Summer’s here so we figured it’d be a good time to pull back the curtain a bit and show you how a game like Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is made. This month we’ll give you a couple of glimpses into how the magic becomes a game. In this post we’re focusing on the atmosphere of the game: Concept Art, Level Design, Lighting and Audio.
Concept Art
“For quite a while the Concept Team was working on an Underground area - exploring mood and tone for that section of the game. It took quite a bit of time since it's incredibly detailed. Once everyone was happy with our concepts, we decided to move on to one of the core locations of our city: Weaver Tower, the headquarters of the Seattle Camarilla.
We already had a basic layout for this area, so we focused on the entrance hall first. This is a large and striking space and solving the architecture and lighting fit was a fun task for the Concept Team. After this, we moved onto secondary places like corridors and rooms. We used the Entrance Hall as a main reference for what we wanted to achieve.
Like every location, Weaver Tower needed some unique features. We wanted to have something both mysterious, yet ancient feeling. Naturally, the real world provides the best inspiration, and the meticulous care and time it takes for bonsai trees to develop is where we gravitated towards. However, we also wanted it to feel different. So by juxtaposing the organic form of the tree, we designed it to be made of thousands of brass wires seemingly erupting from a Smokey quartz. All of which was achieved in Unreal Engine 5 to really get an established idea of how these statues fit in the space and create the most impact for players. We hope you’ll enjoy browsing around these spaces!”
⁃ Text - Junior Concept Artist Isobel Hine.
⁃ Image 1 & 2 - Isobel Hine.
⁃ Image 3 – Lead Concept Artist Michele Nucera.
Level Design
“As a Level Designer, I love working on spaces that evoke a range of powerful emotional experiences for the player. I've been exploring how we can best achieve this, while collaborating with our other departments. I am very excited to see your reactions!
Recently I’ve been working on an early level in the game, where I focussed on how we can encourage player learning, and how we can help you to feel confident when playing our game. We also want to build levels that support a variety of playstyles, to make sure that you can play as your chosen Clan.
As a Vampire, we want you to be able to embrace your supernatural movement options. Our levels have been carefully crafted in a way that will allow you to experiment and have fun with our traversal system, and in some places, be challenged.
I can’t wait for you all to play!”
⁃ Level Designer Amy Lee
“In Bloodlines 2 my main focus is to guide you through the cold and looming backdrop that our Design and Environment Art teams have meticulously crafted over the past few years. These quests, set in our nocturnal version of Seattle, allow you to delve into the lives of its many Kindred inhabitants.
Taking place after pivotal moments in the main questline, these adventures will offer you the chance to explore Seattle at your own pace. You will be visiting its Clan leaders, keeping the competition at bay and making decisions that will affect the outcome of your journey as Phyre. These are stuffed with Narrative and lore and I'll be taking you from the depths of the underground to the snow-capped high-rise rooftops.
Having so many great moments of Bloodlines 2's story under my care has always felt like a big responsibility. I am happy to report however, that working with the Narrative team has been wonderful, and bouncing ideas off of them has been some of the most fun I've had here at TCR. I look forward to heading into the night with all of you all, but for now I have more public spaces to deface.”
⁃ Junior Level Designer Jack Goddard
Lighting
“Lighting plays a central role in reinforcing the style, atmosphere of – and most importantly, immersion into – a game world. It can elevate, transform and enrich a simple environment into something much more than the sum of its parts.
The original Bloodlines is iconic for its atmosphere and sense of nostalgia, in part due to how it aptly captured the cultures and attitudes felt at the turn of the millennium. With Bloodlines 2 we wanted our atmosphere to resonate through the same blood-soaked spectacles, but to show the world as it is now.
These nights, many cities have undergone what would look from the outside like a glow-up. Things are shiny and new, flawless, stripped of anything that might bely their history and heritage. Not because we ourselves are flawless, but because we've become better at hiding our monstrosity. But the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. And the more vibrant that light, the more pressing the darkness that seeks to swallow it.
With this in mind, the tenets of Neo-Noir work hand-in-hand with our desire to create an atmosphere of deception and intrigue. Neo-Noir places a strong emphasis on silhouette, form and negative-space to create striking, stylish scenes that have an inviting yet threatening ambience.
Seattle at night is a dangerous place with a diverse range of environments and districts all with their own unique personality. The Lighting team have been working hard to ensure these areas feel enticing, seductive and immersive.”
⁃ Senior Lighting Artist Freddie Pitcher
Narrative
“It is simply a tad too early to reveal what I’m working on right this minute, but I figured perhaps you’d enjoy hearing about how we as Writers create Ambience in games. Something perhaps players don’t think of much (means we did our job right!), but that is still a big part of the overall experience. “Ambients” are the sounds you hear in the game outside of roleplay conversations; this can range from short lines you might hear from a passing NPC to situation-specific enemy dialogue. They're a vital part of developing the game's soundscape to help it feel like a fully fleshed-out world.
It's a process that involves close communication between Level Design and Narrative Design. Getting the ambients right requires understanding every fight, every location, every NPC, and writing unique dialogue to fit. How many enemies are there in this fight? Do they all appear at once or do they come in waves? Why is that NPC here? If you lurk before approaching, can you learn their motivation? Does eavesdropping on them give you a hint for where to go next? What can you learn about the wider world by listening to them?
Ambients are a perfect opportunity for world building, we give each NPC their own personality and a brief look into their life, no matter how minor a part they play. So while it's fun for the player to get a glimpse into their world, ambients really reinforce just that: this is their world. So Phyre (and by extension, the player) is just a small part of it.
Our team mould these around the traversal of the world while accounting for various playstyles; a player who favours stealth might overhear an entire enemy conversation, while a player who prefers to brawl might jump right into the fray and cut off all but the first line. We then move on to implementing every piece just so, to ensure it triggers at exactly the right moment, giving the player an immersive experience that feels alive and natural.
Thanks a lot for reading about this part of game development!”
⁃ Games Writer Cherish Goldstraw
Sound
Hi, all! I've created a few behind the scenes videos showing the process of recording some of the sounds for VtM:B2. I used a variety of different microphone types and techniques to capture close detailed recordings of various textures which would work well for the blood and gore in BL2. I then processed these recordings to bring out the finer details of the sounds to help create a hyper-realistic sonic aesthetic for them bone-crunchy moments in the game.
⁃ Sound Designer Marcus Bagshawe
See you in two weeks for another sneak peek like this, before we break for summer holidays. In the meantime, do be sure to join our Discord or follow us on socials! Bloodlines 2 Twitter, Bloodlines 2 Facebook & Instagram.