Interviews
‘Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2’ – Here’s What We Learned at Penny Arcade Expo
At this year’s Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, the team behind Vampire: The Masquerade showed up in force to debut several projects, including the announcement of the future of Bloodlines II. The game is now coming in 2024, courtesy of new developer The Chinese Room.
This may seem like a massive departure if you’re familiar with The Chinese Room’s previous work, which includes Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and the forthcoming Still Wakes the Deep. Bloodlines II is supposedly a choice-based action RPG, while TCR’s creative output is mostly narrative adventure games.
They do have a plan here, however. At PAX, I was ushered into an inordinately creepy meeting room in the official Vampire: The Masquerade booth to hear all about it.
“We had a different product vision around this one,” Sean Greaney told me, “and at that point it was time to find a studio that shared that vision.”
At Paradox Interactive, Greaney holds the ominous title of Vice President of World of Darkness, which encompasses Vampire and all the horror RPGs like Werewolf: The Apocalypse that share its setting.
“We went out and we spoke to a lot of studios,” Greaney said. “There were a few factors in there because of the franchise we’re in. One of those factors is obviously the ability to handle a narrative in a mature, adult way, and also an ability to handle narratives that are very grounded in what’s still very much our world with an angle on them. That’s very much the World of Darkness, but also the Chinese Room.”
Bloodlines II – a long-awaited sequel to the cult 2004 hit Bloodlines – had been announced in 2019 as being under development at Hardsuit Labs, the Seattle-based developer behind now-shuttered FPS Blacklight: Retribution. Several of the original game’s writers were also said to be returning for the sequel.
Not quite two years later, Paradox revealed it had removed Hardsuit Labs as the developer on Bloodlines II, due to what Grady calls “a diversion of visions” with Paradox. That was it for new news on Bloodlines II until Sept. 2.
The creative director on this new Bloodlines II is Alex Skidmore. “When The Chinese Room became part of Sumo Group, which is one of the UK’s largest developers, the goal of that was to create games that had more action, larger-scale games,” Skidmore told me at PAX. “We were developing concepts around that when Paradox approached us with the opportunity for Bloodlines II. For us, that was perfect timing. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
The Chinese Room had already expanded to a crew of over 100 developers as part of its work on the forthcoming Still Wakes the Deep, which put it into a better position to make a game the size of something like Bloodlines II. It’s also being supported by several other internal teams at Sumo Digital. Skidmore himself is a relatively recent hire at TCR, and has previously worked on games in the Fable and Gears of War series.
“We see Bloodlines II as taking a big step forward in trying to map out our future,” Skidmore said. “That really drew me. I really liked the idea that there was ambition there to make these games, and these are the kinds of games I love to make.”
The Chinese Room effectively started Bloodlines II when it took over the project in 2021. Its new game is still set in Seattle, and takes place in 2024, during a massive, once-a-century snowstorm that’s paralyzed the city. While this is still distinctly set in the same world as Bloodlines – as well as other recent Vampire video games, such as last year’s Swansong – Bloodlines II picks up 20 years later.
In TCR’s Bloodlines II, for the first time in a Vampire adaptation, you’ll play as an elder vampire rather than a freshly-turned novice. While Skidmore was cagey about further details, your character begins Bloodlines II as having just awakened from a long slumber, which means you’ll have no idea what to make of 21st-century human or vampire society at the start of the game.
“In this one, Seattle is a completely dominated Camarilla city,” Skidmore says, “as opposed to Los Angeles in Bloodlines which was technically an anarch state. So here you have this whole political system. Everything’s under [the Camarilla’s] control, and then at the start of our game, all that’s in jeopardy. That’s what our story explores.”
Interviews
How ‘The Strangers: Chapter 1’ Is Only the First Act in an “Expanding Stranger-Verse” [Interview]
Out this week is The Strangers: Chapter 1, the first installment of a new reboot trilogy from director Renny Harlin (A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Master, Deep Blue Sea). While Harlin previously detailed fresh plans for the overarching trilogy, Chapter 1 first aims to recreate the visceral terror of Bryan Bertino’s original film.
It also lays the groundwork for what’s ahead, introducing the peculiar small town of Venus, Oregon.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Harlin, producer Courtney Solomon, and executive producer/star Madelaine Petsch (“Riverdale”) about the seeds planted for Chapters 2 and 3 within The Strangers: Chapter 1 ahead of its release in theaters this Friday, May 17, 2024.
Based on the original 2008 cult horror franchise, the project features Petsch as Maya, who drives cross-country with her longtime boyfriend, Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), to begin a new life in the Pacific Northwest. When their car breaks down in Venus, Oregon, they’re forced to spend the night in a secluded Airbnb, where they are terrorized from dusk till dawn by three masked strangers.
There’s no question that rebooting The Strangers with not one but three movies, all telling one continuous, evolving story, is ambitious. While Renny Harlin was more than up to the task, Courtney Solomon shares what made the director the perfect collaborator on a project that’s more like a miniseries than a straight reboot.
The Strangers – Chapter 1. Photo Credit: John Armour
“Obviously, he has a horror pedigree from the past, and we’re all aware of what it is,” Solomon tells us. “I was looking for somebody who was a great shooter, so I was looking for somebody who would work with me so that I could worry about story and character, which is where my strength lies. In this particular thing, you’re more taking on a sort of showrunner role because it’s a giant movie and somebody that could then give me the Hitchcockian shots that I was looking for to build the suspense and the tension.
Solomon continues, “Together, we could actually blend our talents and our resources, obviously with everybody else on the crew and the amazing cast and Mads and the whole thing. I had been a fan of a bunch of Renny’s work for a long time. I always regaled him as one of the top shooters. When I sent him this 289-page script, he was down for the journey because everybody knows Renny will go on any journey. He’s an explorer.“
Chapter 1 mostly adheres to the familiar beats of Bertino’s film, but with a few noteworthy teases of where the trilogy will head next. Part of that stems from the town where protagonists Maya and Ryan find themselves navigating the locals’ quirks. Some residents are spotted in the background only, like Richard Brake, surely to play a larger role in some capacity, right?
Harlin teases what’s ahead, “Obviously, there are some interesting actors there, and the idea is to introduce the town and some of those actors we’ll see in all three movies, some of them in two, some of them only in one. But definitely, my goal was to introduce a town without, by any means, making it look like a madhouse of crazy, weird characters with interesting faces that could be completely innocent, or maybe some of them could be something more than what’s on the surface.”
Madelaine Petsch as Maya in The Strangers. Photo Credit: John Armour
It’s no spoiler to say that Petsch spends most of Chapter 1 in an intense state of fear due to the cabin siege by the masked trio. As palpable as Maya’s fear of her attackers can be, there’s also a defiance that pokes through. When asked whether that may be truer to Maya’s core or hint toward her overarching arc, Petsch offers more insight into her character.
“I think a person can be two things at once,“ Petsch reflects. “Of course, she was fearful for her life, she was fearful for the possibility of losing Ryan, but she is at heart a stubborn, defiant individual who is resilient and tenacious and won’t back down. So, I think it is definitely a little bit of a keyhole into the future.“
Bloody Disgusting also asked Solomon whether The Strangers: Prey at Night factored into the new trilogy in the process of evolving the story, and the producer expanded more on what to expect. That comes with the emphasis that Chapter 1 is only the first act of the story.
Solomon explained, “We were trying to make our own flavor, but we looked at both that were done. I mean, the first chapter in this, really, is like using the DNA of the original because it was done so well, and it’s the setup for this really amazing story that we’re telling. Why try to improve on something that was done so well as far as the DNA is concerned, the basic beats? Then, we customize to what we’re doing. Also, there’s a new horror audience out there that’s never seen the original. All we’re doing is expanding The Strangers-verse. I knew the OG people would go with us on that part of the journey because this is not over until you watch the end of Chapter 3. If you want to judge this version of The Strangers, you have to go through all the chapters. That’s what this is.”
“But I think they’re going to be very satisfied because we never changed the tone at all through that. In fact, it gets more intense, not less intense. And movie two was nothing like movie one at all. It’s not a repeat in any way,” he adds. “It’s an evolution, both from the point of view of the protagonist and actually being there, if this really happened to you, we go beat by painful beat. That’s the horror. And a little glimpse further into who’s behind the mask without them ever giving a speech or us coming up with some dumb explanation.“
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