Watch 20 minutes of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 gameplay

"It looks messy, but in that sense it's a faithful sequel," PC Gamer editor Phil Savage told me after his 20 minute preview of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, which you can watch above. 

The game is in pre-alpha, so everything may be subject to change (like those dance moves at the beginning, maybe), but what we got to see of Seattle looks promising in a few ways.

Phil wasn't actually playing the game, to be clear, but he got to direct the decision-making for the PR rep in control. "For context, I ended up roleplaying a deadbeat vampire asshole who thinks he's got the skills to coerce people but always fucks it up and ends up in combat," he told me. "This was, of course, accidental at first, but increasingly deliberate."

I like the sound of that, and the variety of dialogue options.

The combat looks a bit rough in this early state—though I find the wildly ragdolling enemies endearing, as they've gone out of fashion—but again, this was a pre-alpha demo, and Bloodlines 2 isn't out until March 2020.

At the PC Gaming Show earlier this week, Hardsuit Labs also revealed a new Bloodlines 2 trailer, which you can watch here. Below, I've embedded the show segment where Hardsuit's Brian Mitsoda and Cara Ellison take the stage to talk about their approach to writing vampire stories.