new origins that let you play as, among other things, the galaxy's most lavish cruise ship. And you'll be interacting with your gravity-bound friends and rivals a bit differently than other empires."If you conquer new planets and that sort of thing, you'll spin them off as vassals or have the option of playing as that vassal," Muray explained. "You'll also be able to settle onto planets eventually if you desire, giving up your arkship and turning it into infrastructure on the planet. Or at the reverse, say you're losing horribly in a war. Maybe you should consider greener pastures and flee your planet-bound existence and build an arkship to get away."If you're like me, the first thing that came to mind on hearing that was Battlestar Galactica fleeing from a machine revolt—something that can already happen in Stellaris. And I wasn't alone.

"Absolutely, that was kind of what we were hoping for," Muray confirmed. "We want to be the quarians who go back home and land. You want to play as [the colonial fleet from] Battlestar Galactica. I mean Battlestar Galactica was one of the things in my initial pitch deck after I approved their prototype. We must cover this fantasy."

The other, bigger expansion in Season 10 is called Willpower, which will focus on shaping and spreading Ideologies. Stellaris has always had ethics like Materialist and Spiritualist that define the things your people strive for and how they might interact with other species. But Willpower seeks to take that a step further, even possibly pitting empires with similar ethics against each other.

"If I have a spiritualist Ideology and you have a different spiritualist Ideology, then they will bicker and fight against each other most likely," Muray explained. "You'll have to be careful that you don't lose ground to their ideology and they become the dominant one in your empire. [But] we were pretty specific that this is not the religion expansion. Spiritualist Ideologies are kind of religions, but we have Ideologies for all of the ethics, not just spiritualism. So you can have Human Rationalism as an Ideology that you'll spread. And then the aliens that you expose to this may pick up your habits and want to join it and follow some of your tenets and things like that."

Alongside all of that, Season 10 will introduce scenarios to Stellaris that use its base mechanics in ways that are quite different from the standard 4X grand strategy mode. One is a king of the hill-style PvP game meant to be playable in a shorter amount of time than a grand campaign. Another is a roguelike about guiding one ship across the galaxy.

"I've always wanted to do some sorts of constrained scenarios," Muray said. "There's a lot of stories that we want to tell that we can't because there's this whole game there. The example that I always used was a Fallen Empire rolls up to pre-FTL Earth and it's like, 'Hey, here's some knowledge data banks and stuff like that. We just lost our fleet to the Prethoryn Scourge. You just need to hold up for 10 years, 20 years and we'll be right back!' And just playing these sort of short game experiences.

"In Hearts of Iron you can play a game and be done in a night or day or whatever. Eight hours is enough to do a campaign. In Stellaris it is not. And sometimes I want a shorter play session and accomplish something and feel like, 'I did this.'"With the ability to really tweak the rules and starting parameters of a campaign, Paradox hopes modders will surprise them as well.

"The players are the ultimate source of creativity out there," Muray continued. "The entire MOBA genre was created off of one of these sorts of systems. The scenarios that we have are very constrained in different ways for whatever the playstyle is. The way this works is you can be like, 'The physics research file—it doesn't exist.' You can just blacklist that. I really want to see what [modders are] able to do with Stellaris if they can blacklist or whitelist things and systems and you know just go nuts. So I don't actually know what the scenario system is going to bring us, but I really want to find out."

Season 10 makes it seem to me like Stellaris isn't ready to slow down any time soon. But if you want to know how it got here and where it might be going in the even more distant future, check out the other part of this interview on the 10th Anniversary with Muray and Paradox's Chief Creative Officer Henrik Fåhraeus.

Paradox Interactive has rolled out its "biggest update yet" for Europa Universalis 5. This is a slightly cheeky way to phrase things, considering this is only the second major update for Paradox' latest, dizzyingly complex grand strategy. But it's also accurate. With patch notes that Paradox claims would fill 72 pages of a Google doc, the Encinades update overhauls several of the game's major systems and squashes more than 2,000 bugs.

The primary goal of Encinades (which is not to be confused with echidnas, the small, egg-laying mammal and Sonic the Hedgehog frenemy) is similar to that of Alexander the Great, namely expanding the Balkans. The update introduces more than 300 new advances and around 150 dynamic historical events, many of which revolve around Greece and the other countries in Europe's southeastern peninsula. These are designed to couple with the Fate of the Phoenix expansion pack, which focuses on Byzantium, but are free for everyone to play with.

The update also overhauls the Holy Roman Empire (which history tells us is no mean feat). As explained in the accompanying video showcase, the previous implementation of the UI for the Holy Roman Empire made it "incredibly difficult to distinguish members, policies and finances at a glance". Hence, this panel has been rebuilt into a tabbed structure, which Paradox hopes will make the information easier to digest. Though one could argue the Holy Roman Empire being incredibly unwieldy and hard to parse is the most authentic experience you can have.

More broadly, Encinades provides a significant overhaul to the game's economy, with more refined trade route logic and enhancements to the Maritime Presence mechanic, as well as a new trade orders feature. Paradox hopes these adjustments will "reflect a more historically accurate economic setup". Orthodoxy has also been reworked to make Patriarchs into proper, interactable characters, while the related laws & tenets system has been updated so that some laws are inviolate, while others can be changed.

As for those bugfixes, yeah, there's a lot. British history fans will be pleased to know that The Wars of the Roses event will now trigger properly, while Lichfield Cathedral will no longer randomly wander off to Stafford. The "Reform Society" disaster has been stopped from occurring multiple times (I mean who would want that?), while Paradox has also fixed a bug where players were not "able to liberate countries because they 'would cease to exist'", which feels like something that would spark some intense political philosophy debate.

The full changelog is available on Paradox's Forums. The update should further enhance what was already a sterling entry in Paradox's grand strategy simulations, at least according to Jonathan Bolding in his Europa Unversalis 5 review. "It's nothing less than an attempt at simulating the world for centuries with a fidelity beyond anything else in the genre," he wrote last October. "It's enough to make even the most hardened genre veterans realize they'll have to stop, take a moment, and start learning new things again."

Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 offered an intriguing story when it finally released last year, but mechanically The Chinese Room's vampire RPG felt a little anaemic compared to the wild kitchen-sink design of Troika's original. Its combat, for example, revolved almost entirely around vampire-based fisticuffs, with guns and melee weapons reduced to disposable items wielded through telekinesis. Combined with the flat progression of your vampire powers, it meant fighting felt a little one note.

It's an issue The Chinese Room addresses directly in Bloodlines 2's first DLC. Loose Cannon sees you ditch the main game's protagonist Phyre, instead playing as Benny, a side character from the sequel who is far less fussy about getting hands-on in a fight.

Benny is Seattle's vampire sheriff who goes rogue at the outset of Bloodlines 2, abandoning his post on a personal quest that serves as the story's inciting event. He's also, from what I recall, a raging arsehole who I disliked intensely, which makes the notion of playing as him a challenging prospect. Loose Cannon details the events that led up to Benny suddenly going AWOL, and explores why an individual with his, uh, volatile personality was made sheriff in the first place.

Benny is a member of the Brujah clan, the frontline warriors of Vampire: The Masquerade's world. The Chinese Room has used Benny's bloodline as an excuse to bring back proper melee and ranged combat. Benny can pick up guns, bladed and blunt weapons just as you could in Troika's game, while also coming with his own set of combat finishers to boot.

There is a bit of irony at play here. In the original Bloodlines, one of the Brujah's key traits was a bonus to unarmed combat. Hence, making Benny the weapons guy is a little counterintuitive. The Chinese Room pitches this as a "new take" on the Brujah playstyle, which is a little cheeky. But you know what? Fine. I'm not going to let a bit of lore get between me and a big pile of guns.

If anything, I'm more concerned about The Chinese Room's statement that Loose Cannon will involve "new quests across reimagined familiar locations". I'm all for new quests, obviously. But Bloodlines 2 only had about five locations in it to begin with, and I was thoroughly fed up with bouncing between them by the end of the game. The idea of going back to that Anarch biker club again has zero appeal. If you want to put the spark back in our relationship, Bloodlines 2, take me somewhere new!

Nonetheless, I am glad to see Bloodlines 2 getting an expansion. The sequel didn't sell as well as Paradox hoped, which was perhaps inevitable given the project's long, tortured gestation, which Paradox accepted its share of the blame for. But the publisher said it wouldn't walk away from the game despite its troubles, and it seems to have stuck to that promise thus far. Loose Cannon fires onto Steam tomorrow.

In the wake of Cities: Skylines 2's shaky launch and mixed reception, developer Colossal Order and publisher Paradox Interactive have parted ways, with a new dev, Iceflake Studios, stepping in to continue patching the city builder.

The issues with Cities: Skylines 2 ranged from poor optimization to an absence of modding support to a perceived lack of features (at least when compared with the original) to its Bridges & Ports expansion being delayed for more than a year.

At least some of Skylines 2's struggles both during development and post-launch were due to the Unity engine the game is built on, according to Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen. "We completely overestimated the engine's capabilities at the beginning of the project," Hallikainen said when we talked earlier this month.

"When we started to work on the sequel, we very much built all the plans toward features that were not finalized in the engine. So, we basically wanted to future-proof the game. We were all the time thinking that we will be working on this game for possibly up to 10 years, post launch," Hallikainen said.

"We basically looked into the very new technology that Unity was offering, and that turned out to be a mistake, in the sense that there were features that didn't actually fulfill the promise," she said. "We ended up in a situation in the development where we had to build much more things to either replace missing features or something that [wasn't] working.

"This was something that we very much now understand, that our mistake was to bank on something that was not yet proven, and that was a huge hindrance throughout the development of Cities: Skylines 2."

Some of the issues with Unity at the time, Hallikainen clarified in an email after our talk, were "the general instability of the engine, HDRP shader pipeline missing core features like the interpolators, and the ECS [Entity Component System] long running job support (the lack thereof)."

In my 2023 review of Cities: Skylines 2, I noted some performance and optimization problems as well as a general sparseness to its features—though I definitely didn't expect the city builder to run into quite as much trouble as it did post-launch.

Interestingly, despite the issues during Skylines 2's development and launch, it sounds like Hallikainen doesn't bear any ill will toward Unity. "We have a great relationship," she said. "We definitely had good communication with Unity throughout the development of the game, and they did the best they could to help us. Overall, what I absolutely want people to understand is that everyone at Colossal Order, Paradox, Unity, we all did the best we could under the circumstances."

Now independent again, Colossal Order is currently working on a new game, though Hallikainen wouldn't give me any details about it—other than that it's "in the simulation genre," it's being made for PC, and it's being made, once again, in Unity. "We're very much happily using Unity," she said. "It is just that we are going to be using it in a smarter way."

While Cities: Skylines 2 has been sucking up all the oxygen with its bungled launch, severely delayed updates, and developer switcheroo, Colossal Order's original city-builder has been enjoying the quiet life. An update here, a community pack there, the odd free weekend away. It's like a retired middle-manager thriving in its dotage while its replacement burns the office down.

But it seems Skylines 2's shenanigans might have inadvertently brought the Cities: Skylines back in for one last job, as Paradox Interactive has abruptly announced a swathe of new additions to the OG. Across the next week, Skylines is getting an expansion pack, a meaty free update, a free weekend and a massive discount.

Let's start with the expansion, since it has an intriguing concept. Developed by Skylines's console port specialists Tantalus Media, Cities: Skylines—Race Day lets players outfit their city to host glitzy motor races and bring fame, fortune, and glamour to their metropolis.

By constructing a Race HQ, players can create a racetrack using special motor racetrack roads and pit lanes, build spectator stands, and schedule race events. You can also use the space within the circuit as a recreational centre by building parks, shopping malls, and so forth.

Although racetracks are designed to be separate entities for your city, you can also host races along your city streets by building event roads. These are multipurpose byways that can be used to host motor races, as well as cycling races, running races, and parades complete with floats and marching bands.

As you'd expect, hosting such major events in your city will require significant planning. It takes time for your citizens to set up for a scheduled event, blocking off roads, preparing for crowds etc, as well as packing everything away once the event is done. I'm intrigued by the potential challenge of ensuring your city can still function as such events are ongoing, requiring you to consider traffic contingencies much more when laying out your roadways.

Race Day bursts forth from the start line on March 10. The launch will coincide with a free update that adds illuminated billboards, fences you can build alongside roads, and a new employment visualiser that shows you which areas of your city are struggling for hires. Not as exciting as the DLC, obviously, but the employment visualiser should come in handy.

If, somehow, you don't already own Cities: Skylines, Paradox is hosting a free weekend on Steam between now and Monday, March 9. The game is also on a 90% discount until March 12, letting you grab the base game for just ($3) £2.49. That's a fantastic price for what is still the best nuts 'n' bolts city-builder you can play today, whatever the antics of its troubled sequel.

Cities: Skylines 2 just received its first update from new developer Iceflake Studios, which replaced Colossal Order at the end of 2025. You might think this would be a prime opportunity to breathe new life into the struggling city-builder. To come out swinging with some big new features. To make the flowers bloom, the birds sing, the babies gurgle in a way that makes you think "Are they happy or about to barf?"

Nope! Instead, Iceflake's debut patch is utterly obsessed with death. Turns out your idiot citizens have been croaking in completely the wrong ways in Cities: Skylines 2, so Iceflake has donned its black robe and sharpened its scythe to sort things out.

Dubbed First Frost (though really it should be Last Rites) the update makes numerous tweaks to systems that govern the lights going out, the buckets being kicked, the farms being bought, etc. Chiefly, it fixes a bug that prevented time of day being taken into account when determining citizens' demises, which meant everyone was popping their clogs between midnight and six o'clock. It also quadruples the number of times the game calculates deaths from four to sixteen, in order to "further reduce the number of citizens dying at the same time".

In addition, the patch fixes an especially peculiar bug that made most of your citizens immortal when playing in easy mode. "Previously, about 80% of them never died of old age," Iceflake writes in a Steam post. An ageing population is difficult enough for modern governments to deal with, so I can imagine how challenging an immortal one would be. Shuffle off, grandad! How else am I to get a house in this economy?

Not everything in First Frost is about departures from the mortal realm. The patch also reduces trips made on the bicycles introduced by Colossal Order before it moved on to pastures new, by 80%. In short, your citizens are spending less time cycling and more time dying, which I suppose is how exercise works in real life too.

Elsewhere, the patch introduces a bunch of new UI icons for roundabouts, cul-de-sacs, road maintenance depots, pollution types, and more. It updates the onboarding tutorial for new players, makes terraforming tools less aggressive (otherwise known as a terrorforming tool), and makes a bunch of graphical improvements like improved shadow rendering, snow support for decal-based lots, and fog that adjusts according to weather conditions.

Oh, and the update finally switches autosave on by default, which is good, but also kinda wild that it's only happening now. It took two years, four months, and a change in developer, but Cities: Skylines 2 will now save automatically without player intervention.

While not bristling with new features, Iceflake's first patch still seems to have improved the sequel's immediate fortunes. Recent Steam reviews stand at 67% positive at the time of writing, compared to 54% positive overall. Let's hope this proves a new foundation for a brighter future for the sequel.

Werner "Wesp5" Spahl, author of the essential Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines Unofficial Patch, appears to have the inside scoop on the initial, canceled version of its sequel, pulled from Hardsuit Labs by publisher Paradox in 2021, as opposed to The Chinese Room-developed game we got last year.

Over the past few days, Wesp5 has released four videos showing gameplay and assets from the canceled version of Bloodlines 2. Last November, Wesp5 also showed off a silent demo reel of powers from this version of the game.

Of the newer videos, two are slide shows of still images from Bloodlines 2's development, set to music by Bloodlines 1 composer Rik Schaffer. "HSL Bloodlines 2 – People" shows, as you might expect, screenshots and model views of characters from the game. "HSL Bloodlines 2 - Locations" features maps, concept images, and screenshots of environments from the game.

Wesp5 has also uploaded two extended gameplay sequences: "Warehouse" shows an infiltration of a warehouse/office complex, including what appear to be a partially implemented boss fight, as well as a scene of our player crashing an office party⁠—maybe involving some vampire mind control?

"Medical" shows a level set in a haunted hospital with some really nice jump scares, freaky scenes, and flashbacks to the institution's heyday in the 1930s. Even in its unfinished state⁠ it looks like a pretty loving, worthy ode to Bloodlines 1's memorably spooky Ocean House Hotel level.

The gameplay is very rough and WIP, but the vision definitely strikes me as more in line with the original game⁠—less polished than The Chinese Room's Bloodlines 2, but potentially more interactive⁠. It has that stiff, Elder Scrollsy, Bloodlines One-sy "Yeah it's not gonna feel as good as an action game, but there's a lot of RPG stuff going on" look.

All the same, there's no way of knowing if it would have all come together under Hardsuit Labs. A canceled game gets to remain a perfect martyr in the minds of its devotees, sky-high expectations unsullied by first contact with reality. As for the game we eventually got, PCG online editor Fraser Brown appreciated Bloodlines 2 for the game it was: A more constrained action-RPG with a strong narrative and vampire vibes, but some unfortunate flaws, particularly in its side content.

Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 may not have been the success Paradox Interactive hoped, but the publisher has committed to standing by the troubled sequel, and developer The Chinese Room has been doling out updates for the game since launch. December brought a vaguely holiday-themed update that added custom difficulty settings and a Santa-ish skin to let you get your Jolly Saint (Artery) Nick on, festively delivering teeth into the necks of snowbound Seattle's citizenry.

Now, The Chinese Room has released another update that is notionally related to Valentine's Day. The primary feature of the patch is enemy loot, letting rooftop-dwelling vampires and ghouls carry useful items such as restorative elixirs and newly introduced blood bags. These can either be pickpocketed from unwitting foes or scavenged from their corpse after you've beaten them to a pulp and lapped up all the juice.

In a Steam post, Paradox/The Chinese Room say the change has been added to "make rooftop encounters more rewarding" which is sensible enough. It doesn't *scream* Valentine's Day though, does it? Even if we acknowledge the gifting limitations of being an undead creature of the night, turning up to your lover's coffin with a filched blood bag is a bit 'wilting bouquet of flowers from the petrol station'.

On the plus side, at least you can look your best while disappointing your un-life partner with the vampire equivalent of a ready meal (seriously dude, make some effort and kidnap a virgin or two—she's worth it). The update also adds several extra character customisation options.

This includes the all-new addition of facial hair for Phyre, alongside seven new accessories such as a beret and an eyepatch, eight more make-up choices, seven additional hairstyles, and four extra eye colours. Apparently, Bloodlines 2's customisation options now amount to 151 items and 24 outfits, which means you can really hone your look for wandering around Seattle wishing there were some interesting side-quests to pursue.

Fortunately, some meatier optional adventures will be coming to Bloodlines 2 soon, though you will have to pay for them. Paradox plans two DLCs for later in 2026. The first of these will let you play as Benny, the deeply unpleasant vampire Sherriff you encounter early in the game. The second centres around Ysabella, the glamorous Toreador who owns the Atrium nightclub.

Is any of this likely to tempt me back into Bloodlines 2? Honestly, I doubt it. The game certainly has its merits, as Fraser Brown explained in his Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 Review. But most of those merits revolve around protagonist Phyre and their relationship with Fabien, the Malkavian detective who lives in their brain. What I really want is more stuff to do in the world with them, not a bunch of side-adventures with the B-team. Still, kudos to Paradox for standing by the game.

I could never look at cute bunnies the same way after watching Watership Down, but I feel more prepared for Age of Wonders 4: Rise from Ruin. Now I know how hard these fluffy critters have it, and how hard they'll fight to survive. And that's very much what the new expansion is all about.

The expansion's new species is the harefolk—anthropomorphic hares who survived the apocalypse. They're all about speed and endurance, though like all the forms you pick for your empire's primary species, they can be customised with any traits that you've already unlocked.

Appropriately, they're joined by an unforgiving new map type, the Astral Barrens. This wasteland was created by a magical calamity, leaving behind a brutal land where mana is drained from the living and spellcasters must deal with unstable spells that can backfire.

To survive this inhospitable realm, you'll be able to use three new magical tomes. The Tome of the Warband will help you raise stronger armies; the Tome of the Sandwalkers will spread sand across your territory, blind your foes and let you summon desert guardians; and the Tome of the Warlord will give you access to mighty warriors and infernal allies.

On top of this, you'll get a pair of new mounts, five new realm traits, new music, more narrative content, new critters and units, and of course there's the accompanying free update, Scorpion, introducing quality of life updates, bug fixes, a combat balance overhaul, new customisation options and more stuff to unlock in the pantheon.

This is all coming on March 9.

I'm still digging through the last vampire-themed expansion, corrupting worlds and drinking blood, but I'll never say no to more maps, species and spells. While Paradox often gets a lot of flak for its DLC-focused philosophy, Age of Wonders 4 seems to have been given a pass—I only ever see folk getting excited about its expansions. That's likely down to the fact that they're not very divisive—they tend to just bring with them lots of cool new features.

And post-apocalyptic, nomadic bunnies are a feature I think we can all get behind.

A decade after it famously beat SimCity at its own game, Finnish developer Colossal Order waved goodbye to the Cities: Skylines series last year. In Colossal Order's place, stewardship of Cities: Skylines 2 was taken over by Surviving the Aftermath developer Iceflake Studios. Now at the helm, Iceflake has unveiled the first part of its plans to take the sequel forward.

In the first issue of a new developer diary called City Corner, Iceflake outlines some of the features arriving in its debut Skylines 2 update. "There are quite a few changes coming in this first patch, some of which you have been requesting for a long time," the developer explains. The post focusses primarily on visual changes Iceflake is working on, though these do not represent the full extent of the update.

Even so, the announced adjustments to Skylines 2's are substantial. The headline change is a new feature that allows players to customise the colours of individual objects, inspired by yenyang's 'Recolor' mod. "So far, we are limiting this asset colouring to buildings, props and vehicles for now," Iceflake writes. "But we are working on making this possible for trees, plants and other props as well."

Arguably more significant, however, is an extensive rework to Skylines 2's UI, intended to make interacting with the sequel less confusing. "We have streamlined the onboarding process and changed some icons to be more expressive and easier to understand the context from them." The focus of these changes is to the toolbar, which Iceflake says has "gone through a big makeover" to improve clarity and readability.

Other planned changes include a major lighting and skybox pass designed to improve night-time visibility and increase the number of clouds you're likely to see, plus an overhaul of Skylines 2's weather effects that ensures snow actually sticks to the ground. "Since most of the surfaces didn't show any signs of snow even in the thickest snowstorm, we decided to fix it in true Finnish fashion," Iceflake says.

As mentioned, this isn't everything coming in Iceflake's first Skylines 2 patch. The studio plans a second dev diary that will dive into the mechanical changes coming with the update. "We have also prepared fixes to some of the issues you have mentioned in our forums, which we will touch upon in the next post," Iceflake adds.

It still isn't wholly clear why Colossal Order parted ways with both Skylines and publisher Paradox Interactive. In a statement announcing the split, Paradox said the pair had "mutually decided to pursue independent paths", while Colossal Order's CEO explained the developer planned to pursue "new projects".

But it isn't the first time a developer has shuffled off the stage of its own game under the publisher's banner, with the original developers of Bloodlines 2 and Prison Architect 2 both receiving the shepherd's crook treatment. Perhaps Paradox likewise felt that Colossal Order was no longer the best studio for the job, although it may also be that CO felt disillusioned by the response to the sequel.

Iceflake is in a slightly different position from the replacement developers of those games, however, taking care of a game that's already out. While it's too early to say how well the studio will handle caretaking duties, this initial post does show some promise.

Paradox aired its year-end report—where it chats all the money it has and hasn't made for the benefit of investors—earlier today, but don't worry, I watched it for you. Long story short? Paradox raked in a whole lot of cash this quarter: 23% more than it earned in the same quarter last year, making it Paradox's "second-best quarter ever". Hooray! Also, it managed to make 162% less operating profit for an overall loss of 245.4 million Swedish kronor (around $28 million). Uh oh!

And the reason is, well, yeah, it's Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2.

"The profit line, or EBIT [earnings before interest and taxes] is affected by a big writedown of the game Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2," said Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester. If you'll recall, Paradox announced last November that its troubled sequel to cult classic Bloodlines 1 hadn't sold as well as it had hoped, leading to a write-down of 355 million kronor.

Profit was also impacted by "scheduled amortisation of the entire capitalised development cost [for Bloodlines 2] over the period from October to December 2025, amounting to MSEK 345.7." Unlike the wince-inducing write-down, though, that's just a fairly bog-standard bit of accounting for the game's development costs (though those would, perhaps, have been lower had the game not been such a nightmare to create).

Absent the write-down, Paradox's profit would've shaken out to around 110 million kronor—still a hefty chunk less than its operating profit in the same quarter last year (395.3 million kronor), but, you know, still a profit.

Now, to be fair, vampires weren't the only thing taking a bite out of Paradox's bank account last quarter. Wester and Paradox CFO Alexander Bricca pointed out that the volatility of foreign exchange rates has also been doing a number on the company. "The dollar was down, I think 12% if you look at the quarter average, [the] Euro down 5, 6%—so, all in all it impacts our top line quite significantly," Bricca told investors.

It's hard to see past that Bloodlines 2 iceberg, though. Wester tried to put a positive spin on things, mind you: "On revenue, it's our second-best quarter ever!"

Poor Bloodlines 2, is all I have to say. Sure, it should never have been saddled with that name and the attendant expectations, but I rather liked The Chinese Room's take on Vampire: The Masquerade. It wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed my time with it. At least Paradox doesn't blame the studio for the gaping hole in its finances: "The responsibility lies fully with us," it said at the time of the write-down. Still, I'm not expecting Bloodlines 3 any time soon.

Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 is a good game. I said it and I stand by it. Its biggest problem, as PC Gamer's Toreador-in-the-streets, Venture-in-the-sheets Joshua Wolens so accurately put it, is the title: Calling it Bloodlines 2, rather than anything else that would safely distance it from the legendary original, was a massive self-inflicted kneecapping. That's not to say there aren't legitimate complaints to be made about the game, because there absolutely are, but there's no doubt in my mind that Bloodlines 2 would've been received far more warmly if it hadn't hitched its wagon to a game people just refuse to be normal about.

Anyway, now I've got that off my chest, this is what we're actually here for: Paradox and The Chinese Room have rolled out the Bloodlines 2 roadmap for 2026, laying out what's coming over the course of the next year. If your immediate reaction to this news is, "Bloodlines 2 has a roadmap?" the answer is yes it does: Paradox may not have been super-happy with how Bloodlines 2 sold, but it's sticking with the game to the very end.

You might recall that Paradox has said this previously (when it talked about not being super-happy with how Bloodlines 2 sold, in fact), and what's in this roadmap isn't really new. What is new, or at least slightly adjusted, are the timelines for the two expansions.

First up is the Valentine's Update, set to go live on February 11 with "new cosmetics, facial hair, enemy loot, [and] bug fixes." After that is the Loose Cannon expansion, initially expected to be out in Q2 2026 (so, sometime between April 1 and June 30), which is now slated for the maybe-possibly earlier Q1/Q2. Then comes The Flower and the Flame expansion, originally set for Q3 (July 1-September 30) and now targeting the similarly wider window of Q2/Q3.

So the big news, such as it is, is that both Bloodlines 2 expansions may show up sooner than expected. That's good, and I'm glad that Paradox isn't cutting the game loose because it wasn't the big hit we all hoped it'd be.

But I was up front about being a Bloodlines 2 enjoyer, so I'll be up front about this: I really do wonder, who cares? The expansions may flesh out the game's story somewhat, but not in any way that really matters to it. Benny and Ysabella aren't much more than throwaway plot devices in Bloodlines 2, and no spoilers but let's just say that neither of them plays much of a role in the endgame. And cosmetics, in a narrative-driven action adventure? Not what I would consider a vital addition to the experience.

For me, the post-launch content is emblematic of the bigger problem with Bloodlines 2: A failure (or maybe a refusal) to understand or acknowledge what it is, and treat it accordingly. Maybe the expansions will tell compelling, well-told stories about the Sheriff and the Artiste that compliment the nighttime world of Seattle in unexpected ways, but it really seems like a missed opportunity to me. Make one of these add-ons about Fabien's Prohibition-era adventures, say, and the other about a night with Phyre in 18^th century Budapest, and I'd be standing in line to throw money at it—and I know I wouldn't be alone.

Nuclear Submarines. Cramped, covert vehicles often housing over 100 sailors, sneakily voyaging around the world. Crews can be underwater for months at a time, away from their families, getting no sunlight, and barely communicating with the outside world. But somehow, gamers will still find a way to leak the location of one on Reddit. Allegedly.

No, this isn't about War Thunder. I know, I was surprised too, because that's usually the game of choice for people who want to spread declassified military information. This time, a player posted a photo of their laptop with Crusader Kings 3 booted up to the r/navy subreddit alongside the caption: "First person to play CK3 on a submarine?"

The post was swiftly removed and the associated Reddit account has been deleted, so we've only got screenshots and secondhand accounts to piece the event together. Apparently, the photo's metadata contained a location, which would be a big no-no if the OP was indeed on a military submarine. It's not even clear if it is indeed a nuclear submarine, as non-nuclear subs are still present within a lot of naval fleets. People on X and Reddit are going with the nuclear option, though.

Under a screenshot of the Reddit post posted on X, people are arguing if a phone could even collect GPS location data if it were underwater on a submarine. The truth is I have no idea, but I'd assume if you can connect to the internet, your location can be determined somehow. "The Hunt for Reddit October" is my personal favourite reply among a sea of conflicting opinions on how nuclear submarines work.

There's also a great post on the Crusader Kings subreddit, editing a Simpsons meme to fit the current situation. Like I said above, we're all surprised this wasn't another War Thunder leak.

It's been a rough ride for Cities: Skylines 2 over the last two years, with the sequel's premature launch in 2023 leading to severe technical issues and lengthy delays to planned future updates. But the troubled city-builder has received some significant TLC lately. November's bike patch brought bicycles, scooters and associated infrastructure to player-created metropolises, and now, developer Colossal Order has finally added its hotly anticipated asset editor too.

As Colossal Order concedes in a recent Steam post, development of the asset editor has been "long underway", with the community clamouring for it more or less since the sequel launched. The developer admitted in March that the editor had "proven more technically challenging than initially anticipated". Citing issues such as lingering Unity dependencies and the large amount of in-built assets affected by the editor's addition.

In any case, those issues have seemingly been resolved. Colossal Order's aim with the asset editor is to let players "create complex assets on par with official content", and the tool has a few interesting features to make this easier for players.

For starters, rather than having its own bespoke menu, the editor opens into a custom Skylines 2 map where users can build numerous assets simultaneously. "That's right! If you're making multiple asses, you can prop them all at once." Users can also choose different scenes in which to build, including a plain green landscape and one dotted with roads and trees to aid "size comparison and [provide] a visual reference for how your asset will look in game."

Elsewhere, the editor supports "flexible" prop placement, letting users select and adjust props as much as they like once placed, and streamlines the process of managing bigger lots: "Gone are the days when you had to manage multiple assets to create truly large building complexes," Colossal Order says. "Now, all you have to do is simply type in the numbers for the depth and width of the lot for the whole building."

The editor bundles in several tutorials to help aspiring asset modders get started, while the official wiki features detailed guides for how all the editor's functions, er, function.

Short of any surprise updates, the asset editor represents Colossal Order's final major addition to Cities: Skylines 2, as the studio parts ways with publisher Paradox Interactive and moves on to pastures new. Neither Paradox nor Colossal Order has explained the reasons behind the split in detail, simply claiming the choice represents "the strongest possible future" for the series. But Paradox has developed a habit of transplanting troubled projects into new development hosts, having done the same with the recently released Bloodlines 2 and the currently MIA Prison Architect 2.

Come January, development of Skylines 2 (and the series as a whole) will be taken over by Surviving the Aftermath developer Iceflake Studios. While Skylines 2's future direction remains unclear at this point, Iceflake has stated it will reveal its plans soon.

The saga of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is coming to a close. After a decade of development, a midpoint studio switch and some last-minute drama surrounding launch DLC, it all culminated in disappointment.

"We've had high expectations for a long time, since we saw that it was a good game with a strong IP in a genre with a broad appeal," said Paradox CEO Fredrik Wester. "A month after release we can sadly see that sales do not match our projections."

A good-but-not-great game with a middling Metacritic score, saddled with years of expectations and plenty of development drama, Bloodlines 2's fate looked pretty clear the moment it finally arrived.

Paradox announced a write-down of 355 million SEK/$37 million/£28 million (cheers IGN) of capitalised development costs, reflecting that the development costs won't generate the profits the publisher previously anticipated. This is based on an updated sales forecast made a month after Bloodlines 2's launch.

Wester places the blame firmly on Paradox's shoulders. "The responsibility lies fully with us as the publisher. The game is outside of our core areas, in hindsight it is clear that this has made it difficult for us to gauge sales. Going forward, we focus our capital to our core segments and, at the same time, we'll evaluate how we best develop World of Darkness' strong brand catalogue in the future."

This almost exactly echoes what his deputy CEO Mattias Lilja told me a year ago, when we had a candid conversation about the company's fall from grace.

"It is not in our strategic direction to make this kind of game," Lilja said. "So if Bloodlines 2, God willing, is successful, Bloodlines 3 [will be] done by someone else, on the licence from us. I would say it's the sort of strategic way this would work. So it's still an outlier from what we're supposed to do, we don't know that stuff, so we should probably let other people do it."

Wester added that the game's sales performance won't have any bearing on updates or the planned DLC expansions. "Our post-release plan remains firm; we will deliver updates and the promised expansions to the game in the coming year."

Bloodlines might just be cursed. While the first game is fondly remembered and continues to be celebrated, it launched in such a terrible state and did so badly that it effectively killed RPG developer Troika Games.

But clearly Paradox has made some big blunders here. The publisher has a very inconsistent track record, and has historically had particular difficulty when it goes beyond the sims and strategy games it's best known for. Hence Wester's comments on focusing capital "to our core segments".

Lilja said the same thing a year ago: "We have solved this problem before, and then we sort of forgot. But I think essentially the solution is what we did back then. We refocused on the core. We stopped talking about stuff before it was ready to be talked about."

It's also what Wester said when he returned as Paradox's CEO in 2021, after stepping down for a few years. And he said it a few times before that, too. It's a classic Paradox move at this point: it takes risks on games outside its wheelhouse, the risks don't pay off, Paradox does a mea culpa and promises to focus on strategy games.

But it's not had much luck with its core interests, either. Empire of Sin, Lamplighters League, Star Trek: Infinite, Millennia and Cities: Skylines 2 are all games that fit perfectly with Paradox, in genres where it has experience.

Lamplighters League was Harebrained Schemes' follow-up to the excellent BattleTech, and the first Cities: Skylines was an astronomical success that filled Paradox's coffers. Paradox and Harebrained Schemes ended their relationship in 2023, while Colossal Order just announced they were breaking up this month.

So while Europa Universalis 5 (which we awarded a score of 87%) has enjoyed a decent launch, Paradox definitely isn't out of trouble yet.

Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 released last month after a lengthy, difficult development, one that saw the project taken off original developer Hardsuit Labs by publisher Paradox Interactive and handed over to The Chinese Room. When it finally burst from its coffin, the critical reaction ranged from mildly positive to firmly negative, with our own Fraser Brown giving it a respectable score of 78 in our Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 review.

Yet whether players liked it or not, pretty much everyone agreed that The Chinese Room's sequel wasn't really a successor to Bloodlines at all, lacking the ridiculous roleplaying depth that makes Troika's original the brilliantly broken bloodsucking adventure it is. In fact, PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens pointed out that the biggest problem with Bloodlines 2 is that it is called Bloodlines 2.

As is so often the case, it appears Bloodlines 2's adoptive developers were highly aware of this potential problem. Speaking to Cat Burton of the Goth Boss Podcast (via PCGamesN) TCR cofounder Dan Pinchbeck explained how he urged Paradox Interactive not to call Bloodlines 2, well, that.

Pinchbeck says that, from the start, The Chinese Room intended to build its own version of the game, rather than try to finish the work done by Hardsuit Labs up to that point. "When we first started talking to Paradox, I said—we'd even seen the Hardsuit build—I was like 'We're a studio that [has] built our reputation on storytelling.'

"And I guess you want to do it justice. You want to take care of it. But taking over a project that had already been in development as well, that's such a tricky thing to take on. We are an original IP studio. The only way we're going to want to do this is if we are able to, basically, we'll take everything that's there and use as much as we can. But we don't just want to finish someone else's game."

Paradox, apparently, agreed to this. But Pinchbeck says the "tricky question" was whether The Chinese Room's should herald its status as a sequel to Bloodlines 1, something he repeatedly discussed with one of Paradox's former producers. "We used to sit there and have these planning sessions of 'how do we get them to not call it Bloodlines 2?' You can't make Bloodlines 2. There's not enough time. There's not enough money."

Pinchbeck points out that the original Bloodlines came out at a "really interesting period" when games like Stalker and Shenmue were shooting for the moon in terms of roleplaying simulation. "You could ship a really ambitious game that was full of bugs and holes, was totally flawed, but the ambition was really exciting."

Pinchbeck says that "you couldn't get away with" that style of design now. "Trying to recreate that magic in a different environment felt wrongheaded. No one would be happy. 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."

To briefly interject, I'd point out that making an ambitious but broken RPG wasn't acceptable in 2004 either—Bloodlines was a commercial failure that resulted in the death of Troika. Its reputation has been salvaged mainly through time and the absurd dedication of one German chemist.

Nonetheless, Pinchbeck is correct that it's even less acceptable now than it was then. Hence, in a pitch that he says would make Bloodlines 1 fans elicit a "psychic scream", Pinchbeck said to Paradox: "We can't make Bloodlines 2, we can't make Skyrim, but we can make Dishonored. And if we look at something which is not an RPG and is not fully open world, but is really tightly focused and true to the mythos, and it's a good ride, we get a Bloodlines title out in the world.

"And then we started talking about saying, then 'what would the next big Bloodlines game look like after that, if that happened'?" In other words, The Chinese Room tried to rework Bloodlines 2 as vampire Dishonored as a stepping stone to another Bloodlines game, perhaps Bloodlines 3 or, if The Chinese Room had its way, the true Bloodlines 2.

Personally, I don't think The Chinese Room pulled off this plan of making vampire Dishonored either—though you can see that DNA more clearly than you can Bloodlines 1. And I think Pinchbeck recognises this too, as he says that "like every other game" Bloodlines 2's development became a process of "untangling an anaconda fuckball of competing priorities and what everybody wants and things like that".

Ultimately, Pinchbeck left The Chinese Room sometime in the summer of 2023, more than two years before Bloodlines 2 launched. In the interview with Burton he cites being "very burnt out" and lingering stresses from a "very difficult pandemic" as reasons, though he also states that the studio had "evolved into something that wasn't the same thing Jess[ica Curry] and I had started."

Colossal Order will soon part ways with its difficult second child, Cities: Skylines 2, but at least the developer got to teach the sequel to ride a bike before sending it to live with adoptive parent Iceflake Studios. The newly released bike patch actually adds bicycles and electric scooters into Skylines 2, along with all the infrastructural gubbins that go along with a bicycle-friendly city.

By default, your bike-loving citizens will cycle along the standard road network with cars and trucks. But you can create specific bicycle paths and bicycle road lanes to separate cars from cyclists—which is safer and healthier for everyone. Since cyclists also need a place to park their bikes when they reach their destination, the update also adds numerous types of bike parks. Just as adding more car parks encourages drivers not to park on the street, bike parks will encourage more citizens to cycle around the city rather than drive.

But the bike patch adds considerably more, such as several new types of park. This includes a bike park that is also, wait for it, a bike park. What I mean by that is it's a place to park your bike that is also a bike park. Sorry, that still isn't clear enough. I mean a recreational civic area themed around bicycles where you can also safely stow your two-wheeled, pedal-powered transportation device for a temporary period. Jeez. English, eh? Who needs it?

Elsewhere, the bike patch adds a new campfire area, several types of business plaza to ensure workers don't enjoy themselves too much while on a break, and a whole bunch of transportation buildings that aren't related to bikes. This includes a new train depot, a railway terminus station that can be extended with a multiplatform bus station and a tram stop, a cargo transfer station, and three new tram stations. Finally, the update adds two new types of wind turbines and a small cemetery—perfect for when you're running out of places to hide the corpses.

While the bike patch will likely be the last major mechanical update introduced by Colossal Order, the studio will be implementing Asset Mods before it bows out completely at the start of next year. From that point onward, it's Iceflake Studios' baby, with Colossal Order's fellow Finnish developer aiming to outline its plans for the game soon.

It still isn't clear exactly why Colossal Order is handing off development of Skylines 2 to another studio. The sequel has certainly not been an easy ride for CO, but it's very rare that a developer willingly hands over the creative reins to another studio. Paradox, meanwhile, has developed a track record of switching projects between developers, having done so with both Prison Architect 2 and Bloodlines 2.

Cities: Skylines developer Colossal Order has parted ways with publisher Paradox Interactive, with ongoing development of the series moving to a different studio.

In a statement posted to the Paradox Forums, Paradox announced that the pair had "mutually decided to pursue independent paths", claiming the choice had been made to ensure "the strongest possible future for the Cities: Skylines franchise."

Colossal Order will continue to oversee development of Cities: Skylines 2 until 2026, handling the incoming Bike Patch and a "beta implementation" of the long awaited asset support for the game's Editor. Come 2026, however "all existing and future development" of Skylines 2 will be handled by Iceflake Studios.

What is Iceflake Studios? Well, Paradox describes it as one of its "internal management game studios" based in Tampere, Finland. Iceflake was founded in 2007 and acquired by Paradox in 2020.

Looking at Iceflake's website, the developer seems to have been mainly focussed on developing mobile games until relatively recently, having developed 2021's survivalist city-builder Surviving the Aftermath—though as part of the statement, Iceflake's Studio Manager Lasse Lijedahl says it has a "decade worth of experience from making city building and management games."

Lijedahl also said that taking over on Cities Skylines is an "immense honor and a great responsibility." Colossal Order, meanwhile, is moving onto pastures new, with CEO Mariina Hallikainen saying the company is "excited to channel our experience, creativity and passion into new projects that align with our long-term vision."

It's hard to know exactly what to make of all this. Cities: Skylines 2 had clearly been a difficult project for Colossal Order. The sequel launched in a rough state, poorly optimised and lacking many features players had grown fond of in the original and its many, many expansions. Supporting the game has also proved troublesome for Colossal Order, with its Bridges and Ports expansion being delayed for more than a year.

Paradox eventually conceded that Skylines 2 had been released too early, though deputy CEO Mattias Lilja claimed that everyone involved had been "in agreement that iterating [Skylines 2] live was the right way to go." Clearly though, this was the wrong choice, and the game's reputation has yet to recover.

Skylines 2 is also far from the only game published from Paradox to hit troubled waters lately. Indeed, replacing developers has become something of a habit for the publisher, with Prison Architect 2 being handed off from Double Eleven to Brazilian outfit Kokku, while Bloodlines 2 was taken off Hardsuit Labs and given to The Chinese Room. Bloodlines 2 did eventually come out, albeit to responses that ranged from mildly positive to largely negative. Prison Architect 2, on the other hand, has been delayed indefinitely.

That's not to mention the cancellation of Life by You, the botched DLC releases, and the underwhelming responses to games like Millennia and Lamplighters League, the latter of which also led to Paradox parting ways with its developer, Harebrained Schemes.

As for what this all means for Cities: Skylines 2 and the series as a whole, all three parties are apparently working to ensure a "smooth transition" at present, while Iceflake Studios will "share its plans" for Cities: Skylines "in the near future."

I like strategy games, but they start to lose me as they grow increasingly complex to the point of near-impenetrability. That's largely kept me away from grand strategy and 4X games, which tend to offer the richest sandboxes to the most committed players, occasionally at the cost of accessibility to newcomers. The only series in the style that's truly won my heart is Age of Wonders, the fourth of which you can try for free this weekend until Monday, Nov. 17.

If you're not familiar, Age of Wonders marries the deep strategy of 4X to turn-based tactical RPG gameplay. It also grounds a lot of the map-painting in intuitive, tangible roleplay scenarios: You don't play a faceless nation, but a customizable ruler and culture, gathering magical artifacts, schools of magic, skills, and provinces as you explore the world. You can play as anything from classic fantasy dwarfs to gothic, power-mad molemen, and territory is won with turn-based battles made up of your custom troops.

In his review, online editor Fraser Brown said Age of Wonders 4 "demands to be played over and over," and I concur. It's also a great hangout game with asynchronous multiplayer that can be played cooperatively or competitively, ideal for playing tug-of-war with fantasy fiefdoms while shooting the breeze over Discord.

This free weekend roughly coincides with the launch of a new vampire-themed DLC, as well as a sale where you can nab the game for $25 on Steam, 50% off the regular price. The free period just seems to include the base game, but there's plenty to dive into without any expansions.

Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 was always going to be polarizing given the oddball legacy of its cult hit predecessor, but I didn't expect it to polarize in the precise way that it did. As PC Gamer online editor Fraser Brown said in his review, the "good, sometimes even great" bite 'em up "is a sequel in name only, and it never really enthusiastically embraces being an RPG." Regardless, developer The Chinese Room has begun updating the game with fixes and features as teased in a roadmap that debuted in a blog post today.

Today's patch, which kicks off the roadmap schedule, includes some welcome polish: a save on exit feature, a crash fix, and two dozen or so assorted bug fixes. The rest of the roadmap stretches beyond a Christmas-themed winter update and into next year, though it's a little light on details; there's a Valentine's Day update, and two DLCs due for the latter part of 2026.

In the meantime, the future looks a bit scant. The next major patch will pack a few features that, while nice, aren't exactly glamorous points on a roadmap. An FOV slider, motion blur toggle, improved progress saving—these are good features! They also probably should have been in from the start, or at the very least, shouldn't be the snazziest part of a purportedly major upcoming update.

On the more fun side, the winter update will include new cosmetics for Phyre to celebrate the holidays. It'll also include a custom difficulty mode where you can tune starting health and enemy awareness, as well as choose to play exclusively Phyre quests or Fabien quests.

The full blog post can be found on Paradox's website and notes that more details will come as the patches get nearer.

Surviving Mars: Relaunched is an unusual remaster, though this is not particularly clear at a glance. Remasters tend to fall into two categories: gussied up classics that take advantage of technological improvements, new consoles and a new audience, or cynical attempts at double dipping. Surviving Mars comfortably slots into the first group, but given the original's relative youth, you could be forgiven for assuming it's part of the latter.

Haemimont Games and Paradox Interactive released the original Surviving Mars back in 2018. In my Surviving Mars review, I said it was "a lot of hard work, but managing a burgeoning colony never stops being compelling", and then slapped an 80% on it. Thanks to the DLC, we were then able to keep expanding our colonies with new features all the way up to 2022.

This is not an ageing classic, then. Nor has its relevance diminished. Survival city builders are even more popular than they were when Surviving Mars first launched, and the fantasy of colonising Mars is as zeitgeisty as ever. It largely feels as fresh as it did back in 2018. Yes, it launched during a previous console generation, but it's compatible with PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

But Haemimont's reasons for this remaster are still pretty compelling. The studio stopped working on Surviving Mars back in 2019, with Abstraction Studios taking over update and DLC duties. The most notable additions during this era were the Below and Beyond expansion and the tiny Martian Express pack (which was actually designed by modders). These represented a significant drop off in terms of quality, despite the features themselves being very welcome.

With Haemimont back at the helm, it had the opportunity to tweak the work of its successors, adjusting things like the underground maps for Below and Beyond, which is now more spacious, and significantly polishing the train system from Martian Express in direct response to player complaints. Tracks now have fewer placement limitations, and you can make a proper network with the trainline running through multiple stations before looping back to its point of origin.

Essentially, Haemimont has made the game it would have, had it not left for greener pastures.

These are likely the most highly-anticipated changes, but there are little tweaks and quality of life improvements filtered throughout, as well as enhanced lighting and textures that bring the game up to modern standards.

Side by side, these changes are absolutely noticeable, but I confess I still had to compare screenshots before I realised how much had been improved. OG Surviving Mars already looked great and was blessed with a strong aesthetic, so this doesn't feel like a significant upgrade.

See, the most significant changes are under the hood. Haemimont has developed a new engine, which along with bringing in these improved visuals, means better performance and more tools for further development, including mods. Less important for us, it also means a native PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions are coming.

Porting the game to this new engine means that Haemimont can start working on new DLC that's not held back by OG Surviving Mars's limitations. Next year, we'll be getting Feeding the Future, an expansion focused on grub, and the more scintillating Machine Utopia, which will let you create fully automated colonies.

That's the exciting bit. The game is being revitalised, and while you can argue that these things should have just been added to the original game, the relaunch is what's justifying it from both a business and technical standpoint. This is how we get a bigger, more ambitious Surviving Mars, which I hope will carry on for several more years.

Haemimont smartly included a new expansion right from the get-go, too, likely realising it needed something new to tempt the old guard to slap down some cash again. This comes in the form of the Martian Assembly, which like all the previous DLC, is fully integrated into the new version of the game.

I never really cared for the rivals system, which filled Mars with other organisations looking to exploit the planet. They just kinda annoyed me. The Martian Assembly, though, mostly just makes them a bit more helpful. The Assembly adds the Earth Council to Surviving Mars, through which you can pass laws, with support from other mission sponsors, that give you some pretty huge boons, like speeding up your rockets or increasing the capacity of residential buildings.

I was able to push through everything I wanted without any conflict, so there wasn't really any downside. I did find the interruptions a bit irritating though. Look, guys, I'm trying to make the Red Planet green, I don't have time to come to your meeting.

Things do get a bit more interesting once all these laws have been exhausted, though, because that's when the titular Martian Assembly comes into play. You plonk down the Martian Assembly spire, and then you can start getting into the nitty gritty of colonial governance, picking the flavour of your government, from zealous theocracies to communist communes, and watching as various factions fill it up.

Here, you'll find a greater abundance of laws waiting to be passed, but also a lot more pushback, as competing ideologies spark political crises. Or you can just go full dictator mode and force everyone to follow your will (until the rebels come for your head).

It's by far the most substantial addition to the new version, and while I'm still really just digging into it, it's absolutely proved to be valuable, throwing lots of wrinkles and avenues for roleplaying into the mix.

Surviving Mars: Relaunched is demonstrably the best version of Surviving Mars. It's prettier, more polished, and fixes some long-standing problems. If you never dipped into the original game, or never checked out any of the DLC, then I'm pretty confident that you'll have a great time with it and never look back.

The value proposition is less obvious for veteran players. I have no doubt that the improvements will be well received, but even with the discount everyone with the original base game will receive, it's still $20 for the upgrade. Granted, that's only a bit pricier than some of the meatier bits of DLC, and you're effectively getting some DLC with it, in the form of the Martian Assembly.

But while this is a solid upgrade, it's not a transformative one. Yet. If you've played the game to death, I'm not entirely convinced it's worth shelling out another $20 for—though I don't think that the price is exploitative or greedy. The work that's been done does justify it, but it was always going to be a harder sell for experienced players. That said, if you want to continue on this journey and see where Haemimont's future DLCs and updates might take you, you'll need to pay for your ticket.

Need to remember the release date for Europa Universalis 5? Just recall this handy rhyme: In two-thousand twenty five, Europa Universalis sailed the ocean… five. Or you could just look below, I guess, because EU5 finally hits on November 4, 2025, 12 years on from the original release of Europa Universalis 4.

In other words, it's nerd Christmas. Still your breathing and strain your ears, and you can hear, on the wind, a million people with history degrees and jobs completely unrelated to those history degrees getting incredibly excited (no shade: I'm one of them). This is Paradox's flagship grand-strategy series—its early-modern history sim that sees you guide one of a whole bunch of countries out of the late middle ages and into modernity, with almost certainly a whole lot of atrocities along the way.

Our Europa Universalis 5 review is already up and, sorry to spoil you, this one sounds just as likely to suck a few hundred, or thousand, hours away from you as the last entry. "A new bar for complexity in the historical grand strategy genre that sometimes buckles under the weight of its ambition," we called it. Sounds like a Paradox grand strategy game alright. Here are the EU5 release times for your region.

When is the Europa Universalis 5 unlock time?

For most of the world, EU5 releases on November 4, though one must—as ever—make a few exceptions for territories at the far east of the world map. China, Japan, Korea, and Australia all get the game in the wee hours of November 5. Just consider it the price you pay for living in the future, and please let me know tomorrow's lottery numbers once you have them.

Here are the release times, with additional times in the map up above:

• West Coast US: 9 am PST
• East Coast US: 12 pm EST
• UK: 5 pm GMT
• Europe: 6 pm CET
• Australia: 4 am AEDT (November 5)
• New Zealand: 6 am NZDT (November 5)

And if you're wondering if your PC has the heft to run a few hundred years of history, you can always check out the system requirements on the EU5 Steam page.

Is there preloading for Europa Universalis 5?

Joyous news: yes! In an email to fans, Paradox confirmed that EU5 would have preloading 24 hours before launch (Ie 24 hours before the times listed above, in whatever your timezone is). That should be more than enough time to get it all downloaded: the game only weighs in at around 15 GB of space.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 was a bit lacking in the character-creation department, but developer The Chinese Room has taken that criticism on-board and added 24 more customization options in its Halloween update. There are eight new hairstyles, eight new makeup styles, and eight new eye colors to choose from, though you'll need to start a new playthrough to see them.

The new looks are helpfully flagged with a pumpkin logo so you can tell the hair horns, permanently bleeding eyes, and gold domino kink mask aren't super serious options, though there are also more down-to-earth styles like cornrows and pale blue irises in there as well.

"We'll keep releasing regular updates and patches throughout 2025 and into 2026", says The Chinese Room, noting that, "we're looking at including features such as an FOV slider, new save game options, custom difficulty settings that include the ability to play only Phyre's side of the story on your second playthrough, as well as additional customization options."

Being able to skip the linear detective side of the story would be a boon—it's something modders are already working on, alongside fast travel. Though given how few options Bloodlines 2 gives you in how to approach problems, it's tough to imagine people wanting to replay it. I finished the original three times as different clans because they were so different, but Bloodlines 2 doesn't have that kind of reactivity.

This patch also includes a bunch of bug fixes, so if you were experiencing crashes, missed the dash tutorial, or somehow lost the ability to jump, those issues have been addressed. The full patch notes are below:

Fixed Crashes

• The game freezes while following the scent during the objective "Follow Verona's Scent"
• Title crash during the combat on top floor of South Main ST. Parking
• Title crash after killing enemies or Miranda near Aurora Pawn Shop during Onda’s side quest in The Pathways of Hesperides
• Title crash after setting the quality preset to Medium from Ultra near the distraction tutorial
• Title crash upon restarting the checkpoint while opening the rear entrance to the 'Hole in the Wall' bar
• Random game crash during the combat on the rooftop of C_07 building while progressing through the 'Meet Katsumi at the hole in the wall' objective
• The game froze during the objective "Track down and deal with Edward" in the side quest of Niko "The Violent Glove"
• The game froze and terminated while climbing up the tower via roofs in the Square Room
• Title crashed when progressing through “To Founder on the Lethe” and reached Plastic Factory
• Game crash when the player was in combat during the final battle
• Game crash on transition screen after 'The Prince of Seattle' Chapter in Performance Mod
• Game crash/fails to boot when starting the game
• Game freezes and crashes randomly after reloading from the last checkpoint and re-engaging in combat near the elevator door
• Random game crash after restarting from last checkpoint after killing Alicia during Niko's side quest 'The Betraying Bracelet'
• Game crash upon input at “Press Any Button” screen when launched from Epic Launcher

Fixed Bugs

• Player permanently lost jump functionality when spamming jump key while feeding on the Stealth tutorial Ghoul
• Objective and map marker fails to update after restarting from last checkpoint upon completing conversation with Gideon's glasses
• Bypass first Unbirthed combat encounter, breaking objective update flow
• Player got stuck inside the broken elevator when attempting to climb the shaft during telekinesis tutorial
• Scent trail & Fabien's dialogue fails to trigger upon interacting with the dead Ghoul behind Makom bar
• Dash tutorial failed to trigger when jumping into the "Strike from Above" sequence in the quest "To Taste a Foreign Body"
• Fabien’s dialogue fail to trigger and toilet door failed to highlight after eliminating all Sabbat Ghouls in Verona quest
• Interaction prompt fail on the Atrium entrance door after conversation with the bouncer if restarting from checkpoint at Ryong
• Player is unable to interact with Lou's door after warning Verona and marking another NPC
• Unable to get through crack in the wall in the sewers
• Clan-specific dialogue options missing in localizations
• Melancholic NPCs fail to respond to aggressive dialogue prompts while wearing "The Priest" outfit
• The Makom Bar board is incorrectly placed on the emergency ladder of the SoulCraft building
• Melancholic NPCs fail to respond to second & third dialogue prompts while Toreador outfits are equipped
• Player loads into Willem's Car Park after loading a save of the quest titled "In Memoriam" on the Main Menu
• Phyre dialogue overlaps and subtitles disappear after skipping the dialogues during different conversations
• Checkpoint to Disable thermal barrier fails to update and I.A.O. enemies do not spawn at Harbour Island
• Objective waypoint missing on the in-game HUD for all Quest NPCs on the map when exiting the Police Station
• “Report to Officer Smith” objective skips after collecting photo from Officer Jones
• Gramophone music fails to trigger if the player restarts from the last checkpoint during the music puzzle sequence at Willem's Plastic Factory
• Heightened Senses activates incorrectly after restarting from the last checkpoint "Basement_PostFeed" during the "To Taste a Foreign Body" quest
• Player fell out of the world near the first generator after defeating the enemy and sprinting towards the generator
• The VFX of the Toreador clan passive 'Cat’s Grace' VFX remains active indefinitely when triggered during feeding with Spark of Rage perk active
• Niko fails to give the Elixir reward if the player completes the side quest 'The Derelict Picture' without breaking the Masquerade
• Gideon flickers at the entry of Safia during "MDSirePast_100_GideonAndSafia_Chat" conversation
• Controller vibration intensity remains the same even when switching to 50% intensity
• Missing VO for Clan-specific dialogues

Fixed Achievements

• The 'History Buff' trophy unlocks correctly if the player interacts with all audio exhibits without listening to the dialogues at the Seattle Underground Tour
• "What Sup?" achievement count does not update after feeding on Choleric NPC

It takes a village to make a videogame, and there's no one way to do it. Solo devs and quintuple-A studios alike face all sorts of challenges trying to make all a game's moving parts cohere, and the more cooks you add to the kitchen, the more different design philosophies are bound to conflict. That's where design documents come in—living, comprehensive treatises that outline all a game's systems and design goals to be referenced by those working on the game—at least, for some.

Johan Andersson, lead on Europa Universalis 5, said in an interview with PC Gamer news writer Joshua Wolens that the practice can be too rigid and restraining. For Paradox Tinto, good design comes with a bit of democracy.

"Design documents stifle creativity and it reduces people's ownership and empowerment," Andersson said. "You create better games by talking with your team … tell the person some broad outlines, like 'we want this,' 'it should function like this,' a few samples, and let them make the detailed decisions. It creates greater ownership and greater accountability long-term in a project.

Otherwise, you end up with a bunch of idea guys who write all the documents and the rest are there to follow. Of course, you need to have someone in charge that goes back, 'well, let's make sure we're following towards the same goals' and all that."

He noted his team used design documents more frequently in the early days, but these days, he "doesn't believe" in the practice. "At the end of the day, you want most of the people to feel that it's their game, not a bunch of the design team or a few people's games," He explained. "You want everyone to feel ownership of the game. It becomes better then."

When asked if he felt that EU1, because of its reliance on design documents, was a bit stifled, he said it was. But they didn't use design docs out of a particular faith in the practice; the team did it "because we didn't know better."

"That was what we thought was gonna be the good way. I don't think you should judge what you did in the past by your knowledge you have now, because we don't have time machines."

Europa Universalis wasn't always a household name in strategy gaming. Like the company behind it, EU has had a fraught journey over the years—and as EU lead Johan Andersson explained in an interview with PC Gamer news writer Joshua Wolens, the early days were spent trying to keep the lights on.

Europa Universalis 2, for instance, was conceived under brutal time constraints. Andersson explained, "We came up with a bunch of ideas for what we should be doing. I think we, in two or three meetings, wrote down, like, three pages of ideas, and it's 'Okay, we need to get this game out quickly, and it needs to be done so it's sold in the US market before Christmas, because we need the money [or] else we cannot pay people.'"

That didn't curb the team's ambitions, mind you. Players had already tinkered with EU1—wherein you selected from a small batch of scenarios, each with a designated playable nation—to make any country accessible from the get. The mod maker behind that feature, named Henrik Fåhraeus, was hired as content designer for the sequel, which aimed to have every country playable in the base game; today, Fåhraeus is Paradox's chief creative officer.

"So, that's a good hire. Like, what's that? 25 years ago," Andersson chuckled.

EU2 launched to "pretty good reviews," Andersson said, but noted "I didn't think too much about the 'shot in the arm' or something, because we knew the game was good." It was still a bit of a rough patch for the team as it only had the connections to distribute the game in Germany until the following year, which hamstrung its reach.

Still, Andersson took solace in EU's burgeoning, passionate community of players: "Back in the day of Usenet and all that stuff, we had people that were not good at German that ordered the game from the German distributor just so that they could play the game. It was a little bit of a different time."

Paradox has always dabbled in a smorgasbord of styles, especially when you consider all its published games, but its in-house efforts are almost all grand strategy games where you paint real-world provinces your favorite color. But before it had solidified that reputation, it was trying to make a name in other genres. Trying, and failing spectacularly.

In an interview with PC Gamer news writer Joshua Wolens, Andersson recalled one of the studio's earliest games: "If you want to laugh, Google Valhalla Chronicles. We had the best comment ever on that one: 'bugs, many and diverse, some more interesting than the gameplay.'"

It's not a looker. But as Andersson explained, the team was "doing multiple games at the same time" and its take on a Baldur's Gate-inspired RPG "did not turn out great.

"We did a lot of games with a small team of like five, six people for the first, like 10 years," he said. "We became Paradox in 1999 and Paradox Interactive in 2005. Until 2009, I think we released like 20 different games from that internal studio, and most of them were grand strategy games."

While strategy was clearly the studio's wheelhouse, it didn't become obvious until much later that it'd become its sole focus. Andersson said: "We thought it was EU1 that made it into a grand strategy studio. I think it was EU3, which was probably like the 12th grand strategy we made. That was when we basically were like, 'we're a GSG studio, we're not gonna do anything else.'"

It's probably for the best. It's hard to imagine today's Paradox Development Studio putting out any sort of RPG, but games like Crusader Kings have a way of producing stories no writer would ever be eccentric enough to come up with on their own.

If you've played a Paradox game before, you know the deal. The studios' 4X and grand strategy games in particular tend to have very long lives supplemented by constant infusions of paid DLC, ranging from piecemeal addons to full-on expansions. It doesn't always go to plan, and the execution was particularly spotty with Europa Universalis 4, but EU5 lead Johan Andersson reckons the problem isn't Paradox's DLC strategy. In fact, it's been "pretty fucking great."

In an interview with PC Gamer news writer Joshua Wolens, Andersson said the DLC model has been a logistical and financial win. "When we started with that system, we were a studio of 12 people. That's [around the time Crusader Kings 2 released] and we're doing EU4. I have no idea how big PDS Stockholm is—300, 400 500 people—I have no idea about Stockholm these days.

"We have multiple pipelines on games that are keeping them alive, so I'd say it's a pretty great system, at least if you're looking at success."

While the company has met with numerous hitches in the last several years, it is a much bigger publisher than it used to be, with five internal development teams to its name. And as Andersson's experience with Paradox Tinto goes, the DLC model is handy for reasons unrelated to business and growth.

"This system, it means that you, as a game director in charge of your project, can have complete control over when you want to release stuff," he said. "You decide what's going in, you decide the scope, you decide exactly when you can release and what should be released. So it's up to you as a game director to get the good product out on using your team to be great."

He conceded that it's not been a perfect run: "A lot of the early ones were like, trying to find our way. Conquest of Paradise was the first big one. Like, okay, what shall we do? Let's make a random map for the New World. It kind of worked." After that, he said the team's approach became more reactive to feedback, but that didn't always yield perfect results either.

Andersson explained, "After you've been doing them for a while, you run out of ideas; we promised to make a naval focused one, but we can't come up with a great design for the ideas. And then you end up with Mare Nostrum. If you Google and check that one out, nobody hates it. Nobody likes it. Just boring, mid."

When asked if he was concerned that players coming from a fully kitted-out EU4 save to vanilla EU5 might feel like something was missing, Andersson said he's "been thinking about it a lot" but that "this is nothing to worry about, because pretty much every feature that we've added to EU4 in patches or free updates have been either ported or a new system has replaced them."

As for EU5's DLC plans, Andersson said he is hopeful the Paradox model will continue to bear fruit.

"I think that EU5 can be a good long-term platform," he said. "There's a lot of countries in the world, a lot of history, that we can create content around to have a supportive framework for many years."

Crusader Kings arguably has the best subreddit of all time. Not because it's informative, or the community is a lovely bunch, though both of those things are true. It's the best because it has thread titles like "My son became a German and now my empire is dying", constant grousing about whatever the Pope's getting up to, and endless hand-rubbing about what to do (or what not to do) with wives, heirs, and all those vassals any self-respecting Crusader King collects.

This week's quiz is a simple one. There are 15 thread titles here. To prove your worth, separate the real from the made up.

One note: Kwizly has a hint system that doesn't work very well with yes/no quizzes like this. So don't use it, or we'll send the Pope round.

Johan Andersson is preparing for a game launch. He's done it before. The director on the imminent Europa Universalis 5 and studio lead at Paradox Tinto has been making history for more than a quarter of a century; if you've played one of the studio's sprawling strategy sims, he's almost certainly touched it. Odds are he directed it. Since starting at Paradox in 1998, his life has been one slice of history after another.

"The first thing when you say [it's been over 25 years] is, like, 'Holy shit! It's been that long?'" Andersson tells me over video chat. "But then again, I look at the screen here and realise, 'Okay, I have grey hair now, and I didn't have that when I started.'"

Now 51 years old, Andersson was a bright-eyed 20-something when he started work on his first Paradox game, Europa Universalis 1. "It's kind of interesting to have been able to be there from when we were basically a few people, just coding on something that was completely different than today's hardware, doing something that in today's world is very, very simple.

"Take it to today, 25 years later, [it's] much more advanced, much different." Gone are the 50-pound monitors, gone are the limited pools of playable countries. Gone, even, are most memories of the fact that Europa Universalis as a series was originally based on a board game of the same name.

Ancient history

Did Andersson foresee the series having this kind of longevity when he sat down to work on the first game over a quarter of a century ago? Absolutely not. But to be fair, he was too vibrant and youthful to be foreseeing much of anything. "I did not see 25 years in the future—how many young people in their early 20s think that far ahead?

"We didn't have, like, vision boards. We didn't use those things. We didn't look that far in advance. We were young, and this was among the first games we had been doing. I mean, for most people that had been working on it, this was their first game, and before I was doing [EU1], I had only done, like, console games and action games… We just wanted to make a real-time historical strategy game that we could play and enjoy. And so would you."

So you can't blame Andersson for not immediately clocking Europa Universalis as a series that would follow him for decades. At the time, the company was not even called Paradox, and it existed as a subsidiary of the now-bankrupt, then-going-through-bankruptcy Target Games. "This was one of our first games we started doing there. It was basically a board game that had gotten licensed—a very complex, super complex board game that was very intriguing."

A videogame based on a hyper-complicated French board game about the tournament of shadows between early-modern great powers does not, as a pitch, scream 'blockbuster success,' but Andersson was itching to work on it anyway. "I grew up playing Civilization, I grew up playing all these old-style board games, so for me this was kind of like my dream game to get back to Sweden and work on."

Despite its humble origins, the first Europa Universalis ended up determining the shape Paradox's strategy games would adopt for decades to come. Despite being a Civ fan, Andersson asked himself, "'Why should we have turn-based [games]?'" when he sat down to make EU1. "Turn-based is due to the limitations of playing a board game. A computer can very much be playing out stuff in real-time."

There was Civ inspiration in there, sure, "but I also played a lot of RTS in the mid-'90s: way too much Warcraft 1 and 2, Command and Conquer… It was interesting to combine the concept of real-time, deeper strategy with long-term play.

"A bit RTS, I would say a bit board game. We looked at a lot of Civilization. I mean, mix all those three together and you get Europa Universalis, which was basically the origin of Paradox games."

The Great Slump

While a young Andersson and co were chipping away at EU1, their parent company was busy collapsing. In 1999, Target Games declared bankruptcy, beginning the process that would spin Paradox off into its own separate, videogame-focused company.

It would have been quite good—moreso than usual, even—for the-organisation-that-would-be-Paradox to sell a lot of videogames, but the plates you had to spin to shift discs in the era of physical retailers were even stranger and wobblier than now.

"Back before Steam, before 2010, you basically had to print copies of games. To be able to print, you need to pay in advance, and then you get paid far, far afterwards. Sometimes some distributors don't pay even when they're supposed to pay! Sometimes you don't sell the amount of copies you expected to.

"And we did not sell huge numbers in those days. It was a very small number. So, like, if you're not paid for a print run of 2,000 copies—which was a lot—you were basically like, 'Okay, who's not getting a salary this month?'

"So there were constant challenges back in the day of running a small company with small volumes—lots of money tied up in things outside our control."

EU1 launched in 2000, and EU2 followed—unfathomably, in our modern era of decade-plus game lifespans—in 2001. "We came up with a bunch of ideas for what we should be doing. I think we, in two or three meetings, wrote down… like, three pages of ideas, and [the mood was] 'Okay, we need to get this game out quickly, and it needs to be done so it's sold in the US market before Christmas, because we need the money [or] else we cannot pay people.

"I was young… didn't have any kids or anything like that. And I had a deal with the CEO we had before Fred [Wester] that was like, 'Yeah, every time you work past 9 pm, you can take a taxi home. So I never went home before nine o'clock on a single work night, ever. Not before 2005."

Even in those constrained conditions and with a breakneck (by modern standards) turnaround, Andersson and co. were making decisions that would have lasting impact on Paradox and its games. "Originally, in EU1, you could only play, like, the eight countries that were set up in each scenario… People found out, and they made this mod that let you play as any country. So in EU2, we made this system so you can play any country."

The modder who had opened up EU1 was Henrik Fåhraeus. "I hired him for EU2 as a content designer," says Andersson. "He's currently the chief creative officer for Paradox, and is running the company in Stockholm. So that's a good hire!"

The march of time

Having released two Europa Universalis games in a span of two years, Paradox did not turn around and immediately begin work on EU3. Instead, the studio went to all the other periods of history it could think of. "We had this idea that we should make a game for every time period that we know about," recalls Andersson. "Like World War Two; we did the medieval Crusader Kings; [and] Vicky 1. We also had ideas for prehistoric and Roman, and there were a lot of other things.

"But there was always this little bit of pressure to make a sequel [to EU2] eventually."

Europa Universalis 3 arrived (a luxurious) six years after the release of EU2, in 2007. By this point, Paradox and Andersson had a long portfolio of grand strategy games under their belts, but it was this game, in his recollection, that turned it from a general game studio into a grand strategy developer.

"Back then [the early 2000s], we were doing multiple games at the same time. Like, we were doing a Baldur's Gate [style] game that did not turn out great. We had like three separate teams doing it… If you want to laugh, Google 'Valhalla Chronicles'—we had the best comment ever on that one: 'Bugs, many and diverse, some more interesting than the gameplay.'"

It was EU3 that marked the transition from that era to Paradox-as-a-grand-strategy-maker. "It was not EU1 that made it into a grand strategy studio, I think it was EU3, which was probably, like, the 12th GSG [grand strategy game] we made."

EU3 was an undertaking. "We had created a new engine, a 3D engine, and we had made a licensed game… Diplomacy." Paradox's work on Diplomacy, which released in 2005, was adapted into the new 3D engine.

Making an engine was not the same as making a game. "It was a bit challenging, because while I've done some 3D work, it was like 'fake' 3D work back in the old, early console days before 3D cards and 3D graphics. So we did not really have that much experience… If you have seen the first EU3 screenshots—before the expansions—it did not look good. It looked blocky. It didn't look great at the time, and it has not aged well, let's put it that way."

Nevertheless, on this rock Paradox built its church: EU3's new engine made it easier to add expansions—green shoots of the DLC-focused approach that defines Paradox games to this day—and their development took place with one eye on the community. "We basically had someone draw the short stick, and they had to gather all the suggestions that had been posted in the last six months, or whatever, and print them out.

"Then, when we designed something, we went through and picked as many suggestions as we thought were good. So a lot of the expansions, not just for EU but all the others at that time, they were: 'What does the community want?' Take some stuff that fits thematically and make an expansion on that. Then again, that's basically how we've been operating ever since, at least when I'm running it: I pick a theme and then go through what the community wants that's related to that theme.

"If you don't listen to your community, if you ignore their concerns before release, you'll release Imperator."

The Concert of Europe

If EU3 marked Paradox fully becoming a 'grand strategy developer', EU4 marks the series fully adopting the complete 'Paradox shape' we recognise today: a sprawling base game built up over years and years by DLC after DLC.

It was also the first EU game to release after Crusader Kings 2 introduced a lot of relative normies to the joys of historical simulation, and the first one—for many of them—to seem even vaguely parseable. "This was the first time we had a UX designer hired at the company ever," recalls Andersson. "We actually did iterations upon interfaces, instead of just 'the first [thing] we made was the thing we used.'"

EU4 was a long way away from those first blocky screenshots of EU3 running in its homemade engine, too. "This was the first time we actually had map graphics that [were like] 'Oh! This looks really good'—it was competitive, graphically, compared to other games in the same genre."

But the goal was not just to look pretty. "We wanted to take EU4 to the next level, so we put up a vision of: it should be 25% better interface, 25% better multiplayer, 25% better graphics, 25% improved gameplay. That was the entire vision." Andersson and his team doubled down on mechanics to differentiate the game's various countries in play, ginned up a lot of historical events that could trigger and alter a game, and created a new trade system.

But EU4 also had to fit into the then-new Paradox DLC model. "It was mostly about getting a polished game to take us to the next level, and also create a platform for the new business model we had for making DLCs that we could sell as optional, and you could still update the old game."

That drumbeat of DLC for EU4 has had its ups and downs over the years. Some were mostly well-liked (Art of War, Rights of Man) and some were disastrous (Leviathan). If you ever want to attract a lot of comments on a forum thread or Reddit post, just ask people what they think of Paradox's approach to DLC, not just on Europa Universalis, but across all its games.

But for Andersson, that approach was right for EU4 and right for Paradox. "I would say it's been pretty fucking great," he says. "When we started with that system, we were a studio of 12 people, I think—that's CK2."

Now? "I have no idea how big PDX Studio Stockholm is… I don't know if we're 300, 400, 500—I have no idea about Stockholm these days. We have multiple pipelines and are keeping games alive, so I would say it's a pretty great system, at least if you're looking at success."

Which is not to say Andersson thinks the system is beyond reproach. On the one hand, it gives devs a lot of power: "You, as a game director, can have complete control over when you want to release stuff. You decide what's going in, you decide scope, you decide exactly when you can release and what should be released." Sounds great, but when your game has been out for years, ideas can sometimes run dry.

"After you've been doing them for a while, you run out of ideas: 'We promised to make a naval-focused one, but we can't come up with great tech, we can't come up with great design for the ideas.

"And then you end up with Mare Nostrum. I mean, if you Google and check that one out, you're gonna see: nobody hates it, nobody likes it. It's just like, boring, mid! That's what happened after a while." More personally, it was around the release of Mare Nostrum that Andersson stepped back from hands-on development of EU4, "because I was running out of ideas for a while."

DLC teething pains or no, Andersson regards EU4 as a feather in the studio's cap. "We had great reviews, sales numbers were great. It was like, everything was good! People loved it: it was playable, bug-free, polished—it was all you could dream about."

New Europe

A quarter century of Europa Universalises (Europas Universalis?) later, and EU5 is right around the corner. When Andersson sat down at a desk to get to work on EU1 all those years ago, he wasn't thinking ahead. But back then, the turnaround between that game and its sequel was a single year. EU2 to EU3? Six years. It's been 12 years between EU4's release and EU5, and an older, wiser Andersson is more reflective than he was in the '90s.

"I honestly don't know. If [another game] is 12 years from now, I'm not sure I'm around working as a creative lead. I mean, I'm going to be in my 60s. I'm not entirely sure I want to be that if it's 12 years.

"I don't think it's gonna be shorter. I think that EU5 can be a good, long-term platform for how we want to do [things]... There's a lot of countries in the world, a lot of history, that we can create content around, and have a supportive framework for many years."

Early on in our chat, Andersson said that his goal across his whole career has been, "I want to create believable worlds, that's my philosophy. The more games I've created, the more entrenched I've become into that… I want systems to all fit together, interact with each other, so it feels like—when you're playing, you're not thinking that you're playing a board game, or playing a game, [but] that you're actually in the world, as much as it can be while playing a strategy game on a computer."

So is Europa Universalis 5 the most believable world yet? You can probably guess his answer.

"Hell yes. The most in-depth. Everything is running around it being a believable world with a population and everything all playing together. And I'm really proud of that simulation system." After all, he has been iterating on it for 25 years.

Bloodlines 2 really lays it on thick with the collectibles, and Patience—the vampire who's turned the backroom of Aurora Pawn into an art studio—has another list of items for Phyre to hunt. At least this one is shorter, as they only wants you to find nine Crosses of Saint James.

Talk to Patience about their art and it'll start the quest Crosses to Bear. There's one hidden in every Haven around Seattle, and while you'll find some playing as Fabien, they only count when you pick them up as the Nomad. Collect every Cross of Saint James as Phyre and you'll get an achievement, Crucifixation.

I've scouted every Cross of Saint James location in Bloodlines 2 and brought them all to Patience. It didn't do much aside from improve our relationship (and let me bite them), but here's where I found all nine.

Cross of Saint James locations: Haven

The first Cross of Saint James conveniently waits just outside of Phyre's Haven home. Take the stairs to the apartment building's second floor and investigate the floor around the Christmas tree. The cross is sitting in the open on one of the presents. Sorry, that's a gift for Patience now.

Cross of Saint James locations: Glacier Hotel

You'll find the next cross near Lou's quarters in the Glacier Hotel, so take the elevator to the top and head up the stairs toward her Seattle lookout. Instead of turning left as you usually would, keep walking around the balcony until you reach the picture of Seattle with the cross stuck in it.

Cross of Saint James locations: Makom Bar

There's another Cross of Saint James located at the Makom Bar. Enter Fletcher's swanky piano joint and hook around to the bar's storage room in the back. You'll find the cross stuck in the top of a barrel in the back left.

Cross of Saint James locations: Benny's Auto Repair

Your next cross location is in the Auto Repair shop where you meet Max. Head right after you first enter and look for it on the pegboard—it's hanging up and mixed in with all the tools.

Cross of Saint James locations: Hole in the Wall

There's a Cross of Saint James waiting for you inside Katsumi's bar, the Hole in the Wall. It's on the same side of the room where she usually sits, so turn around from there and inspect the dart board on the wall. It looks like someone was using the cross as a makeshift game piece.

Cross of Saint James locations: Weaver Tower

The Weaver Tower cross is located on the floor where Ryong and Safia usually hang out, so take the elevator up and head right as you exit the lift. The Cross of Saint James is stuck in the arm of one of the lobby couches.

Cross of Saint James locations: Aurora Pawn

This cross is conveniently located in Aurora Pawn's backroom, just outside of the tiny cubby Patience occupies. Look up and to the right as you enter, you'll see it stabbed into a poster of a woman.

Cross of Saint James locations: Wake the Dead

You'll find yet another Cross of Saint James inside Wake the Dead cafe. Inspect the shelves to the right of Mrs. Thorn, it's sitting on display in the middle of an open book.

Cross of Saint James locations: The Dutchman

After entering The Dutchman, walk all the way to the back left of Silky's club and enter the first-floor bathroom. You'll find the cross stuck in a broken mirror above the sink.

A decade after Bloodlines 2 was pitched to then-new Vampire: The Masquerade owner Paradox Interactive, we're finally able to sink our fangs into the undead sequel. Unfortunately absence has not made the heart grow fonder, and it's currently sitting at Mixed reviews on Steam.

The consensus among the user reviews, even the positive ones, is that Bloodlines 2 doesn't really earn the name, and that it has a surprising dearth of RPG systems for something that calls itself an RPG.

"It is a good VtM game, but it is not a Bloodlines game," one positive review reads. "Paradox could have saved them a ton of outrage by marketing it differently." But they're not all so balanced. "Nothing about this game is what you sold us 6 years [ago]," reads a less favourable review, "and you don't deserve to be let off the hook for that."

I'm not remotely surprised by the response so far. I had a good time skulking through the streets of blizzard-battered Seattle, giving it a respectable 78 in my Bloodlines 2 review, but the most common criticisms are the same ones I had.

It's a narrative-driven mystery, an investigative adventure game, masquerading as an RPG with only the thinnest RPG systems. And it probably shouldn't be called Bloodlines. I don't think sequels always need to hew closely to the original brief, but there's just so little of what made Bloodlines a cult classic evident in Bloodlines 2.

This is all made worse by the fact that the shelved first attempt to make a sequel, Hardsuit Labs' version, actually did seem to have a bit more connective tissue. It was certainly more RPG-like. But the folk wishing that version had been given more of a chance are kidding themselves.

I got to see a hands-off just before the big delay in 2020, and it was not a game I was keen to play. It may have been more of a systemic RPG, but that doesn't necessarily translate to a good game. And folks weren't all that convinced at the time, either, so there's some revisionist history going on.

What I think Bloodlines 2 does actually succeed in is showing, once again, that it's really fun to embody a character in the World of Darkness universe. Outside of Bloodlines 2, we've just got Swansong and some visual novels, and I crave more. If we do get more, though, Paradox ain't interested in being involved again.

"It is not in our strategic direction to make this kind of game," deputy CEO Mattias Lilja told me in an interview last year. "So if Bloodlines 2, God willing, is successful, Bloodlines 3 [will be] done by someone else, on the licence from us. I would say it's the sort of strategic way this would work. So it's still an outlier from what we're supposed to do, we don't know that stuff, so we should probably let other people do it."

Given how cursed Bloodlines is, though, I'm not sure what developer and publisher would be brave enough to pick it up a third time. The original sold poorly, was supremely broken, and Troika never made another game again, shutting down a mere two months later. After Bloodlines 2 was initially shelved, Hardsuit Labs faced redundancies, and now it's a support studio. I would not want to play with this grenade.

The I.A.O. grows more aggressive as Bloodlines 2 carries on, and the militant vampire hunters deploy their own surveillance system throughout Seattle when you're deep into the action RPG. Silky, the city's Brujah Primogen, isn't a fan of the privacy invasion, and he asks Phyre to 'deal' with the I.A.O. surveillance cameras.

There are 30 Bloodlines 2 security cameras to destroy in total, and you'll need all of them to win favor with The Dutchman's owner. His sidequest isn't immediately available upon first meeting Silky, but should unlock when starting the main quest We Don’t Do Ghost Stories.

While I was far more eager to help Silky, I found the request just as tedious as Fletcher's Anarch tag hunt. But worry not if you're struggling with the brawny vamp's request, because I've got every Bloodlines 2 security camera location recorded here along with a handy map for guidance.

All Bloodlines 2 security camera locations

You'll have to do a lot of climbing to find every Bloodlines 2 security camera. Like with the other collectables, remember to watch your circular crosshair for any indication there's something special nearby. Use the map above along with my brief descriptions to pinpoint their exact location, then thumb through the galleries below if you need more detailed screenshots.

1. Look through the construction scaffolding along the building behind Atrium
2. Above the neon pentagram on Atrium's rooftop bar
3. Higher up on one of the tall buildings across from Weaver Tower
4. On a rooftop across the street from Atrium, near a small water tower
5. Climb the block's eastern buildings and look down at the red flour sign
6. East of the Glacier Hotel on the corner of a rooftop hangout
7. Climb the buildings northwest of Makom Bar and look south
8. On a rooftop to the east of the pink paranoia billboard
9. Directly across from the auto repair, visible from the door
10. Above the Hole in the Wall, tucked away under a concrete overhang
11. On the corner of a rooftop gazebo decorated with paper lanterns
12. Look up from the alleyway street just across from the Yinuo Beer sign
13. Look south from the rooftop across the street from Brew-House
14. Near the yellow building in the west, just in front of the red Tacoma structures
15. In the alley southwest of Aurora Pawn, face south and look at the rooftop corner

16. On the building south of the construction zone, facing the blue hotel sign
17. Behind Wake the Dead, visible from the ground looking across from the flower graffiti
18. High on the corner of the tall, U-shaped apartment building
19. Pointed at the main street from a narrow alley, near a series of fire escapes
20. From the ground north of St. Stephens, look along the back alley wall
21. Across the street from Weaver Tower's north wing, in a nook with yellow graffiti
22. Underneath the west side of a bridge in the garden area
23. Southeast of Haven, angled at the main street where you see a blue hotel sign
24. Visible while looking down from a fire exit just behind Haven
25. Climb along the northern most buildings in the block, it's just above a blue exit door
26. Near an umbrella dining area in the back of the block, just above a street light
27. Visible from the ground just outside the northwest corner of the police station
28. In the alley across from the covered scaffolding, high between the eastern buildings
29. Inside the construction zone across from The Dutchman, above a red cargo crate
30. Look up just over a pile of trash when exiting The Dutchman's back door

When you've found all 30 I.A.O. security cameras, head back to The Dutchman and speak with Silky. He'll thank Phyre for the help, and have new conversations to explore regarding his goings on at Schmitz Park.

Completing this set of collectables also improves your relationship with Silky—though he was willing to shack up with me after finding just five measly cameras—and unlocks new codex details. You'll also get an achievement, Cutting the Feed, as a final reward for your efforts.

Fletcher is the Ventrue clan's Primogen in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, and one of three vampires with an assignment that'll have you scouring Seattle for collectables. After you meet him at the Makom Bar early in the story, talk to him again to hear his gripes about supernatural graffiti and receive a rather frustrating request.

It seems Fletcher is a bit of an art snob, and he wants Phyre to scrub Seattle clean of the non-Camarilla Kindred graffiti. Sounds easy enough, but there are 30 Anarch Tags to hunt down and Seattle is an awfully big place.

Bloodlines 2 helps with the search by making its circular crosshair grow in size when you're close to something valuable, but who knows what that something is. Fortunately for you and Fletcher both, I've already scouted every Anarch Tag location in Bloodlines 2 and created a map of the city highlighting all of them.

All Bloodlines 2 Anarch Tag locations

Finding every Anarch Tag in Bloodlines 2 requires quite a bit of climbing—almost all of them are on a rooftop somewhere. Use the map above with the brief descriptions here to point you in the right direction. If you're really stuck, scroll through the galleries below for more specific Anarch Tag location screenshots.

1. Jump to the rooftop across from Atrium, beside a barred window
2. On the southern Weaver Tower wing, glide over from the western blocks
3. Behind the pink Our Little Secret building, look up in the corner by the airduct
4. A block northwest of Atrium, between the two southwestern most buildings
5. Northeast of St. Stephens, you should see the church in the same view
6. Behind Macom Bar, look lower along the walls while facing the bar
7. Third building east of Glacier Hotel, on the roof tucked in a concrete nook
8. Behind a broken fence on the roof, visible while facing the Glacier Hotel sign
9. South of Hole in the Wall, just above the red bar sign
10. Northeast of the Hole in the Wall, face south toward the red tiger sign
11. North of the building with paper lanterns on the roof, drop into a brick alcove
12. Between the buildings north of Auto Repair, closer to Wake The Dead
13. Climb behind Wake the Dead, walk around the building ledge, and stop across from Hotel Sunrise
14. Across from the 93.9 STR FM building, above the rooftop exit
15. Almost out of bounds, climb high and stop below the red satellite tower

16. High up, just below a metal platform and to the right of a ladder
17. On the smokestack, visible when facing north
18. Southwest of the Dutchman, almost out of bounds on a building wall
19. On a ledge in the block's inner southwest corner, across from a white Sparak sign
20. Climb along east of the Dutchman, look high up at the building to the south
21. Below the blue Penumbra Capital sign north of the Seattle Police Station
22. Northernmost building, almost out of bounds, out in the open on a brick wall
23. Between two fire escapes, on the building across from a red beer ad
24. Climb buildings around Haven, face Longthorne Bank, and check the chimney
25. Between the two buildings northwest of St. Stephens, beside an air duct
26. Eastern edge of the Haven block, on the roof near an air conditioning unit
27. In the center building on a cluster facing the street
28. Behind a small wooden building near the frozen fountain
29. In the garden plaza closest to the conservatory, on the side of the statue
30. On the front door of the conservatory greenhouse

If you're hunting all of the Anarch Tags in one go, make sure your Bloodlines 2 save stays current by talking to NPCs or finishing sidequests to trigger the auto-save. It's not a difficult chore, just tedious. I was doing fine until the last few, then really struggled to hunt down a couple stragglers. All of those buildings blur together after a while.

When you're done collecting all 30 Anarch Tags, head back to Fletcher at the Makom Bar and he'll sing your praises—the dude really hates that graffiti. He'll have new dialogue to explore, an updated codex entry, and reward you with the Clean Up the Streets achievement.

It's not immediately obvious how to save in Bloodlines 2, and boy it sucks (in the not fun vampire way) to lose your progress in a lengthy RPG. Even knowing that Bloodlines 2 was pivoting to a more action game style, it's not the save system I expected, so fear not if you're scratching your head.

The good news is, no, you aren't daft. I spent ages searching for the option too, but there is no manual save in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. The system is a tad barebones and what you see from the beginning is what you get. Unless you're willing to repeat quests completely, the vampire RPG makes you dig Phyre's grave, then lie in it.

How do you save in Bloodliness 2?

The only way to save in Bloodlines 2 is its auto-save system which keeps your progress through vampire-infested Seattle. When an auto-save is in progress, you'll see an icon in the top right corner of the screen that looks like the Anarch Tags spraypainted around the city.

Quitting the game doesn't trigger a save, either, in my experience. From the settings window, Bloodlines 2 warns that you'll lose any unsaved progress by selecting 'Exit to Main Menu,' so make a mental note of your last checkpoint before closing the game. Despite the notice, I learned the hard way on more than one occasion and lost my progress.

Can you have more than one Bloodlines 2 save?

There is only one auto-save slot in Bloodlines 2. Starting a new playthrough overwrites that slot and duplicates the old save in a file that starts from a checkpoint. It's a bummer if you want to check out multiple clans, explore more choices, or swap between Phyres with ease.

But the good news is that Bloodlines 2 has a chapter select option, even if it's not labeled that way in the menu. At the title screen, select 'Load Game' and scroll through the list of quests. There should be one save for every main quest you've completed—that means 22 distinctly named saves for folks who have completed the game.

Selecting any of these starts from the beginning of the quest and overwrites your current auto-save. I'm the save scumming type, so this is about as close as I can get to that when I'm unhappy with any of my choices in Bloodlines 2.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will let you dress your bloodthirsty undead elder in 24 different outfits. 25, if you count their unflattering corpse pajamas (which I don't). That's a lot of outfits. A lot of outfits that desperately need to be ranked.

I have worn clothes for more than 40 years. You could say I've become an expert. I've got three wardrobes full of them, and I'm told I have too many pairs of shoes. I'd argue 18 is not enough, but whatever. Anyway! This means I am perfectly positioned to provide you all with an objective ranking of every outfit in the game.

You can skip straight to the rankings, but before we get into that, I'd better tell you how the outfit system works.

How do outfits work in Bloodlines 2?

Bloodlines 2 has no gear system at all, so all of the outfits you'll collect are mostly cosmetic. That said, your threads are still helpful when it comes to feeding. NPCs react to what you're wearing, you see, and this matters when you're trying to collect blood resonance: that is, blood from people who are experiencing specific, strong emotions.

Some human NPCs will be in the midst of a depressed, horny or angry episode, and in these instances, regardless of what you wear, you'll be able to make them want to fight you, run away from you, or follow you somewhere for a quickie. But for NPCs who aren't fully resonated yet? They'll need a push, and that's where your clothing comes in.

If you're trying to solicit a sex worker, for instance, your scruffy Brujah clothes (which undoubtedly smell rancid) might put them off. And if you want to start a fight with a biker, they're just gonna think you're one of the gang. Ultimately, it doesn't matter too much, and you'll have an easy time feeding no matter what you wear, but you'll have a higher success rate if you consider who you are talking to and what you're wearing.

How do you unlock outfits in Bloodlines 2?

Outfits are nice and easy to unlock in Bloodlines 2, and they're exclusively tied to your power progression. Each outfit is associated with a specific power, you see. For the outfits attached to your chosen clan, you'll unlock each of them when you spend your ability points. But you can also unlock all the powers and outfits from each of the five other clans.

To do this, you'll need to hit up the clan primogens in their havens after Prince Ryong makes you Seattle's sheriff. Each power has a specific blood resonance cost, so you'll need to do some feeding first. You can also do sidequests for larger blood resonance rewards, but Bloodlines 2's sidequests are terrible.

What's handy is that you can target specific powers and outfits that you unlock with blood resonance, rather than unlocking them in a specific order. So you don't need to spend blood on stuff you don't want just to get to the higher tier fits.

With that out of the way, onto the list!

Bloodlines 2 outfit rankings

24. The Herald

Starting off with an easy one. The Herald absolutely sucks. I get what The Chinese Room is going for: a noble's tunic, making a nod to the Ventrue's love of aristocracy. But it just looks so dumb! A high-fantasy-looking thing, something a haughty elf might wear, which is just totally out of place on the streets of Seattle.

How to get The Herald: You can wear this travesty by unlocking the third Ventrue power, Cloud Memory.

23. The Diva

Only saved from the bottom spot by the sheer audacity of its ugliness, The Diva is just a mess. There's no way an aesthetically-minded Toreador would be caught dead in this, right? The big brown boots—there are almost always boots—with the flouncy pajamas makes me want to get out the flamethrower. And the bloodsoaked cumberbund? Well, that's a Masquerade breach waiting to happen.

How to get The Diva: You can get booed off the stage in this mess by unlocking the last Toreador power, Blurred Momentum.

22. The Outcast

We've entered Brujah territory, and we're going to be staying here for a wee while. I just have beef with the clan's whole aesthetic. Look, I really love the concept of a clan of rebellious vampire scholars who are now the punks and bikers of the undead world, but I find their look tedious. It captures only one side of the Learned Clan. The Outcast is the most plain outfit for the Brujah, so it's coming in last place.

How to get The Outcast: You'll need to unlock the last Brujah power, Earthshock, to do your Sons of Anarchy cosplay.

21. The Brawler

Ever so slightly better than The Outcast, since it's a bit more rough and tumble, but The Brawler is still pretty bland. The red star is at least a nice nod to the Brujah's communist leanings (the best thing about the clan, frankly), but a red vest tucked into leather trousers? Get out of here.

How to get The Brawler: Unlock the second Brujah power, Charge, and you'll be reading Marx in no time.

20. The Shadow Dancer

I was going to keep laying into the Brujah outfits for a bit longer, but then I remembered The Shadow Dancer exists. The worst Lasombra outfit is more fun than anything the Brujah gets, but it's just all over the place. Like two people with extremely different tastes, both wearing blindfolds, attempted to dress Phyre. Or maybe three people. The combat boots with smart trousers and that belt are bad enough, but then the top comes outta nowhere. And is that a harness? No, not for me, thanks.

How to unlock The Shadow Dancer: Grab the second Lasombra power, Shadow Step, to show off your guns.

19. The Rebel

And we're back to the Brujah! For the first time in this list, we've reached the point where I can say: "I'd actually wear something here." Specifically the jacket; I will never wear jeans that have been shredded so dramatically. I live in Scotland and my knees might get cold. But the dog collar doesn't quite fit, and the whole thing is too one note. The Brujah clan is meant to be full of individualists, and none of these outfits capture that.

How to unlock The Rebel: Unlock the third Brujah power, Taunt, and you'll be ready to watch a band brutalise their instruments.

18. The Drifter

This will be my final Brujah dig. Actually, it's fine. The hoody looks a bit weird, specifically where the collar meets the hood, and it's a bit boring, but the long coat is vaguely vampy (because for some reason I still associate vampires with cloaks), and the general dirtiness fits a bloodsucker who probably feeds in alleys and behind bars. Also: this is something I definitely wore in my early 20s. Not really a point in its favour, though.

How to get The Drifter: Brujah vamps will unlock this as soon as they wake up in their haven; everyone else will need to unlock the first Brujah power, Lightning Strike.

17. The Magister

This is where I'm going to have to admit I'm giving the Tremere preferential treatment because I love those silly blood mages. This has most of the same problems as The Herald, but I dig the evil mage look so much more than the fancy elf look. It doesn't remotely work as a modern outfit, and the attempt to drag it into the 21st century with those combat boots makes it look so much worse. But I did make Phyre wear it for 15 minutes.

How to get The Magister: Get that final Tremere power, Blood Salvo, and you'll be ready to lead one of the clan's chantries.

16. The Priest

I keep changing the placement of The Priest, but I've decided to commit. Conceptually, I like it. The Lasombra clan controls the Catholic Church, so why wouldn't they dress the part? It's also the only outfit that inspires bespoke reactions from NPCs. And it is undeniably entertaining to watch a priest decapitate a ghoul with his hands. But, and this is important, priests don't have good drip.

How to get The Priest: Prepare for the pulpit by unlocking the last Lasombra power, Enter Oblivion.

15: The Trickster

The Trickster is the type of outfit you might find in a bin, but I'm placing it here because it does a great job of capturing the legacy of the Tremere, a group of gloomy blood mages, with modern fashion. You're ready to agonise over bad song lyrics while also digging into an ancient tome. A bit too 'angsty teen goth' for a 400-year-old vampire, but it still works.

How to get The Trickster: If you choose the Tremere clan, you'll get this automatically, and everyone else can get it after unlocking the first power, Blood Curse.

14: The Stalker

This Banu Haqim outfit, like the Tremere one above, doesn't look great, and the hood seems to have been inflated like a balloon, but it still commits to the clan best known for its assassins' whole vibe. It's got a parkour-adjacent streetwear thing going on, but doesn't stray far from the assassin aesthetic. VTM's fashion is at its best where it embraces the nature and history of these monsters, but with a modern spin.

How to get The Stalker: Pick the Banu Haqim clan and you'll get this straight away; otherwise you just need to unlock the first power, Bladed Hand.

13: The General

The best part of this outfit is simultaneously the worst: yep, I'm talking about the collar. The vibe is more royal than militant, but that's perfect for a clan of dickhead rulers like the Ventrue. I just love how extra it is. But the texture is an absolute mess. I think it's meant to look fluffy; instead it looks like it's had a smoke texture slapped on it, which has then been awkwardly stretched out.

How to get The General: Boss your minions around after you've unlocked the final Ventrue power, Mass Manipulation.

12: The Poet

The red and gold, that belt, this is one for the club creeps. Toreador fashion is usually fun and I love how sleazy this looks. Unfortunately, you've got those awful trousers. It's like Phyre couldn't find anything that worked, so he just stuck some massive gold studs on his jeans. Also, what's with all the boots? Bloodlines 2 is obsessed with them.

How to get The Poet: You'll be ready to get kicked out of clubs for being too handsy after unlocking the second Toreador power, Blink.

11: The Justicar

I kinda dig The Justicar, honestly. The patterned, red lining is a fun accent, adding a bit of ostentatiousness to a mostly understated look. And, like The Stalker, it really emphasises what the clan is all about, but with an added air of authority. The problem is that the hood looks really weird in action, making each cinematic kill and feeding sequence just a bit too goofy.

How to get The Justicar: You'll be laying down the law after unlocking the last Banu Haqim power, Unseen Aura.

Bloodlines 2's top 10 outfits

10. The Prince

We've finally arrived in the top 10! What an exciting time to be undead. Less obviously royal than The General, this is still an authoritative look for a Ventrue vamp. It's a bit understated, but then you've got the purple shirt (the colour of the aristocracy) and the big collar, which gives it oomph. Not sure about the boots (again), but otherwise it fits the Ventrue brief perfectly, as well as looking like something that, yeah, a vampire might wear, without looking like cosplay.

How to get The Prince: Start warming up your throne after unlocking the second Ventrue power, Possession.

9. The Player

What can I say, I love a leopard print blouse. Who doesn't? I'm a sucker for a vintage Toreador look, it turns out. And yes, we've got boots again, but look! They're different; they've got heels! So you can loom over people while beating them with your copy of The Game.

How to get The Player: Sexy Toreadors will unlock this at their haven, but the other clans will need to unlock the first Toreador power, Entrancing Kiss.

8. The Seneschal

I'm a big fan of this Ventrue look—it's the best thing in the clan's wardrobe. Rather than going for an aristo vibe, this is pure '70s record producer, or maybe a gallery owner who does a lot of coke. It's a reminder that none of these clans are monoliths, and while Ventrue vamps like power and influence, that doesn't mean they're all blue bloods or CEOs. This would work well for a Toreador as well.

How to get the Seneschal: If you're Ventrue you'll get this automatically, while everyone else will need to unlock the first power, Terminal Decree.

7. The Slayer

I didn't vibe with The Slayer at first, but it's really grown on me. There's a whole fantasy monster hunter thing going on, but adapted to a more modern, understated fit. It feels especially appropriate for Phyre, who's also known as the Nomad. It's a hard-wearing, practical outfit with just a bit of flair, perfect for the vamp on the move.

How to get The Slayer: Join the hunt by unlocking Split Second, the second Banu Haqim power.

6. The Mage

The Mage is simply a great urban fantasy outfit; it's like something a Tremere would wear in a speakeasy, drinking bathtub gin and casting spells. The pentagram lacing is a great touch, and the huge popped collar is a fun nod to the classic Dracula aesthetic. I've gone back and forth over the little scarf, but I've decided that I like it. I want a little scarf.

How to get The Mage: Get your own little scarf by unlocking the third Tremere power, Cauldron of Blood.

5. The Atheist

The Atheist is one of my faves, but I prefer it on my femme Phyre; some lads can make the look work, but masc Phyre ain't one of them. Anyway, I liked it so much after playing a Lasombra vamp for a preview I ended up buying an inverted crucifix earring to channel my long-ignored inner goth. I have been mocked appropriately for it (40-year-olds shouldn't be indulging in this nonsense) by friends and family, but I still wear it when I'm feeling fancy and want to support my pal and yours, Satan. So! Yes, this is a good look.

How to get The Atheist: Lasombra vamps get this automatically; the rest of you can stick it to God by unlocking the first power, Arms of Ahriman.

4. The Warlock

The best Tremere outfit, The Warlock isn't quite as playful as The Mage, but I really like a clean look that still makes a statement. With only a few small touches, it still manages to be magician coded, and you've still got that nice big collar that says "I'm a vampire" without breaching the Masquerade. The little blood pendant is a nice touch, too. This pairs particularly well with the red-tinted sunglasses, which anyone can wear but feel most suited to Tremere vamps.

How to get The Warlock: Unlock Recall, the second Tremere power, to start turning blood into magic.

3. The Sheriff

This was a tough one! I wore The Sheriff the longest out of all the outfits, and it's a suit I'd likely wear myself. The subtle American frontier sheriff aesthetic is a perfect match for Phyre's role, too, as they quickly become the sheriff of Seattle. I've bumped it down to third place, though, because at the end of the day, it doesn't really play into the fantasy of being an ancient, powerful vampire. It's just a really sharp suit.

How to get The Sheriff: Unlock the third Banu Haqim power, Mute, to start laying down the law.

2. The Elder

OK, yes, this is a ridiculous outfit to wear in 21st century Seattle, unless you're going to a fancy dress party or answer exclusively to the name Lestat, but I love this ludicrous getup. It's the most extra, most classically vampire looking thing in your robust wardrobe. Sure, you're gonna be the first person the hunters visit when blood-drained corpses start showing up, but you'll look great as they try to stake you.

How to get The Elder: Begin your dapper new unlife by unlocking the third Toreador power, Beckon.

1. The Sin Eater

We've made it, pals! The best outfit in Bloodlines 2. There is no debate. Given the last two outfits, it should come as no surprise that my favourite kinda squishes them both together. If you want to be a frontier lawman but also a bit dapper, and you're thinking of moonlighting as an undertaker, then this is the look for you. It's got it all: not too ostentatious but still full of character; goth-adjacent without being angsty; ready for work but also fancy enough for a party—why would you need another fit?

How to get the Sin Eater: Snack on sin by unlocking Glimpse of Oblivion, the third Lasombra power.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2's main quest is an elaborate, labyrinthine conundrum that spans a century, full of vibrant characters and evocative writing. Bloodlines 2's sidequests, on the other hand, are pointless, one-note tasks that will send you into a torpor.

Every night, the primogens of Seattle's vampire clans sit around in their havens, waiting for you, Sheriff Phyre, to come and solve things that one of their goons should be handling. The absolute best you can hope for is some murder, being sent to kill a human in need of a beatdown or a ghoul who's gotten too big for its britches.

Otherwise, you'll be searching for CCTV cameras, decorative crosses, graffiti and packages. Yeah, we're talking bottom-of-the-barrel filler quests here—stuff that you'd even roll your eyes at in a quest-laden MMO. In a brisk 20-30 hour narrative-driven RPG, they're unacceptably bad.

These quests are devoid of plot, have little to no impact on the rest of the game, and since this is an RPG without gear, the rewards are terribly basic. XP, which you'll get plenty of during the main quest, and blood resonance, which you can gain from feeding on Seattle's human population anyway. It's almost like The Chinese Room doesn't want you to do them. Maybe it's a test.

If you're absolutely desperate for another ability point because you're just on the cusp of unlocking a new power, then sure, maybe it'll be worth your time to do one of these odd jobs. But there's no point in doing them otherwise. There are some associated achievements, of course, but if you're willing to have a terrible time just so Steam will tell you that you've done a good job, you're beyond saving.

Now, if you want to embark on some undead romance, it still pays to visit these primogens. By asking them about themselves at different junctures during the story, you'll get opportunities to make a positive impression. You'll also get a relationship bump from the primogens who task you with the collection quests like smashing CCTV cameras or finding crosses if you respond to their request enthusiastically.

From my testing, however, it doesn't look like the sidequests themselves have an much of an impact on these relationships—if any at all. In most cases, I was able to have what The Chinese Room calls a "romantic feed" pretty early on, regardless of how many sidequests I'd completed. It's also worth nothing that these romantic scenes offer nothing but a fade-to-black and some awkward noises. They are completely disconnected from the rest of the game.

So I'm here to tell you that you don't need to do any of the the sidequests. This is not a case of an RPG starting you out with some busywork only to surprise you with a great story or some incredible rewards. No, this is a case of a developer best known for evocative walking sims forcing itself to cram some basic filler into its first RPG. Because it thinks it has to.

This is no excuse, of course. And The Chinese Room's narrative flair makes these rubbish diversions an even greater transgression. A bit of story, a bit of character, and these sidequests could have been somewhat worthwhile. But instead the studio opted to just tick a box and call it a day. Given all the delays, I expected more.

By committing to finishing them all, you're just derailing another otherwise tight story; choosing not to move to the next meaningful sequence, instead pausing the good stuff to rush halfway across the city to pick up a parcel that has zero bearing on anything. You deserve better.

Trust me, you'll have a much better time just focusing on the main quest, which is where The Chinese Room clearly put all of its energy.

There's always one question on everyone's mind when a big new RPG appears. Don't be embarrassed—I know you're curious. You want to know if you can hook up with any of the immortal bloodsuckers and find romance in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. I've got good news and bad news.

In the World of Darkness, the universe in which Vampire: The Masquerade is contained, romance is kinda complicated. More complicated than usual, I mean. This is because vamps aren't human. Like Phyre themself says, the Beast—the demonic apex predator inside every vampire—hollows them out, removing human emotions like love.

With that bit of lore in mind, let's dig in.

Can you romance NPCs in Bloodlines 2?

There is what The Chinese Room calls "romantic feeding" in Bloodlines 2, but if you're looking for traditional RPG romance systems then you're out of luck.

While vampires can retain some of their humanity—which there's a system for in both the tabletop game and Bloodlines 1, but not the sequel—in most cases their former nature gets squeezed out by the Beast, the source of all their darker proclivities. Unlike the vampires of Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer's horny yarns, VTM's undead monsters don't really get lovestruck, or even thirsty—unless we're talking about blood.

Yep, blood is almost exclusively what drives their desires. There are some exceptions to this, and some vampires might go through the motions, remembering what love felt like when they were human, trying to replicate this in their new unlife. But for the most part, vampires don't care much about traditional romance.

In Bloodlines 2, you can roleplay Phyre as a vampire with more humanity than most, and you'll find one other vampire who acts in the same way: Safia. She responds to your flirting, and you can strike up a sort of unspoken relationship with her, exchanging tender words and support. It's actually incredibly sweet. But that's as far as it goes.

With the rest of Seattle's vampires, though, and its mortals, any sexually charged moments are fuelled exclusively by blood. When you feed on mortals, it's a pleasurable experience for both participants, but it's also predominantly practical for Phyre. They need blood to use their powers.

In the case of other vampires, though, that's when romantic feeding comes into play, which is the closest you'll get to knocking boots with an NPC.

How does romantic feeding work in Bloodlines 2?

Vampires feeling a bit of bloodlust don't ask for much before they're willing to go for a little romantic feeding alone time, but it's still a bit convoluted. There are actually two different ways to grab an intimate moment with a fellow undead monster, but let's start with the flirty route. Here are the broad strokes:

1. Meet your primogen lover-to-be in their haven
2. Pick dialogue options that please them
3. Flirt with them three times
4. Strike up another conversation with them
5. Listen to Phyre and their new friend having a good time

Bloodlines 2 unfortunately never really explains what triggers romantic feeds, but my colleagues and I have been diligently experimenting and jumping between saves to figure it out. It's primarily driven by two things: how much the primogen likes you, and where you are in the story.

Each of the playable vampire clans in Bloodlines 2 is represented by a primogen—think of them as an undead official representing the clan's interests in the Camarilla court, which runs nighttime Seattle.

When you're introduced to these head honchos in the main quest Keep the Peace, you'll be able to flirt with them, but your vampiric seduction techniques aren't so powerful that they'll immediately hop into their coffin with you.

You'll need to flirt with them three times, first. This is not possible during that first meeting, however, so you'll have to put in your time first.

You can ruin your chances of enjoying more flirty banter, too. If a primogen doesn't vibe with you because you've said the wrong thing, their response to your first attempt at flirting will be a firm rejection, and the option might never appear again—as was the case with the Brujah and Toreador primogens in my first playthrough. They found me too pretentious.

If they like the cut of your jib, however, you'll have a better shot. But it's still not entirely straightforward. It'll take you several nights to hop under the covers with your undead paramour, and you'll need to keep making a good impression.

The second opportunity to be an unrepentant flirt is available during the next night, when you're be on the main quest A Work of Holy Innocents. So just head back to the primogen's haven and stick out your silver tongue. You'll have to wait a bit longer to hit on them a third time, though.

The following night, during To Founder on the Lethe, you won't be able to flirt an additional time, but are new dialogue options that allow you to learn more about the primogen and score some extra friend points.

It's only when you reach Prove Yourself, the next evening's main quest, that you're finally able to seal the deal, getting that coveted third flirting opportunity. Time for some romantic feeding!

I've tested this with multiple primogens and it always works the same way. It's also worth noting that you can actually wait until Prove Yourself before you do any flirting, and then knock out all three in a row. Just be aware that you'll have to start a new conversation each time. Then after three flirty exchanges, talk to them once more and they'll proposition you.

But if you don't want to keep hitting on vampires, there's a second method related to power progression. Here are the steps:

1. Visit the primogen's haven
2. Spend blood resonance to unlock their clan powers
3. Don't annoy them
4. Once you've unlocked the final power and perk, they'll suggest a romantic feed

Primogens are a source of power, letting you unlock new abilities from their clans by spending blood resonance, which you receive from feeding on humans experiencing specific emotions, or by completing sidequests (you get your own clan powers without this extra step). And once you're ready to unlock the final power, the primogen will suggest something more intimate.

Like the flirty route, though, this is predicated on what they think about you. If you annoyed them during your first meeting and subsequent chats, they'll still let you drink their blood so you can gain their powers, but you'll never get a romantic feed. To be honest, though, you're not missing out.

The result of a romantic feed is the same regardless of what method you deploy: You get some flirty, suggestive banter, the screen fades to black, and then you have to listen to Phyre and their pal getting it on. Briefly. And that's your lot!

What's disappointing isn't the lack of a romance scene, though. Well, it's not the only disappointing part. What really ruffled my feathers (vampires have feathers, right?) is that none of this feels earned. Your chats with these vamps are largely perfunctory, and they don't really play a role in the main story. It just feels totally disconnected from the rest of the game.

So who exactly can you hook up with in Bloodlines 2?

Every primogen can be flirted with and eventually seduced, though it's easy to miss out on some of them by putting your foot in your mouth, as I did with Silky and Patience in my first playthrough.

You'll also need to focus on flirting if you want to hook up with the primogen of your own clan, since you don't need to feed on them to unlock your inherent powers. That means the second method won't be available to you in that one specific instance.

With that out of the way, here's the full list of everyone you can 'romance':

• Fletcher, the Ventrue primogen
• Mrs Thorn, the Tremere primogen
• Niko, the Banu Haqim primogen
• Onda, the Lasombra primogen
• Patience, the Toreador primogen
• Silky, the Brujah primogen
• Safia [Platonic]

Unfortunately, only the Safia romance is worth pursuing, as it's the only one that adds anything to your story. It's well worth flirting with her. The rest largely feel like they've been included to tick a box, because The Chinese Room knows you're a thirsty bunch.

Every great leader knows it: you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Sometimes you have to do bad things in order to achieve good things. Sometimes you have to spill a little blood. Sometimes you have to, let's see here, kill 806 quadrillion people via famine in the space of a single year. Well okay then!

This and other vital lessons come courtesy of Victoria 3, which is celebrating its third birthday with a few statistics, as has become fashionable. Turns out players are either incredibly bad farmers or incredibly efficient murderers, because in the last 12 months they've starved enough people to death to denude real-life Earth of humans 107 million times over.

But it was all worth it, because in the same timespan our plucky players managed to create anarchist Prussia 1,476 times, which is surely deeply distressing if you're Otto von Bismarck and deeply heartening if you are Gustav Landauer. Also, if you are either of those people, welcome back.

All this was accomplished in a total of 440,377,653 hours of play, which equals out to about 1.1 billion deaths an hour if my maths is right. So well done. Well done on that. You must get up very early in the morning.

I am a little dismayed by players' most-common governments, mind you. Vicky 3 provides you ample room to get incredibly weird with your state structures, but the stats say people just can't get enough of their presidential democracies, with 61 million of them coalescing in the last 12 months of play. Treat yourself, folks: try a Soviet Republic or Bhutanese Diarchy some time.

Finally, I'm at least a little surprised by the most-played nations. I'd expected the charts to be dominated by humdrum anglophone states. Especially the UK, given it was the dominant power of the era. But no, China has been players' most popular pick with 3.4 million playthroughs happening in the Middle Kingdom over the last year. Then it's Japan, the USA, Russia, and Prussia (thus all the anarchism, you see).

Anyway, I should apologise. At least some of those famine deaths were probably down to my ill-thought-out tariff policies. I really thought it was a good idea at the time.

You are Phyre, an elder vampire of prodigious strength and no small amount of fame, forced to sleep for a hundred years. And people have been waiting for your return. You wake up in 21st century Seattle, bound by a curse and weighed down by the expectations of modern bloodsuckers.

Amid all this, you must carve out a place for yourself in this new city, along with an identity, even as you're nudged into deals and alliances, bending and adapting as you try to become what Seattle's nighttime residents need: a big scary vamp who can fix everything. Or break everything.

The story of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2's lost protagonist eerily encapsulates the state of the game itself: a long-awaited sequel with years of hopes and doubts and assumptions bearing down on it; an RPG that has to be an RPG, has to be a sequel, that strains against its bonds.

To RPG or not to RPG

Bloodlines 2 is good, sometimes even great, and it absolutely sated my appetite for a blood-fuelled undead yarn. But it is a sequel in name only, and it never really enthusiastically embraces being an RPG. Given its predecessor's cult status, and the source material, that's bound to be a disappointment for some.

I decided to roll with it. I've been told you can't skip right to the final stage of grief, but after a few hours I had reached acceptance. I'm just so good at processing stuff. 30 hours later, I watched the credits roll with a cosy feeling of satisfaction.

So! What actually is Bloodlines 2? It's a conspiracy-laden mystery that's as Raymond Chandler as it is Anne Rice. You've got a lot of questions in search of answers. What's the deal with the sigil binding you to Seattle? How did you even get here? And why do you have a chatty Malkavian detective in your head?

It's a buddy cop deal. Except one cop is an ancient vampire, and the other one is also a vampire, but he's dead, double-dead, and living inside his pal's noggin. And together they're going to clean up Seattle. While also killing a lot of ghouls. Like, so many ghouls. They never learn.

As Phyre, you'll skulk around the city at night, investigating your whole situation, while also doing work for Seattle's court—the undead head honchos. They pretty quickly make you the sheriff, so you also need to split your time between snooping and keeping the peace.

Chatting, rooting around and killing ne'er-do-wells: that's the gig. Your vampiric senses manifest as a kind of detective vision that highlights certain things of import: blood stains, scents, the heartbeats of mortals—that kind of thing. Your crosshair, meanwhile, changes in size to highlight the proximity of important objects, from letters to elixirs that give you health or buffs.

There are some light puzzles, but the conundrums you deal with are primarily social ones, or big picture things, worked out in conversations with vamps, ghouls and Fabien—the voice in your head. In this regard, it's not unlike a Telltale adventure game (you even get the "someone will remember this" style popups), where your relationships and how your actions are perceived by other characters are what drives the story, and your investigation, forwards.

This is where Bloodlines feels like it's most comfortable. Indeed, it's where it excels. Seattle's undead denizens are all deliciously arch, devious and downright dangerous, and each conversation with the court's members becomes an elaborate dance as you try to suck all the information out of them without turning them into an enemy.

In Bloodlines' dialogue and relationship system, it isn't just what you say that matters, but how these words are affected by the context of your previous actions and your whole vibe. If you've been an asshole for the entire game, nobody is going to fall for your honeyed words if you suddenly start trying to play nice.

War of words

When I wasn't chatting, I found myself craving these social moments. Not just because the writing is sharp, playful and full of unspoken threats, but because some of the verbal jousting and heat-of-the-moment decision making gave me the same buzz as solving a puzzle.

One small moment stands out in particular. I'd broken one of the Big Rules, and I had to go back and speak to my boss, Seattle's prince. Fabien warned that I should keep quiet about my transgression. But this was one of the rare times when I didn't follow my helpful guide's advice.

When I realised my prince and their disfigured spy master, Tolly the Nosferatu, knew I wasn't giving them the whole story, I came clean. Because I knew my prince, I knew she was a pragmatist, and I knew she respected me, as a powerful vampire elder. And I was right to do so. Our relationship protected me. Afterwards, Fabien congratulated me, acknowledging that I'd made the right call. I felt very clever.

There's only really one thing missing from the chatty, investigative side of Bloodlines 2, but it's a big one: there just aren't many RPG systems propping it up. For instance, your background, which you lay the foundation for early on and then keep adding bricks, rarely plays a role. I spotted a few references, and got a couple of unique dialogue options, but that was it.

Outside of combat, then, there's not much that separates a Banu Haqim vampire from a Tremere vampire. Whether your clan's known for a ruthless application of justice or an obsession with blood magic, you'll mostly see exactly the same things.

Now, this doesn't stop you from going in hard with the roleplaying. I tended to pick options that made sense for a vampire who takes their role as sheriff very seriously, like a member of the Banu Haqim would, but those options would still be there no matter what clan you picked.

Beyond your detective vision, there's also a lack of non-combat vampiric abilities. Your powers are more action-focused, and you don't get any of the skills or attributes you'd normally associate with an RPG. You'll never get smarter or more charismatic, and you'll never need to learn how to pick locks or hack computers.

Now, The Chinese Room has done a good job justifying this. You're an elder vampire who's lived for 400 years, and the events of Bloodlines 2 take place over just a handful of nights. It might be weird if you got smarter suddenly, you can already smash most locks, and how's someone who's been asleep since 1920 going to figure out hacking?

But I still miss the flexibility and sense of character building that these features normally provide, and while Bloodlines 2 works without them, it does make it feel like less of an RPG, less like I'm creating my own bespoke version of Phyre. And it's a shame I won't be able to play again as, say, a better investigator, or someone able to strike fear into the hearts of everyone around them just with a quiet word—something the Lasombra clan can actually do, but only during fights.

Pulp fiction

There is an exception to this, however, and his name is Fabien. See, when Phyre goes to sleep, Fabien's memories bubble to the surface. He's forgotten whole chunks of his unlife, but as Phyre hides from the rising sun, these lost moments return, and you can play through them.

In the dream sequences, Fabien jumps between 1920 and 2024, just before Phyre's arrival. In both time periods, he's investigating a serial killer who's been hunting ghouls and vampires, decapitating them and hammering rebar into their bodies. We learn a lot about the court during these sections, and his investigation is unsurprisingly tied to what's going on in the current day.

What makes the dreams so great, though, is that they are completely devoid of combat and totally invested in sleuthing. And since Fabien is a Malkavian, he gets unique insights into objects and some mind-control powers, which you absolutely can use on your conversational sparring partners.

Bloodlines 2 is linear throughout, and you can only use Fabien's Malkavian powers at specific moments on specific people, so you're really being led through these sequences, but boy are they fun. My favourite power is the one that lets him read objects. See, the incredible insights Malkavians glean come with a cost: madness. In Fabien's case, it's poor impulse control, bad jokes, occasional befuddlement, and talking to inanimate objects.

So when you try to get a read on an item, Fabien strikes up a conversation with it, bestowing the item with a voice and a personality. And Fabien does all the voices himself. You'll chat to a fancy death threat, a flirty filing cabinet and an unhelpful dead cat, to name but a few.

I'm a big fan of my version of Phyre, and I liked being a deadly hunter of naughty vamps, ghouls and occasionally humans, but I think I'd give it all up to play a version of Bloodlines 2 that was just Fabien running around solving crimes and not once killing anyone. And I get the feeling that The Chinese Room would have liked to make that game, too.

To be clear, Bloodlines 2's combat is good. It just doesn't feel essential. It's certainly better than its predecessor's. Though I think, once again, some of the RPG elements will be missed. There are no stats to worry about, no gear or inventory management, no weapons. You're a 400-year-old killing machine who can decapitate multiple enemies with just your hand. And throughout the game, you'll unlock a wide variety of exotic powers, but you'll also probably figure out a build that works for you early on, and there's not much need to evolve it.

After the first few hours, I'd unlocked all of the Banu Haqim powers, and really that's all you need. With all your clan powers remembered, you have a full loadout. Instead of getting more powerful, you make lateral moves into the skillsets of other clans. But you're always restricted to four active powers. You can become more flexible, and by unlocking the perks associated with each clan you get some extra advantages, but for the most part you reach your full potential close to the start of the game.

This means the combat does start to outstay its welcome. I was having a great time mixing Banu Haqim and Tremere powers, transforming me into a stealthy blood mage who could turn enemies in blood bombs and then turn invisible to go for a series of stealth kills. The infinite access to telekinesis that you get right from the start never stops being handy, either, letting you pick up everything from guns—which you can mentally hold in the air and then shoot—to random bits of detritus. But by hour 20 I was using my stealth to skip any fights that I could.

Stay skippy

Whether I was fighting hunters, with their grenades and teamwork, or a pack of weapon-wielding ghouls (which make up the bulk of Bloodlines 2's enemies), the strategy I'd figured out early on just kept working. The versatility of the vampire powers, and your incredible mobility, gives encounters a strong Dishonored vibe, but the level design and specific challenges The Chinese Room sets up never comes close to reaching the heights of Arkane's masterpiece.

This is also why I eventually stopped doing sidequests, since a fight is the best you can hope for. Honestly, it's wild that a narrative-driven RPG could have such dreadful diversions. Sidequests are doled out by the leaders of the city's various clans, and here's everything they task you with doing: running to a random area to pick up a package, killing a human, killing a ghoul or finding collectibles. That's it!

I had to go through the same busywork every single night. Barely any story or context, just a mindless job. And since there's no gear system, all you get is XP (which you'll get in abundance from the main quest) and blood resonance, which you'll spend to unlock powers from different clans. You can also just feed on civilians to get blood resonance, and while it's in smaller amounts, it means these sidequests feel even more meaningless.

Two thirds of the way through the game, I'd unlocked every clan power, every clan outfit and had a loadout that had been working for me for 20 hours. So I started skipping the side stuff. As a completionist, this is not normal for me, but I hate having my time wasted.

It just seems like The Chinese Room felt it had to include sidequests, so it threw a series of incredibly low-effort ones into the mix. The same goes for the open world. Nighttime Seattle is dense in atmosphere and at times incredibly striking, but there's hardly anything to do in the city. I almost feel bad for complaining about open world bloat now, because if this is the alternative? Well, no thanks.

Anything not related to the main quest is simply not great. And that's a significant problem in an RPG—even one as brisk as this. And while the main quest has much to recommend it, it's not quite exceptional enough to completely make up for the poor quality of Bloodlines 2's meagre side activities. The writing elevates the critical path, but there isn't anything that will stick in my mind like Bloodlines 1's terrifying Ocean House Hotel or Death Mask Productions.

Bloodlines 2 features the best Vampire: The Masquerade story out of any of the videogame adaptations. It's a corker. And I probably will play through it again, even if the changes likely won't be all that dramatic. But the quest design and the character progression really hold it back.

This is a game that's been designed to be a narrative adventure game with a pulpy noir bent—not an RPG. This identity crisis means that it's always just a bit awkward, with The Chinese Room trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. But it's still a miracle that, after one of the most tumultuous creation stories I've ever encountered in game development, it even exists. Let alone that it's good.

Two years after the release of Cities: Skylines 2, and more than a year after it was originally supposed to arrive, the big Bridges and Ports expansion is finally almost here. Paradox and Colossal Order announced today that the big, twice-delayed DLC will finally go live on October 29.

Bridges and Ports was originally expected to launch in mid-2024, a few months after the release of the Beach Properties asset pack earlier that year. But Beach Properties was such a mess that Paradox eventually apologized for the whole thing and just gave it to everyone for free, and ultimately delayed the expansion into the second quarter of 2025 so it could focus on the main game, which was also a mess. Then it delayed Bridges and Ports again, to near the end of 2025, because everything was a mess.

But apparently now that's all been sorted, at least enough that the expansion can be unleashed on the public. The Bridges and Ports expansion will add 20 new drawbridges and lift bridges, customizable ports, a new Ferry Transport System, "expanded maritime industries"—fishing, offshore oil rigs, that sort of thing—and three new maps, more than 100 assets, and new achievements.

Paradox and Colossal Order really need to get this one right. After two years of work, Cities: Skylines 2 remains mired in a "mixed" rating on Steam, with just over half of the user reviews, both recent and overall, coming in positive. Concurrent player numbers also continue to lag behind those of the 10-year-old Cities Skylines.

It's a state of affairs reflected in the reaction to the Bridges and Ports release date announcement on Steam, which at this point is dominated by complaints about the game. The absolute last thing Cities: Skylines 2 needs right now is yet another whiff—even something that's just kind of half-assed will be very bad news, I think.

We'll see how it goes in a couple weeks. Cities: Skylines 2 – Bridges and Ports is set to roll out on October 29 and will go for $20/£17/€20. Also coming that day is the Cold Wave Channel radio station, "with minimalist beats and icy vibes," which you can pick up bundled with Bridges and Ports for $22.49/£18.89/€22.49, or separately for $5/£4.49/€5 if you want the chill tracks without all the added infrastructure.

Before you begin your afterlife in Seattle, one of the first choices you'll make in Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 is which one of the Bloodlines 2 clans your protagonist Phyre comes from. As factions in RPGs often work, each vampire clan has a very different personality and goal and which one you choose will change your combat style and how other vamps treat you in conversations.

There's a whole backlog of lore from the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop RPG including even more clans, sects, and other vampire hierarchy minutia, but I'll focus on what you need to know to choose which lunch table you're doing to sit at in Bloodlines 2 including combat style, abilities, and clan persona.

The six playable clans in Bloodlines 2 are:

• Banu Haqim: the hunters and lawbringers
• Brujah: the rebellious brawlers
• Lasombra: the shadowy killers
• Toreador: the graceful seducers
• Tremere: the scholarly warlocks
• Ventrue: the aristocratic tyrants

What does your clan choice change in Bloodlines 2?

• Abilities: You can unlock abilities from other clans, but they may cost more Ability Points if the Discipline they're from isn't one that your vamp's specializes in.
• Dialogue: You'll have different dialgoue choices depending on clan background.
• Passive: Your starting passive ability is tied to your clan and you cannot unlock passives from other clans.
• Perk: You can unlock the perk at the top of another clan's ability tree, regardless of your chosen clan.

Like a backstory in other RPG settings, your clan choice will change some of the dialogue options available to you in Bloodlines 2. "When hunting for Blood Resonance, specific disciplines and outfit choices can also affect NPCs on the street," the developer says, which means that the Disciplines your clan specializes in will change how you're perceived in public.

Banu Haqim clan in Bloodlines 2

The Banu Haqim are "cursed with a thirst for the blood of other vampires" and act as the judges and executioners of the night. They're hunters at heart so their combat style focuses on camouflage and quiet kills. This is one for the rogue and ranger mains who want to kill with stealth.

The Banu Haqim disciplines are Celerity, Blood Sorcery, and Obfuscate.

Banu Haqim abilities

• (Passive) Silence of Death: All your actions become completely silent after feeding.
• Mute: Silence an enemy or civilian so that no sounds they make (screams/gunfire) can be heard by others.
• Split Second: Effectively stop time around yourself.
• Bladed Hand: Slash a line in front of yourself, beheading mortal opponents.
• Unseen Aura: Become invisible (but not silent) to enemies and civilians nearby.
• (Perk) Unseen Passage: Remain crouched while sprinting.

Bloodlines 2 Brujah clan

Formerly a bunch of philosophers known as the "Learned Clan," at the time of Bloodlines 2, the Brujah are a gang of anti-establishment radicals known for their tempers. The dress code is tattoos, denim, and muscles. The Brujah fighting style in Bloodlines 2 is melee focused, sort of like a berserker class, with rewards for getting into the center of combat and tanking there.

The Brujah disciplines are Celerity, Potence, and Presence.

Brujah abilities

• (Passive) Brutality: After feeding, become flush with vampiric strength, increasing your melee damage.
• Taunt: Compel an opponent to attack you, dropping their weapon and taking increased damage.
• Lightning Strike: Target multiple opponents with a hail of unstoppable punches, dealing increased damage (and knockback) with a final punch.
• Charge: Surge forward, grabbing an enemy in your path and use them as a battering ram against other opponents you collide with.
• Earthshock: Slam the ground and fling surrounding enemies into the air.
• (Perk) Spark of Rage: Killing enemies without feeding still activates your clan passive.

Bloodlines 2 Lasombra clan

The Lasombra have some religious history but are mostly known for being ruthless assassins. It's trenchcoats and big crosses around here in the clan of silent killers. The Lasombra fighting style is striking from the shadows, similar to the Banu Haqim but with more of a focus on killing with control abilities than pure stealth.

The Lasombra disciplines are Dominate, Potence, and Oblivion.

Lasombra abilities:

• (Passive) Shadow Cloak: Feeding on enemies casts you in shadow, making you harder to see.
• Arms of Ahriman: Throw a shadow onto the ground, snaring enemies who will be trapped in place until damaged.
• Shadow Step: Teleport into the shadow of an enemy.
• Glimpse of Oblivion: Strike fear into an individual so they flee their post.
• Enter Oblivion: Cast a broad shadow, drawing others it touches into a temporary dimension separate from everyone else.
• (Perk) Stygian Shroud: Prevents mortals from attacking you while feeding.

Bloodlines 2 Toreador clan

The Toreador are the pop culture vamps: charming, seductive, and full of mind games. They're a clan of beautiful artists and socialites who kill with a kiss. Their combat style, when they deign to get blood under their nails, is all about speed and enchantment.

The Toreador disciplines are Celerity and Presence.

Toreador abilities:

• (Passive) Cat's Grace: Increased movement speed after feeding.
• Entrancing Kiss: Entrance an individual into becoming an ally that will defend you from opponents, lasting longer the weaker willed the target.
• Blink: Instantly dash to a target location.
• Beckon: Put an individual into a trance, making them walk towards where they last saw you.
• Blurred Momentum: Boost your reflexes to evade damage.
• (Perk) Fleetness: Relocation abilities will recharge over time.

Bloodlines 2 Tremere clan

The Tremere are a clan descended from mortal mages who conned their way into immortality with magic. They're still rather bookish and academic, and are basically blood sucking warlocks. When it comes to combat, they deal damage with ranged ability blood magic.

The Tremere disciplines are Auspex, Dominate, and Blood Sorcery.

Tremere abilities:

• (Passive) Corrosive Touch: Bodies dissolve after you feed on them.
• Cauldron of Blood: Boil an enemy's blood, making them scream, drawing nearby enemies and civilians.
• Recall: Mark your current location then teleport back to it, obliterating enemies standing where you reappear.
• Blood Curse: Curse an enemy to explode next time they take damage, dealing damage to surrounding targets.
• Blood Salvo: Conjure blood daggers you can throw at enemies.
• (Perk) Blood of Potency: Gives a chance when feeding to get twice as much blood from the last used ability.

Bloodlines 2 Ventrue clan

The Ventrue clan is an aristocratic bunch that prides itself on wealth and influence. Their mind games aren't based on sex appeal like the Toreador and instead are more about authoritarian control. Their combat style is all about deadly mind control, so all the damage without the actual melee.

The Ventrue disciplines are Dominate, Fortitude, and Presence.

Ventrue abilities:

• (Passive) Flesh of Marble: Become highly resistant to damage after feeding.
• Cloud Memory: Relax a target into forgetting you were there.
• Possession: See through an enemy's eyes and control their actions.
• Terminal Decree: Command a mortal to kill themselves.
• Mass Manipulation: Subdue enemies within range, preventing them from attacking, and apply all Domination abilities while active.
• (Perk) Resilience: Increases health restored by feeding.

It's hard out there for a Civ-like. Civilization 7 may have been divisive, but the bones of its competitors can still be seen poking out of the ground. Millennia, a Civ-like developed by C Prompt Games and published by Paradox last year just received a final update before being consigned to sink into the lone and level sand.

When Phil Iwaniuk reviewed Millennia he called it "rough-edged but worthwhile", with complaints about its UI and AI and few other things, but praise for its way of handling progress through the ages and "city improvement tile system." It sounded like the kind of game that could be significantly improved by a few additions, and while it did receive several—the final patch is update eight—it doesn't seem like enough was done to elevate it above the competition.

"With this patch," the announcement says, "we are sadly coming to the end of an age. This will be the final patch for Millennia, thanks to C Prompt for their work and support of this game. We at Paradox will no longer be active on community platforms for Millennia, but you can continue counting on us for support needs, and the game will remain available to play indefinitely."

That announcement highlights the final update bringing "a host of bugfixes, localization updates, and some added mod support", which the full patch notes go into more detail about. For instance, "Deployed Units (Envoys, Merchants, etc.) regain movement between turns while deployed" and "Conquering a Region with a 3rd nation's units inside the borders properly pushes out units that shouldn't be allowed inside the new owner's borders." There's nothing transformative in there, but at least a few last bugs were squashed before it sank beneath the sands of time.

Cities: Skylines 2 just got a free content update in the form of the Netherlands Region Pack. This will provide Netherland-loving players the opportunity to build up a Dutch-inspired city with a bunch of new service buildings and an eerily realistic cemetery.

"The interest and size of the Dutch Cities community is not a secret; it represents a large and very active side of the playerbase, which is passionate about urbanism, transit, and city building," a Paradox staff member, REV0, says in an official blog post. "Even during the production of original Region Packs, we as creators had an interest in working on a Netherlands Region Pack and saw the interest the community had in including this region.

"However, back then, the budget, manpower, and time constraints didn’t allow for the creation of a 9th Region Pack, but following the completion of the original packs and the positive reception of the content, our collective interest in a Netherlands Region Pack was re-ignited, and PDX gave us the green light."

The dev diary is pretty lengthy, but in it REV0 explains what kind of features players can expect in this Region Pack. There's medium row density zones aimed at replicating historic city centres, something that can mimic cities like Amsterdam, service buildings like two fire station variants, small clinics, a hospital with early 1920s design motifs, and an incredibly realistic cemetery.

"I wanted to include a cemetery in the pack in order to have an asset that players can customize to the max, deal with the deathcare properly as their cities grow larger with an aging population," REV0 explains. "As a result, the cemetery became the most complex asset of the pack, offering more than a dozen functional and beautification upgrades, having its own small gameplay loop. A proper shoutout is deserved here—Peanut—as he provided his technical knowledge when it was needed in order to get this complex asset working the way I intended it to."

The cemetery will be a standalone building that can begin functioning straight away. It also allows players to "customise your deathcare towards crematorium or burial sites," via upgrade choices.

"Around 60% of the Netherlands prefers cremation, due to the challenges and costs of finding a burial site," REV0 says. "Even then, these sites are 'rented', offering burial services for 10 to 30 years with yearly costs, making cremation a more affordable and respectable alternative." It may sound pedantic, but these are the kind of specifications that I, and I'm sure plenty of other Cities: Skylines players, appreciate seeing in things like Region Packs.

"Despite its long Developer Diary, the Netherlands Region Pack was made in a short time, and based on our experience with other Region Packs we worked on, the process was rather smooth," REV0 says. "As a personal note, this pack was special for all of us, since the Netherlands has always been the top suggestion for a Region Pack. I am glad that we were given the opportunity to work on it, and hopefully, you will enjoy the results of our work."

Good news, folks! Bloodlines 2 is now a vampire free-for-all. After revealing launch DLC that included two vampire clans, Lasombra and Toreador, Paradox and The Chinese Room have finally walked back the questionable decision, no longer locking away what are essentially two RPG classes.

Both clans will now be available in the base game at no extra cost, letting you flit around Seattle as a seductive monster or a manipulator of shadows.

"Thanks to our community for the frank feedback on Bloodlines 2 and the Premium Edition," said Bloodlines 2 executive producer Marco Behrmann. "That feedback made it clear: Lasombra and Toreador belong in the base game, so that is what we are doing."

Behrmann also thanked the developer for what has been a genuinely impressive turnaround for the concepts that will eventually become replacement DLC, a pair of story packs titled Loose Cannon and The Flower & The Flame, due out in 2026.

"We’re constantly impressed by their creativity and skill in weaving enticing narrative threads that expand on the main story in Bloodlines 2."

So the base game will now feature all six clans, the Deluxe Edition will include the Santa Monica Memories cosmetic pack (just some furniture for your flat), and the Premium Edition will include that DLC and an expansion pass, containing the new story packs.

This does mean less day one DLC, but honestly, who thinks that's a bad thing? Instead of paying extra for features that were designed in tandem with the rest of the game, we're getting new stories that will flesh out two characters—Brujah sheriff Benny and Toreador Primogen Ysabella—next year.

And thankfully this won't impact the release date. Bloodlines 2 is still launching on October 21.

The DLC was a bad call, there's no way around it, but while Paradox doesn't always make the right call initially, the publisher is one of the best when it comes to responding and reacting to feedback, and its leadership team owns their mistakes.

Last year, deputy CEO Mattias Lilja and chief creative officer Henrik Fåhraeus sat down with me for an exhaustive chat about what has been a tumultuous period for the company, and in 15 years of writing about games I've never had such a candid interview.

At the time, I wrote, "What's clear is that it would be a mistake to count Paradox out. While it seems to be bouncing between cancellations and delays and rough launches like an out of control pinball, it's been here before. The stakes have never been this high, and the problems have never been this high profile, but it's got a proven track record of weathering storms." And I'm hoping that Bloodlines 2 represents this bounce back.

Certainly, what I played earlier in the year gave me reasons to be excited. And when I played it again as the DLC (now not DLC) clans, I was still impressed.

So I'm not surprised there's been some kind of course correction. This happened with Cities: Skylines 2's first DLC, too, which was quickly refunded and released for free. Until it actually happened, though, I wasn't willing to bet Paradox would change its DLC plans so dramatically. The publisher had a bunch of different options, and it went with the best possible one—at least for us—so I'm happy to put my fangs away.

PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens wrote last month that Crusader King 3's then-upcoming DLC Coronation would provide "even more opportunities to be murdered spectacularly by your vassal." He was close, as it turns out, but a bit off the mark: It is in fact Paradox Interactive that's being spectacularly murdered by Crusader Kings 3 players, for once again blowing it with a DLC release.

One day after its launch, Coronations holds a "mostly negative" rating on Steam, driven by complaints about the minimal additions it makes to the games and the bugs it brings along with it.

"This is literally a DLC that doesn't change anything," one reviewer wrote. "I understand that it's a content pack, but it's at the level of a mod from a workshop, or a small free update, as an attention-grabber for a major update. But definitely not something that can be called DLC."

Another review called Coronations "a welcome addition" but also said it should've been put out as a free update: "Paradox, just make this one free, and re-evaluate what sort of content is worth being paid for in the future. You are just nickel and diming people at this point."

Even the positive reviews hammer Coronations for offering very little for the cost. One user wrote, "As someone who already paid for it, I think this should have been free or should be made free so everyone can use it," while another suggested players "buy it if you have some free money," but otherwise, "it's not really recommended."

Given the choice, most people in most cases would rather get stuff for free than have to pay for it, but in this case that doesn't seem to be at the root of the 'should be free' complaints. In a lengthy message posted to Steam, Crusader Kings 3 QA manager Riad apologized for the state of Coronations, saying it "was not up to the standard you deserve."

Riad said PDS Black, the Paradox studio working on Crusader Kings 3, has been "pouring enormous resources" into the development of the All Under Heaven expansion, which will expand the game across all of Asia. Because of that, other projects, including Coronations, have not been given the resources they need to do their jobs—something Riad said he wants to avoid in the future.

"As a studio, we’re taking a hard look at how we assign resources, and support our developers so that every release meets the expectations you rightfully have," Riad wrote. "For example, we will be more stringent about allowing last-minute changes to the game (which can cause issues like broken oaths). We will also ensure that we dedicate more time towards full-length playthroughs throughout the entire development cycle, to ensure that issues like these can’t slip through. This is about making sure the quality of every DLC lives up to the game that I, and many of you, love.

"Many of us on the team, myself included, joined Paradox as fans of the games. Meeting you at events (most recently in Visby!), hearing your stories, and seeing how much Crusader Kings III means to you is what makes this work so meaningful. That’s why it hurts so much when we fuck up like this. We don’t take your trust for granted, and I want to do my best to ensure we earn it back."

I have no doubt about the sincerity of the apology. Paradox's problem, as many people pointed out in the comments, is that this seems to happen a lot. Just a few weeks ago, Paradox was forced to walk back an obviously ill-conceived plan to lock two clans in Bloodlines 2 behind $30 DLC, although it has yet to specify exactly how it's "making adjustments" on that front. In 2024 the publisher apologized for an equally dumb DLC release for Cities: Skylines 2, and a few years prior to that it said sorry for literally years of general shittiness in Europa Universalis 4.

This has not gone unnoticed. "If this was the first time paradox was apologizing for a rushed, subpar DLC I might take this post seriously," Steam user marshall said in response to Riad's apology. "Sadly it's not even the first for CK3, I also play several other Paradox games and get the same ♥♥♥♥, the studio is banking on our good will to release crap and make more $ (less workers for a DLC = more profit). Good will is NOT infinite."

"While I appreciate the apology, it has been a trend across many updates or DLCs for all your games this last year or two," MadMax X added.

"Literally, I feel like I’ve read some variant of this apology a half dozen times," Xineate wrote.

A few also pointed out that while Paradox has apologized, it's also continuing to charge full price for the DLC. Coronations costs just $5/£4.29/€5 on Steam, so not a huge amount of money, but some Steam reviews say it's more akin to a Steam Workshop mod than actual DLC. Paradox did offer refunds on the botched Beach Properties DLC for Cities: Skylines 2 and made it free for everyone, but at this point there's no indication the same thing will happen here.

Paradox has put out a small patch, however, that aims to fix the worst of the bugs in Coronations, so at least it should work more or less properly now. The patch notes on that are below.

• Fixed the issue with always getting the Oathbreaker event, regardless of if you completed the oath or not
• The buildings needed for the three "build special oath buildings" oaths have been changed from tier 3 to tier 2
• The special oath buildings have had their costs and modifiers reduced across the board
• The special oath buildings have had some of their triggers simplified, so they need fewer of their requirements than they used to
• These oaths have also had the time you can do them increased from 10 years to 20 years
• Specifically for the spiritual one, switched the requirements from tier 3 to 2, and vice versa
• The Alliance oath has been changed from 5 alliances needed to 3
• Building Oath (the generic one) has been reduced from 10 buildings to 8, and the time available to do it has been increased (from 15 years to 20)
• Legendary Hunt has been changed from 3 to 1, and has had the time available increased (from 20 years to 40)
• Fixed the Prepare Heir oath decision, so it checks for the proper scope in its requirements, and also removed the gold cost
• Added two new modifiers for the AI, so if they choose a warlike oath, they will have an increased war chance, and similarly, if they have the peace oath, they will have a peace oath, which will decrease their war chance
• Removed health bonuses and maluses from Prepare the Heir rewards
• Added extra checks for the AI so they will try to take oaths that make sense
• Fixed the End the Struggle oath, so it correctly tells you which struggle area it is targeting, and massively increased the time it is available to you (from 20 years to 50)
• Increased the time available to do the Repent Oath from 10 years to 20 years
• Fixed Anointment Doctrines and Anointment activity type being available to faiths with Temporal Head of Faith (these are for Spiritual HoF faiths only); temporal HoF faiths have guaranteed access to regular coronation instead
• Fixed duplication bugs and self-crowning malus caused by temporal HoF being Coronation host
• Blocked the building oaths for Nomads and Tribals

First reported by Eurogamer, Paradox announced this weekend that PlayStation Store preorders of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 are being refunded with the instruction that customers renew their preorder after planned "adjustments" to the game and its price.

This is in response to the backlash over core content being locked behind a $30 DLC, an unforced error at the end of a long, challenging development across two studios⁠. Paradox noted that PlayStation customers will be able to place a new preorder for the game after it finally announces those adjustments on September 17th.

"Anyone who pre-ordered the Premium Edition through the PlayStation Store will be contacted and refunded starting Monday, September 8th," a Paradox representative wrote on the VTMB subreddit. "You will be able to pre-order your Premium Edition copy again later, before the release on October 21st. Please note that this is an intentional first step in our planned course of action leading up to September 17th to deliver the best possible experience for you at launch."

As for why this is only on PlayStation as opposed to other storefronts, our best guess is that the PlayStation Store won't allow the sort of partial refund a price change would require. So, Paradox has to cancel the orders and have customers place them again at the new price.

In contrast, there is leeway in Steam's refund policy for partial or full refunds for DLC that's cancelled or misses its promised release window. So, a Steam preorder customer might be able to receive a refund of the difference between the old and new price.

Some type of price change seems imminent, but it's still up in the air how much. The PlayStation Store refunds are the latest update on Paradox's controversial announcement last month that two of the six playable clans in Bloodlines 2 will be paywalled inside a $30 DLC—on top of the $60 price tag on the base game.

Unsurprisingly, that idea didn't go down well with players. Clans in Vampire: The Masquerade are effectively a combination of race and character class, and the original Bloodlines offered seven to pick from. To put it in perspective, just imagine if Baldur's Gate 3 locked one third of its classes⁠—say, the Warlock, Bard, Monk, and Barbarian⁠—behind a $30 DLC at launch.

Paradox announced last week that they will be "making adjustments" ahead of the launch of Bloodlines 2 in light of the backlash. However, we have to wait until September 17th for a full breakdown of whatever changes Paradox is making to Bloodlines 2's DLC and pricing.

Bloodlines 2 has had an infamously fraught development, beginning at Hardsuit Labs with an original release date scheduled for 2020. Paradox pulled the project from Hardsuit, citing concerns about quality, and rebooted it at Still Wakes the Deep developer The Chinese Room. Despite its turbulent history, PCG online editor Fraser Brown was surprised and impressed by his first hands-on, and it seemed like redemption was at hand for the troubled project.

But one third of the game's playable classes being locked behind a $30 DLC at launch⁠—raising the price of the full game to $90⁠—has effectively killed Bloodlines 2's new momentum and positive word of mouth. The best case scenario here would be a full mea culpa, folding all the clans into the $60 base game and lowering the price of the Premium Edition to reflect its relative reduction in value. However, a simple price drop with two of the clans remaining separate DLC isn't out of the question⁠—no matter how inadvisable.