Ophelia Price
"A cold and cunning woman, Ophelia is the hand at work behind every situation. Those that join her find themselves curiously doing what she wants whether they planned to or not, and those that oppose her have a tendency to disappear. In a fight she is fast, quiet, and versatile. Unable to take large amounts of punishment or carry the more powerful weapons, she offsets this by using conventional firearms in conjunction with dark magic to maximize her offensive and defensive capabilities. No need to face dead-on what you can take out at 300 yards with a sniper rifle." — Blood II: The Chosen Website
Ophelia Price is one of the four Chosen and acts as Caleb's love interest. Whether or not she loves him back is controversial throughout the series and is up for debate. She acted as Caleb's original gateway into the Cabal, after the death of her husband and son (at the hands of the Cabal, though Ophelia does not blame the cult for this but rather her husband).
Blood II reveals more about her personality, that she is a cold, cunning, manipulative, woman and prefers stealth to strength. She uses the Tesla Cannon and Sniper Rifle primarily. Her and Caleb's relationship is tenuous, mostly consisting of back-and-forth jabs with no real affection ever being shown; though under the surface of this is left ambiguous. In Blood she is shown in brown pants and shirt with a green cape and has short flowing red hair. In Blood II she wears a leather jacket and pants and now has shorter red hair styled into spikes.
She is voiced by Lani Minella in Blood II: The Chosen (who also voiced Gabriella). She has a few vocals in the first cut scene of Blood, but is not identified in the cast, though she may be voiced by "Celeste". When left alone Ophelia will recite random verses from "The Dole of the King's Daughter: Breton" by Oscar Wilde and "The Truth the Dead Know" by Anne Sexton to herself.
History[edit]
Early Years[edit]
Much of Ophelia's early life is unknown. Her British accent hints that she is a descendant of English immigrants, or that she was born in England and migrated to America later. She was probably brought up in a family of some wealth as she was able to enrol in college and join a sorority (Iota Eta Pi).
Ophelia's entrance into the Cabal came during her college years when a genius student created a reanimation serum. The Cabal sent zombies into the campus to secure him and the serum, but as zombies are apparently wont to do, they wandered instead to the "largest collection of defenceless and scantily clad women" - Ophelia's sorority house.
Observing the power that the Cabal wielded, Ophelia had an evil inspiration: ditch her education, family, and associates and join the cult. After destroying all of the incriminating evidence against her, as she knew they would never take a perky bleached blonde sorority girl, she presented herself to the cult and was accepted.
The Cabal[edit]
Ophelia was eventually married, either before or after joining the Cabal, and gave birth to a child (given tradition, it can be assumed that she took on his surname of Price). Her husband was also a member of the cult, but for reasons that remain unstated he rescinded his membership. In response, the Cabal torched their homestead, killing him and their young son. Ophelia was left insane and babbling incoherently about the cult in the remains of her burnt up home, though she did not blame them for her plight but instead was left with a deep abiding hatred of her late husband.
Caleb found Ophelia in the remains of her homestead, during his criminal wanderings. He was struck by her beauty but also the words in her mad ramblings. As he rehabilitated her, Caleb learned about the Cabal and their master Tchernobog and joined the cult as well seeking power. It is also implied that he and Ophelia became lovers. Eventually, the two rose through the ranks and, along with Ishmael and Gabriel, became members of the Chosen, Tchernobog's elite generals. The four Chosen served the dark god well, preparing for the day when He would throw open the doors between the dimensions and take over the Earth, although earning the ire of others high in the cult like Cheogh.
Betrayal and Death[edit]
Main Article: Blood
Sometime between 1871 and 1928, Tchernobog summoned the four Chosen to the Hall of the Epiphany, His main chamber. Instead of giving orders, as the Chosen had thought, Tchernobog told them that they had failed Him, and proceeded to disavow them. The four were stunned as Tchernobog sent His lieutenants in to take the Chosen out one by one. Cheogh swoops down from the darkness and kidnaps Ophelia, causing Caleb to jump to her aid but in the end fail to grab hold of her.
Cheogh takes off and drags her to the Altar of Stone, where he crucifies her on a large stone monolith. After Caleb was resurrected his first action was to find Ophelia and defeat Cheogh. Upon arriving at the place where Ophelia was hung he screams in anguish as the temple begins to rumble, and a wall collapses. Cheogh emerges and Caleb slays him. He then takes Ophelia down off the altar and places her on a funeral pyre to cremate her body. Afterwards, he approaches the body of Cheogh, points his Sawed-Off Shotgun at the creature's head, and pulls the trigger one final time.
Resurrection[edit]
Main Article: Blood II: The Chosen
At some point in the year 2028, Ophelia is resurrected by unknown means although Ishmael says that "she was the first to come through". It is likely however that the tears between the realities had something to do with her and the other Chosen's return to the land of the living. She is held by the Cabal in the Temple of Poon in CabalCo headquarters. Once Caleb arrives and finds Ophelia tied to the altar (something rather reminiscent of their previous encounter), she attempts to seduce Caleb into assisting her, before Gideon arrives and spirits her away through another rift.
After Caleb catches up with Gideon, Ophelia appears on the rooftop, inexplicably free, and calls Caleb a "dumb bastard" for following Gideon in. While there, Caleb battles another version of Ophelia as part of the Undead Chosen. They eventually reunite in Reality Beta after the defeat of The Ancient One.
The Nightmare Levels[edit]
Main Article: The Nightmare Levels
During their long walk home through the other world, the four Chosen stop at a campfire and tell scary stories. Ophelia, nonplussed by Caleb's sudden disappearance, tells of her time in Iota Eta Pi during the Cabal attack.
Relationship with Caleb[edit]
Fan Artwork by Lena "Hellen" Iachoukova
Ophelia's affection for Caleb is debatable to say the least. Very little of the relationship from her side is explored in the canon media; the only acknowledgement of them as lovers is in the Blood manual and accompanying bloodhlp.txt file. In fact, some textual sources relating to Blood II even go so far as to say she has outright rejected Caleb as well as herself following her unexplained resurrection.
"Resurrected into a world with no future and full of disgust over the undead creature that she has become, Ophelia is desperately searching for a way out. She'll do whatever it takes to escape from a world gone mad, a body she no longer knows, and the love of a man she's grown to despise." — Blood II instruction manual
Other background material also hints that one of Caleb's motivations in Blood II was supposed to be winning Ophelia back, although none of this ever really appears in the final product, likely due the game's rushed development causing last minute cuts and story changes.
"Can he hold the Chosen together long enough to retake the Cabal? Or will his actions destroy them all? But the most important question is what he will do when he discovers that the love he has kept alive for nearly a century is nothing but an illusion?" — Blood II instruction manual
When Caleb does finally meet her in-game they engage in some friendly sexually charged banter, none of which can be considered as being strongly suggestive of a relationship in doubt, although the fact that she was tied up at the time may have had something to do with her conducive attitude. She does also seem to share the other Chosen's frustration over Caleb's stubbornness with regards to accepting his responsibility to seal the rifts, but this does not equal hatred.
She is also annoyed when he follows Gideon through the rifts, although once it is all over her annoyance with him seems to have become moot, though what of it remains after the fact remains unclear.
"He wants you to follow him, you dumb bastard." — Ophelia Price, C3L10: Cabal CO Rooftops
She does not seem to mind being trapped with him in the other world, and in The Nightmare Levels during her story she warns the others against revealing her secret, indicating that she still felt rather strongly about Caleb's good opinion of her.
"Actually, I have to let you two in on a little secret to tell this story. Don't tell Caleb though. He'd never forgive me." — Ophelia Price, C5L2: Iota Eta Pi
When she does eventually meet up with him later at the end of her story, she goes on to address him in a very familiar fashion, hinting at some secret affections, or at the very least a fear of Caleb turning against her.
"Umm... you're having a bad dream... Caleb, dear. Just a nightmare. — Ophelia Price, C5L2: Iota Eta Pi
Likely, their relationship is based on a tenuous bond of the hardships they went through - Ophelia's insanity, her involvement with the Cabal and subsequent disavowment, and being resurrected over a century later. It is known that the two were lovers back when they were serving Tchernobog, however it is unknown how this has survived through death, time, and battle.
Development[edit]
Garrett Price was one of the initial founders of Monolith Productions (as opposed to QStudios), alongside Brian Goble and Bryan Bouwman, but it is not clear if Ophelia's surname is a homage to his (it could also be in reference to horror actor Vincent Price). He later joined with Goble and Bouwman to form HipSoft. According to the Blood Alpha, her original given name was supposed to be Rachael, with Caleb having the similar sounding name of Michael.
Ophelia's final design was an example of Monolith Productions' community outreach during the development of Blood II:
"Based on the what you folks had to say on the Blood forum about the picture of Ophelia, I tweaked her design a bit. No, I didn't give her 38DD's or long hair. I did however change her clothes some so they would be more recognizable. No more space suit (actually, a motorcycle racing suit)... now she has a leather racing jacket, chaps, and boots. I think she looks pretty good... and I'll be interested to hear what you all think when we can release a picture of her." — Eric Kohler's .plan file, March 20, 1998
In another earlier plan file update, Kohler also made some observations upon the design of other female game characters:
"So I've been thinking about breasts lately. I know your first thought is... Eric, why have you been thinking about breasts, and more importantly, why are you telling me about it? Well, I answer, the last few weeks I have been designing some of the characters in Blood 2, and several of them are, obviously, female. I've been looking around at the females in other games and comics and what do you think I found? Every single one of them looks like some silicon injected, lypo sunctioned, fake baked, frankentitty bimbo! What, might I ask, is the deal? Why are all of these characters cookie cutter dipshits? Really, is there something I am missing. I know both the gaming and comic industries are mostly aimed at young males, but don't those young males find it a little boring and insulting that the creators of these various products think they can toss a gravity defying rack on the body of a 13 year old girl and you'll run right out and buy it?!?" — Eric Kohler's .plan file, August 1, 1997
From these observations, he defined his (somewhat prescient) feminist motivations for character design:
"I for one would rather see women in games that have real CHARACTER, not just the same Barbi face, body and boobs with different colour hair and skin tight outfit. I would love to see a story (comic, game, movie... whatever) with a female lead that truly kicked ass. Now Zena's gettin' close, and Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead had potential (although she screwed it up), but as of yet I haven't seen one lean, mean, crazy in the head action oriented ass kicker character that also happens to have breasts. I wanna see a chick who really knows how to use the guns she totes around, doesn't do her martial arts moves in stilleto heels, and snickers with glee as she blows your friggin' head off. If anybody else wants to see this in a game, drop me a line, or just wait for Blood 2... he he he" — Eric Kohler's .plan file, August 1, 1997
It may be somewhat ironic then that in "C3L3: Temple of Poon" she actually does appear as a classic damsel in distress, even if she does not seem tremendously pleased to see Caleb's "gallant" rescue attempt, sarcastically quipping "Hmm, Prince Charming I presume?". When Caleb meets her again atop of "C3L10: Cabal CO Rooftops" she seems to have managed to free and even arm herself with a Tesla Cannon however, and actively berates her erstwhile rescuer for following Gideon through the portal.
External Links[edit]
Protagonists: Caleb | Ophelia Price | Ishmael | Gabriel/Gabriella
Antagonists: Chosen-in-training | Little Caleb | Undead Chosen
