I wanted to make a joke about drawn-out blood-letting in that headline, but it was honestly just too much work. Wow, what a segue, because it turns out Paradox Interactive and Hardsuite Labs' forthcoming Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has been delayed beyond its initial Q1 2020 release date to "later in the year".

In games, this sort of news is actually OK, because we know more time under the hood of any game, let alone a fringe potential Dark Horse is only a good thing.

Over the last few months, it has become clear to Paradox Interactive and Hardsuit Labs that hitting the original launch time frame of Q1 2020 would risk shipping a game that does not meet the ambitions that developer and publisher share. This decision has been made to ensure that Paradox and Hardsuit deliver the best Bloodlines 2 experience possible.

You can learn more about this decision from Narrative Lead Brian Mitsoda’s letter to the community here.

The press release around the delay talks about the devs taking stage at this coming PDXCON, which should highlight some of the details around the coagulation of the project.

Yep, I went there. Honestly though, in our industry, delays like this speak larger to the process than anywhere else, and I'll take a mild delay over a Day One Patch band-aid any day of the week.

Watch the Gamescom trailer for the game embedded below.