“Ensuring a healthy work-life for their Devs” has been cited as the cause for the delay.
Vampire: The Masquerade-Swansong was set to be released in February next year but Developers Big Bad Wolf has made the decision to delay the release of the game again now to the 19th of May 2022.
The delay was announced via a Twitter post that stated:
” With Swansong, we are taking 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. T
his 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.”
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong is more of a narrative-driven adventure RPG than Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, another World of Darkness project that has had its fair share of delays and development issues.
The game will be released for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Vampire: The Masquerade-Swansong is based on White Wolf Publishing’s tabletop role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, and is part of the larger World of Darkness series.
The game will be a narrative-driven single-player RPG in which the player gets to control three vampires with different vampiric disciplines which can be switched over the course of the game.
The story follows three distinct vampires, Leysha, Galeb, and Emem, as they investigate a mysterious shootout.
The player gets to customize their character by upgrading their disciplines and statistics to suit their own personal playstyle. Whilst roaming and exploring this in-game world you will need to be discreet and careful not to expose your vampiric nature. You will also be confronted with moral decisions on many occasions, with the consequences of your decisions determining the game’s destiny.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong | The Invitation official trailer:
Delays are an annoyance but an unavoidable part of game production, and perhaps this extra time will allow the developers to incorporate all of the finishing touches that fans want to see in the final product.