Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Starting Clan Lineup Overview

The five vampire clans you’ll be able to join in Hardsuit Labs’ upcoming Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 when the game launches are Brujah, Tremere, Toreador, Ventrue, and Malkavian, plus the starting Thinbloods. And if you’re interested in a quick overview of these clans, plus some musings on the prominent but excluded ones, you should check out this PC Gamer article. An excerpt:

Gangrel and Nosferatu are the odd clans out

Sadly, the Gangrel and the Nosferatu don’t quite fit into the narrative that has been established so far in Bloodlines 2.

Historically, the Gangrel left the Camarilla a few years before the events of the first Bloodlines, so depending on how the story of Bloodlines 2 unfolds, it might make more sense to leave them out initially. The Gangrel also have what some would consider werewolf features. In Bloodlines, their Animalism discipline allows them to materialize a spectral wolf to attack their victims. In V20 (the 20th anniversary) tabletop version, their clan weakness causes them to gain animal traits temporarily if they frenzy, or lose control of their hunger. If a Gangrel’s frenzy is really intense, then they might gain those animal features permanently.

And that brings us to the Nosferatu, who look like F. W. Murnau’s vampire character in his 1922 film, Nosferatu. Pointy ears, talon-like fingernails, distorted facial features—being turned by a Nosferatu makes you super ugly and super terrifying. In the first Bloodlines, traveling out in the open is a Masquerade violation. That’s how ugly you are. People ran away at the sight of you, and the police would chase you back into the sewer from which you emerged. So, you have to travel underground and stick to the shadows, waiting for people to pass by if you need to get into a building. This was hard—not a fun experience if you are playing the game for the first time, and Bloodlines 2 looks like it’s going to have so many places to explore that you’ll want to see it all.

Also, the developers have said that they wanted players to make a more informed choice about what clan they join; removing Gangrel and Nosferatu from the equation for the reasons I just mentioned is another security measure for that.

Now, the Malkavian could present similar issues because you are fundamentally changing something about your character, mentally rather than physically, but the developers seem to have mitigated that by making the Malkavians less crazy this time around. Also, the Malkavian clan is popular with players, so to not start out Bloodlines 2 with that clan available at launch would have made no sense.