Paradox Interactive’s Vampire: The Masquerade video game series has lain dormant for some time now. Based off of White Wolf’s popular pen-and-paper setting, the series’ last video game entry arrived way back in 2004. However, like the bloodthirsty creatures of the night that define it, Paradox’s iconic series may soon be rising again.
Vampire: The Masquerade Revival Clues
While it hasn’t formally announced a new Vampire: The Masquerade game, Paradox is certainly up to something strange. The studio recently launched an intriguing web-based dating app called “Tender” (no doubt a play on the Tinder mobile app). Tender’s landing page promises users a chance to meet their soulmate, but you have to provide your blood type first.
Once inside Tender, users can match with other “sick people” near them and complete puzzle-based quests and tasks. The nature of these tasks points to Tender actually being a Vampire-themed augmented-reality game (or ARG). Since the Vampire: The Masquerade series sits squarely in the RPG genre, debuting a new game via ARG seems appropriate.
The last proper Vampire: The Masquerade game was 2004’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. In Bloodlines, players got to create their own vampire protagonist and align them with several different vampire houses. Unlike some of the earlier Vampire: The Masquerade games, Bloodlines had a modern-day setting and branching questlines.
Back in 2015, Paradox purchased the rights to all White Wolf properties from CCP Games. At one point CCP was working on an ambitious modern gothic MMO called World of Darkness. However, those plans were ultimately scrapped. When Paradox purchased the White Wolf assets, it said at the time that it wanted to look into reviving Vampire: The Masquerade. With Tender, it seems the studio is finally making good on its word.
For more on the latest RPG news, we covered The Outer Worlds directors’ comments on Fallout 76. We also looked at how Beamdog and Skybound Games are porting classic isometric RPG’s to consoles.