How to save in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2

It's not immediately obvious how to save in Bloodliness 2, and boy it sucks (in the not fun vampire way) to lose your progress in a lengthy RPG. Even knowing that Bloodlines 2 was pivoting to a more action game style, it's not the save system I expected, so fear not if you're scratching your head.

The good news is, no, you aren't daft. I spent ages searching for the option too, but there is no manual save in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. The system is a tad barebones and what you see from the beginning is what you get. Unless you're willing to repeat quests completely, the vampire RPG makes you dig Phyre's grave, then lie in it.

How do you save in Bloodliness 2?

The only way to save in Bloodlines 2 is its auto-save system which keeps your progress through vampire-infested Seattle. When an auto-save is in progress, you'll see an icon in the top right corner of the screen that looks like the Anarch Tags spraypainted around the city.

Quitting the game doesn't trigger a save, either, in my experience. From the settings window, Bloodlines 2 warns that you'll lose any unsaved progress by selecting 'Exit to Main Menu,' so make a mental note of your last checkpoint before closing the game. Despite the notice, I learned the hard way on more than one occasion and lost my progress.

Can you have more than one Bloodlines 2 save?

There is only one auto-save slot in Bloodlines 2. Starting a new playthrough overwrites that slot and duplicates the old save in a file that starts from a checkpoint. It's a bummer if you want to check out multiple clans, explore more choices, or swap between Phyres with ease.

But the good news is that Bloodlines 2 has a chapter select option, even if it's not labeled that way in the menu. At the title screen, select 'Load Game' and scroll through the list of quests. There should be one save for every main quest you've completed—that means 22 distinctly named saves for folks who have completed the game.

Selecting any of these starts from the beginning of the quest and overwrites your current auto-save. I'm the save scumming type, so this is about as close as I can get to that when I'm unhappy with any of my choices in Bloodlines 2.