Bloodlines 2's redemption arc kicks off with a new patch roadmap promising all of the fixes I'm looking for

Marred by severe technical issues and janky combat, one of the few ways that Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 really captures the spirit of its predecessor is in the rough state of its launch. Similarly, I'm sure The Chinese Room is hoping to mirror the redemption arc of Troika's original from broken mess to cult classic. Its latest patch, 1.0.4, fixes some of the bigger issues we saw at launch, finally adding a 'save on exit' feature, as well as squashing various bugs. My primary interest, however, is the upcoming 1.0.5 update, which adds much-needed essentials that probably should have been there to begin with.

As I mentioned in my Bloodlines 2 review, The Chinese Room's first foray into The World of Darkness is anything but perfect. The vampire game launched with glaring performance issues and, in a move that's perhaps more perplexing, several missing core systems. As the dawn broke and you retreated back to your haven (i.e when you quit the game), your progress didn't save. This meant you had to rerun missions from the last save point, which meant redoing sometimes chunky sections of the story. With Bloodlines 2 patch 1.0.4, this will no longer be the case. It's also fixed a particularly annoying bug in the underground zone where NPCs phased into walls and couldn't be killed (that one stung).

But my focus is on the team's new roadmap, which confirms that an FOV slider, motion blur toggle, and the ability to manually save at any time will drop with patch 1.0.5. Should all of these have been in the game from the jump? Yes, absolutely. But The Chinese Room has been pretty quick to fix things, confirming that 1.0.5 should drop before the end of the year.

From here, we'll see a Christmas-themed update that adds new cosmetics for Phyre, as well as a custom difficulty mode allowing you to tailor the experience even further. The much-requested ability to skip Fabien's missions is set to drop alongside the difficulty changes, but all of this will only be unlocked after you've completed the game for the first time. Given that Fabien's storyline is key to understanding the overarching narrative, I can completely understand why The Chinese Room has made this decision, but as a Fabien evangelist, I'll probably wind up replaying his story anyway.

Coming into 2026, we'll see a Valentine's update drop in Q1 (presumably on or around Valentine's day), which I hope adds a bit more depth to the game's effectively non-existent romance system. It was one of my biggest disappointments, largely because I saw the bones of something special, so hopefully we see some meaningful adjustments there.

Then Loose Cannon, the story DLC that focuses on fiesty Sheriff Benny Muldoon, drops in Q2, with Ysabella's The Flower and the Flame set for Q3. Given that Ysabella's backstory story is the one I find the most intriguing, that's the drop I've got my eyes on.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 patch 1.0.4 is live now, adding the 'save on exit' feature, and crushing multiple bugs. You can read the full list of fixes here, but note that it may contain some spoilers.