Co-founder of The Chinese Room: “We held meetings to discuss how to persuade the publisher not to name the game Bloodlines 2”

Back at Paradox, there was a producer I’m still friends with, but now he works for a different publishing company. We held meetings, sat down, and thought: ‘How can we make them not name the game Bloodlines 2?’
It felt like our main task was to acknowledge – this is not a Bloodlines sequel. We can’t make a continuation. There’s neither time nor money for it.
Bloodlines was released during a very interesting period of game development, where you could release a truly ambitious game, full of bugs and other flaws, far from perfection but with captivating ambitions.
Many of these titles became cult classics. But if you dissect and analyze them, they’re not really that good. They had great ideas that players liked. That wouldn’t fly today.