Mens nogle virkelig nød Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, stod det også klart ud fra kritikken, at spillet ikke levede op til forventningerne, som navnet ellers lagde op til. Det havde ekstremt få RPG-elementer og mindede langt mere om et Dishonored-spil med et vampyr-twist. Udvikleren The Chinese Room virker dog fuldt ud bevidst om dette, for som medstifter Dan Pinchbeck forklarer, forsøgte de faktisk at ændre spillets navn.
"There was one of the producers - then at Paradox - I'm still friends with, he's now with another publisher. We used to sit there and go and have these planning sessions of how do we get them to not call it Bloodlines 2," fortalte Pinchbeck til YouTuber Cat Burton. "That feels like the most important thing we do here is to come at this and say this isn't Bloodlines 2. You can't make Bloodlines 2. There's not enough time. There's not enough money. And Bloodlines 1 came out at a really interesting period in game development when it was the same time as games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Shenmue when you could ship a really ambitious game that was full of bugs and holes, was totally flawed, but the ambition was really exciting."
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"Trying to recreate that magic in a different environment felt wrongheaded. No one would be happy. You wouldn't make people who love Bloodlines 1 happy and you wouldn't make people who didn't know about Bloodlines 1 happy because they'd never get Bloodlines 2 and they'd always get a flawed game that was built too fast and with not enough money," fortsatte han.
Selvom bagklogskab er en vidunderlig ting, virker det ud fra interviewet som om Pinchbeck havde ganske stor forudseenhed omkring projektet. Holdet hos The Chinese Room gjorde simpelthen det bedste, de kunne, med de ressourcer de havde - og selvom det ikke var nok til at gøre fans af originalen tilfredse, var Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 nærmest dømt til aldrig at kunne indfri de forventninger. Spillet blev udskudt så mange gange, at det næsten er svært at fatte, at det overhovedet kom ud, selv hvis det ikke helt kunne leve op til arven.