Summary
Rumours of Troika classic Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines potentially getting the remaster or remake treatment have surfaced. They’ve come from two places: one being the fairly standard source of poster on a game leak-obsessed section of Reddit, the other being rather more unorthodox. It’s not often a metal band allegedly pause mid-concert to ask the crowd if they know an old game’s getting a revamp. Yet, as spotted by Perfectly Crimson Gamer and Europeanvideogamer, that appears to be exactly what happened at a gig industrial metal band Genitorturers played in Brooklyn on October 15th. According to a Reddit post from an alleged attendee of this concert “it was great. but at one point, they asked us if we knew about VTMB - then they said they’re remaking the game”. PC Gamer report that Nicholas Golden, a member of another band who performed as part of the Genitorturers gig, has corroborated the post’s assertions. Genitorturer have an established link to the original Bloodlines, with their tune Lecher Bitch being played at a bar called The Last Round that’s frequented by some of the game’s Anarch bloodsuckers. Meanwhile, in the equally rowdy locale of the r/GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit, a user who claims to have previously given people a heads up that Forza Horizon 6 would be set in Japan alleged that they’ve heard about Bloodlines coming back via a remaster rather than a remake. “I can confirm that it is in the works. NOT a Remake, but a Remaster, with some caveats” was their exact wording. The user then went on to stress that the industry’s especially volatile right now in terms of games in the works being “one slip or one economic downturn away from being cancelled”. That’s not inaccurate, but it also does feel a bit like someone delberately covering their basis so they can easily point to the ‘plans might have changed’ sign if people pull them up on their claims further down the line. All in all, I’m inclined to treat all of this with a heavy dose of salt grains. The Chinese Room developed follow-up Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 came out this time last year and generally struggled to reignite the magic of the game whose name it shared. Even Bloodlines 2’s former creative director eventually came out and said it shouldn’t have been given the name it was. From the verdicts I’ve seen it’s not a terrible game, but also not one you’d expect to have had a positive influence on any behind-the-scenes efforts to get a full-blown re-do of the original on the go. That’s not to say such a thing isn’t happening and it’d be lovely to see a studio like Nightdive given a crack at it. There’s also a chance Genitorturers were mistakenly referring to Bloodlines 2 as a remake of the original Vampire, which would be as funny as it would be tragic for fans of the series if it turns out to be the case.