Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 latest dev diary dives into blood resonance and clan abilities

The latest developer diary from the team behind Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is now available to read and contains a deep dive into blood resonance and clan abilities featuring The Chinese Room’s Lead Game Designer, Gavin Hood, Senior Game Designer, Max Bottomley, Senior Concept Artist, Jordan Grimmer, and Senior Narrative Designer, Arone LeBray. You can read below for full details:

Dev Diary #20: Blood Resonance

Welcome, Kindred, to this Bloodlines 2 Dev Diary from the team at The Chinese Room.  Tonight, we want to talk to you about our Blood Resonance feature.  For those unfamiliar with Vampire: The Masquerade, this is blood that is emotionally charged. A valuable commodity for an experienced elder vampire like Phyre.

Our vision of Phyre as an elder is that they have accrued many clan abilities over their 400 years as a vampire, but the incident that brought them to Seattle has locked away their connection to them. By using resonant blood and drinking the blood of the Clan Contacts you can restore Phyre’s connection to the abilities that aren’t native to your chosen clan.  For more on the specific clan abilities, please read our previous Clan Highlights: Brujah, Tremere, Banu Haqim and Ventrue.

– Project Creative Director Alex Skidmore 

Determining what Resonance a vessel has makes feeding more than just a pit stop. Most vampires observe their victims from a distance or engage them in conversation to feel them out.

-Vampire: the Masquerade 5^th edition

Blood Resonance Mechanics

Blood Resonance is an important part of your journey when exploring the city. It feeds (pun intended) into how you tailor Phyre’s abilities to match your vampiric playstyle and fantasy.

When exploring Seattle you can find pedestrians with one of three potential blood resonances: Melancholic (feeling anxious or afraid), Sanguine (feeling aroused/sexual attraction), and Choleric (feeling annoyed or angry). This is something only a vampire can know so you need to use your Heightened Senses to identify these pedestrians. Once found, you need to “turn” these pedestrians fully resonated. This is done through conversations, in which you will attempt to manipulate your victim’s emotions as needed.

With this feature, it was important to us that roleplaying affected the outcomes of these conversations, so the way you act throughout the game determines what conversation options are available. Also, your appearance is an important factor in these conversations, so choose your wardrobe wisely!

If you manage to “turn” the pedestrians, they will become fully resonated and react accordingly. This means they might start a fight with you, run from you in terror, or even find you irresistibly attractive, all of which increases the resonant blood of that type gained from feeding on them.

Whilst these are great ways to gain resonated blood, they aren’t the only way! You can find events happening around the city – highlighted on the map – where NPCs are already fully resonated allowing players to skip the conversation and jump straight into the feeding.

Either way, you are attempting to accrue enough blood of different resonance types to ultimately increase the range of the abilities you can use, and this is where Clan Contacts come into the mix.

Once you are Sheriff of Seattle, Clan Contacts, such as Mrs Thorn (clan Tremere) at Wake The Dead Café, will offer to aid you in restoring your connection to the abilities of their clan by drinking their blood.  A pre-requisite is collecting the required amounts of the resonant blood for the ability you wish to “re-learn”.  Once collected you can drink the Clan Contact’s blood, adding the ability to the Ability Tree to unlock with Ability Points.

I’m really looking forward to seeing your reactions to the pedestrian conversations and can’t wait to see what combinations of abilities you all put together! See you in the dark alleyways of Seattle.

– Lead Game Designer Gavin Hood

Cross-Clan Ability Combos

As your key to unlocking clan abilities beyond your clan’s base set, Blood Resonance opens up a lot of options for players who like to experiment. You’ll find abilities that already befit your bloodline much easier to unlock, and generally will suit your style of play best. For instance, a Banu Haqim Phyre can get hold of blood sorcery powers relatively easily, but if you’re committed, all abilities can eventually be gotten hold of.

To collect resonant blood even faster, certain abilities induce a blood resonance on their own – Brujah’s Taunt will fill people with rage, causing them to gain Choleric blood resonance right away.

There’s some really strong ability combinations available, as well as some silly ones! I’m not sure if Earthshock is suited to a sneaky build, but it does make breaking stealth more dramatic. Mass manipulation can be used in a few more ways, and there’s no shortage of things you’ll want to do inside of stopped time (Split Second).

Personally, I like to have multiple relocate abilities unlocked so I can adapt my movement to different situations.

Unlocking a clan’s abilities also gives you access to that clan’s perk, which you can stack up with others for a powerful edge as you progress through the game. You’ll definitely want to collect a few of them if you’re looking to reach the apex of what an elder vampire can be.

– Senior Game Designer Max Bottomley

Visualising Heightened Senses

Following our previous post, in which we explored Phyre’s heightened senses, the next step was all about how we could differentiate what we see to easily show the player what kind of prey they’re dealing with. We called this part of Phyre’s senses “Blood Resonance,” where we visualise the type of person we’re hunting based on the scent of the blood pumping through their veins.

When it came to concepting the visual style of this feature, we needed to consider a few different factors. Firstly, the level of danger a person has in relation to Phyre. Are they unaware of your presence? Are they actively searching for a threat, or are they just a bit agitated or worried after they’ve caught a glimpse of you in the shadows? Additionally, we wanted to visualise a way to show the types of emotions that enemies and the public are feeling too, are they angry? Lustful? Fearful? These types of blood resonance may just come in handy while exploring Seattle.

For the concept itself, we felt like a good direction would be colour-coding the types of blood resonance enemies and the public are experiencing. When they’re idle and unaware of us, a cool blue signifies their calm demeanour. When they’re actively hostile, a vivid red to show their blood pumping, their silhouette almost on fire.

As you are exploring the world, we hope that this feature will be a great tool to hunt down Phyre’s prey while keeping her safe in the underbelly of Seattle.

- Senior Concept Artist, Jordan Grimmer

Writing the Blood Resonance Conversations

Some Kindred are picky eaters. Some of them prefer to hunt specific prey that fit their preferred tastes. In Bloodlines 2, Phyre will sometimes need to deal with fellow night-dwellers who desire certain delicious meals.

Behind the scenes, we wanted to look at what it would feel like to go hunting for specific prey like this. Seattle is populated by people who have an inclination to certain types of Resonance in their blood. Maybe they are Choleric, prone to anger if pushed too far. Perhaps they are merely Melancholic, having a bad day and fearful of what the future holds? Or maybe they are Sanguine in their mood, ready for… love?

The key for us was that merely by being prone to these feelings, their blood wasn’t quite ripe yet. This is where our Blood Resonance conversations come in. Phyre needs to search out these people in Seattle and give them that little extra push. And not everyone will respond to the same type of push! What might push a Lustful Businesswoman to be ready for a romantic dalliance with someone who appears to have wealth won’t work if you want to terrify a Fearful sex worker into running for his life.

Phyre will need to use all the tools at their disposal. It starts with a hunt through city streets to find the right person, then sizing up what approach to use. If dressed like a wealthy partygoer, will this potentially fearful Biker be properly terrified? And even if the right clothing is selected, what if Phyre says the wrong thing? Or maybe Phyre is strong enough that they can rely on their vampiric abilities in the conversation to properly prepare the meal they crave?

After all, everyone likes a bit of seasoning on their midnight snack.

– Senior Narrative Designer Arone LeBray

Our players knowledgeable in the lore of Vampire: The Masquerade may wonder if playing as Ventrue Phyre will be much more difficult, giving Ventrue Bane in the 5th Edition forces them to drink only from a preferred “type”. Your feeding in game won’t be limited at any point – the mark on your hand has affected not only your powers but also your Bane, as you find yourself slowly returning to your old self. This gives you more freedom in feeding or, for example, doesn’t make you prone to raging outbursts as a Brujah. Clan-specific dialogue options allow you to tap more into your clan characteristics and play more as the “type” that will differ from playthrough to playthrough. Ventrue Phyre will probably feed less than others, given you heal more from a single bite – which is a part of how we translated Fortitude into the game.

However, that temporary “freedom” is not the case for other NPCs you will meet in the game. You will still find Ventrue dealing with refined tastes, which will cause them problems. We won’t spoil you more now, though!

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