Part 1: Chapter 1, Level 1

"You just can't sit and enjoy your new issue of Guns N' Gibs while suffering the subway in peace these days. First that ticket guy dared to confiscate yer flask of Ol' Red '99, and then that spineless conductor had to stop the train for an hour just because some snot-nose brat in a baby carriage rolled onto the tracks! You were about to go up there and give him a piece of his own mind but then you recognized his voice... and realized that your day was about to get... interesting."

Our first level is short and simple in getting us into the gist of the game. A subway train with a lot of low-level enemies and a lot of innocents. We're also greeted with proof that either someone who worked on expanding dual-wielding thought most of the new secondary fire modes were worthless or the entire dev team was seriously unable to work out how to get secondary fire to work with two guns on the new engine. Either-or, really.

The Characters


Caleb

Our quote-unquote "hero", and at least according to me and other members of the Blood fan-cult-thing, the most interesting Doom clone protagonist of his day. Born in 1847 in western Texas, an era and place known for their brutality, which he nevertheless managed to thrive in by being even more brutal; by the time the end of the Civil War was approaching in his late teens, he had already acquired the reputation of a merciless gunfighter. Around 1871, during his travels, he discovered a burned-down homestead and, upon investigating, discovered a lone survivor, Ophelia. Little of what she said was comprehensible, but what was revealed what had happened: she and her husband had been members of the Cabal, worshippers of the dark god Tchernobog, until her husband tried to leave the cult. The Cabal set fire to their homestead in retaliation, killing Ophelia's husband and their young son, for which she blamed her husband rather than the cult. Taking her under his protection, she in turn lead him into the cult when she returned to them, the two falling in love with one another as they became members of the "Chosen", Tchernobog's elite servants. Ultimately, however, Tchernobog made his grand move, betraying the Chosen, with his other lieutenants kidnapping and murdering Caleb's friends while he himself was cast into some manner of bottomless pit, left to "consider [Tchernobog's] power, in a hollow grave".

Caleb reawakened circa 1928, having spent the intervening half-century or so as a corpse which refused to rot, immediately setting out for revenge. Carving his way through the Cabal, killing off the three lieutenants who had killed his friends in Tchernobog's betrayal before ultimately meeting the dark god himself and learning of the reason for the betrayal - Tchernobog wanted Caleb to carve his way through the Cabal, gaining more and more power with each person he killed, until he would eventually be powerful enough for Tchernobog - who reincarnates by possessing a new host after they kill his current form - to, as he put it, "throw open the door between dimensions and inherit the Earth". The two fight, and regardless of Tchernobog's plans, when he is defeated he dies for real, Caleb only inheriting his powers presumably because revolving your world-domination plan around a guy powering himself up by murdering absolutely everyone in your cult isn't a smart idea when said cult is already large and powerful enough to dictate world decisions as it is. Caleb then spends the next century doing whatever he pleases, simply not giving a shit, which is about where we're left off at the start of this game.

The playable characters in this game differ by way of four stats: Strength (their melee damage and how much ammo they carry), Resistance (how well they stand up to damage), Speed (obvious), and Intelligence (how much Focus they have for using magical weapons). Caleb, rather surprisingly given most games' focus on making the primary protagonist the balanced character, is focused more on high strength for middling to low speed and resistance and poor intelligence - he carries a lot of ammo and does better damage with guns, which is good because he's limited in his magical abilities later on. When left idle, Caleb will randomly start singing old showtunes.

Caleb's voice is provided by Stephan Weyte, an alumni of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art who's best known for his video game roles in the '90s, Caleb being his best-known role. Other video game roles he's known for include Captain Nathaniel J. Claw in the 1997 platformer Claw, several voices in Humongous Entertainment's children's games like the Pajama Sam and Freddi Fish series, Ike's father Greil and narration in 2005's Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, and the unnamed Colonel who shows up at the end of Metroid: Other M. Of course you don't be classically trained as an actor and only do video game roles, so of course he's got several live action roles under his belt as well, such as Albert in the 2000 comedy dot.CON, Steven Spielberg in a 2006 short Showering with Spielberg, Jack Stern in the 2009 Mixing Karma, and, perhaps most notably, playing to his reputation in the 2014 FPS: First Person Shooter, a film in the style of Hardcore Henry (although it actually predates that film by a year and a half), wherein he narrates the journey of the protagonist to rescue his wife Linda and defeat a scientist who's created a devastating virus. EDIT: As of December 2018, he's also found his way into the retro-style FPS DUSK - rather appropriately, as the full release also shows the protagonist of that game has a design similar to Caleb's.


Gideon

The primary villain of our story, the face of the Cabal and the one most directly responsible for its current existence as the world-spanning, multi-million-dollar industry CabalCo. Little is known about his early life, other than that he was groomed for the position of the Cabal's leadership since birth, and that this most likely took place quite some time after Tchernobog's defeat in 1928. Supplementary material claims that, despite the immense power he's managed to wrestle from the world through the Cabal, he feels unworthy of his position so long as Caleb, the Great Betrayer who killed their God, still lives - thus, his single-minded obsession with killing Caleb, reclaiming the power of the One That Binds, and acquiring abilities beyond which even the Cabal can grant him. Normally I'd take what the manual, promotional websites, or even the between-level texts say with a grain of salt given the wildly different characterization of other characters (claims of Caleb having his sights on ruling the world, alternately destroying or controlling the Cabal to do so as in the manual and the like, versus simply not giving two shits about anything but killing people whenever he wants as he's actually presented in-game), but in Gideon's case what we're actually shown in-game doesn't stray too far from that idea.

Gideon's voice actor was the late Edward "Ted" D'arms, a Colorado native who had a rather short tenure as a video game voice actor, starting as the voice of Rupert, the judge, and Mr. Fahrman in 1995's Torin's Passage, Admiral Nathaniel Akkaraju in Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, and Gideon in this game and its expansion, and all but retiring from video game roles to focus more on performing on stage around his home after 1999's Starsiege. He also had an extensive resume in live-action roles, IMDb claiming he's most famous for his role as the unnamed veterinarian in 1993's Homeward Bound. Though he started in the early '60s with a role in The DuPont Show of the Week, he really hit his stride in the '70s as he moved on to film roles, such as 1973's Cinderella Liberty where he played Cook, and Dennis COoley in '78's Doubles. He was most prolific, however, in the '90s, between the video game roles from '95 to '99 as well as continuing to appear in live-action roles like Bill Tudor in Past Midnight from 1991, Captain Bullard in Adventures in Spying from 1992, and Richard in the 1998 short William Psychspeare's The Taming of the Shrink. His last role before retiring completely was as Dick Nickerson in 2003's G-Sale, a mockumentary in which his character, a retired star of a '60s sitcom, competes with a market researcher, a computer programmer, and owners of an antique store to acquire an antique board game worth a small fortune. He passed away on December 18th, 2011.


The Weapons


Knife

Bog-standard melee weapon to replace the pitchfork of old, though it actually at least feels a little more useful, even if only because there are more innocents to stab with it. Primary fire swings it twice for a somewhat decent amount of damage, secondary shifts to an underhanded grip for a noticeably stronger stab. All four of the Chosen have their own variations on the knife - in Caleb's case, a Bowie knife with a slight curve to its grip - but the animations and reach are identical; the characters' individual strengths determine the strength and speed of the attacks.



Beretta 92

Similarly bog-standard pistol acting as the first ballistic weapon available to you. Primary fire is a regular gunshot with somewhat-decent accuracy and a fast refire rate, secondary is a sort of emergency mode where your character turns it on its side, lifts it above their head and aims downward to empty it into the nearest threat. Can be dual-wielded and very likely will be considering effin' everybody in the first chapter drops one, so don't expect to even be able to use the secondary fire, much less get any use out of it that primary's lack of a fire rate cap can't do more efficiently from a longer range. Uses bullets as ammunition; the characters' individual strength stats again determine how much ammo they can hold, with Caleb getting a max of 500.