Nosferatu are not in. I think the final placeholder image is likely Lasombra. I present 3 main evidences to support this.
Firstly, the image on the right is not underground. You can see a window in the far back, and there are also very VERY obvious cues of light/shadow contrast going throughout the hallway. The image is likely an abandoned warehouse, but if it really were Nosferatu, why would they not do a sewer? The rest of the images are so fucking on the nose with the clan themes, why is the one on the right so ambiguous in comparison? It would make sense why this has confused me for so long if it were the outlier clan; the clan that was not in the previous bloodlines but is now. This line of thinking leads me to believe it is Lasombra. The Lasombra also fit in lore in V5, where they didn't as much in Bloodlines 1. Half of the Lasombra defected to the Camarilla, but their historical antagonism with the Ventrue has placed them in a vulnerable position under their rule. We normally associate Ventrue and Lasombra as two sides of a coin, but the Lasombra's precarious political situation now juxtaposes the two, and explains why their placeholder image might be a dark abandoned warehouse rather than another skyscraper across from the Ventrue's.
Second, the Lasombra are the second most likely fit for the game behind Nosferatu. The reason why the Nosferatu seemed like such a shoe in was because of how obvious they were as the essential stealth pick. This is by far the best case for Nosferatu inclusion in my mind, but then I realized: the Thinblood Nebulation discipline is meant to be a substitute for Obfuscate. If we make the case that Nosferatu is in fact NOT in, Nebulation along with the potentially stealth-ish (or at the least shadow-ish) Oblivian abilities of the Lasombra would make enough for a genuine stealth build. Considering the fact that we keep our Thinblood disciplines even after choosing a clan, the inclusion of Nebulation I think is a very important killer of Nosferatu's chances in this way. The first active allows the player to muffle their footsteps and cloud their vision, the second allows the player to incapacitate foes from afar (both are upgradable to currently unknown effects). These, in my mind, are almost enough to make for a stealth build on their own. The fact that environments will be built with the mist transformation in mind further reinforces this.
Grayson Diaz
Third and lastly (and I consider this as maybe the most important point), is that the Nosferatu curse is too debilitating. By my observation, an important pillar to this game dev's approach to design is being more approachable than the first. They haven't directly stated this, but starting as a Thinblood and gaining a clan later rather than immediately at the start works to this effect. Similarly, virtually no new player who wants to go "stealthy" would ever want to do it at the price of basically never being able to speak to a mortal ever again. This line of thinking is also consistent with my belief that Malk would be reserved for DLC, simply because they are not optimal first run clans from a game design standpoint. Some of you may disagree and say that you loved playing malk/nosf first, but this is objectively bad design from a modern game dev standpoint. The Nosferatu are simply too hardcore to be allowed to be in the base game. Allowing players to go Nosferatu first run would effectively cut off far too much content for the player, even if they included an ability like Mask of a Thousand Faces. The case of their clan selection is also a liability for them. Virtually no member of the undead world, let alone a thinblood, would ever voluntarily choose to become a Nosferatu. It is incredibly difficult to write a scenario like this outside of setting your background as something of hyperfocus like a NEET. It would be much simpler, logistically speaking, to reserve them as dlc and write them in as a special scenario. This same logic applies to Malkavian as well.
Christian Hughes
I'm now resoundingly of the belief that this is Lasombra. It is not Nosferatu. The image is too ambiguous, the inclusion of Nebulation is (by reasonable interpretation) enough for a stealth build, and Nosferatu are far too much of a liability for game design for anything outside of a secondary playthrough. It isn't Malkavian for the exact same reasons. The only evidence supporting the idea of it being Malk is the idea that the image depicted might be of an abandoned insane asylum (spend some time looking at the image, this seems highly, highly unlikely.)
The next clan reveal is tomorrow. The original placeholder images prior to the Brujah were in the order of the OP image, but given Brujah was first this clearly means that placement does not matter. However, the Brujah image filename is img-clans-1.jpg, and img-clans-2.jpg would be Lasombra, which could mean that Lasombra will be revealed tomorrow.
They said inclusion of people with mental illness was important, it's obviously malkavians.
Logan Hill
Brujah are already in though.
Nathan Sanchez
Didn't they say it was problematic or needed to be handled carefully? Also its very possible that there will be Malkavian *characters* but that doesn't mean the PC will be able to choose Malkavian on release.
Joshua Young
Can't wait for the reveal that the final clan is the Banu Haqim
