WITCHER, EXPANSE, PUNISHER and SHADOW & BONE vets team up to develop a WORLD OF DARKNESS TV franchise

An intriguing coalition of writer-producers has formed with a view to bringing White Wolf's venerable tabletop roleplaying universe, The World of Darkness, to television and film.

Eric Heisserer (the showrunner of Netflix's Shadow and Bone), his wife Christine Boylan (The Punisher) and production company Hivemind (The Witcher, The Expanse) have partnered with Paradox Interactive, White Wolf's parent company, to develop a number of TV and film proposals based on the roleplaying game. The World of Darkness posits a world where various supernatural creatures exist in secret alongside humanity, with the various sub-games taking place in different locations and time periods. 

The best known of the World of Darkness games is Vampire: The Masquerade. Other titles in the line include Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, Wraith: The Oblivion, Changeling: The Dreaming, Hunter: The Reckoning, Demon: The Fallen, Kindred of the East and Vampire: The Dark Ages. The games were launched in 1991 with Mark Rein-Hagen as the principle creator of the setting.

The franchise has so far not been adapted for television or film, but there have been several successful and critically-acclaimed video games in the setting, most notably Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (2004). A sequel to that game is currently in development at Paradox.

The new team are planning to develop a number of different TV and film projects. It must be assumed that Vampire: The Masquerade would be the most logical jumping-off point, being the original and most popular incarnation of the franchise. In Vampire, the modern-day world is being secretly fought over by several millennia-old vampire clans who operate in the shadows, with strict codes of conduct ensuring the continuance of "the Masquerade," the illusion that vampires are myths and not real. This setting is popular because of the high degree of personality and character given to the vampire clans, allowing for numerous twists on the familiar vampire tropes.

Paradox confirm they are working on VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE - BLOODLINES 2

Paradox Entertainment have announced that they are working on a sequel to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, one of the most critically-acclaimed CRPGs of all time.

Originally released in 2004 as the second game (after Half-Life 2) to use Valve's Source Engine, Bloodlines was a somewhat open-ended RPG which cast you as a vampire in the setting of White Wolf's phenomenally popular pen-and-paper roleplaying game. You could choose from one of several vampire clans, including the insane Malkavians who would get an entirely different dialogue tree for the entire game from the other clans. The game was hugely acclaimed on release for the quality of its writing, dialogue, story and characterisation, but criticised for a large number of bugs. Subsequent patches and fan mods have fixed most of these issues and in some cases restored cut content.

Bloodlines' developer, Troika Games, later collapsed and most of the staff who worked on the game moved over to Obsidian Entertainment. Leonard Boyarsky, who worked on Bloodlines, is now working on The Outer Worlds alongside former Troika colleague (and Fallout co-creator) Tim Cain. However, Bloodlines' other creative lead, Brian Mitsoda, is working on the new game alongside Cara Ellison and Chris Avellone.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is currently planned for release in March 2020.

WEREWOLF: THE APOCALYPSE game in development

A couple of years back Paradox Entertainment bought White Wolf, the company behind the World of Darkness, a horror setting for a family of roleplaying games, the best-known of which is Vampire: The Masquerade. It's now been announced that a new computer roleplaying game in the setting is in development, based on Vampire's sister game Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

The new game, curiously, is not being released by Paradox. It's instead being developed by Cyanide, the French studio behind Blood Bowl and the so-so 2012 Game of Thrones RPG, and being released by Focus Interactive. This makes me wonder if the development deal pre-dates White Wolf's acquisition, as there doesn't seem much logic to them doing this and not Paradox themselves.

Hopefully the new game will be good, although Cyanide's track record has been spotty. What gamers have been hoping for is a new Vampire game, especially given Paradox's alliance with Obsidian, where some of the developers of the well-received 2004 RPG Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines are now working. Time will tell whether that intriguing possibility comes to light.

Obsidian Entertainment are working on three games

Obsidian Entertainment have confirmed that they currently have three titles at varying stages of development.

A screenshot from the forthcoming Tyranny.

First up is Tyranny, a roleplaying game that they are developing for Paradox, due for release later this year. This game is set in a world where the bad guys have already won and the dark lord is in control of the land.

Second is Pillars of Eternity II. The original Pillars of Eternity (which I really need to get back to) was a big success and made Obsidian a solid amount of profit. A sequel is a no-brainer. However, this is in a rather early stage of development and Obsidian are still considering going back to Kickstarter for the sequel.

Most intriguingly, they have also got a third game under development in secret. This third game is, specifically, being worked on by Tim Cain, the creator of Fallout and former head honcho at Troika, Troika being the company that worked on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines using the then-cutting edge 3D Source Engine. The new game is using the now-cutting edge 3D Unreal 4 Engine, and Obsidian's new partners-in-crime Paradox recently gained the Vampire licence when they, er, bought the entire company lock, stock and barrel. Fans are already running around screaming in hope that Obsidian and Paradox may be collaborating on a new Vampire game with some of the same team who made Bloodlines working on it. Paradox also recently bought the specific Bloodlines trademarks and rights, which would allow them to make a direct sequel or remake the first game. There is also the possibility that this new game might be related to Obsidian's recent partnership with Paizo Publishing to make video games based on the Pathfinder RPG system.

Paradox buys White Wolf and VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE from CCP

Paradox Entertainment has purchased the White Wolf roleplaying company and all of its licences from CCP. These licences included the Exalted and Trinity roleplaying games, but, far more importantly, the family of games known as World of Darkness, most notably Vampire: The Masquerade.

White Wolf was bought by Icelandic firm CCP - the creators of EVE Online - in 2006 with the intention of releasing an online roleplaying game based on the World of Darkness properties. However, the project sunk into development hell before CCP canned it early last year, preferring to refocus their attention on EVE Online.

Paradox's purchase of White Wolf came out of the blue, but is highly encouraging. Paradox is a Swedish developer best-known for the Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron strategy games, but it has recently made a move into publishing third-party games, including the hugely successful Cities: Skylines and Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity. Their collaboration with Obsidian is particularly important with regards to the White Wolf news, because several of Obsidian's senior developers and programmers used to work at Troika Games, who developed the critically-acclaimed Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines in 2004, still rated as one of the best CRPGs ever made.

In a statement, Paradox confirmed that they will be pursuing new video games based on the White Wolf properties in the near future, which is sure to delight fans of what has traditionally been the second-most-popular roleplaying game of all time.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines for under £4!

Steam sales can be a thing of beauty, when a game you've wanted to get for years suddenly crops up on sale for the equivalent of pocket money.


In this case, for this weekend only, the critically-acclaimed RPG Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is at 75% off. In the UK that equates to £3.74. For a game that's six years old and whose development company no longer exists, Bloodlines has rarely cropped up on Steam sales and has maintained a mid-ranking price of £14.99 for most of that time. So this price drop is great news for people who've been waiting to try the game out for a while.

There are a number of fan-made patches available for the game, though it's a bit of a minefield trying to work out which one is the best. Rock Paper Shotgun covers some of these issues here.