If there's a recent game-dev story I'm ravenous to hear more about, it's this: what the hell happened with Hardsuit Labs' version of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2? If you can cast your mind back to the heady days of 2019, you might remember the game's initial announcement, when Paradox got Brian Mitsoda—writer on the original Bloodlines and narrative lead on HSL's Bloodlines 2—on stage to announce the series' revival with all manner of hullabaloo. The game was due out the following year.
A year later and the game was not out, but Mitsoda and creative director Ka'ai Cluney were suddenly and shockingly fired. In 2021, Hardsuit lost the project entirely. In 2023, Paradox revealed it had given it over to The Chinese Room, which had dramatically overhauled the game in its own image. Today, we are six days away from that game's release, and hoi polloi like us still don't know any more about what went down with HSL's Bloodlines than we did several years ago.
