Insincerity of Blood: Refreshed Supply

Blood: Refreshed Supply - Reveal Trailer Screenshot. Taken from YouTube.

Just as I was trying to wrap my head around my closer look at Heretic + Hexen and Nightdive Studios' approach to it, the announcement of Blood: Refreshed Supply arrived was quite a distraction. A second re-release six years after Blood: Fresh Supply? It seems rather pointless at first glance like with DOOM + DOOM 2 (around second re-release that came out 5 years after previous one), but there's more to this than that. It's more complex.

In order to properly understand the discontent and annoyance some people (myself included) have regarding Refreshed Supply, it's best to look back at Fresh Supply and that's what I'll do in this post. Talking about its rough release, public's reaction and reasons why it happened. Highlighting the importance of post-release support and questioning the accepted narrative related to it. After all that, it'll be the turn to poke misleading marketing of Refreshed Supply and weirdness of its pre-ordering.

The Bad & Ugly in Heretic + Hexen

Heretic + Hexen Game/Expansion Selection Screen.

The unfortunate nature of re-releases and remasters are that they would never be perfect. After all, perfection isn't something achievable when you really think about it. You'll always have some flaws, inaccuracies or even missing features. While it's not something that would bother newcomers and such due to lack of prior experience, for the die-hard fans these things would be a problem. Some things could be tolerable, but some shouldn't be.

Aside from that, there's a matter of presentation and approach to the project itself. Ideally you would want to have a re-release or remaster done by a group of people with enough love to the original(s) and dedication to preserving essential aspects of game(s) they work on. Even without the first part, you can still achieve the second one with the right focus and handling of its development.

I like Heretic. I love Hexen: Beyond Heretic. Can I recommend Heretic + Hexen? No. After playing it for many hours and looking around to gain more insight into it, I don't think it was handled in a way it should've been. From evidently lazy approach to missing details and outright false advertisement. This re-release was also quite an eye-opener to how Nightdive Studios operates, and it's also something that needs to be addressed.

Soundtrack Disarray in Heretic + Hexen

Sound Options in Heretic + Hexen.

There're a lot of things I could say about Heretic + Hexen re-release, and I'm not sure if I'll end up committing to spilling these thoughts into the void, but there's at least one topic I want to cover separately because I think it's both interesting and important. What started as a mere observation of absent OPL3 version of games' soundtracks turned into discovery of wrongful presentation of music's "Original" option in what seemingly is a vague topic.

I'll start off with notes about current soundtrack options in the re-release and how the likely reason behind Nightdive Studio's mistake was generalization of music in Doom Engine games and then dive further into what version of soundtracks for Heretic and Hexen are closest to the 'intended ones'. Even if the actual chances of this being corrected is extremely low, at least PC players have something to work with to account for this on their own.

Revised Issues & Suggestions for War1R

Warcraft Remastered Battle Chest Trailer Screenshot. Taken from YouTube.

It's been over a month since Blizzard Entertainment has shadowdropped Warcraft 1: Remastered, Warcraft 2: Remastered and Patch 2.0 for Warcraft 3 during Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct. Since then, I tried my best to dedicate some of my free time to observe and take note of the general state of the first two releases, their updates and unaddressed issues. This approach mostly comes to the fact that more eyes are likely to be centered on Warcraft 3 with its fragmented community, but even then there're some things that I feel like have been missed out on by players and developers alike. It would have to wait for a good while though.

Nevertheless, right now I would like to talk about remaster of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and not just because it's the first game in Warcraft franchise. But because it's likely to be the most neglected one, which you can argue may be evident by all the recent updates both titles were getting: War2R managed to catch Patch 1.01 alongside multiple hotfixes, but War1R is yet to receive a proper patch of its own (only hotfixes). Warcraft RTS Team and developers from Blackbird Interactive (assuming they're still attached to the projects; hopefully, they are) are making some admirable small steps after the initial rushed release, but more needs to be done. Because these games deserve much more.

The purpose of this "article" is to revisit my list of issues & suggestions for War1R I posted on r/Warcraft3 & Blizzard's forum in more depth to the best of my abilities and even add something new to all that. Not only just to "do this myself" (video would be ideal, but that's not something I can do anytime soon; post's timing isn't good already with too many delays) and get it out of my system, but to publish a "comprehensive" feedback based on my outside observations for the developers in hopes that they're keeping track of all that people have to say outside of forum discussions, Reddit posts, YouTube videos and such.

Some Thoughts about Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct

Warcraft 30th Anniversary Key Art. Taken from Blizzard.

Despite having some ideas and intentions to write something prior to Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct, life have kept me too busy for me to dedicate some time to that. All I could manage is post some tweets about Warcraft 3's Patch 2.0 and Warcraft 2: Remastered "leak". It was quite rejuvenating to be kind of exciting about Blizzard event after stepping away from Warcraft franchise. World of Warcraft Classic's Season of Discovery managed to reignite the remaining appreciation for the series that laid mostly dormant in my mind.

Since my interest are centered around the good old days of Azeroth, I won't have much to say about Hearthstone, Warcraft Rumble and remaining World of Warcraft news. You know, something like Undermine would've been very interesting to me... around 6-7 years ago, but the few things from The War Within that I saw didn't really have any reaction on me. I guess the Khadgar nonsense has a potential of being interesting if they take some inspiration from Earthsea's Ged, but even then I have my doubts. And the same can be said about Housing in Midnight expansion: neat on paper, who knows how it'll turn out.

Either way, it's time to throw some general thoughts from my messy mind into the void to clear my head. Maybe someone will even waste their time reading it and have only themselves to blame for it, but still thanks for that time.

Echoes from Blizzard's Past

Edited "Games" Page from Battle.net Launcher. Originally Made by Kacpa2.

Technically more than three years ago, Ilko's Hall got its proper start and it started with "Blast from Blizzard's Past" where I caught onto strange anomaly on Blizzard's website regarding its pre-Warcraft games. Originally I thought they were planning to hand them over to GOG, but a few days later Blizzard Arcade Collection was shadowdropped during BlizzConline. I still look back at this quirky "kind of prediction" fondly. Despite this, I guess I was hesitant to revisit this topic as time went on. To be fair, there wasn't much to cover and I'm not sure if I even mentioned anything new in some random post.

Anyway, that doesn't matter now! Because I'm about to pick things up right where I left them at that first "article". Since I completed the "main quest" of Ilko's Hall, it feels natural to complete this concluding circle by falling into sudden old school Blizzard rabbit hole yet again and there's quite a few things I have to cover. In order to let the proper atmosphere settle in, I also recommend you to check out both "A Tale of Warcraft Remasters that Almost Happened" & "Callback to Blizzard Classic 'Arcade'" before reading this one.

Main Quest Update

"Main Quest Update" Thumbnail.

You know, this post should've been written and released a long time ago. Too bad I ended up being weirdly sentimental about it to a point where I decided to drag it out up until blog's third anniversary. Despite a few events out of my control, I've managed to more-or-less keep some resemblance of investment into a niche hobby and hold myself roughly accountable to this odd commitment. Starting out with taking my shot at various types of texts before figuring out what kind of strangeness I enjoy the most. Not every post ended up in a way I hoped or initially thought, but at the end of a day I'm glad I spend time doing something and trying myself at writing different things within this large world of blogging or digital diary.

As time went on and things were changing in a way they did, it became apparent to me that Ilko's Hall needs to change too... Well, I think it needs too. Nothing stops me from just letting its current state speak for itself, but that's not how I want it to go. I want to bring the proper sense of closure to something that's been a part of my life for surprisingly long time. However, that doesn't mark a definitive end to it and I will explain it shortly. Just let me start with the usual conclusions and then some.