Paradox Interactive has just launched a brand new app/website featuring a special alternate reality project which may or may not be related to an upcoming, unannounced Vampire: The Masquerade game.
A new Vampire: The Masquerade title has been a long time coming, ever since the release of the beloved, albeit bugged and janky Bloodlines, and Tender may well be the first suggestion of a new entry in the franchise.
Tender ARG is a newly-released web app presenting itself as a way to connect people in search of their soulmates. While the whole thing kicks off innocuously enough, it gets weird pretty quickly. The fact that you can sign up with your Paradox Account should tip you off right at the very start.
As any other soulmate-searching app, Tender asks you a variety of questions as well, though these often delve firmly into the territory of creep and dread. Subjects such as that of thanatology, chaos magick, demonology, De Sade, morbidity, Illuminati, and other related ones keep popping up. Alarm bells going off and all that.
Without spoiling much, once you've completed your profile, the app tells you that you'll be given tasks to complete over the coming weeks without hinting at what it might be related to. The kicker is that Vampire: The Masquerade IP is now under control of Paradox Interactive, who disbanded the original owners, White Wolf, after they used the current situation in Chechnya to bolster the game's backstory.
Given how there hasn't been a new V:TM game in quite a while now, it's to be expected that Paradox would be working on something behind the lines. Seeing Tender's connection to Paradox in practice, and the app's tendency to delve into the esoteric, there's now reason to believe something big may be coming our way soon.
