We are the Cabal. I, Gideon, am its sinister genius leader. We have always lurked among you... like maggots in the bloated, stinking corpse of a diseased rat. Servants of the One that Binds, the dark god Tchernobog. Until a century ago, everything was going according to our evil plans. We never expected to be betrayed by one of our own. His name was Caleb. He destroyed our god and absorbed the power of Tchernobog. I and I alone will restore our dark god. I will destroy Caleb. I will mash his intestines beneath my feet like rotten grapes - and Caleb will die for the last time.
—Gideon
Blood II: The Chosen is a First-Person Shooter game from the Blood series, developed by Monolith Productions and released in 1998. It's the sequel for Blood (1997), and it runs on the LithTech engine, developed in-house by Monolith. The game and its expansions can be purchased digitally from GOG.com and Steam.
The game takes place exactly one century after the first game, featuring the Cabal's attempts to kill Caleb and take back the powers of Tchernobog, while Caleb's disuse of the dark god's powers accidentally summons abominations from another dimension.
Unfortunately, due to being rushed out the door, it released in a very poor state, and though it does have a following (including a very active modding community), it's rarely considered on par with the first. Plus, it had the unfortunate luck of being released in 1998, a year with many strong contenders to Best Shooter of the Decade, such as Unreal, SiN, Quake II and the eventual winner, Half-Life.
The game shows examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer:
- C1L5, "Steam Tunnels", one of the longest of the game.
- C2L3, "Sewage Treatment Plant", which is noticeably shorter but actually requires you to swim through part of it.
- Amusement Park of Doom: In the Expansion Pack Nightmare Levels, Ishmael goes on a lengthy flashback narration of how once he was coerced to take the role of the aforementioned JoJo and then struggled his way out of the abuse. It takes place in a similar Dark Carnival and you, as Ishmael, have to slaughter your way through droves of cultists while occasionally visiting your fellow freaks and spouting sarcastic comments about their demises.
- Apathetic Citizens: The civilians often don't react to the horrific things going on around them (including half a corpse sticking out of a public washing machine) as strongly as you think they would. The manual and guidebook suggest that they've learned helplessness in regards to CabalCo.'s takeover.
- BFG: The game added a new, literal BFG: the Singularity Generator.
- Blackout Basement: "Love Canal" has some extremely dark sections with bottomless pits on the floor; falling into one means instant death. The game is generous enough to give you a few flashlights before those sections, so don't waste the batteries.
- Boom, Headshot!: Headshots exist as a mechanic, but it's janky as hell. Sometimes you can 3-shot a human with a Beretta and he'll die before a single flinch, others you might as well be hitting them in the legs, and still others you actually can hit them in the legs and they'll die instantly.
- Boss Rush: The game makes you fight undead versions of the other three Chosen before fighting the Ancient One.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the penultimate level of Nightmare Levels, one of the shot glasses you can pick up will cause Caleb to comment that "this is the best level I've been in".
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Literally in the case of the shotgun - you first acquire it from an exhibit in the museum level.
- Call-Back: The game features ringing telephones that you can answer across some levels. One phone in the third level does the same Hugh Jass joke a phone in the second level of the first game did. An elevator in the first chapter also has elevator music remixed from the secret level of Blood's last retail episode.
- Campfire Character Exploration: In The Nightmare Levels, on their way back to Earth from another dimension, the Chosen sit around a campfire and each one tells a story from his or her past. The first four of the expansion's six levels are played out as scary stories from their respective pasts.
- Circus of Fear: The circus Ishmael (who was the old JoJo The Idiot Circus Boy) escapes from in his backstory, as seen in Nightmare Levels.
- Cliffhanger: The four Chosen are left in an alternate reality, and make no real progress towards getting out in Nightmare Levels. The end text lampshades this:"Does Caleb really close the rift? Does Ophelia get her two-minutes of gift? What the heck happened to Gabriel... er, Gabriella? What if Ishmael can't get home? And, where did he get those tattoos? Tune in next time on: As 'It burns, it burns'. Enjoy these answers and more soon...
we promise." - Critical Existence Failure: A weird version as the chance for an enemy to get stunned by attacks appears to be linked to how much health they have remaining, a full health drudge lord for instance will generally not get stunned but one near death is likely to flinch by any damage.
- Cut and Paste Environments: The game goes all out with this, with three out of four chapters reusing an individual level three separate times.
- The subway train is perhaps the laziest, used as the first level of the game and then reused as the first and antepenultimate levels of the second chapter, two of which even play out identically (Caleb murders everyone and gets to the front just in time for the train to crash into another one), the only differences being in enemy types (only Cultists the first time, adding Fanatics and Drudge Lords the second and a single Prophet at the end of the third).
- The other two are the result of trying to emulate a Hub Level-style system without actually having hub levels: chapter 1 has you traverse an urban area just off of some tenements three times (exiting each time respectively by heading to a museum, going down an elevator into the sewers, and heading for a condemned church), where the first time through includes level-exit triggers for later visits - it's possible to noclip through the vents at the back of the laundromat and skip straight from the second level of the chapter to the end. Chapter 3 likewise has you traversing part of the CabalCo offices three times, sidetracking twice to circumvent locked doors by turning off their power and grabbing a keycard before you reach an elevator that takes you where you need to go).
- Death Ray: The namesake weapon, though it shoots hitscan Reflecting Lasers. However, the "death" part is well honored, as its DPS easily rivals the assault rifle's.
- Didn't See That Coming: The Singularity Generator manages to be unpredictable enough that it revives the rest of the Chosen, even turning one from a man to a woman. Once the scientists who created it have it working the way it should, Caleb bursts in, kills them, and steals it.
- Difficulty Levels: It has more standard difficulty levels that primarily place more enemies and let them deal higher damage; the only noticeable difference is that your maximum health is also determined by difficulty, with the easiest allowing for 200 normal health and the hardest dropping you to just 50.
- Embarrassing Old Photo: Ophelia's segment of The Nightmare Levels has her tracking down an album of these in order to symbolically destroy her past as (gasp! horror!) a sorority girl. In the present, she asks Gabby and Ishmael not to tell Caleb about this, as she thinks he'd "never forgive [her]"... so, of course, Caleb unexpectedly drops in at the end of her recollection (somehow) and light-heartedly teases her about it.
- Epic Fail: CabalCo attempted to make a really big gun that tears holes in the fabric of reality to kill things, with the intent to use it to kill Caleb. They instead somehow made a gun which tore holes in the fabric of reality to bring the other three Chosen back from the dead.
- Expansion Pack: The Nightmare Levels, which adds new single-player sequences, some extra multiplayer maps, two new weapons, extra options, and new bug fixes.
- Exploding Barrels: Certain objects like soda machines, washing machines, cars, fuel pumps and closed rusted barrels explode when damaged. For electric appliances it's mostly a visual effect, but for the others, expect some Splash Damage if you're close.
- Everything Fades: All gibs disappear over a short period of time, save for the heads of gibbed corpses.
- Gatling Good: The Vulcan Cannon has the highest DPS potential of any bullet-firing weapon in the game. Gabriella has it as her weapon.
- Guide Dang It!: There's only one Death Ray, and it's very well-hidden. If you don't have a flashlight, you're not likely to find it without resorting to a guide.
- Guns Akimbo: The game let you dual-wield certain weapons indefinitely by picking up a second one, at the cost of that weapon's alternate firing mode.
- Hearts Are Health: The Life Essence, like in the previous game, is an anatomically correct heart. The Life Seed is a bigger heart that floats above a sigil.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Genocide (easy), Homicide (normal) and Suicide (hard).
- Just Train Wrong: The subway trains. The crowner is one train running right after another with just a two meter gap. That would spell disaster in real life once the front train would began braking - as the game perfectly demonstrates the other two times it reuses the subway map, both of which end with your train crashing into the one ahead of it.
- Kill It with Fire: The flare gun, the napalm cannon and the DieBugDie sprayer.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: There's a phone call in the second level in which a lady asks "Mr. Cal-Eeb" if he is or has ever been a character in a video game. Caleb replies "You've gotta be kidding" and hangs up.
- Limited Loadout: A unique downplayed example: when you're fully kitted out there's one weapon assigned to all ten number keys, but every gun you pick up is assigned to a number key in the order you pick those guns up in rather than predetermined slots, except for the knife (which always gets slot 1) and the various bombs (which are counted as inventory items). This means you're eventually going to start dropping weapons to pick up later weapons, since there are about twice as many guns as there are slots for them, and you can keep weapons in the slots that are most convenient to you for quick access.
- Lock and Key Puzzle: Not to the extent of the first game, but still has some levels (particularly CabalCo's R&D wing and several of the Nightmare Levels) dedicated to hunting down several keys in sequence.
- Locomotive Level: C1L1, C2L1, and C2L7 all take place on subway trains. The first two end with the train in question crashing into another one and derailing, while the third has you jump from one train to another one right ahead of it before stopping it safely.
- Made of Explodium: Even by GoldenEye-era FPS standards, some rather unusual things explode in a burst of flame when damaged enough, such as vending machines, refrigerators, and even some of the wooden desks in the CabalCo offices. This is, of course, assuming it's not a machine that bursts into Ludicrous Gibs when destroyed...
- Mad Scientist Laboratory: CabalCo's Research & Development wing, in which you get to kill the Mad Scientist in question and steal the BFG he's tried to attack you with during various cutscenes across the game.
- Mana Meter: Focus, used to power supernatural weapons like the voodoo doll, Life Leech and The Orb. Interestingly, this caused a common belief that the Orb did not have a Secondary Fire mode - it does, but it takes more than 100 Focus, so only Ophelia and Ishmael can use it.
- Mirror Boss: You fight zombie clones of the other three Chosen, one after the other, just before the final fight with the Ancient One. They each have two weapons to switch between depending on the situation (save Ishmael, who has one weapon supported by abilities similar to a Zealot), making them fight more like the player than any other enemy in the game.
- Muzzle Flashlight:
- Bullet-based weapons emit a big circle of orange-ish light when fired, while others produce much more negligible but still useful flashes. Firing in the Air a Lot with the assault rifle is a passable way of going through a very dark section if your Ten-Second Flashlight runs out.
- Thanks to the lighting mechanics of the LithTech engine, a flare makes for a fairly decent light source until it burns out, either on impact with a solid surface or after a while on an enemy. Said enemy can work as a living, moving lantern if you can get it to follow you, assuming the randomized damage values don't cause it to die as soon as the flare touches it.
- Nerf: Several weapons and enemies didn't pass from the original to this game unchanged.
- The Sawed-Off Shotgun lost all of its accuracy, fires and reloads more slowly, and requires a reload after every two shells even when paired up. As a mild compensation, it can be dual-wielded at will without a power-up, and though ammo is less common overall (particularly all but disappearing in the third chapter), Caleb's cap for it was increased by 50 shells. Extra Crispy allows you to use the double-barrel discharge with dual shotguns.
- Soul Drudges, the substitute of the Zombies, are much slower and easier to juggle with your melee weapon.
- Speaking of melee weapon, the pitchfork has been replaced by a much weaker knife that has little to no use outside of killing Soul Drudges and civilians or breaking containers without wasting ammo - and even the latter is a crapshoot, as some very strange objects blow up in a highly-damaging fireball when you break them.
- The flare gun doesn't deal a continuous stream of damage; instead, it does so per tics. Alt-fire is completely useless, too, due to a bug which prevents it from igniting enemies (so much so that it was re-tooled in the Extra Crispy mod to fire a big shotgun-like cluster of primary fire flares). However, it can be dual wielded at will, flares are more common, and weak as the projectiles are, they burn underwater now and are far better than most video-game flares at actually providing illumination.
- The Voodoo Doll is much less harmful to anything you're targeting, and the secondary fire loses out to a double-barreled blast from the shotgun. Its ammo now recharges over time, though.
- The Life Leech is a bit of a mixed bag. You have a lot more control over the length of the bursts and can even fire it automatically, it uses Focus (the same recharging "mana" pool the Orb and the Voodoo Doll feed off of) instead of the finite and rare Trapped Souls, and it doesn't hurt you if you run out of juice. On the other hand, the "turret" secondary fire is gone and replaced by a fairly useless Shockwave Stomp that costs all of Caleb's Focus and doesn't drain health from the people you hit with it, the projectiles are a lot weaker, slower and curve in weird ways that ruin any accuracy past close range, and to top it off, the firing animation isn't nearly as visually impressive. It's good utility if you're low on health and faced with melee-only enemies, but doesn't compare to the arsenal you're most likely used to by the time you get it near the end of the game.
- The Napalm Launcher is one that got shafted the hardest, going from an aversion to Video Game Flamethrowers Suck, to now being a proud example of it. In II, it has a much slower firing rate in both modes, while the fireballs are much weaker (primary fire hurts less than a double shotgun blast - at least three shots are necessary to kill a basic enemy on Suicide difficulty), painfully slow, and don't set the target on fire. In early versions it was still worth keeping around because a bug refilled your ammo to full with each pickup, so it was still a spammable option, but now, after the fix that changed them to give only 10 shots per can, it's at best inventory filler.
- The Tesla Cannon in the first game is best described as "assault rifle of electric death". In II, it took a good few steps back in functionality: each projectile costs double the ammo, they're fired at a slower rate (with a delay between pulling the trigger and the gun actually firing the first shot), travel more slowly, and are a lot weaker, while the secondary mode is extremely costly (at least four times the original's secondary) and only really usable against enemies that are slow or tend to stand still.
- While You Were in Diapers: Some of the phone calls.When I was young we didn't have any Life Leeches. We had to kill those Soul Drudges with our BARE HANDS! We had to bite their legs off and they'd keep comin' back. We didn't care. We liked it that way.
- Nostalgia Level: Nightmare Levels begins with Cold, Cold Grave, which combines at least three levels from the first game's Episode 2.
- Ray Gun: The CabalCo Death Ray. It even looks like a '60s Sci-Fi B-movie prop you'd expect Little Green Men to tote.
- Scarab Power: Armor pickups come in the form of scarab beetle talismans entitled the Ward (25 armor) and Necroward (a full 100).
- Shout-Out: Shares a page with the rest of the series.
- Sinister Subway: Three levels place Caleb on a subway train. Two of the three end with the train in question crashing.
- Slasher Smile: The box art is a close-up of Caleb sporting one.
- Sobriquet Sex Switch: Gabriella, who was Gabriel in the previous game, somehow had her body changed to that of a woman during her resurrection. The only explanation she gives is that "it's a long story".
- Standard FPS Guns: Also subverted. It pads out the armory of Blood (1997) with a normal 9mm pistol, multiple varieties of bullet hoses (smaller machine pistols that can be paired up up through an assault rifle with underslung Grenade Launcher and then a multi-barreled monstrosity), and a sniper rifle, but otherwise keeps most of the bizarre weapons of the first game, or replaces them with equally-odd new ones, like a pesticide sprayer with a Zippo lighter attached to make it into an impromptu flamethrower. Even better, it doesn't have assigned weapon slots, so you can customize your loadout by dropping weapons you don't want or need.
- Steam Vent Obstacle: The (first) obligatory sewer level consists near-entirely of finding switches to turn off a series of steam vents blocking you from crossing a bridge to the exit.
- Stopped Dead in Their Tracks: When Caleb and Ishmael reunite, the latter immediately urges Caleb to take his duties as the "One That Binds" more seriously, which just frustrates Caleb into walking off... then Ishmael mentions that Ophelia was resurrected—and not only that, she was the first to come back. Upon hearing this, Caleb freezes.
- Ten-Second Flashlight: A set of crappy Night-Vision Goggles that lasts exactly 50 seconds, and an angle-head flashlight that dies after 100 seconds (one minute and forty seconds) of use.
- Useless Useful Spell: The Night-Vision Goggles paint enemies in a nice bright green hue, but they paint all of the surroundings with a dark green that, in a game where it's already dark and hard to see, makes it damn near impossible to see anything. Even worse is that this is still an upgrade over the Beast Vision glasses from the original game. It's more of a tool for taking out nuisance enemies in an environment where they're difficult to see than it is an actual navigation tool.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: The game expands on the first game's head-soccer: now you can kick the head and various other gibs of any humanoid enemy around and adds it as a multiplayer mode.
- Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Zig-zagged.
- The Die Bug Die bug spray is short-ranged, slow-firing and all around worthless, only serving to check how much spray ammo you have for the assault rifle's Grenade Launcher secondary - a function which itself was rendered unnecessary in a patch that added a second ammo counter for your spray ammo when you have the assault rifle equipped.
- The napalm launcher got nerfed, only toting the largest Splash Damage radius in the game to its favor.
- Vulnerable Civilians: The civilians tend to stay put, but are still as defenseless as they were back in the first game.
