During my Gamescom 2025 interview with the developers of Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2, I was able to obtain details on the game’s estimated length. According to Design Director Jey Hicks, there’s quite a bit of side content:
Jey Hicks: I can’t say the exact numbers because right now we’re trying to figure out exactly how long it is, because we’ve been adding in a bunch of new content recently, but currently our estimates are between people who are a fast player who doesn’t do any of the additional content, maybe 20-25 odd hours and then up to potentially around 40 hours for more sort of completionists.
My conversation with the folks from The Chinese Room also revealed that Fabien, the Malkavian vampire stuck in Phyre’s head, wasn’t really playable until a couple of years ago. It was a decision that made Bloodlines 2 much better, according to Hicks and Narrative Director Ian Thomas.
Ian Thomas: We did quite a big change later on, we had a lot of extra story we wanted to tell and we also wanted to introduce the Malkavian clan. Suddenly we went, what if the Malkavian was the character in Phyre’s head? Suddenly, it really started to work, and we found that having the old vampire who has maybe lost their humanity to quite a big extent and doesn’t connect to the humans, along with Fabian, who’s fascinated by humans and is really interested in how the world work, it was a really nice pairing, and that just worked for us, along with a really good voice actor. Suddenly, Fabian was brought to life and they went okay, this is the right way to go. It’s quite a late change and also a brave change, I think, from Paradox’s case, because they said, yes, you’re right. We do need to make this change, let’s take the time to do it. We are very happy with that.
Jey Hicks: I think it was definitely a worthwhile decision to delay the game and make sure that people actually relate and enjoy the characters. We didn’t want Fabian to be just another voice in your head sort of character.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 will launch on October 21 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X. Read my recent hands-on here.
