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VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE – BLOODLINES 2 is a brilliant undead mystery

- Fraser Brown

You are Phyre, an elder vampire of prodigious strength and no small amount of fame, forced to sleep for a hundred years. And people have been waiting for your return. You wake up in 21st century Seattle, bound by a curse and weighed down by the expectations of modern bloodsuckers.

Amid all this, you must carve out a place for yourself in this new city, along with an identity, even as you're nudged into deals and alliances, bending and adapting as you try to become what Seattle's nighttime residents need: a big scary vamp who can fix everything. Or break everything.

The story of Bloodlines 2's lost protagonist eerily encapsulates the state of the game itself: a long-awaited sequel with years of hopes and assumptions bearing down on it; an RPG that has to be an RPG, has to be a sequel, that strains against its bonds.

TO RPG OR NOT TO RPG

Bloodlines 2 is good, sometimes even great, and it absolutely sated my appetite for a blood-fuelled undead yarn. But it is a sequel in name only, and it never really enthusiastically embraces being an RPG. Given its predecessor's cult status, and the source material, that's bound to be a disappointment for some.

Instead, it's a conspiracy-laden mystery that's as much Raymond Chandler as it is Anne Rice. You've got a lot of questions in search of answers. What's the deal with the sigil binding you to Seattle? How did you even get here? And why do you have a Malkavian detective in your head? It's a buddy cop deal. Except one cop is an ancient vampire, and the other one is also a vampire, but he's dead, double-dead, and living inside his pal's noggin. And together they're going to clean up Seattle. While also killing a lot of ghouls.