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***Update 3 – 2015-11-16 – 22:19 CET ***

I was just informed by one of our readers that Night Dive Studios CEO Stephen Kick (the studio that´s planing to make a remake of “System Shock 1”, and “maybe” a release of “System Shock 3“) “hope” to bring back Monolith´s classic FPS game “Blood” in one form or another. This became publicly known when Kick mentioned it in GOG.com´s live stream via Twitch on the 23rd of September (you will find that information around the 01:20:40 mark via GOG´s Twitch Stream). However, Knick couldn´t tell all that much about “Blood“, at least not for now. So only time will tell if Night Dive Studios will be able to release a new “Blood” game in the future (their main focus is probably on the “System Shock 1” remake right now). Nevertheless, I´m still really happy to hear this. So I wish Night Dive Studios the best of luck with all of their upcoming projects!

Cred:

DrearierSpider

Source:

GOG via Twitch



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“When you get to hell, tell them I sent you. You will get a group discount.” – Caleb

When I played a very early demo of Monolith´s dark, brutal and gory FPS game “Blood” (the game was original released back in 1997), I had no idea what I could expect. As I knew nothing about the game or Monolith at that time. I just thought that the name of the game sounded really cool. So little did I know that “Blood” would change my Gaming life forever, because as soon as I saw the world of Blood through the eyes of Caleb (the main protagonist/anti-hero of the game). I became an instant fan of Blood and Monolith. The rest is as they say “history”.

And Blood became something of a cult classic among FPS Gamers worldwide. In fact, the Blood community is still active to this very day. However, after “Blood 2” (which were released back in 1998) things went down hill for the Blood franchise (bad reviews, grades, sales and bugs killed the game off). Personally, I never saw “Blood 2” as a really bad game. Nevertheless, the bugs (mainly serious crash bugs) really destroyed the fun and joy of the game. In the matter of fact, If my memory doesn´t fail me now. It took quite a while for Monolith to release the very first patch for Blood 2 (which solved some of Blood 2s crash bugs). I should point out that there was a handful of fan made patches for “Blood 2” (which did wonders to the game), but most of them saw the day of light shortly after (or before) the death of “Blood 2” (when Monolith decided to pull the plug on the game).

The death of Blood 2 and the Blood Remake project

Anyhow, that wasn´t enough to save “Blood 2” from an early death. So once Monolith released the “The Nightmare Levels” expansion pack (the game was released in August 1999), it was already too late for “Blood 2”. And that´s probably why there has been no new Blood title since then, and keep in mind that it´s been over 16 years since the Blood 2 expansion pack hit the market. A funny side note by the way. I did, in fact, try to pitch a script for “Blood III” to Monolith around 2002-2003 sometime, but Monolith had other plans at the time (I bet that they were knee-deep in the development of F.E.A.R. 1). And that was the end of line for “Blood” pretty much. Even so, I did never really bury my dreams and hopes for a sequel to “Blood 2”. I´m not going to lie though, if it hadn´t been for the Blood community (the fans who have kept the spirit of Blood alive for over 18 years time now) I would have given up on the thought of a new Blood game years ago.

So I got quite excited when I found out about the Blood Remake project back in 2012. Well, my happiness wouldn´t last for long. As Atari pulled the plug on the project the very same year (Atari had huge economic problems at that time). I still think that Jace Hall (Monolith Productions founder) were more disappointed than anyone else though. As Hall really wanted to do a full-blown Blood Remake game. In the matter of fact, this is what Jace Hall told Postmortem (It´s a Blood fan forum) back in 2012:

“I just got an unusually short, one sentence e-mail from Atari, letting me know that given the current set of circumstances, they are choosing to decline to proceed,”

“The only thing that can be done at this point is to wait and see what happens with ATARI, and hope that they find themselves in a position and mindset to allow my efforts to continue on this matter at a future date.” – Jace Hall, Monolith via Blood fan forums Postmortem



Blood gets resurrected by the fans and the mod community



Jace Hall´s statement was of course not a pleasant read for me (or for anyone else who´s a fan of Blood), as it felt like “Blood” was dead and gone for life. However, thanks to the Blood mod community (which has made awesome “Blood” mods such as “BloodCM” and “zBlood” for example). I started to feel a bit of hope and excitement again, and just the other day I found out about DiRT´s “Blood Evolution project” (BE is a re-imagining of the original “Blood” game from 1997). And in my opinion, “Blood Evolution” is probably as close to a Blood Remake as we will ever get (the mod/game runs on Unreal Engine 4). However, there is no release date for the BE project as of yet (which by the way is an “non-profit” project, so BE will be free-to-play on release). And it´s been months since DiRT released any new details for his BE project. So I guess that I shouldn´t get too excited just yet. Nevertheless, I still hope that DiRT will finish his Blood Evolution project some day. As I´m truly convinced that Blood really deserves to be resurrected from the dead.

Not only that, there are at least two generations of gamers that probably have no idea what Blood is all about. Well, Blood Evolution might change all of that. And who knows? If Blood becomes really popular among Gamers again, the talks about a “real” sequel to “Blood 2” might submerge once more. Well, time will tell, at least I feel “somewhat” more hopeful and excited for the future of the Blood series now.

With that said, what do you think about the “Blood Evolution” project so far? And do you have any memories of “Blood 1” and “Blood 2”? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comment section down below!



Source:

ModDB



Robin “V-Act” Ek

The Gaming Ground

Twitter: @TheGamingGround

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Tags: -DiRT, Blood, Blood Evolution, FPS, Monolith, Unreal Engine 4