Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2’s Narrative Themes and Characters Explained in New Dev Diary

is here, bringing many updates and changes to the original, beloved, city-planning simulator game, ​​​​​, which has been around since 2015. The series remains true to its roots with several familiar elements and then adds in new quality-of-life features such as better tools, and entertaining AI enhancements in addition to the stunning new graphics and soundtracks available. It is a truly massive game, five times larger than the original, and yet many of the new changes are seen in the intricate details.

As initially reported by The New York Times and confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter, Jon Stewart's Apple TV+ series The Problem with Jon Stewart was canceled just weeks before filming of the third season was scheduled to start. According to one of the NYT's sources, «Mr. Stewart told members of his staff on Thursday that potential show topics related to China and artificial intelligence were causing concern among Apple executives». According to THR's sources, executives told Stewart he had to be «aligned» with them regarding the show's topics, and that led to him deciding to leave.

You may know Inkle from interactive storygames like 80 Days, Heaven's Vault, Overboard!, and the Steve Jackson's Sorcery! Series. All of these games were made with Ink, a scripting language the studio created that uses markup instead of script, and came with Unity integration built-in. Given how badly Unity dropped the ball then also tripped over the ball then ate the ball while rolling around in dirt this year, it makes sense developers with an interest in using Ink might want to divorce it from Unity.

Happy Friday, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable releases to streaming and video rental, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

Immediately after implementing a new tournament structure intended to, among other things, create more cross-regional match-ups, the League of Legends World Championships suffered a legendarily bad draw that turned - at least for one day - what was meant to be an international competition into what fans have taken to calling Worlds: Civil War.

Telecom gear maker Nokia said Thursday that it is planning to cut up to 14,000 jobs worldwide, or 16% of its workforce, as part of a push to reduce costs following a plunge in third-quarter sales and profit.

Two weeks after the previous narrative-focused blog post, the developers of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 have now discussed their artistic approach, sharing a few new good-looking screenshots for good measure.

Developer The Chinese Room has published a new dev diary for upcoming RPG Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. This time around, the dev diary revolves around the game’s neo-noir art style, with commentary by associate art director Ben Matthews.

China stands accused of stealing intellectual property and using artificial intelligence to hack and spy on other nations at an unprecedented scale.

Seattle-based developer Harebrained Schemes announced it is splitting with Paradox Interactive. The news comes as no surprise, given the unsuccessful release of The Lamplighters League, the studio's latest game that launched earlier this month.

Ever since Elon Musk took over X (formerly Twitter), it has undergone a myriad of changes. In a bid to make it a super app that can compete with China's WeChat, the microblogging platform has received several new features, alongside a complete rebranding that resulted in Larry the Bird being replaced by an X. However, not all users are happy with the multitude of changes being introduced on the platform, with several of them calling these moves draconian. Just recently, it was announced that X would bring a 3-tier subscription model to its X Premium.

Happy October, Polygon readers!