I've returned to Seattle for the first time since February. Not the real Seattle, of course. I'd probably get deported. But the ominous, permanently dark Seattle created by The Chinese Room for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2.
Earlier in the year, I was drinking blood and getting up to mischief as a Tremere vampire, and then a Ventrue Vampire, for PC Gamer's exclusive first hands-on with the long-awaited RPG. This time, though, I've been playing around with the two DLC clans: Toreador and Lasombra.
The Lasombra clan is a particularly interesting option. They're quite naughty, even for vampires. Power-hungry and cruel, the clan murdered its titular founder and then co-founded the Sabbat, a loose-knit group of vampires who believe in embracing their inhumanity. In the first Bloodlines, they were not your friends.
But while the Sabbat still exists, there was a messy breakup, and now a big chunk of the Lasombra clan have joined the ranks of the Camarilla, the Sabbat's traditional enemy. Freshly woken from a century-long slumber, Phyre must decide to do the same.
This creates an interesting friction in conversations with other vamps, some of whom won't exactly trust you. But the clan isn't above playing ball and helping their fellow Camarilla members, and they prefer to act as the power behind the throne. So even with my dark past looming over me, I was still able to gain the Camarilla's favour with sweet words.
I really dig the Lasombra's whole vibe. They've got a lot of the Devil in them, with an aesthetic to match—glamarous Satanism. I'm into it so much that, after playing, I went ahead and bought myself a pair of inverted crucifix earrings. As a deeply uncool man in his 40s, this was probably foolish.
You're going to be thinking about shadows a lot if you make Phyre a member of the Lasombra clan.
You're going to be thinking about shadows a lot if you make Phyre a member of the Lasombra clan. When the time for talk is over and the fangs come out, shadows are your friends. You can use them to harm and trap enemies standing in front of you, giving you some breathing room when you're juggling a larger group of foes. And you can slip into them, reappearing behind an enemy, where you can score a quick kill.
The Chinese Room warns you right off the bat that Lasombra is a hard-to-master clan, and I definitely found myself dying with a bit more frequency. Their abilities are a bit more tactical and situational than those of the other clans, but their backstory and mastery of shadows makes them a compelling pick.
Toreador might be a more familiar clan if you've played the first Bloodlines. They're the sexy gang. Seduction, manipulation, flashy clubs, fancy galleries, ostentatious outfits—they are proudly extra.
As Fabien—the voice inside your head—will remind you, the Toreador have a close relationship with the Camarilla, which will come in handy as you navigate Seattle's undead political situation. I was a bit disappointed not to spot many Toreador-specific dialogue options in the early section of the game I played, however, but the generic flirty, seductive options felt even more appropriate this time around.
Their seductive qualities also bleed into combat. The first ability you'll gain lets you kiss a foe, temporarily making them an ally. The rest of your abilities are split between speed and more seduction. So you're uncommonly fast even for a vampire, and able to bend enemies to your will: a handy skillset. Though there's nothing in the Toreador repertoire quite as impressive as the Ventrue's puppeteering power, which lets them force entire groups to break their own necks.
I'm still leaning towards Ventrue or Tremere for my first playthrough, but I'll absolutely be cosying up to the other clan leaders so I can add some Lasombra and Toreador powers to my skillset—something Phyre is able to do as an elder.
Making them DLC seems like a big mistake.
So both clans are welcome additions to Bloodlines 2. But making them DLC seems like a big mistake. Paradox and The Chinese Room already have an uphill struggle ahead of them. The game's incredibly tumultuous development, and the big changes that the team's made to the game's formula, have raised a lot of doubts. Until I played it earlier in the year, I didn't have high hopes.
Fans of blood-sucking RPGs have become frustrated; a state of affairs only exacerbated by the frequent delays. Paradox and The Chinese Room now need to take a leaf out of the Toreador playbook and lay on the charm. Thick. And upselling prospective players before the game's even out is possibly the worst way to do that.
Launch DLC is pretty common these days, but it doesn't make it any less annoying. Some inessential cosmetics, though, like the Santa Monica Memories DLC, are less offensive. Wee goodies for anyone who fancies shelling out a bit more—OK, fine. But Shadows & Silk isn't just a little extra.
The clan system is at the core of Bloodlines 2. It's effectively your class. This isn't a bit of throwaway DLC—it's something that's central to the game. There's justification for this sort of thing when it comes in the form of post-launch support. You've played the game already, so here are a couple of new clans that you can buy. The fee justifies the extra time it's taken to develop them.
But Shadows & Silk has been made in conjunction with the rest of Bloodlines 2. It's been designed to be experienced at launch. This is not "new"; it's effectively part of the base game. But it's been purposefully siloed away to encourage players to shell out more cash. It's just a bad look.
And this coming from someone who has long defended Paradox's DLC practises. In its internally developed grand strategy games in particular, it always goes hard on DLC, but there's a crucial difference between that and what's going on here.
While games like Stellaris and CK3 have so much DLC you'd need to take out a second mortgage to grab it all, these expansions add entirely new features, they're accompanied massive free patches that add just as many meaningful new mechanics, and they're what keep these games alive and novel for years after launch. They're good for the health of the game, benefiting everyone—even players who'll never buy them.
Carving out something as standard as RPG classes to sell them before a game's even launched adds absolutely nothing to Bloodlines 2. It's exclusively a money-making move, and not even a good one, that benefits neither the game nor the people playing it. Simply put, Silk & Shadows should be free.
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