Concept art from 1994 revealed

[Dead Reckoner]

Apogee posted concept art on twitter from very early on in Blood's development: https://twitter.com/Apogee_Ent/status/1 ... Hw064sAAAA

Really interesting stuff. Werewolves, magic grenades, skull cultists with exposed organs, and what appears like a world or intermission map.

[Daedalus]

This is an incredible revelation, and given the date it's probably the earliest thing we'll ever see from Blood's development. As usual, it conforms to a much older timeline than where Blood eventually landed and is filled with magic as opposed to the more grounded elements that came along later.

The grenade doesn't seem to survive even slightly in the final game. The key seems like there might be a little influence in there, since the handle has some iconography and the scale seems quite large.

The hooded skeleton is far from anything we finally landed on, and the wolf was presumably done away with, perhaps as an early enemy. The intermission screen is really interesting, and it feels like it might've been looking to copy Doom's style of map intermissions. Despite being unused, that image has a lot of horror tropes that obviously actually transferred to the final game, so that's really nice to see.

The werewolf of course translated into beast mode. It's interesting that they were sort of tacked on at the end despite being one of the earliest ideas formed for the game.

Thank you for presenting this upon the Altar.

[Dzierzan]

More stuff: https://twitter.com/ScottApogee/status/ ... 4160596992

[Dead Reckoner]

Turns out Blood 2's bone leech and soul drudge were originally conceived for the first Blood, who knew. Perhaps the "skull cultist" was meant to be drudge priest or lord. First it's drawn next to a wolf, then next to a bat. A shapeshifter?

I don't recognize the glyphs from the symbol in the second batch of concept art, other than what looks like a Nine Inch Nails logo.

The version of the beast that did make into Blood lacks the canine nose and tail of that werewolf sketch, though that doesn't stop many players from mistaking him for a werewolf

The iconography on the key looks like one of the door texture designs from Blood. This may have been an early way of marking the doors with their respective keys.

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[Daedalus]

Really great stuff, I hope there's a little more out there. I definitely preferred Kilstrom's influence in the end.