Trivia / Blood II: The Chosen

• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: This GameSpot preview delves into "backstory info" on the Chosen that appears to have been completely made up and based solely on their appearances here (most obviously with Gabriella, who was born male but whom the writer assumed was a cisgender woman). While some of it could have come from earlier drafts, Caleb's and Ophelia's profiles contradict what info the first game's manual gave on them and how they met. (In short, Caleb was always a gunslinger, not a violent gold prospector, and he and Ophelia couldn't have engaged in an actual affair because her husband was dead when Caleb came across her.) It also gets its wires severely crossed in regards to the "One That Binds"—that was Tchernobog's title which was passed down to Caleb, and Tchernobog was certainly not an outside entity unknown to the Chosen.
• Dueling Works: It had the bad luck of being released in 1998, a year with tons of strong contenders for FPS/videogame of the year such as SiN (1998) and the eventual winner Half-Life, setting itself apart by its Science Fantasy elements (combining near-future technology and alternate-universe shenanigans with some of the old Wild West mysticism from the first game) and by use of a unique in-house engine (SiN and Half-Life were both derived from versions of the Quake engine). Blood II was the last out the gate, coming out almost three weeks after SiN (which, ironically, came out the same day as Blood II's demo) and a single day after Half-Life. It was, unfortunately, the true loser of the duel - in hindsight, going up against the massive Sleeper Hit that was Half-Life would have doomed anything except maybe the version of Duke Nukem Forever demonstrated in its 1998 trailer, but SiN - while receiving a similar mixed-to-negative critical reception to Blood II for many of the same reasons - still at least managed an Animated Adaptation in 2000 and a sequel in 2006 on top of the obligatory expansion pack (which also came out several months sooner than Blood II's). On the other hand, Ritual went the way of the dinosaur shortly after that sequel^note though not the fault of the sequel per se, they just did a bad house gambling with an aborted expansion for Quake IV, whereas Monolith was able to bounce back with several Sleeper Hits like No One Lives Forever and TRON 2.0, and is still making games to this day, which is more than can usually be said for Valve between their almost-complete dedication to Steam and their tendency towards Valve Time.
• Executive Meddling: GT Interactive demanded Monolith to not only make Blood II in the first place (at that point everyone wanted to focus on the LithTech engine and Shogo) but also complete the game's development within 11 months thanks to both GT's deteriorating financial situation and the impending releases of Half-Life, Thief: The Dark Project and SiN (1998). The developers were forced to rush the game to meet the strict deadline, cutting a number of features at the last minute and having to release the game as an Obvious Beta. GT's buyout by Infogrames also meant that Monolith was not able to get the funds needed to patch the released game to the state they wanted to, and were only even able to get a patch out at all by putting out an expansion pack with it.
• Franchise Killer: The middling reception and low sales killed any chance at a third game. With Monolith now under the wing of Warner Bros. and Atari apparently uninterested in pursuing any opportunities with the license,^note they only own the rights to the games; Warner Bros. owns the trademarks and IP as those were retained by Monolith any attempts at reviving the franchise are unlikely to happen.
• Refitted for Sequel: It was planned for Blood (1997) that each member of the Chosen was going to be playable (and it's been theorized that the bosses of the first three episodes were repurposed from their intended Beast modes). This was cut down to just Caleb due to time and budget constraints. The concept would be revisited in this game, which allows you to play as any of the four Chosen across both single- and multiplayer, though again time constraints mean only Caleb sees cutscenes, so the other three don't get the full experience except in The Nightmare Levels, which was specifically designed around playing as all four of the Chosen.
• Troubled Production: Start with the fact that it only even happened because GT insisted on a sequel, and then demanded it by fall 1998, and you've got a pretty good idea. To give a better idea on what sort of issues the team had to deal with, the official plan of development was to get the concurrently-developed Shogo: Mobile Armor Division - the game they actually wanted to make after Blood - out the door as quickly as possible, so its team could be folded back into the Blood II team to share assets and help finish its development. Considering Shogo only came out just shy of two months before Blood II, it didn't help all that much. The problems didn't even end there, as GT's buyout by Infogrames right after the game launched meant that Monolith only even got patches out by piggybacking them on an expansion.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Even long after release, the website for the game went off of an entirely different concept for the story, in which the game began with Caleb resurrecting the other three Chosen and bringing them together to help him take over the Cabal, with gameplay that would have allowed for either a proper campaign as any one of the four Chosen or a full four-player co-op game. Jarringly, Ophelia would have rejected Caleb for resurrecting her in an unfamiliar body, a plot point that persisted all the way to the back of the box; in the final, she still cares for Caleb and only gets (justifiably) irritated with him at worst.
  • The manual for the game makes several claims that are not true in the finished version, such as that the MAC-10's Secondary Fire is a three-round burst (in-game it's slower and more accurate full-auto), the M16 can be used Guns Akimbo (complete with concept art showing Caleb's in-game model with two assault rifles; Extra Crispy re-adds this), that the knives used by the individual Chosen become more powerful the more you kill things with them (no such mechanic exists), that the flashlight and NVGs can be active indefinitely (the flashlight only lasts a minute and a half, and the NVGs don't even last one full minute), and something about the Life Seed being unable to boost a player's health past 250 without a "Constitution Binding" (Constitution Binding doesn't exist, and your max health is based solely on your character's strength stat).
  • A second expansion titled Revelations was in development, which would have seen Caleb taking control of the Cabal and having to deal with a Renegade Splinter Faction called the "Krest"; it would have been twice as long as The Nightmare Levels and added several new weapons like a stronger pistol and a tranquilizer gun, as well as changing existing weapons (such as letting the MAC-10 use secondary fire with two guns, making dual shotguns fire one at a time to pump out a more constant stream of buckshot, and giving the Orb a less-Focus-intensive melee attack as its secondary mode since Caleb can't even use the secondary mode it has in the base game). It was cancelled after Infogrames saw the poor sales of the base game and its developer, Tequila Software, went under after trying to continue the expansion as a free project. In 2015, a number of assets and prototype levels meant for the expansion were released by former developers to the community for use in mods and fan projects.
  • There's evidence of an entire scrapped third act in which Caleb and Gideon are forced to team up against the Ancient One; the only remnant seems to be the entity in question being treated as though it had a role in the plot before Caleb confronts it.

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