Nightclubs are a central component of the overall Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines experience. They're a little like hubs for each of the game's areas, but what they really bring to the table is ambiance: Music, lights, sketchy characters, bits of stickiness you don't want to think about too much, the occasional side quest, and dancing. Lots and lots of dancing.
Bloodlines had some pretty wild (and weird) dance floor moves, and I am incredibly pleased that they'll be returning for Bloodlines 2. And I don't just mean that there will be clubs and dancing in the game. Lead user interface and experience designer Rachel Leiker told Kotaku that the actual arms-flailing, hips-twisting, frenetic Bloodlines breakdown original is back.
"Night clubs are kind of core to the experience of being a vampire," Leiker said. "One of the things that people enjoyed from the first game is dancing, so of course we were going to have it in our game as well."
"We actually took that directly from the first game and one of our animators studied it very intensely,” she said. “He actually did the motion capture for it in our game. He’s very dedicated. They did motion capture for a bunch of dances, and it was like a big party in the mocap room."
This is such good news—not just that the dance is back, but that the design team recognized that it was worth the effort of making it happen. It probably won't carry any weight with players who missed out on the original (and might even seem pretty damn weird) but as a sign that the new team gets it, it means something.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is set to come out in March 2020. Here's 20 minutes of pre-alpha gameplay to sink your teeth into.
Dare to compare:
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
