Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Hunting and Feeding Dev Diary

Welcome, Kindred, to this Bloodlines 2 Dev Diary from the team at The Chinese Room.  Tonight’s diary is about hunting and feeding, both in combat scenarios and the more social setting of Seattle. Feeding is at the heart of the game loop and fantasy of being a vampire so if you faint at the sight of blood, read no further.

– Project Creative Director, Alex Skidmore

Feeding is a really important part of the vampire fantasy, and so from a gameplay perspective, we were set on making it a fundamental part of the player’s actions and strategies. You’ll be doing a lot of it – Phyre’s a little-and-often kinda drinker; that helps keep the beast in check- plus it’s your main source of healing, and critical to using your powerful discipline abilities. A lot of incentive for us to make it feel good!

Your main concern will be your surroundings – getting spotted feeding on the streets is a blatant Masquerade violation, and more violent types won’t be content to let you feed on their friends unscathed, so you’ll want to isolate your targets. Feeding in the swing of combat is risky, but not impossible – if you’re mindful of which direction you start a feed from, for example, your victim can help soak up a lot of gunfire for you!

One aspect that was really challenging was presentation, from a first-person perspective. Feeding in first person doesn’t really show you much at best, and looks silly at worst, but a simple cut in and out of third-person can also be disorienting and feels a bit disconnected. What we settled on uses a bit of both, with some basic cinematic action cutting techniques to maintain continuity of motion, and enough first-person action at the end to get you settled into your next move. It’s subtle, but I think it goes a long way in helping the flow of the game in hectic situations!

– Senior Game Designer, Max Bottomley 

As a vampire, Phyre has access to senses that are much more powerful than that of a human. Whilst exploring Seattle, Phyre will be able to tap into these Heightened Senses, enhancing her ability to smell, see and hear her enemies. By concentrating on these senses, Phyre will detect the beating hearts of nearby prey even through walls, allowing her to choose just the right strategy to pounce on them.

When it came to visualising this, we wanted our concepts to reflect the vampiric nature of homing in on your next meal, sensing and smelling blood through the air. We wanted Phyre to feel like a predator stalking her enemies using all her vampiric gifts. To do this we wanted to tap into a striking art style for this part of the gameplay, something that highlighted Phyre’s vampiric lust for blood while also being very clear for the player experience.

Art by Jordan Grimmer. A concept of heightened senses exploring how to differentiate between humans.

As you can see from the concept art, once we tap into our Heightened Senses we enter a visually different version of our current environment, one where enemies stand out brightly, their blood pumping. Phyre can sniff out these potential dangers and then plan accordingly her plan of action. We wanted the visual language of enemies to really pop out from the drained background in this mode. Phyre is hyper-focusing on her prey, so we wanted enemies to burn brightly in the world, their blood shimmering even through walls.

Art by Michele Nucera. Explorations of how feeding could look.

Once we get up close and personal, that’s when we can feed. We wanted the feeding to feel like an intimate experience between you and the victim – biting someone’s throat will always give you a sudden rush of power. Drinking blood is a way to restore your powers and by doing so will become an addictive experience for the player.

We wanted the action of feeding to reflect the visceral nature of stealing life from a beating heart, taking life from a host, and transferring it to the player. Above we explored a few ways we could show this through the reaction to Phyre’s vision as the blood enters her system. This level of exploration, creating many different ideas and iterations, is key when we’re trying to find something that could work for a feature like this.

– Senior Concept Artist, Jordan Grimmer and Lead Concept Artist, Michele Nucera

Art by Michele Nucera. Get up close and personal with your victim.

Blood Resonance Events 

Not only is Seattle brought to life with people going about their own business, including NPCs reacting to the player (perhaps even running away in terror!) it’s also a place where the player can hunt!

As you move around the city, you’ll be able to track and hunt NPCs that have the potential to become fully resonated with a specific type of blood to feed on. Track these NPCs down using Heightened Senses and knowledge of the city, then use charm, fear, or anger to convince and bend them to your will.

Very early on we wanted these events to feel like something players would want to go and investigate as they pop up around the city, I like to refer to these events as vampire candy for players to track, follow, and feed on! Social Feeding is a key part of the players’ time in our Seattle, and revolves around influencing the NPCs in certain ways – maybe you’ll stumble upon someone angry that the ATM has stolen their card and you can take that anger and feed on it. Maybe someone’s scared after missing the last bus home, and chasing them down a dark alley will tip them into terror and give you the Social Feed you’re craving.

It’s been great working on a system where the NPCs display very raw emotion letting the player really lean into the vampire fantasy allowing them to interact with the denizens of Seattle in a number of different ways. You can use abilities, conversations, or just plain terrify them then reap the rewards with a careful feed.

We wanted to give players the freedom to hunt the way they want but it was also important that players need to be mindful of how and where they feed to avoid breaking the Masquerade! Social Feeding is a slower process so it’s best to lure victims to secluded areas.

Explaining to animators that I want an animation of someone cowering like a shocked actor from a 1950s horror movie then watching those animations come to life… Chef’s Kiss!

It’s been really great to just sit and think, wouldn’t it be great if Phyre is approached by a mugger and threatened… only to have them turn and flee in fear once they realise what Phyre is!  I’m really looking forward to seeing how players choose to tackle the hunt and feed within the city area itself.

– Project Lead Game Designer, Gavin Hood

Don’t miss the next DD where we sink our teeth deeper into the intricacies of Blood Resonance!