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Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has been through a hell of a journey to reach us. At last night’s Opening Night Live from Gamescom, Paradox revealed the long-delayed game finally has a release date, October 21. What the publisher didn’t boast about was is that it is locking two out of the six playable clans behind paid day-one DLC, and it’ll cost you an extra $30 to unlock them. A third of the ways to play the game.

Expensive day-one DLC was once the most loathed concept in gaming. Back in 2012 it was the talk of the industry, as companies deliberately developed a chunk of the launched game with the intention of hiding it behind a further paywall, and people understandably hated it. Times moved on, and now we’re screwed over in all manner of different ways, most usually seeing significant portions of games sectioned off behind so-called “battle passes,” where we’re expected to not just pay once but to buy new ones multiple times throughout the year! Yay video games! But Paradox is kicking us old-school with Bloodlines 2 by deciding that a full third of how you can play the game will require you to fork out 50 percent of the original asking price again. The cheapest version of the game will cost you $60 on PC, but if you want to buy everything they developed for launch, it’ll cost you an extraordinary $90. Not even the $70 “Deluxe Edition” will secure you either of the missing clans. (Thanks RPS.)

A huge part of how the original Bloodlines played was based on the clan you chose at the start. It affected not just more common features like stats, but entirely changed how you approached the game. Different clans within the world treated you accordingly, missions were experienced differently as a result, and the means by which you could approach the RPG quests were all affected by who you were. Play as Brujah and you were a mighty warrior but very vulnerable to “frenzy,” where you’d fully lose control of your bloodlust. But pick a Toreador and you were a schmoozer, expert in socializing, but weakened by your inability to turn away from the truly beautiful. Clearly these made for very different experiences of the game. But now, in Bloodlines 2, if you want to be a Toreador and play that way, it’s going to cost you an awful lot more.

As the game’s own FAQ makes clear, these choices are not cosmetic.

“How will the dialogue options differ in each playthrough?” asks one of the questions. The answer:

The dialogue options differ depending on which clan you’ve chosen and what choices you’ve made throughout the story. When hunting for Blood Resonance, specific disciplines and outfit choices can also affect NPCs on the street.

It also notes that “each clan offers new, unique abilities, playstyles, and distinct outfits.” Play style seems a hell of a thing to lock to day-one DLC.

For a while, Bloodlines 2 did look to have become vaporware, after its original development under Hardsuit Labs fell apart in 2021 following its former leads being fired. Then in 2023 it re-emerged, now being developed by The Chinese Room, the studio best known for their walking sims, which has had its own turbulent few years. Given The Chinese Room only released their most recent game, Still Wakes the Deep, in June of last year, it seemed unlikely that Bloodlines 2 could be imminent. But here we are! It’s out in just a couple of months.

We’ve reached out to Paradox to ask what has motivated the decision to lock away such a significant chunk of the core game behind day-one DLC. (Although we can guess it’s at least in part, “We desperately need to recoup some of the costs of the last six years of development across two different studios under multiple different leaderships for the sequel to a game that came out in 2004.”) We’ll report back if they respond.

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