WELCOME TO MASQUERADE VAMPIRE: THE BLOODLINES 2

I HAVE WOKEN UP IN AN ABANDONED BUILDING IN SEATTLE, A CENTURIES-OLD VAMPIRE WHO HAS BEEN IN A TORPOR FOR 100 YEARS. WHO FORCED ME INTO A SURPRISE SLUMBER? HOW DID I GET TO SEATTLE? AND WHY THE HECK AM I HEARING ANOTHER VAMPIRE IN MY HEAD? THESE TANTALISING QUESTIONS ARE JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG IN A GAME THAT UNEXPECTEDLY FEELS LIKE A CLASSIC PULP NOIR DETECTIVE YARN.

- By Fraser Brown

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, from my double helping of the game’s prologue, is very keen to let you embrace the power fantasy of being a supernatural predator, but it equally focuses on solving mysteries and crimes. Imagine splicing Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles with Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and you're close.

But let’s jump back a bit to the first question you might be asking yourself: who am I? Unlike Redemption or the first Bloodlines, which kicked you into the World of Darkness as a vampire, this time we play as the Nomad, who picks the nom de guerre Phyre - a vampire celebrity who’s not been forgotten despite these years of sleeping.

WAKEY WAKEY

Playing a character with so much power - even though you've lost much of it thanks to an as-of-yet unexplained ritual - and so much history is a very different experience. But developer The Chinese Room, you'll be glad to know, has not gone down the exposition dump route when it comes to introducing Phyre.

“[We're] deliberately leaving space for the player,” says narrative director Ian Thomas. “So if we went, ‘Here is your character, they’re like this, they have done this, all of these things,’ actually, in a way, it’s not important that they know all that backstory - at least to start with, because we are dumping them into a new and unfamiliar situation.”

Throughout the game you'll have chances to define your history, and that starts early on, when you describe a key moment from your past, and eventually reveal what vampire clan you belong to. But these moments are peppered throughout, letting you get a feeling for the character and the setting first, before you lock in their legacy. NPCs also play a role in filling in the blanks.