Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong Delayed to May 2022

Publisher Nacon and developer Big Bad Wolf Studio announced that they have delayed Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong three months in order to focus on the game’s quality. Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong will instead release on May 19, 2022, for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, and other consoles.

As with many cases of video games delayed this year, the studio states that the pandemic “threw a wrench” into Swansong‘s development. That hasn’t discouraged the developers, however, who follow up that the delay will give them additional time to polish the game and focus on QA. The delay will also help the team focus on recommitting to work-life balance as well as make sure Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong’s long list of characters, dialogue, and choices are up to snuff.

Below is a transcript of the full delay announcement:

With Swansong, we are taking the narrative-RPG formula so core to our studio DNA and scaling up as we adapt the systems from the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop into a video game experience. The political intrigue and supernatural mystery baked into the setting are a perfect fit for the story we want to tell.

Our focus is on crafting a world that draws you in, that requires you to make difficult decisions and live with the consequences. Swansong features lots of characters, choices, dialogues, and opportunities to decide how the story plays and our ultimate focus is on quality. With this in mind, we’ve made the difficult decision to delay the launch of Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong from February 2022 to May 2022.

This wasn’t a decision we took lightly, but one necessary to ensure the highest possible quality while retaining a healthy work-life balance for our team. Granted, the pandemic also threw a couple of wrenches into our planning, but this delay will allow us to apply some additional polish and give us some extra time for QA. We’re a small but very passionate team, eager to create an immersive experience that rivals the sort of personal storytelling you’d experience from a great tabletop session. One that leaves you with questions long after the credits have stopped rolling (but a reason to go back and see how things could have been different).

Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong will be available on May 19, 2022.

We can’t wait to share more with you, so stay tuned. Thank you very much for your patience and all of your support.

While it’s unfortunate that Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong won’t be released in February 2022, it’s nowhere near comparable to the long and troubled development history of another game in the franchise: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. After developer Hardsuit Labs fired two lead developers back in August 2020 they appointed a former Ubisoft consultant. Then, in February 2021, publisher Paradox Interactive replaced the development studio in its entirety. As it stands, Bloodlines 2 is slated for release sometime after 2021, which is a pretty wide open window.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong now launches in May 2022.

[Source: Gematsu]