Two modders are building their own Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines remaster

Another day, another instalment of ‘Lauren shakes fist at clouds and talks about Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.’ With rumors swirling that Troika’s classic RPG is getting a remaster, I’ve been actively insufferable for the past week or so, and will continue to be until one appears. As the World of Darkness works through its annual Month of Darkness event, my eyes are on October 31 as a potential remaster reveal date. But, in the meantime, modders ‘Safemilk’ and ‘Sine’ are working on an RTX mod that completely overhauls Bloodlines 1, bringing its textures into 2026.

Now it’s worth noting that Safemilk and Sine’s Bloodlines mod is built using NVIDIA’s RTX Remix technology, which allows “modders to easily capture game assets, enhance materials with generative AI, and remaster games with path tracing, neural rendering, and DLSS 4.5 with Multi Frame Generation.” Other classics like Half-Life 2, The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, and Painkiller have been remastered using the tech, but if you’re not a fan of AI, this one maybe isn’t for you.

Starting out with Santa Monica, the mod’s primary focus is on upscaling the game’s textures and character models. The Asylum’s blurry posters have been reworked to be a lot sharper, The Ocean House hotel somehow looks even creepier than it did before (still one of the most atmospheric horror experiences I’ve ever had in a videogame), and The Diner has been fully upscaled too (Doomsayer not included, I hope).

Safemilk and Sine’s first priority is to improve the environments, but character models are in the works. The duo note that this will likely be the most difficult part of the remaster, as Bloodlines runs on a “pre-Half-Life 2 version” of the Source engine. “In an ideal world, I could just remodel them from scratch and rig/skin them, then full scale replace the assets through Remix (which is my preference),” they write. “But right off the bat, just turning on RTX and adjusting some roughness values gives amazing results.”

I’d argue that Bloodlines’ face tech is still some of the best in the business, despite the game releasing back in 2004. I hope that Safemilk and Sine manage to keep that alive without compromising the feel of the game – I wouldn’t want a ‘yassified’ version of Prince LaCroix or Pisha, for example. They’re all perfect as they are.

More generally, the thing that separates a good remaster from a great one is the ability to maintain the integrity of the original game. Whenever generative AI gets involved, there’ll be understandable concerns that it doesn’t fully understand what it’s upscaling, but Safemilk and Sine have been working on this since 2024, and are “doing their best to maintain the original vibes.” What I’ve seen so far seems to do that, and I’m excited to see what comes next. Just show me Chinatown; it’s my favorite.

You can download Safemilk and Sine’s alpha version of the mod via moddb. As always, modding comes with its own risks, so safety first.