Legacy of Kain | A Complete History and Retrospective

what if your fate was predetermined what if your choice determined the life or death of the entire world what if you could go back in time and try and change the past legacy of cain explores all of these things and more in its epic story of deception destiny revenge redemption and betrayal its shakespearean dialogue biblical themes and grand scope make it a series that fans love going back to legacy of kane is a long beloved series of video games starting in the early 90s its fan base is massive and dedicated the games themselves were praised by critics at the time of release and some of the entries have gone down as classics in the annals of video game history so where is legacy of kane today why hasn't a mainline entry been released in almost 18 years what is it about legacy of kane that makes fans so eager for a sequel or even a remake i'm gonna try and answer all these questions and more today as we talk about the legendary series legacy of kane i'd like to establish some structure to this video considering the length if that kind of stuff bores you you can just skip ahead with the handy chapters that i've included below first i'd like to specifically address the length of the video it's pretty long but there's a reason for this legacy of kane while only comprising five mainline entries is heady its story is lore heavy and full of metaphors that lend themselves well to analysis it's one of the reasons people still talk about these games today its gameplay is worthy of heavy analysis as well because its impact on the action adventure genre is still seen to this day and was extremely prevalent in the early 2000s there's also a lot to cover with the history and development of the series i'd like to give good context for each game to show the vision and reasoning behind the development of each entry in the series the legacy of kane series is also infamous for cut content and cancelled sequels which we'll be going into detail on as well i'd also like to note that most of the footage i'll be showing i got from the pc versions of these games these were the easiest way for me to play these games in 2021 most of the pc versions work well when patched i'm not going to get into the ridiculous amount of effort that went into getting these games to work on modern machines just know it's dumb i mostly won't point out flaws that are specific to the pc ports and if i do i'll let you know i'd also like to thank kawaii games for letting me use his soul reaver footage for some reason i couldn't reasonably record this game which was one of the smaller issues i ran into when trying to get these pc ports to work my intention for this video was to provide a final retrospective on the series combining the history of the series with an in-depth analysis on the games themselves as well each section will cover the development the gameplay and story and then cut content as well as any final thoughts that i have on the game before we move on to the next one if cut content or development isn't your thing like i said before i've included handy chapters below so that you can just skip straight to the story and gameplay i'd also like to thank the amazing people over at the legacy of kane wiki their information and help was so beneficial in the process of making this video i'd also like to shout out sites like the dark chronicle and the lost worlds the former being an encyclopedia of everything legacy of kane and the latter being a fan archive of all cut content and cancelled sequels in the entire series the legacy of kane fanbase is amazing and dedicated i worked a lot on this video and i did a lot of research but it's very possible that i missed something if there's any questions that my video doesn't answer you can go to any of these sites and try to find them yourselves i put some links in the description for those curious an obligatory spoiler warning is also in order as i'll be going in depth on each of these games so spoiler warning for blood omen blood omen 2 soul reaver soul reaver 2 and legacy of kane defiance legacy of kane is an amazing series and you can see the love and care that went into each game it's clear that the people making these games actually cared about their world and the characters in that world so i think it's only fair that we're comprehensive when we're talking about the series itself with that being said it's time for me to quit talking and get to the first game hey dad it's me your favorite son and today i want to talk about legacy of kane i had to do that [Music] blood omen legacy of kane is a top-down action-adventure game developed by silicon knights and published by crystal dynamics with distribution by activision the original concept for blood omen was developed in 1993 by dennis dayak and ken mcculloch while working at silicon nights the game was originally titled the pillars of nozgoth the team at silicon knights spent six to eight months working on the game's design they wanted to make a game where there was no ultimate weapon or armor forcing you to use your head as well as your reflexes they wanted it to be a mature title that adults would want to play diac met lyle hall a crystal dynamics producer at a developer conference and the two agreed that games should be given higher budgets and deliver on bigger expectations silicon knights had sent multiple proposals to crystal dynamics one of which was for blood omen crystal dynamics eventually went with blood omen as they thought that fantasy would go over better than the other sci-fi game that silicon knights were pitching the soul reaver the titular weapon of the series was taken from another of the proposals the team had developed and was transplanted into blood omen but this is the legacy of cain after all and back in 1996 anti-heroes were not as popular as they are now and barely existed in video games dayak said that kane was partially modeled after william money from clint eastwood's unforgiven kill just about everything your walks are crawled at one time or another and i'm here to kill you little bill they wanted to challenge the mono myth and introduce players to a world where everyone thinks you're evil while kane might not be a traditional anti-hero leaning more towards the ante than hiro he still counts and this moral grey area is a central piece of kane's story especially in the beginning the game was originally planned for the 3do and possibly the sega saturn but hall and dayak convinced crystal dynamics to choose the playstation as they were impressed with its streamlined architecture and graphical abilities when blood omen was finally showcased at e3 1995 silicon knights were adamant that they received credit as the game's developer one of the few publications to give credit to silicon knights was die hard game fan which named blood omen best overall game at e3 after lots of consideration the decision was made to substantially increase the size of the development team doubling silicon night's members overnight this led to the size of the game increasing as well with an original planned 40 game characters turning to 190 and 40 tile sets increased to 600. when the game released its sales were described as immensely successful with the game being a critical hit as well critics cited the story as the best of many strong features in the game and the load times being noted as agonizing this was due to the large amount of cut scenes and lack of vram allocation being provided on the playstation meaning the team had to store graphics where they didn't belong after the development there was a bit of controversy surrounding the rights to the actual series we'll get into that a little bit but let's talk about the story of blood omen [Music] the story of blood omen centers around nazgoth and articular character kane the world of nazgoth is tied to the pillars of nazgoth nine columns of marble and other materials which reach into the sky infinitely each pillar is tied to a fundamental principle with a guardian being responsible for each mind represented by noop raptor the mentalist dimension protected by azimuth the planer conflict protected by malik the paladin nature guarded by bane the druid balance guarded by ariel energy guarded by de joule the energist time guarded by mobius the time streamer states guarded by anachroth the alchemist and death guarded by mortanius the necromancer these sorcerers make up the circle of nine dedicated to serving and protecting the integrity of the land when a guardian dies the circle is broken until their successor is found these pillars directly correlate to the state and health of the world itself if the pillars are corrupt the world is corrupt long before the events of the game the vampire population of nazgoth increased which spurred the forming of the circle of nine this also encouraged a crusade of a monastic brotherhood of vampire hunters called the seraphan the subsequent purging of vampires caused vorador a legendary vampire to retaliate storming the circle of nine and killing six of its members before defeating malek the leading member of the seraphan mortanius the necromancer then condemned malek for his trespasses upon the vampires and damned him to serve the circle for eternity as a wraith trapped inside a suit of armor [Music] in our current story vampires and humans co-exist sort of not really the humans are too busy to worry about vampires as there's a new threat the legions of the nemesis attacking from the north years later ariel the guardian of balance is murdered by an unknown assailant causing the pillars to break and turn corrupted that brings us up to the current day you start the game as kane a young nobleman from corhagen he stopped at a tavern in zeke's drill but was turned away by the barkeep and forced to the road tavern's closing this be on your way stranger it's at this moment that kane is set upon by a pack of brigands and run through with a sword you can't attack or defend yourself at all at this point you can even get away from the bandits a little bit but the town's exit is blocked off you're forced to watch kane die no matter what kane wakes up in the underworld faced by the necromancer maurtanius who gives him a chance at vengeance promising him the blood he hungers for kane accepts the offer without a second thought his narration calling the choice foolish and awakes in his own mausoleum i awoke to the pain of a new existence in a dank womb of darkness and decay he realizes that he's been awoken as a vampire and sets out immediately for vengeance you gain a sword and a recall spell as well as some flays which are some type of curved blade i'm assuming kane kills his assailants with ease and is told by maurtanius that these fools were merely the instruments of his murder not the cause kane then sets out to the pillars of nasgoth to look for a cure to this curse that he's accepted this is where the game opens up a little and lets you veer off the beaten path it's not crpg open but it will let you take the road less traveled and possibly find some secret caves along the way there's a lot of secrets in this game of a large variety we'll get to those in depth a bit later kane arrives at the nine pillars and is met by the specter of ariel the former guardian of balance when kane asks how he may cure this curse that he's chosen she tells him that there is no cure for death only release she then instructs him to destroy the sorcerer's poisoning nosgoth if he sought peace the circle of nine have currently been driven to insanity by noop raptor the mind guardian nope raptor was ariel's lover and in a fit of grief and misery over his beloved's death he vowed to spread terror throughout the land nupraptor is stationed in his retreat high atop a mountain overlooking vasserbund this is our next destination we take a teleporter away from the pillars and quickly gain bat form kane has many different forms that he acquires throughout the game but bat form basically allows us to fast travel this might be one of the earliest iterations of fast travel i've seen in a game you can find bat beacons all around nasgoth and when discovered you can fly there anytime you'd like as we make our way through nasgoth we find our first shrine shrines are normally hidden in caves and are small dungeons that will provide you with some new power upgrade at the end our first shrine will provide us with a light spell this spell illuminates the area for a short period of time and i didn't really find much use in the spell to be honest immediately we find another cave which gives us the wolf form wolf form lets kane change into a wolf duh and lets us jump over chasms or get up onto higher ledges this opens up the world a lot and lets us reach areas we couldn't before blood omen does have this kind of metroidvania and i use that term loosely designed to it you constantly end up gaining abilities or weapons that you can use to travel back to already completed areas and find secrets there after we get our wolf form we get access to our first spirit forge spirit forges are our second type of secret cave and they allow us to trade blood for something normally a bunch of items in this case we get 10 flays for most of our blood vial these secrets are cool but every time i did them i would be left with almost no health and would be sweating to get to the next save point which i entirely understand is the point and i think it works well it's an optional sacrifice which indirectly ups the difficulty in return for some upgrades our next type of secret cave that we'll encounter are blood shrines blood shrines are big pools of you guessed it blood we can drink from them and receive a permanent upgrade this one makes us stronger which really means we can move small boulders now our final type of secret cave is the moon caves moon caves are the rarest form of cave that i encountered while playing blood omen the only reason being that they are only open on a full moon i tried as hard as i could to not cheese the game very much and just have a normal play through so i didn't just sit and wait for these to open on our journey we pass through noctuln and steich and crow where nothing of particular note happens but eventually we reach vasserbund outside of vasserbund is a gypsy camp where we find our third form disguise which is going to come in very handy in a second disguise lets us turn into a human as long as we have magic this is particularly handy because vasserbund is full of pretty strong guards as we reach the middle of the town we see nope raptors retreat it's looming over the city in the shape of a giant skull the mentalist sits atop his retreat watching all waiting for his moment to wreak havoc upon the world as we enter his retreat the front door sitting at the foot of the mountain we begin our first boss dungeon most bosses in the game are preceded by a large dungeon full of monsters puzzles and traps this is an old school design philosophy that shows its face more than ever in this setting but still works for the most part as we invade his retreat there's probably no better time than now to talk about noop raptor nope raptor is a mentalist the game doesn't really explain what it means but we do know that he had power over mental and psychic abilities while also being hyper-sensitive to people's emotions this could be why his grief was so overwhelming that he would go into a fit of fury and rage at the news of his beloved's death nope raptor's pillar token which is what a guardian receives when they become protector of a pillar was his enlarged cranium assumingly making him smarter and more powerful in the ways of the mind i see nupraptor's story as almost a mirror of keynes a different onset but the same outcome nope raptor seeks revenge and murder but because of his grief over his dead lover kane's fury and revenge are much more inward he seeks these things for himself nope raptor's retreat is one of the shorter boss dungeons we bob and weave through bone projectiles and fireballs killing slimes sorcerers and skeletons along our way eventually we reach the top of the retreat and kane sees nosgoth through the eyes of nuprapter that's when kane comes face to face with the man himself who already has malek the paladin with him he dismisses malek and were left to fight nup raptor the nope raptor fight was particularly easy he shoots waves of green and purple balls at you but the purple ones fade in and out you can use this moment to slip past the wave and get closer to nup raptor each time you hit him he switches to the other side of the arena and does the same thing eventually he sits in the center and launches skulls at you until you whack him enough for him to die and his head to be severed we take nope raptor's pillar token his severed head and head out of his retreat on our way out we receive the mace which can destroy boulders letting us access many new secrets we gain some magic recovery speed and find another spirit forge before we come upon the town of corehagen if you remember the beginning of the game kane says he is from corehagen this is his homecoming of sorts but he doesn't treat it like normal kane speaks of core like he speaks of everything in nozgoth with disdain and vitriol a plague has been terrorizing korhagen for a while now and bodies crest every avenue and street of the town there's some speculation that kane was originally fleeing the plague which is why he was traveling on the road at the beginning of the game with gorhagen being blighted by the plague we cannot feed here as the blood is tainted in korrhagen we gained some very useful upgrades including bone armor which causes smaller undead enemies to ignore kane and the repel spell the repel spell is super useful as it repels magical attacks creating a barrier around kane making our way through core hagen is much different than the previous towns and villages we've come across the dead litter the streets and you can clearly see the effects that the plague has wrought on this place very few humans still inhabit this place and they're instead replaced by necromancers and their minions after korhagen we see malex bastion sitting atop a snowy mountain overlooking nozgoth this thread of the guardians placing their bases above cities is important before the circle was corrupted this would have been to oversee the world they sought to protect now it stands as a testament to their perceived place above the lowly folk of nozgoth kane doesn't waste time heading for his next kill making his way across the snowy mountain and entering the fortress that is malex bastion this next boss dungeon is huge and much larger than nupraptor's retreat as we make our way through the catholic fortress of steel and screams we fight many of malex warriors soon you realize that malek is creating these warriors from strange magical machines hidden away in the back rooms of his palace our goal here is to shut these machines down eventually we find the orb powering them and destroy it then we make our way to malek himself the malik fight is also pretty simple especially with the repel spell you have to knock malek down three times after the first time he starts firing off bolts of energy with repel this is really just hitting him over and over until he collapses after kane knocks him down the third time he realizes he is outmatched and retreats we gain the axes of havoc and malice which can do this sick blade spinning thing and just cut down entire groups of enemies this attack doesn't always work great because it can be interrupted by other attacks but when i could pull it off and kill multiple enemies at once it was incredibly satisfying the axes also have the downside of not being able to cast magic when using them they give us the additional ability of being able to cut down large trees opening up more areas for us to explore kane heads back to the pillars of nosgoth to seek out ariel's advice on malik she tells him to journey east of malex bastion and find the oracle this is where we start to see echoes of the hero's journey it's interesting what silicone knights did with blood omen because while we are on a grand adventure of failure and redemption one classic to many myths of old kane is also constantly expressing his disdain for the world his hatred for anything happy and his joy at the suffering of others on our way to the oracle we find a blood fountain that makes snow not hurt us vampires are interesting in this world they cannot touch water of any kind including rain and snow they also feed differently than traditional vampires in sort of a telekinetic way they draw the blood of their victims from a distance the sun can also harm cain if he hasn't acquired the proper blood fountains kane makes his way to the oracle's caves hidden in the same snowy mountain it shares with malex bastion this is where you really start to see the work that silicone knights put into this game the oracle's caves are massive and i'm sure i didn't explore every single centimeter of this place when talking about the development it's apparent what the expansion of silicon knight's team meant for this game these tile sets and enemies have clearly been expanded upon from their original conception we make our way through various shivering and frozen caverns to finally find the seat of the oracle one thing i haven't talked about yet in blood omen is vista markers vista markers are blood omen's way of delivering us narrative information it's the predecessor to things like lore books examining items and narration just being triggered by certain events they appear in the game world as little triangular glyphs on the ground hidden amidst the many obscure artifacts in that museum i discovered an ancient chronicle this passage caught my eye it was during these dark times infested with the plague of the undead that the circle brought the seraphan to existence they can show road markers for towns a switch to kane's perspective of the world like in nook raptors retreat or outside of malik's bastion or even just kane's narration odd this armor resembled that of the ward and his minions yet the steel seemed newly fashioned and untarnished by time these vista markers are used perfectly in the room outside of the oracle seat there are five vista markers here all optional that can be triggered to hear kane examining items on the floor or the walls of the room this gives us greater context into the oracle himself and the world around us this would appear in modern games as investigating items in a room to solve a crime or find out more about the world here in its elementary form its purpose is still fulfilled and in a very inventive way for its time we talk to the oracle and he starts to hint at time conquer time or it will conquer you which will become very important and a recurring theme throughout the series he tells us to seek out the vampire vorador the man we saw slaying malek at the beginning of the game we also get our first in-world introduction to king atmar who will be a very important character in a bit with that we head to vorador's mansion before we enter his mansion though we gain some very useful abilities including mist form an ability which lets us move across water or any other treacherous substance of the ground with ease we can also slip through cracks and walls to access secret areas and when in this form cannot be hit by physical attacks we also gained some strength from a blood fountain a flaming sword and a mind control spell the mind control spell is very interesting and its dungeon is also the first appearance that i can tell of missable secrets or at least intentional ones with the mind control spell you fire a projectile that takes control of an enemy you can then control them while you have magic to use but other enemies will still automatically attack you why i'm not sure in this dungeon there are some unreachable areas that can only be accessed with this spell and if all your expendable enemies die you can't get those secrets i thought this was pretty cool because up until now most secrets have just been hidden rooms or hard to access upgrades but now the stakes have been raised with these upgrades we make our way to vorador's mansion on the way kane questions why a vampire as legendary as vorador would place his hideout in such a treacherous place for a vampire i also want to clarify something here about the story i found the past events that are shown in fmvs at the beginning to be a little confusing so i just want to make it clear so everyone understands moving forward the circle of the nine and the vampires are separate entities it can be hard to discern who is the good guys and who are the bad guys in kane's story but that's kind of the point blood omen houses a difficult story one that challenges the viewer to interpret the circle the vampires and the seraphan are all separate entities the seraphan the vampire hunters were created by the circle as a response to the increasing and encroaching vampire population this is why vorador killed six of the circle and malek the leader of the seraphan then malek became one of the members of the circle as a damnation vordor's mansion is also massive the dungeons become larger and larger as we move forward in the game the entire house is dotted with blood humans ready for sacrifice and torture devices when he finally meets vorador he is disgusted seeing a vision of what he could become if he lets this curse take hold of him to kane vorador is a vision of his possible future vorador tells kane that as vampires they are gods and that the mortals offer their blood as sacrifice cain believes this deep down he knows vorador is right but still thinks that vorador has fallen for the pitfalls of decadence i pondered this as the decadent old fool prattled on about his past vorador recounts his killing of the circle and tells kane to not concern himself with the affairs of man vordor gives kane a ring which he can use to summon vordor if he needs help after kane leaves vordor's mansion maurtanius chimes in telling him that a triad congregates at the roof of the world three of the circle of nine's guardians are plotting their machinations for nazgoth at dark eden dark eden is described as a garden of horrors created by de joule bane and anacroath dark eden is filled with lava disgusting creatures with green blood and a central tower spewing with corrosive energy all of the enemies here are people who have been swallowed up by dark eden's power twisted and turned into abominations there's a wonderful sound effect that emits from one of these creatures that shoot projectiles that's about six times louder than anything else in the game which is pretty cool and not annoying at all eventually we reach the sanctuary at the center of dark eden while infiltrating the fortress we receive the flesh armor which pulls enemies blood from them and spirit death a spell which pulls an enemy's soul from them we reach bane the druid de joule the energist and anachroth the alchemist anachroth flees the scene but not before summoning malek kane summons vorador with his ring and the two recently summoned see it fit to have a rematch of sorts kane runs after bane and d'joule resulting in another boss fight fighting the two isn't particularly hard you focus bane at first who is constantly running around the area turning grass into water but not attacking you directly bane dies quickly and dejoule who is at the top of the arena shooting lightning projectiles at you dies even quicker using repel here and shooting projectiles at de joul makes quick work of this fight kane picks up bane's antler headdress and de joules insulating cloak he heads back into the previous room to see that vorador won the fight against malek taking malek's helmet as his token kane returns to the pillars of nazgoth and restores nature energy and conflict ariel then sends kane to avernus where azimuth the planer dwells azimuth has turned mad due to the pillar's corruption and has begun unleashing hordes of demons on the town from his cathedral to the south avernus is massive and its streets are filled with piled bodies blocking your way other than the dead humans large demons are the only things that roam the streets making your way through averness can be confusing you're mostly weaving through buildings into the sewers and back out again until you find a valid path to the south kane reaches avernus cathedral and begins to infiltrate the place azimuth is a planer therefore the bounds of the planes of existence here are shifted we are constantly jumping through teleporters into another realm to flip switches and open doors back on the other side this is the earliest and most rudimentary form of the main mechanics we'll see show up in the soul reaver series kane makes his way through the cathedral and gains two very important items the wraith armor and the soul reaver the soul revert will be a very important item moving forward not just for this game but for the entire series obviously it's a wavy blade with a skull at the hilt that can pull the souls of its enemies from their bodies and it's by far the most satisfying weapon to use in the game when you kill an enemy with it they explode their limbs flying all over the screen kane makes his way through the cathedral and finds azimuth the planer this fight is pretty simple using repel and our newly found soul reaver the only downside to the soul reaver like other two-handed weapons is that you can't cast spells with it i had to cast repel while i had the flaming sword equipped and then switched to the soul reaver mid-battle to counteract this kane takes azimuth's eye and heads for the pillars of nosgoth but before he leaves he finds a time streaming device in the cathedral when he delivers the eye to ariel and the pillars she remarks that it will deliver him in time she also tells him to turn his focus to the armies invading from the north the nemesis known previously as william the just these are the armies that the humans have been too occupied with to hunt vampires in recent years ariel also tells kane that to find our next member of the circle we must understand his machinations on our way to willendorf we gain a new spell spirit rack which is just mind control but through walls we also gain some strength and some magic regeneration once kane reaches willendorf he realizes that he cannot enter the city unless he appears like a noble our current spell of disguise won't do it so we venture to a cave to find a stronger one with this kane gains entry into the court of king atmar who is lamenting the lost soul of his daughter on her birthday ottmar created a contest one to create the finest doll in the realm and the winner would be granted a royal favor elsevier the doll maker created a toy of such beauty that all were captivated by it and he took a lock of the princess's hair as payment shortly after this she became lifeless atmar wants kane to journey north to elsevier's mansion and retrieve his daughter's soul and in return he will be given rulership of willendorf we make our way through a snow fortress and pass by stallberg a town ravaged by the armies of the nemesis there are bodies strewn about on pikes and piles of lifeless humans block our paths we see a statue constructed in the likeness of william the just and we see williams armies themselves we'll come back to those later but for now kane heads off to elsevier's mansion just to the west kane makes his way through the trixie and horrific halls of the mansion while we see a drastically different tone than we did in the other areas of the game this is probably a good time to talk about the music of blood omen as it plays a significant part in the mansion blood omen's soundtrack was composed by steve hennefin and scott shelley during the entire game there's this motif of coral arrangements building orchestras and violins it all mirrors the biblical epic and vampiric tone of the rest of the game but this all changes when we enter elsevier's mansion this whole section feels a bit out of place in story and also tonally i feel that it shifts us away from the main story to this side quest of helping out king atmar the music for the mansion changes to the spooky whimsical toy maker music the track itself fits with the area but the area is out of place in its own right i don't think this would have felt as shoehorned in if it had appeared earlier in the game but this late in the story it just doesn't sit right with me kane makes his way through the mansion encountering elsevier's exploding doll minions and finds elsevier himself elsevier is another pretty simple boss we defeat him using repel and hitting him over and over once he's dead kane retrieves the princess's soul and brings it back to king atmar kane refuses the rulership but accepts atmar's armies instead this causes atmar to lead the army of the last hope in a skirmish with the legions of the nemesis this entire battle is called the battle of the last stand as every other event in this game we see this battle through kane's eyes kane is fighting with the last hope but as he ventures north he's satiating himself on members of the hope and the nemesis alike to keep his strength atmar is killed and he uses his last words to beg kane to destroy the nemesis the army of hope flees as the tide of battle turns in the nemesis favor kane is backed into a corner and uses his last option the time streaming device he found in avernus with this the landscape around him changes to find out what's going on he reads a victim's thoughts and sees mobius the time streamer rally crowds of people for an onslaught kane realizes he's been transported back in time 50 years to the reign of william the just before he became the nemesis kane ventures through the stronghold of william the just and overhears a conversation between him and mobius mobius is providing william with weapons and warning him of a vampire assassin incoming that's us kane finds william and they go to battle this boss fight was a hack and slash fest william takes a while to be downed we take the usual strategy of repel and hacking him to death kane kills william the just and before we get to the conclusion of this game i need to explain something really quick you're probably looking at this fight and wondering how william's blade looks just like our soul reaver well that's because it is the soul reaver during this battle between kane and william they face off with the same legendary blade this is what's called the first paradox in legacy of kane lore speak this has major ramifications later on outside of this game and we'll get to that in a bit but just know that the original timeline that we were a part of leading up to this is dead and we've now spawned a new timeline moving forward with william's death kane heads back to his time thinking the conflict solved he returns to stalberg to find vorador being executed as mobius is again rallying the population against vampires the people turn on kane as they always have and we track mobius through the town he sends enemies from the past present and future at us one of them being a vision of kane himself this ends with mobius's death and kane delivering the epic line you have seen my plan vampire as i've seen your destiny the future says you die but i am dead kane heads back to the pillars to see mortanius and anna kroth arguing anachroth accuses maurtanius of betraying the circle and reveals that maurtanius had cain killed to destroy the circle mortanius justifies this by noting the circle's ruined nature and its corruption mortanius kills anakroth and his pillar is healed kane reveals himself and the two fight maurtanius takes a few hits from our flaming sword and then changes form maurtanius has been possessed by the dark entity and transforms to that of a huge demon the final boss battle sees mortanius phasing into the ground and back out again every time he pops up he'll do big damage to kane if he's in the way this is easily negated by you guessed it repel and with that the dark one is defeated after this kane is confronted with the knowledge that he is the guardian of balance the last member of the circle of nine and he has two options one is to sacrifice himself killing off the vampires forever and healing the circle for good or to destroy the pillars and accept himself as a god there are two endings to the game but only one is canon as we'll see in further entries of the series the good ending sees nosgoth brought back from ruin and the elements balanced once again with ariel giving us a little narration the bad ending which is canon sees kane accepting himself as a god and realizing that what vorador said is true kane sits atop a throne of bones drinking a chalice of blood falling to the decadence that he so despised in vorador with that we're done with blood omen before we move on to cut content i want to talk a bit about kane kane is definitely an anti-hero and even the developers described him as one in their original philosophy for the game but silicon knights takes this to a 10. usually the anti-heroes that we see today are redeemable in some way they're bad people sure they might be cocky narcissistic or violent but they have rules boundaries and morals tony soprano is a mob boss who kills people but loves animals he's great kane doesn't love animals walter white deals drugs and is a murderer but loves his family kane doesn't even have a family and if they were alive in korrhagen he sure didn't care don draper sells cigarettes for a living and cheats on his wife but he tries to do the right thing kane doesn't even care what the right thing is kane could be described as an anti-hero but i think the great thing about blood omen is that we're not seeing the birth of an anti-hero we're seeing the birth of a villain after blood omen silicone knights would not work on another legacy of kane game so i'm not sure if what the series is now is what the original developer had intended for it in fact i'm sure it's not we'll get a bit more into that once we talk about soul reaver but in the context of our series right now we're seeing the rise of kane as a villain a father and god of all vampires getting us to play as him in the beginning of the series is an amazing move and lets us sympathize with him easier blood omen's gameplay is a bit dated but it wasn't anything unplayable it still works as a classic top-down action-adventure game the myriad of secrets upgrades abilities spells and forms provide a wide breadth of choice in this story focused title before we move on let's look at what wasn't in legacy of kane blood omen [Music] blood omen has quite a bit of cut content as do most of the games in this series originally there was another planned weapon to be included in the game acting as a pair to the bone armor that we do see in the retail version this was called the bone sword no in-game characteristics of this item exist but the hilt of the sword survived into the introductory cutscene as vorador's sword early builds of the game also included a 5-tiered magic system where kane could upgrade his magic meter to full 5 times each time would result in the color of the magic meter changing going from purple to blue green orange and red this coloring scheme is in the final version of the game in the form of the magic refill orbs notating how potent a single orb can be force shield and magic absorb were two spells which didn't really make it into the game foreshield would protect kane from physical attacks and magic absorb would protect from magic or projectile attacks they each had their own dungeon and force shield was almost required to access malex bastion as the whirling blades would one shot you without it magic absorb just ended up being repel and it seems that the effects of foreshield were lumped into mist form there's some speculation from the community considering a shield that was originally planned for the game this comes from a shield mural seen early in the game in nactone most floor murals in the game indicate some sort of items being obtained there and the shield doesn't fit this pattern that being said the developers have made no comment on this and there isn't any further evidence i could find of the shield three crypt dungeons were cut from the game four months before release that were similar to kane's mausoleum they were included in the same cemetery and would provide some missable health and magic upgrades some blood fountains were also removed from the game one providing kane permanent protection from the swamp around vorador's mansion and the other enhancing his vampiric abilities my speculation here is that the latter would have drawn more blood from enemies but there's no evidence for that a removed dungeon outpost town town with a well a frozen town a pirate ship and changed repel dungeons averness city and willendorf tunnel are among some of the other removed areas from the game there's some evidence to show a character named lupo the butcher was removed from the game as well and that he may have been located in nupraptor's retreat originally we were supposed to see kane's death in cinematic form rather than in-game and another fmv was supposed to show kane escaping malek's bastion followed by it exploding in vorador's mansion kane was originally put to the test with a human chess match he had to use the mind control spell to control people on the board this was eventually cut towards the end of development because it just wasn't working very well there are alternate world maps small changes to stallberg and original open world design and a sequence in which mautenius's nature is revealed blood omen's cut content is vast but doesn't begin to rival the other games in the series or what we know about the games that never were with that let's talk about legacy of kane soul reaver [Music] development on soul reaver began with crystal dynamics and it's kind of a rocky and vague situation originally soul reaver was being designed as a game that had nothing to do with legacy of kane called shifter crystal dynamics amy hennig and seth karis were credited for the original concept they started prototype work with a small team in 1997 and began full production in october of that year no actual production work was done on the game before it was changed to soul reaver but it had the same general concept you played as a character who could shift between two realms and the story featured the main character being cast down by his master at this time silicon knights were exploring the idea of making a prequel to blood omen focused on exploring the character vorador crystal dynamics decided to make a legacy of kane sequel and changed the main antagonist of shifter to kane and the protagonist to razael taking place in nazgoth silicon knights saw this and filed an injunction against the company the whole situation is foggy as to what actually happened amy hennig could not comment on the situation other than that the issue was resolved dennis dayak had stated that crystal dynamics took the series in a direction that they would not have in the end rights to the series shifted to crystal dynamics legacy of kane soul reaver then went into full development with an 8 million dollar budget as i said before amy hennig had returned from blood omen to work on this sequel in the series legacy of kane would become her brain child and would stay as one of the highlights of her career in the industry as she's now famous for her work on the uncharted series hennig said the crew was eager to combine the very best action mechanics from blood omen in the areas of combat exploration and puzzle solving with storytelling that was deeply integrated into the gameplay it's clear the team was eager to move forward with the series building on the already large amount of lore that silicon knights had created for blood omen the team developed a new engine for the game based on the proprietary one used for crystal dynamics game gex 3. it had real-time environment morphing and data streaming functionalities that eliminated loading pauses prevalent in games of the time this would also improve on one of blood omen's biggest weaknesses the story was influenced heavily by john milton's paradise lost and served as a jumping off point for the team the team also cited mythology and theology as great inspirations which show up in the games as themes of mysticism and metaphysical concepts soul reaver was originally slated for an october 1998 release but was delayed several times until its release in august of 1999. hennig later commented that they had previewed the game to the press too early and that they had over designed the game this caused a lot of content to be cut before release which we'll look at in a bit let's get into the actual game shall we legacy of kane starts off with one of the best video game intros ever made here we are introduced to raziel a vampire offspring of kane raziel was actually the first of kane's lieutenants and is therefore the oldest of his brothers he and his brothers have clans of vampires across the realms of nosgoth raziel approaches kane to show him his new transformation a pair of wings kane sits upon his throne on the ruined pillars of nosgoth a testament to his acceptance of godhood so long ago cain is jealous of this seeing this as a mirror of his own weakness and rips raziel's wings off in protest cain then has raziel's own brothers toss him off into the abyss as punishment this whole cinematic takes place 1500 years after the events of blood omen much time has passed nosgoth has changed turned into a ruined landscape of corruption and vampirism in the early years of the rise of vampires kane raised his vampire clans and within a hundred years humanity had been thoroughly domesticated raziel also notes something interesting in his voiceover that few know the truth of kane's story that he was once mortal this shows that kane has deified himself in this world that he has constructed he has turned himself into a god in the eyes of his subjects and the events of blood omen are now myth when raziel shows him his evolution this can only be seen as a transgression in kane's eyes not just a transgression to his own supremacy but a transgression to the world kane has created for himself i really want to focus on the music here before we get too deep into the story the main theme of this game which is introduced in the cinematic is fantastic it's got these booming spectral shining noises your ears are surrounded by the banging drums which give you an ominous feeling especially in this context the whole soundtrack is this kind of industrial ethereal egyptian influenced fusion it works incredibly well for developing this post-apocalyptic vampire corrupted world i'll talk more in depth about the music in soul reaver 2 but for now let's get into the story when raziel is tossed into the abyss he experiences 500 years of pure torture and agony burning in the fires of the lake of the dead after these 500 years raziel awakes in the spectral realm a voice speaks to raziel from the depths and tells him that he's resurrected him to become his sole reaver and kill kane to restore balance to nazgoth raziel's betrayal at the beginning of soul reaver has direct comparisons to that of cain's at the beginning of blood omen both noble in some way higher ranks in an already set social standing they are both ripped from the lives they know and made to experience some terror some tragedy they then awaken this new life a new form new powers to learn and explore both also awake with a hatred and a want for revenge this is where the two start to differ they both have disgust and contempt but kane's contempt is for the world around him raziel's disgust is inward for himself because of the vampiric influence over the world the elder god tells raziel that the souls of the world are trapped unable to move on this is causing the balance of the world to be thrown off and he needs raziel to free these souls so that the wheel of fate may once churn again controlling raziel we journey through the underworld and are introduced to our new powers we can glide across long distances with our torn wraith-like wings we can also devour souls replenishing our health much like kane draining his enemies in blood omen the elder god also shows us warp gates doorways that can lay a path across great spans eventually we encounter the slaugh spectral predators that feed on souls the main mechanic of this game and most of the future entries is shifting raziel can shift to the spectral realm when he pleases he can use this to recuperate and gain more health he can only shift back to the material realm when he's at full strength and when he has a planar portal in front of him when raziel dies in the material world he is transported to the spectral realm but when he dies there he's transported back to the elder god this is not only used as a death mechanic but also to solve puzzles things in the spectral realm are changed and some areas might be inaccessible in the material realm that aren't in the spectral razael also cannot interact with physical things in the spectral realm so if he wants to open a door or way down a block he has to find a way to shift back when raziel first shifts to the material plane he sees that nasgoth has changed since he was executed by the hands of his brothers the first enemy we encounter here are that of the dumahim dumas vampire clan and their descendants they have turned into foul scuttling beasts duma is another of kane's vampire officers one of raziel's brothers raziel returns to the lake of the dead where he was cast down and heads towards his own clan territory once he arrives he finds it desolate and learns that his clan has been eradicated by kane himself raziel finds an acropolis that's been inhabited by his brother malkaya and his clan his descendants have been twisted and malformed as well with pointed ears and gray skin soul reaver has an interesting combat system when you're in the material plane you're mostly just fighting vampires and vampires cannot be killed by wounds of the flesh they must be staked burned or tossed into water we can attack enemies until they are dazed but then must either pick them up and take them to an environmental object to finish them off or grab an object from the wall this new combat system provides a lot of player choice as to how you want to carry out combat encounters and makes the game much more interesting switching between the material and spectral plane also has its advantages in the spectral world time does not move so we can't physically change the makeup of the world meaning moving boxes for puzzles and such but the world itself changes in the spectral realm walls might jut out where they weren't in the material giving us access to higher places inside the necropolis raziel finds his brother malkaya who has transformed into a bloated mass of decay covered by the flesh of his victims everyone is afraid sibling you awake to a world of fear these times of change are so unsettling melchia tells raziel that he awakes to a world of fear and that he is disgusted with his own new form the malkaya fight is our first boss fight in soul reaver and is a large change from blood omen where the previous game's bosses were mostly hack fests and using spells soul reaver usually sees you outwitting your opponents we have to use gates and bring them down on top of melchia to damage him eventually trapping him underneath a grinder and smashing him to bits after his death raziel gains the ability to phase through gates we can now gain access to other areas in the world by shifting to the spectral realm and venture further across nasgoth we're also introduced to artifacts that increase our health if we collect enough of them we also obtain our first glyph an object that will provide us with a new spell to use in this case we find the force cliff giving us the ability to throw enemies backward with telekinesis raziel returns to the pillars of nazgoth and finds kane sitting atop his throne raziel expresses anger at kane for destroying his clan and turning him into this new disgusting form i am your creation kane now as before you criticize your own work what have you done with my clan degenerate he tells kane that he's not god and rejects his apparent genocide cain says one thing here that starts to change the way we view him drastically only when you have felt the full gravity of choice should you dare question my judgment he then asks raziel if he could even conceive of what choice he would make if he were in kane's position and raziel responds with judgment again telling him he would choose integrity kane brings out the soul reaver and we enter our second boss battle this fight's pretty simple and just sees kane teleporting around the pillars we have to hit him before he charges up once we hit him three times we're done kane hits raziel with lightning and goes to attack him with the soul reaver and it shatters kane is apparently satisfied with this and laughs while he teleports away the soul reaver's true form stands in the spectral realm and raziel gains the wraith blade a version of the soul reaver that is bound to his arm this is our new weapon and we can use it only in the spectral realm when our strength is full before we move on i want to talk about kane this small conversation that we just had with him is large and it will have drastic implications moving forward but this is the first inkling of development in kane's character in blood omen his tone and view of the world was that of disgust and contempt he made his way through nazgoth killing and delighting in the screams of others at the end he seems to have accepted godhood and the decadence that he so despised in vorador even at the beginning of soul reaver he seems to be a jealous and vengeful god tearing out success in his group of vampire officers now we get to see a glimpse into that mind and he tells us that the choices he has made were difficult we see now that the weight of those choices was not carried so easily as it seemed ariel appears from behind one of the pillars and makes herself known to raziel she meanders to raziel her same old vague and cryptic self about the nature of the world wondering if the past is always meant to repeat itself she tells raziel that she is bound to the pillars because of kane's choice and she tells raziel that he can return here when he has need she also gives us a vague instruction just as she did in blood omen the pillars are now a safe haven where we can restore our energy if need be raziel makes his way to the silenced cathedral territory of the zephonem clan the cathedral was originally built as a weapon against kane's empire it was to blast a deadly hymn which would destroy all vampiric creatures in nazgoth but zephone and his clan murdered the humans that lived there before they could fulfill their purpose the zephonem clan have turned into gangly grey-skinned monsters who secure their prey in cocoons they can climb on walls and crawl on ceilings making them annoying we make our way through this cathedral weaving in and out of its massive pipes solving puzzles and killing zephone eventually we reach zephon himself zephan now resides in a nest of sort and has turned into a monstrous arachnid-like creature the brothers comment on each other's changed appearances zephin noting that raziel isn't the handsome lieutenant that kane once loved the zephyr boss fight requires you to hit him with a flaming egg three times to do this you can hit his appendages that hang from the ceiling and make an egg pop out of him ew you have to grab the egg set it on fire and then throw it at zephan all while he's swiping at you and trying to snatch you up each boss in this game is a reflection of themselves and a reflection of what they have become their leagues of vampires have also each devolved to be more like their masters not only is this true in a story sense but shows its face in game play as well the zephynim can scale walls and so can zephin so i'm sure you can guess what power we're about to gain raziel heads back to the pillars and ariel gives him another riddle beyond these pillars the defiled victim mutely screams its outrage what does that mean with this raziel heads to the tomb of the seraphan this is the resting place of the vampire hunters from the time of blood omen the elder god tells raziel to take heed because a forgotten history lies within the tomb raziel reveals the tombs that lay beneath the structure they show the names of him and his brothers he realizes in an instant that he was once a seraphan before he was turned into one of kane's officers this is raziel's revelation moment as he realizes that not only was his life as a vampire a lie because he was betrayed by his brothers and master but he was already ripped from a previous conquest to fight against his real brothers in unlife this only adds to the fuel firing raziel's anger towards kane and his transgressions interestingly there's a tomb for malek here but his body was not actually buried there razael makes his way through an underground tunnel and we fight a mini boss a touralim vampire who shoots fireballs i mean force projectiles at us we gain the ability to fire force projectiles which will be used to solve puzzles in the future i should talk about glyphs here glyphs are optional items they kind of act as the secrets or forges of this game you can gather them by solving extra puzzles and they reward you with a new power the glyphs that exist in the game are force stone sound water fire and sunlight the only super useful ones are the ones obtained at the end of the game the fire and sunlight glyphs the fire glyph will set on fire all common material enemies and the sunlight glyph will char all nearby vampires to cinders the rest of the glyphs in the game are mostly stun abilities and i didn't find them all that useful raziel comes across the rahabim descendants of his brother rahab who have mutated and devolved into amphibians getting over their own vulnerability to water this sets the theme for this area as water rahab has turned into a merman fish-like creature and swims up to greet raziel rahab tells him that kane already warned him of his arrival and raziel responds by telling him the truth of their previous life rahab pays no mind to this saying that kane saved them from themselves the rahab boss fight consists of us jumping across pillars while avoiding his projectiles and trying not to fall in the water our goal here is to break the stained glass windows and reveal the sunlight to rahab it's over pretty quickly and rahab burns in the water giving us the ability to swim the elder god tells raziel that he must travel past the lake of the dead to his brother dumas fortress on our way we gain the ability to imbue the wraith blade with fire making killing enemies much easier when raziel arrives in ash village he sees that the dumahim are dead he figures that duma must have been killed by kane the elder god corrects him telling him that they were plagued by a vampire hunter ambush the clan was too arrogant and complacent not ready for the ambush when it came few remain of the dumahim and they are reduced to scavengers raziel finds duma speared atop his throne he notes that duma would have been shamed to have raziel find him here stuck like a pig raziel pulls the spears out of duma's body reviving him duma stands almost double raziel's height covered with an evolved armor duma expresses gratitude at the help of his brother but raziel notes that duma was the one who threw him into the abyss duma tells raziel that he is no match for him and that not even kane's power rivals his own the duma boss fight has us leading duma into a furnace you can barely get hit by him because he'll kill you fast so we have to keep him just out of reach we lead him through the courtyard and burn him to death taking his power to constrict foes and move levers from a distance raziel makes his way to the oracle caves the same place that mobius stationed himself at in blood omen when raziel finds the place where we met mobius before he recalls the events of blood omen telling us that he knows even more of the truth than we once thought raziel finds a statue of mobius in the labyrinth and notes that the cold image radiated a certain undeniable power raziel also finds portals in the caves that show him images of past future and present we see raziel awakening from the 500 years of torment and images of kane breaking the soul reaver at the pillars of nazgoth raziel asks if this has all been foretold setting some sort of precedence for fate in the series that we'll come to talk about later we also see raziel finding his true nature in the tombs of the seraphan and raziel thinks it must be kane deceiving him we see a vision of kane and raziel that has yet to happen and a vision of raziel cutting down ariel with the wraith blade a final vision is shown of raziel wielding a red wraith blade each time we view a vision in the portals the music cuts out and we can only hear screams and monstrous noises the sounds of the time stream itself either way its eldritch nature is kind of terrifying and unsettling raziel meets kane in the chronoplast a time machine of mobius's construction kane tells raziel of the true power of knowledge and how he did not understand it before he also tells raziel that he knew he would survive the abyss with his ability to hate raziel doesn't believe this and thinks it's more of cain's tricks and lies cain regales their nature telling raziel that they are gods more now than ever with the chronoplast surrounding them the ability to travel through time at their whim he tells raziel that free will is an illusion and they are set on pre-ordained paths but raziel is too concerned with his seraphan origin to listen he says that his decision to transform the seraphan priests was based on their similarity that because they were both concerned so much with nosgos future that they were one in the same he tells raziel that the seraphan warriors were not altruistic as their goal was the same as the vampires raziel believes kane to be lost in a maze of moral relativism this philosophical conversation tells us a lot about both characters raziel is still filled with hate and vengeance a mode that kane seems to have moved past in the 2000 years since blood omen he has seen too much and done too much to worry about one person over the fate of nazgoth or entire clans of people we also gain the information that everything kane has done has been for a reason we just haven't been made aware of what that reason is yet and now we fight kane's final fight is similar to that of the pillars just moving vertically now kane will teleport around the chronoplast and we have to hit him before he hits us after we hit him three times the fight is over kane teleports to the chronoplast lever and turns on the machine and opens a portal clearly razia but this is not where or how it ends fate promises more twists before this drama unfolds completely raziel goes to chase him but the elder god tells him if he crosses into the portal he will be beyond his influence raziel appears on the other side to see mobius standing behind him the sorcerer welcomes him to his destiny and the game ends on mobius's voiceover about time where time is but a loop a loose stitch in the universal cloth a streamer might seize upon a chance a fatal slip and plunge the fate of planets into chaos obviously this story has much more to be revealed blood omen was a bookend to an era in nozgoth's history an origin story for kane and nosgoth itself soul reaver is the beginning of a new chapter a new chapter in raziel's story keynes and nosgoth raziel has grown he knows more now than he knew when he was thrown into the abyss he thought himself a glorious warrior in kane's conquest of nazgoth that all changed when he was tossed into the lake of the dead that changed again when he realized his days of being a vampiric warrior were also a lie and even his days as a seraphan priest are uncertain he has defeated his brothers and gained his vengeance on them but kane is elusive and he's starting to realize that he's involving himself in a grand scheme that is much larger than himself kane started this story as a villain one that cast one of his own sons into 500 years of agony and torture and in our eyes a bad guy but at the end even this is uncertain we're not sure of kane's plans or his machinations he seems to have something larger up his sleeve if he wanted to kill raziel he would have done so by now what lies in the future will be seen in soul reaver 2. soul reaver is kind of an infamous entry in the series for cut content as i said in the development section estimates of a third of the game were cut just before release it's known that the game would have played out much differently than the retail version of it did let's take a trip into the chronoplast to look at an alternate future of soul reaver among abilities raziel was to receive an amplified force projectile spell that would be enhanced once he had defeated his brother tyrell multiple different versions of the reaver were to exist in the game the first being an amplified reaver which was going to be the ultimate weapon that you attain near the end of the game another version of the reaver was the ariel reaver that would have been obtained after killing ariel and consuming her soul it's unclear as to whether this is distinct from the sound and spirit each form had a forge that razael would modify the reaver from this would go on to be used in soul reaver 2 and defiance actually a lot of the cut content of soul reaver would go on to show up in those two games originally the game was supposed to continue past the chronoblast and there would have been a third act after the chronoplast fight razael would have gained the ability to shift between planes at will there were a lot of weapons deleted from the game before release including a crossbow flamethrower knife dart and staff these would have been environmental weapons like the torch and spears we see in the retail version four large areas were removed from the final version of the game seeming to be the third act of the game raziel would have traveled to the turolim clan territory and defeat his brother tyrell before facing kane a final time at a mountain retreat where kane's throne room sat after this final battle raziel would travel to the pinnacle of the silenced cathedral raziel would then use the cathedral as it was originally designed to wipe the vampires from the face of nozgoth there was a comic that was released after the game itself it was only an issue long and saw raziel feeding on a human only to realize she's a construct of the elder gods with neither mortal or vampire blood she tells him of his future and he sees the events of the soul reaver intro and some of the game happening the interesting thing here is that the comic seems to work off the original version of the game's events the priestess tells raziel of the silenced cathedral and its bells ringing out across the land i'm just going to assume that this comic is not canon which is why i didn't mention it when talking about the main game [Music] with the nature of soul reaver's release and development a sequel was bound to happen it was almost assured in the eyes of crystal dynamics especially with the great success that the game saw in the eyes of consumers and critics alike with this game crystal dynamics split the series in two the focus of kane's development being the blood omen series and the focus of razael's development being the soul reaver series though by the time development started on blood omen 2 it was placed on the back burner for the soul reaver sequel pre-production on soul reaver 2 began in late 1999 with a targeted release year of 2000. amy hennig's team at crystal dynamics created a proof of concept for e3 2000 and was announced as an exclusive title for the playstation 2. upon inception it was decided that the game would not be a traditional complete a level fight a boss type of game the level designers wanted to move away from the abundant block puzzles ever present in the first soul reaver they also wanted to focus on new mandatory enhancements for the reaver soul reaver 2's development also took great focus on the cinematic elements of legacy of kane this can be seen clearly when playing the game as the amount of cutscene time was almost doubled from the first entry the team was also focusing on developing time travel rules and fleshing them out as to not hinder production of the already started blood omen 2. the game's pacing was supposed to resemble a novel or film more than a game which is why there aren't many boss encounters in the game the team again was a little too ambitious with this entry causing some game elements to be cut just like every other entry in the series in this instance the cut content is understandable as the game had a 17 month production schedule and was turned around very quickly it was turned around so quickly in fact that blood omen 2 began development before it but was released 6 months after soul reaver 2. we'll get to blood omen 2 later but for now let's continue raziel's story [Music] soulreaver 2 opens with a recap of the ending events of the first game mainly the chronoplast conversation with raziel chasing after kane raziel pops out of the portal and is confronted with mobius raziel is aware of the transgressions of mobius in the past and tries to attack him his staff disables raziel's reaver and he tries to reason with raziel telling him to spare his life mobius tells raziel that kane is his true enemy and raziel realizes that they are in the stronghold of the seraphan brotherhood razael sees murals of vorador murdering six of the members of the circle around him mobius tells raziel to seek out kane at the pillars of nosgoth and is trying to sew vengeance back up in razael's eyes raziel makes his way through the stronghold and finds the tomb of william the just with his broken soul reaver itself lying on an altar to the man raziel being here causes distortions making the world around him warp and throb his wraith blade remembers its corporeal form and binds itself to the physical reaver giving raziel the ability to summon the blade in the material realm though the blade is sentient and if used too much will leech raziel's own strength causing him to lose health mobius appears and raziel thinks this must be a trick of his as raziel always does but mobius begs for his life mobius tells raziel that they serve the same god our benevolent benefactor from the previous game and raziel spares mobius's life as his vengeance is too strong to let him get caught up in these matters on his way out of the stronghold raziel is confronted with murals of his brothers the seraphan commanders tyrell rahab malkaya duma zephon and the statue of raziel himself he also sees depictions of janos audrin and his defeat his heart ripped from his chest by the seraphan warrior priests all of these things affect raziel especially seeing his former self so pure and righteous comparing it to his current monstrous and twisted form i didn't mention this in the blood omen review but there's an item in that game that gives us an extra life it's called the heart of darkness and is a legendary item it was ripped from the heart of janos audrey one of the greatest vampires to ever live raziel leaves the seraphan stronghold and this is the first time that he is confronted with the images of nosgoth's past the lush green lands filled with forest and rushing waterfalls leave him breathless he sees now that the nosgoth of his day is nothing but a corpse left to rot as we make our way to the pillars of nazgoth we are introduced to new game mechanics soul reaver 2 plays a bit different than the first game we have beacons in this world that will bring us back from death in the spectral realm and obelisks which will save our progress i can't say i particularly love the combat in this game the lock-on mechanism works all right but the dodging doesn't the camera is static but the characters are always moving around and the game just can't ever really figure out where i'm trying to go this makes it difficult because most of the fights in this game require lock-on or auto-face as they call it and it makes a lot of situations tedious we can still reeve souls to restore health swim in water climb walls glide and fire projectiles i like that razael keeps his augmentations from his brothers in the previous game most games try to make you have some sort of complete reset but it was a nice touch that we're still playing as an evolved raziel as raziel leaves the stronghold he notes that he won't be able to enter it again without gaining some sort of power to open the fortress's door raziel arrives at the pillars to find kane who doesn't try to fight raziel at all but tries to reason with him he picks apart raziel's vengeance towards him and tells him that raziel is doing exactly what he wanted him to they both agree that the pillar's restoration is of utmost importance and kane tells raziel that when he was faced with two choices he chose a third i wish i could just play this whole cutscene actually i wish i could just play all of the cutscenes from soul reaver 2 but it would add to the already ridiculous length of this video kane tells raziel when they are which happens to be right at kane's birth if you remember kane was born at the moment of ariel's death destined to become the balance guardian which means raziel and kane are talking just as kane is being born and ariel is dying he tells raziel that right about now nup raptor is finding ariel's body and is streaming with madness we then watch as before our eyes the pillars become corrupted i will play this clip of kane talking about his choice as balanced guardian 30 years later as he had destroyed the members of the circle because my writing can't do it justice 30 years hence i am presented with a dilemma let's call it a two-sided coin if the coin falls one way i sacrifice myself and thus restore the pillars but as the last surviving vampire in norsgarth this would mean the annihilation of our species mobius makes sure of that if the coin lands on the reverse i refuse the sacrifice and thus doom the pillars to an eternity of collapse either way the game is rigged we agree then that the pillars are crucial and must be restored yes raziel that's why we've come full circle to this place so after all this you make my case for me to end this stalemate you must die so that new guardians can be born pillars don't belong to them raziel they belong to us your arrogance is boundless cane there's a third option a monumental secret hidden in your very presence here but it's a secret you have to discover for yourself unearth your destiny raziel it's all laid out for you here you said it yourself kane there are only two sides to your coin apparently sir but suppose you throw a coin enough times suppose one day it lands on its edge kane tells raziel here that there is a third choice and that the pillars belong to the vampires not nosgoth raziel is obviously confused as he kind of always is but he knows something has changed for the pillars to be restored kane must die but kane wants the restoration of the pillars he wants balance which he just happens to be the guardian of raziel heads north and shifting to the spectral realm finds the entrance to some subterranean ruins that lay beneath the pillars the door to which can only be opened with raziel's blade in here he discovers firstly that not only do the pillars extend into the sky but they extend underground he also sees murals depictions of nazgoth's early history where a ancient winged race raised the pillars to defeat their foes he sees the reaver depicted in these murals as well a holy symbol of sorts raziel also notices that his benefactor the elder god is present here lying in physical form underneath the platform that the pillars stand on the elder god is not happy and chastises raziel for letting cain slip through his fingers raziel takes a different tone with the elder at this point not necessarily believing anything he tells him you still need me this impudence is unworthy of you raziel do not forget that you have a task to fulfill here you are indebted to me the elder is obviously trying to get raziel riled up as he tells him to remember his rage i think at this point in the story raziel is in an interesting spot he's stuck in the past and not too sure what he's doing here he just let his only living adversary slip through his fingers the man he crossed the barriers of time to chase get away he did this because he's not sure he disagrees with him and is surely curious as to what he's up to he doesn't even trust the god that brought him back from the abyss and he surely doesn't trust mobius he has no one and really no mission at this point he's lost and alone without even purpose to guide him raziel ventures out of this chamber and makes his way into the surrounding swamp where he finds one of mobius's time-streaming chambers which he can't access just yet he sees someone watching him from a terrorist but then disappears raziel makes his way up to this terrace and finds the person gone so he makes his way into the ruin surrounding him here is where we encounter our first forge and i will say this is another negative but also a positive to this game i go a little bit back and forth with my opinions on soul reaver 2 which we'll get into in full at the end soul reaver 2 mostly replaced boss battles with these forges they're large areas where you have to solve puzzles to gain an upgrade to your blade this idea in concept is nice but the execution falls a bit flat for example this ruin we're currently in is the dark forge as we enter it we see this sun disk off in the distance but don't know how to get it as the spectral world is just as blocked off as the material what we need to do here is go into the material realm and climb up this wall at the beginning of the ruin and make our way across the top of the room eventually we reached the chamber above the sun disc with a rotating mirror but no sunlight eventually you realize that you can shoot the icon in the ceiling to let the sun come in but where is the sun supposed to go the solution to this puzzle is moving the obelisk in front of the beam of light while it's pointed towards this new moon symbol this will cast a shadow on it and reveal a hole in the wall that we can go through the issue with this puzzle isn't its difficulty and the solution wouldn't be just to include more hints the issue is with the design of the puzzle there's not really a way for me to know that i can move this obelisk because all of the obelisks are planted in the corners this could be easily fixed by putting one of the obelisks in the center of its track showing the player that they can be moved you could also just add a railing to the edge of the track to make it a little more obvious that there's a track there then the player can put two and two together to realize that you can cast a shadow with the obelisk a lot of the puzzles in soul reaver 2 suffer from this design and the designers themselves would even recognize it as such post-release blaming it on the short development cycle the shame here is that the puzzles themselves are interesting they just aren't intuitive to the average player meaning me an adult man with dumb brain as we move on through the forge we solve another puzzle to cast light into the main room and place the sun disc on its dice this reflects light onto this ball and fills our reaver with dark energy this is the first of many attunements we'll get in this game and it's one of the new main mechanics that's introduced these beacons around the world can switch the attunement of your reaver to let you pass through doors or activate objects matching that attunement this is a scrapped idea from soul reaver one that was revamped and included in the sequel as raziel leaves the forge he encounters vorador who knows not who or what he is he gives raziel the impression that he's important he must be because he has accessed secrets that have been hidden to all for centuries he's also skeptical of raziel's affiliation wondering if he is the cause of the recent corruption of the pillars raziel tells vorador he is seeking answers and vorador tells him that janos audrin is the only one with the answers to his questions and unfortunately for them he is long dead raziel makes his way back to the seraphan stronghold to use mobius's time streaming chamber and go back to the time of janos audrey first we need to complete the light forge to get access this forge is a great upgrade from the dark forge we basically have to get the light from the back part of the chamber to the front and shine it on two gems so we can gather a sun symbol and place it on a pedestal the puzzles here make sense though they're intuitive and you know what can be moved and what can't we use our dark reaver attunement and the statue at the center of the forge moves we gain our light attunement for our reaver and head back to the seraphan stronghold this gives us entry back into that big door and raziel makes his way back through the stronghold when he arrives at the altar of william the just kane is waiting for him this is where we're introduced to the idea of the first paradox kane tells raziel that when he killed william the just he destroyed one tyrant in the nemesis that would eventually overtake nazgoth but gave rise to another in that of mobius he then tells raziel that history is immutable and that it can only be changed when one carries the soul reaver and when two reavers meet this paradox can change history even raziel and kane being back in this era of time was destined to happen kane hands raziel the physical soul reaver which joins with the wraith version and tells raziel to kill him that is his destiny but if raziel truly has and believes in free will then he will resist the forces of time raziel feels the force of the time stream on him trying to force him to kill cain but he resists and avoids killing kane there's an earthquake of sorts with eldritch noises coming from all around the two kane tells raziel that the time stream is straining to divert itself after their previous timeline had been dead ended this is the second paradox raziel is still hesitant to trust kane not understanding his true motivations but he leaves the altar and heads towards the time streaming chambers mobius confronts raziel before he enters the chambers he is scared and knows that raziel must have changed time he debates raziel over what he's done but raziel tells him that he will be making his own choices from now on choosing his own destiny this is a large moment for raziel up to this point raziel has been an agent of vengeance especially in the first soul reaver he is stricken with grief and disgust at himself and what the world has become he wants nothing more than to get revenge on the people that have wronged him at the beginning of this game he's confused and lost without motivation or purpose but now with the creation of the second paradox raziel has his own beliefs confirmed he isn't an agent of destiny he is his own master he can make his own path even if it requires great force and will this is razael's central motivation raziel drags mobius into the time streaming device and makes him set the chamber up to the time before the seraphan hoping to meet janus audrin and uncover the truth mobius does so but urges razael against this choice before he sends raziel through time he gives off a knowing smile something up his sleeve razael appears again in the time streaming chamber but knows something is amiss the stronghold around him is in ruins derelict and destroyed demons begin to attack raziel and the members of the seraphan and we can see that the stronghold has been invaded raziel finds a statue of mobius in the stronghold holding vorador's decapitated head raziel quickly realizes that he's not in the past but the future and that mobius has tricked him raziel finds mobius's supposed ghost who tells him that he had to send raziel to the future to show him the error of his and kane's decision mobius teleports away leaving raziel unaware of whether he is truly alive or dead before we get further down this path i'd like to talk about combat a little more i've waited a while to really dive deep into this game's combat because up until this point it hasn't been a terrible issue but soul reaver 2 has these big jumps in difficulty when it comes to enemies with no boss fights most of our fighting is done through small groups of enemies before we traveled to the future we were really only fighting seraphan members undead in the forges and the slaugh that inhabit the spectral realm that changes when we go to this era of nosgoth's history we're introduced to these demons some with blades for arms and others with electrocuting abilities there's two things that make these enemies particularly difficult one is their increased strength they hit hard and it doesn't take much to drain our recently increased health bar to zero this wouldn't be so bad as the game is obviously trying to make us realize how powerful these enemies are but the demons also follow you into the spectral realm so as soon as you die you're fighting the same enemies again and aren't really given a chance to recuperate before you're killed and forced to restart at a beacon this can be quite annoying and frustrating and it's really the point in the game where combat changed for me it went from okay this doesn't work all that great to oh wow i can't do anything i'm hesitant to get too deep into the game mechanics because i am playing this on pc and i'm not exactly sure what issues result from the pc port or just this game's design raziel leaves the stronghold and heads to the pillars finding ariel there and the pillars corrupted and destroyed she laments her imprisonment at the pillars and says that it's kane's fault that the world has become this raziel starts to defend kane's decision telling ariel that it was calculated and purposeful raziel thinks that it might be too late to restore the pillars and that killing kane might not work any longer ariel tries to escape raziel in the spectral realm and he shifts to find her she asks for him to show mercy but he tells her that she hasn't shown mercy to her fellow guardians or kane or noop raptor himself raziel decides to show mercy to ariel and leaves the pillars for the chamber below raziel notes that the pillars are cracked and destroyed underground as well the elder god continues to chastise razael telling him that this is the fate of nazgoth as long as kane remains alive raziel notices that the elder god's body has begun to climb up the chamber telling him that as nasgoth suffers the elder god thrives the elder god describes himself as the hub of the wheel the originator of all life and death he then threatens raziel and tells him that there are fates worse than death raziel journeys north into the mountains the caves he's seen before changed he finds janus aldrin's retreat collapsed and broken too late in time to make use of the place kane shows up the two now having an almost playful banter kane warns raziel that they are in great danger the two being in a time where they do not belong kane says that they are marshaling great forces against them in some sort of grand conspiracy raziel thinks that this they is mobius but kane tells him that he's just a puppet and the two of them almost say that they are allies oh my sweet boys kane explains the way that time works a little more that if time cannot be reshuffled following a paradox then the irritants raziel and kane will be expelled from time kane thinks that this is exactly what their enemies are trying to get to happen raziel makes his way to the air forge to obtain the third attunement to the reaver inside he finds murals confirming that long ago the winged race was involved in a legendary war raising the pillars to win the war and being cursed with bloodthirst for their transgression this is the creation of nosgoth's first vampires this forage isn't too bad but i wasn't a great fan of it it's pretty simple the area just happens to be pretty large it has the downside of demons but that's more of a game downside and not specifically the air forge we gather three different hearts from the annals of the chamber and return them to the mummies in the forge this large head that looks like aku from samurai jack comes alive and attunes our blade to air with this raziel makes his way back to the swamp and finds the time streaming chamber from earlier now able to blow the doors off and venture inside he hopes to hurl himself back in time to the days of janus audrin raziel appears in the chamber again and journeys outside to find that he was in the era that he sought he found seraphan banners and vampires staked into the ground raziel finds the warrior priests of the seraphan and grieves his lost virtue where his former want to be one of them was now stood a sort of disgust for them and their order raziel finds janos audrin's retreat still intact but constructed for winged beings preventing raziel from reaching it razael makes his way to the retreat solving various puzzles using the three wraith attunements collected so far and finds janos himself finally after all this time we are confronted with janos audrey the heart of darkness himself the greatest vampire to ever live and he's [ __ ] badass razia my child what have they done to you janos knows who raziel is telling him that he's been waiting for thousands of years for razael janos audrey tells us a lot here this is raziel's culmination in his quest for information but also our culmination of answers to our greedy lore questions janos tells raziel that when the pillars were created he was chosen as the tenth guardian the keeper of the soul reaver his guardianship has sustained him since then and the rest of their race has fallen into ruin because vampires are no longer born and just created the pillars now choose human guardians which makes humans believe the pillars are for them and not the vampire race i want to talk about janos for a minute because in my opinion he's my favorite character in legacy of kane janus audrin has been a myth a legend for the entirety of our story only mentioned in blood omen and soul reaver he was the greatest vampire that ever lived his very heart would revive us from death in blood omen and in soul reaver he is our ultimate quest for truth and answers he's built up in the entirety of the first two acts of soul reaver 2. this building up of a character can be amazing for a reveal but it can also be hard to live up to that expectation but janos meets that expectation first of all his character is designed perfectly he's a vampire but not designed like the ones we've seen before at least not like kane and his army he is beautiful forever young with black wings sprouting from his back to make him angelic damn am i in love with a male video game character his outfit is regal posturing his evolved form his ancient race almost above humans but he doesn't view himself this way he's humble and understanding they know i'm up here beyond their reach and it terrifies them you can see how they flaunt their kills to torment me or perhaps simply to lure me out they have this foolish notion that destroying me will somehow topple our entire bloodline thankfully we're not that fragile his greeting to raziel is warm my child he knows that humans torment him and hate him but he also knows that they're vulnerable to manipulation and it's not their fault that they do not understand he's an image of what vampires should be what they were once not the contempt filled disgusted decadent monsters of nazgoth's future as nosgoth died so did the race of evolved beings enlightened with understanding now i'm not saying that every ancient vampire was like janos but janos stands for something just as raziel was breathless at the sight of nazgoth's lush green-filled land i am breathless at janos audrin's cute little lips moving on raziel learns that he might be a messiah and that dark powers are allied against him mianos tells raziel that the binding of the pillars must be secured and that the reaver is the key janos presents the soul reaver to raziel but he doesn't feel the time stream as he did before raziel feels unsettled as he sees the reaver and tells janos to take it away at this moment seraphan warrior priests break into the retreat and janos martyrs himself teleporting raziel away to the fire forge the irony that janos might be murdered by the crusaders that he just revered hits raziel like a truck he cannot get through the door to save janos without the attunement of the fire forge this forge is okay albeit a bit hard it's quite dark in here but the forge is designed this way we have to use our torch to light different braziers across the forge and use air streams to glide around eventually we light a center dice and it charges the forge raziel receives the attunement to fire for his reaver and makes his way back through the door blocking his path to janos the seraphan priests have janos audrin held to an altar and one of them rips the heart of darkness from his chest the priest notices raziel as the world starts to quake the priest is raziel himself and in this moment he realizes that he was the one who ripped janos audran's heart from his chest janos tells raziel with his dying breath that this was his purpose to save raziel's life while raziel took his own he tells raziel to realize his destiny for without the sword there is no hope with janos's death raziel realizes his vengeance and vows to kill his seraphan brothers and retake the heart of darkness and restore it to janos on his way back to the seraphan stronghold raziel is confronted by time traveling demons that are pursuing him throughout the timestream raziel converses with the elder god once again on his way back to the stronghold wondering if the elder god actually resurrected him or if he was just there when raziel awoke from his torment raziel wonders about his own destiny and history pondering the question as to why he seems to be tricked into death and rebirth time and time again raziel finds the reaver again in the seraphan stronghold noting that he experiences this dread but no temporal distortion as he had experienced in the chapel of william the just as he is compelled by the reaver he goes to take it but before he can mobius appears again before him telling raziel that he is not as foolish as he has been playing as raziel goes to attack mobius he tells malek to not let raziel leave that's right that malik malek tells mobius that the circle is under attack as we hear screams from the other room we can infer that this is vorador slaughtering the circle causing most of them to be reborn as new guardians raziel grabs the soul reaver disarmed by mobius's staff and is trapped in this room alone raziel feels a strange sense of longing as the corporeal blade tries to embrace its wraith twin raziel is confronted by two warrior priests he recognizes both of them as melchia and zephan his brothers in life and undeath he kills them both and raziel can feel the soul reaver's consumption of his own rage and its bloodlust at the death of melchia and zephon the reaver makes raziel invincible as it restores his strength as it's being used raziel is then confronted by duma and rahab raziel notes the irony of the situation as his killing of his brothers would lead kane to revive them as his vampire sons a millennium from now raziel then faces off against tyrell the other that threw him into the abyss at kane's command the one we never fought in soul reaver finally raziel is face to face with his human self raziel's human self antagonizes him and raziel runs him through with the soul reaver this moment is of great significance in razael's story this is not only him starting the events that would cause soul reaver that would cause him to be cast into the abyss hundreds of years later but it's him killing his own past of course it always had to be this way raziel had to kill what he hated and once revered himself to move on he had to kill a part of himself that he might have once particularly liked to journey further he had to rid himself of something that he was once fond of the symbolism is the wraith blade uncoils and wraps itself around the soul reaver raziel feels lost and empty and realizes that without any other foes to slay the soul reaver goes for him raziel realizes that the soul of the reaver was his own and it impales him raziel is unable to resist it are you enjoying this cave don't fight it raziel give into it was this your destiny for me all along trust me [Music] i felt myself weakening unable to hold on any longer the reaver was too strong the compulsion to simply let go too great and then a growing sense of vertigo and the familiar displacement the paradoxical moment when my twin soul hovered both outside and inside the reaver blade this was the instant the glimmer of temporal distortion kane had been counting on all along this was the edge of the coin the minute flicker of probability upon which cain had gambled everything kane reveals himself and tells raziel to not fight the blade raziel realizes his paradoxical nature destined to be trapped here his blade impaling him and his soul trapped hovering inside and outside of the blade kane and raziel both realize that there is a paradox happening with the blades both present inside of raziel meaning that history can be changed kane seizes this moment and pulls the blade from razael's body and causing the third paradox kane's face shows great horror and raziel thinks that the two may have introduced a fatal paradox as the world warps and throbs around them once again behind kane's eyes i could see new memories blooming and dying as history labored to reshuffle itself around this monumental obstruction and i could see by the dawning horror on his face that perhaps we had strained history too far this time that by trying to alter my fate he may have introduced a fatal paradox my god the hilton we walked right into their trap razia janos must stay dead but kane's warning was lost as i slipped into the spirit realm cain is then flooded with memories and tells raziel that they fell into the hilden's trap and that janos audrin must stay dead at this moment raziel falls into the spectral realm too weak to hold on to his material form he is left with his own soul the wraith blade and realizes that he had only postponed his destiny the game ends with raziel both lamenting his fate and realizing himself that history abhors a paradox at the end of soul reaver 2 raziel has grown greatly his arc has been much more developed than it was in the first game at the beginning raziel is a shadow of his master seeking only vengeance in kane through this story he learns who he truly was in his human life he learns about time how it works and the truth of janos audrin and the beginnings of his race raziel's quest started as one of vengeance but quickly became one for truth he started to find that truth and just when he feels he's a step ahead of his enemies and that he's starting to see the world for what it is all of that is lost kane has grown greatly as well or at least our understanding of him has he started this story as a villain and is now almost an ally of raziel himself he has proclaimed that he wants to save nazgoth and restore the pillars just through outside means he even saves raziel at the end of soul reaver 2 and unlocks some truth we have yet to see soul reaver 2 builds upon its characters and lore in a great way it expands the world of nosgoth the vampires kane raziel and even introduces us to something called the hilden who we'll learn a lot more about in later games i love soulreaver 2's story it really adds to the lore of legacy of kane which i think is its strong point i'm not the biggest fan of the gameplay combat back tracking and some of the puzzles but the character development and world building make it a must play but what was cut what didn't make it into the game [Music] soul reaver 2's cut content surely isn't as juicy as some of the other entries in this series having been already made up largely of cut content itself but it's still worth talking about the first of the cut content were the elemental reavers in the retail version of sr2 we obtain four elemental attunements to our reaver dark light air and fire but originally there were meant to be three more water earth and spirit each of these three were planned to have their own forges as well the attunements themselves were also supposed to be much more expansive each reaver would have had four to six new abilities the spirit reaver specifically would have acted as a hook shot letting you aim at distant places in the spectral realm and teleport there along with additional elemental attunements the player would have been able to obtain seven reaver augmentations providing a charged up ability for each elemental reaver there's some evidence showing that nine glyphs were to be included in the game this would have mirrored the glyphs included in soul reaver but each of them were supposedly based on the pillars of balance this is the least covered of all the content of sr2 and most of what's known about it comes from interviews or promotional images two areas were cut from the game the first being the roofs of ustenheim we visit ustenheim in the game but this version of the area would have been larger having raziel traverse the rooftops of the town the second deleted area was the ruins in the swamp this would have been a village that was high in the trees that sit in the swamp it's possible that the village would have been populated with vampires when visiting an earlier version of nosgoth's history there's a small amount of pre-release information stating that raziel would have to contend with a younger version of kane but there's really no other evidence to this and could be a misinterpretation fair warning here this game is really going to feel like a detour in the absolute onslaught of lore character development and story progression we've experienced so far that's because it is but if you're concerned about the overall story i'd urge you not to just skip past to defiance because blood omen 2 does have some large implications for the story moving forward though they only really pop up in the last hour of the game blood omen 2 entered development during the time when legacy of kane's soul reaver was in production it was part of crystal dynamics wanting to create separate and distinct series blood omen and soul reaver they did this to balance the expectations of blood omen fans and soul reaver fans the team at crystal dynamics created a brand new engine from the ground up the team was concerned about the weight of the rest of the series and wanted to separate blood omen 2 from the previous games they did this by setting the game in a previously unexplored region of nasgoth to the south giving the team the ability to create brand new environments for the game the team also had to deal with the problem of lost abilities kane regaining his power which led to the amnesia that kane would experience in the beginning of this game because blood omen 2 and soul reaver 2 were developed simultaneously the teams tried to maintain consistency between the two stories it's still unclear whether the full storyline of soul reaver 2 with its paradoxes and timeline shifts was shared with the blood omen 2 development team blood omen 2 takes place 400 years after the original game and therefore moved the technologies forward as such the team decided moving towards a steampunk victorian gothic aesthetic there's some speculation that like soul reaver blood omen 2 started as a stand-alone project but this is yet to be confirmed [Music] blood omen 2's place in time and the story is kind of complicated it takes place 400 years after the events of blood omen but in a different timeline than we originally know with the third paradox at the end of soul reaver 2 kane was rushed with memories of the past we are to assume that these are the things he remembered showing us more of what he called the hilden the game starts with kane dreaming remembering gathering armies and starting his conquest of nozgoth his destruction was quickly stopped by the seraphan lord a commander of the quickly rising seraphan armies kane awakes in a bed confronted by a vampire woman named uma she tells him that the seraphan have enslaved humans and have been hunting down every living vampire she also tells him that she's part of an organization called the cabal the vampire resistance after this meeting and introduction uma begins to train kane and this is where we get our first bit of series dissonance as blood omen 2's place in the timeline doesn't fit very well its tone doesn't seem to either it's a very odd game that seemed like it was trying to harken back to the gothic victorian days of blood omen on the playstation 1 but at the same time trying to be soul reaver in its gameplay style soul reaver 2 had the great advantage of a cliffhanger giving us the ability to retain all of raziel's powers from the past game starting blood omen 2 as a cain who doesn't remember any of his abilities and after taking down the members of the circle and making his grave decision at the pillars still needs to be told how to feed on a human seems odd i understand why the choice was made the sequel was a great change in gameplay and it didn't come out until 8 years after its counterpart and obviously the lore reasons are amnesia but i think it still just feels strange it feels like there's a better way this could have been done and i think weakening kane and giving him amnesia was just a bad choice we go through this whole tutorial section with uma showing us how to fight draw blood and introducing us to the concept of lore in blood omen 2 we have a health bar and a lower bar the more blood we take from chests or enemies the more our lore bar goes up once full this will increase our maximum health this is another odd choice by blood omen 2. uma tells us to kill everything in sight every human seraphan and criminal and take their blood because it will make us stronger this is one of the large challenges with going back to blood omen after the events of soul reaver 1 and 2. in the soul reaver series we see kane in an evolved form not only does he not even have to worry about feeding anymore as far as we can see he is concerned with things like the fate of the universe and time itself he has a grand plan and machinations and now we've reverted back to this form of his that's basically a killing monster murdering everyone in sight for his own strength now this is obviously a much earlier cane one that probably hasn't even touched the time stream yet but it almost feels like a devolution a back treading in terms of the series it's not an issue that's easily averted and i don't really think i have a fix for it other than don't make a blood omen 2 in the first place kane is introduced to dark gifts of which he starts off with two mist and fury dark gifts are powers that vampires can be given or take they're basically the spells and forms that we saw in blood omen mist form can make us invisible when surrounded by mist letting us sneak up on our prey and kill them fury can be used only when our rage meter is increased and can be used to deliver a powerful blow to an enemy uma also tells kane that all vampires have the inherent gift of whisper which gives uma the ability to speak to us through telepathy i will say that blood omen 2's control scheme as a large upgrade from soul reaver 2 and even on pc it doesn't feel too bad it works decently enough and combat encounters didn't feel broken or like they didn't work the traversal was even interesting and felt fluid uma and kane are separated by a group of seraphan warriors who attack uma on the bridge to the lower city uma tells kane he must take the path to the smuggler's den and meet her at the sanctuary the meeting place for the cabal the one thing i took for granted that soul reaver did was its weaving of story and gameplay in soul reaver you'll play a bit of the game and eventually come across a cut scene just like any game but you also have raziel's inner monologue constantly commenting on the world around him the enemies he sees and what he's feeling at any given point in time this gives us insight into raziel himself but also gives us a bigger view of the world the one thing i thought when i was playing blood omen 2 was why is it so quiet i just keep killing enemies and nothing's happening this is because kane doesn't monologue nearly as much as razael he also doesn't have the elder god to constantly talk to like raziel in soul reaver one this creates a great void of information and story which is kind of what people love legacy of kane for now you're probably saying that's because kane is stoic and it's just a difference in character that's not true though because in blood omen we have vista markers kane would comment on every little thing in the game giving you insight into the history of even the smallest towns and events this creates an empty space in blood omen 2 and just feels like it needs more happening this is also a precursor explanation as to why i'll be talking about gameplay a lot more in this one rather than the story itself kane makes his way to the smuggler's den with the help of one of uma's human contacts who wants to be turned into a vampire after we leave him we see that another vampire is following us and he kills this human contact kane makes his way through the smuggler's den and eventually finds out who was chasing him a vampire named faustus we learned that faustus used to be one of kane's legionnaires in his vampire army kane laments the fact that vampires have turned on their own kind faustus doesn't really have much motivation other than wanting power for this he wants to kill kane this is our first boss fight and it has multiple phases in this first room we fight faustus hand to hand or claw to claw we have to block enough to charge our fury gift and hit faustus with a big blow once we get his health down a little bit he'll run into another room fitted with four furnaces one on each wall faustus will jump to each furnace taunting us as he throws what i believe are molotovs the goal here is to flip the switch at the base of the furnace and light faustus on fire faustus will run away if we get too close so we have to switch to mist form and approach the furnace so he can't see us coming after this faustus will swing from the chains at the top of the room and launch a large attack at us all we have to do here is dodge the attack and then beat faustus while he's down faustus eventually dies and we take his dark gift of jump allowing us to reach further places kane enters the lower city and meets back up with uma she tells him to head through and make his way to the sanctuary kane finally starts getting fed up with the orders and tells uma that he is not her pawn she tells him to hold out a little longer and he'll find the answers he wants kane makes his way through the lower city on our way we get blood omen 2's gameplay loop in full force this is the loop that most of the areas and levels will follow from here on out there's three things to do in each area depending on which one you're in fight which is just about every area collect blood and lore which is just about also every area and solve puzzles which is not every area i've talked about combat before it's a little tight but this kind of changes when you meet the seraphan warriors the seraphin use swords and they have some sort of magic to charge their weapons and use more powerful attacks and boy do they use them their thrust attack cannot be blocked and will cause you to be downed for a few seconds blood omen 2 has an animation problem when you get attacked by a stronger enemy attack it will cause you to be downed for a few seconds most games use this to give the enemies a chance to get some more blows in blood omen 2 doesn't do this kane just lays there and his enemies wait for him to get up now i'm not saying that the game should have enemies punishing you even more than they already are i'm saying the animation is too long this can happen four to seven times in each area depending on the enemies which causes a lot of down time but this is just static time where you're waiting for your character to get up you can press the action button to jump up earlier but the animation even with this is still too long this isn't the only animation that's way too long in this game the much more grievous and annoying version of this is the blood sucking animation in any given area there can be 1 to 20 enemies each chapter has anywhere from 10 to 30 areas that you'll be exploring with each being pretty linear in nature let's say we go into an open street area and we fight three seraphan warriors two criminals and five pedestrians because remember we're killing every human we see to get our lore and ultimately max health increased each time you feed on one of these downed enemies an animation plays the camera pans and shows kane retrieving the blood from the body and then pans back afterwards this animation can be anywhere from four to eight seconds depending on the enemy as some provide more blood than others that's 6 seconds per enemy and in our hypothetical area of 10 enemies that's a full minute of this same exact blood sucking animation if you have 10 areas in the chapter with the same amount of enemies that's about 10 minutes of blood-sucking animations in one chapter this isn't exact math it's just an average but the time spent sucking was obviously significant enough in my play through for me to point it out now you're probably saying son kane sucks blood in blood omen a lot why is this any different first of all in blood omen you aren't forced to kill every single enemy to get blood or increase your maximum blood you could find blood refills and sometimes you were just topped off and didn't need any on top of that the animation was much shorter now you're probably thinking raziel feeds on souls and the souls take forever to get to you same thing right wrong in the soul reaver games we kill every enemy in a room clearing it out and then once the fighting is done we consume all the souls in the room at once one animation for multiple enemies now how could this be fixed well for one if the developers were really attached to the idea of lore being gained from feeding you could just make the animation shorter that would solve most of the problem of how significant the time spent feeding is the real way to solve this is to not have lore gained from feeding on enemies and just have it be chests that give you lore this would work the same way that it did in blood omen where you gain health upgrades from item pickups and shrines not from feeding it's already implemented in the game as blood chests it would just serve the gameplay much better to make it the primary way you receive health upgrades also blood chests are cool because sometimes they go in kane's butt instead of his mouth and i'm to take that as a canon way that kane fed after the timeline split so please add this to the wiki thanks the other thing you're doing a lot is solving puzzles legacy of kane has a lot of puzzles in all of the games some better or worse than others soul reaver 1 was criticized for its block puzzles but a lot of blood omen 2's puzzle issues arise from its controls most of the puzzles are pretty inoffensive i will say i did like some of the puzzles that had to do with disabling guards from afar a lot of puzzles in blood omen 2 revolve around glyph magic this green energy that's pumped through the city in these golden pipes it's used to power gates floodlights and much more sometimes we have to use switches to turn on this glyph magic and then flip a switch to open a gate the only issue here is a lot of time can be spent standing around waiting for the glyph magic to arrive at the switch this was an unnecessary little thing that i don't think needed to be included the magic should have just went straight to the switch blood omen 2 also doesn't allow you to move blocks sideways once you've grabbed them not a video game sin by any means but it does feel like a step backwards after soul reaver 1 and 2. kane makes his way through the lower city and finally meets the head of the cabal who turns out to be vorador we're not exactly sure how he's alive and this isn't revealed to us i believe it was intended to be revealed in defiance or a later game but crystal dynamics never got the chance to revisit this so for now he's just here kane in vorador's meeting is interrupted by a cabal vampire who stumbles into the room injured he tells them that uma found something important on a mission in the industrial quarter but was captured and taken to the seraphan keep for execution kane decides to rescue uma and retrieve her information he heads into the upper city where the higher levels of society live kane must dress as a noble to fit in even though we're going to be slaughtering everyone in sight as kane makes his way through the city he reunites with another of his old friends apparently kane tried to murder marcus this other vampire at some point in the past and then requested his help when conquering nozgoth marcus tells kane that he's now working with the seraphan kane vows to kill marcus and marcus leaves signifying a boss battle to come kane makes his way through the upper city attempting to find the bishop of meridian who can help him get into the seraphan keep when he finds the bishop he is being mind controlled by marcus which begins our second boss battle marcus's boss battle has a little less mechanics than our skirmish with faustus marcus is using his powers of telepathy but we can stun him by ringing the bells of the chapel that we are in this gives us the chance to get a three-hit combo off on him we do this until marcus is down to about half health and then some seraphan priests enter to mess up our plant they stop the bells from working and marcus starts hiding in the shadows of the chapel here we have to kill some seraphan priests but ultimately kill marcus himself by just finding where he's hiding and hitting him we gain marcus's ability to mind control and with the bishop in tow we head to the seraphan keep i don't actually mind the seraphan keep level it's a large stronghold with a gothic temple feel rather than this victorian steampunk that we've been exposed to in the surrounding city of meridian kane makes his way through the stronghold and finds uma in her cell before he can rescue her the seraphan lord shows up and confronts him kane tries to attack the seraphan lord but finds out that he is too powerful and uma tells him that they must run kane also sees that the seraphan lord has the soul reaver stolen from kane during their first battle before they're teleported away kane vows to kill the seraphan lord for vanquishing him last time uma and kane end up back in the cabal sanctuary and uma tells vorador her important information she reveals that the seraphan have found something called the nexus stone a powerful device that can bend time and space and teleport the user anywhere in nozgoth kane learns that it can negate the power of the soul reaver and this spurs him to head off for it kane heads to the industrial quarter to look for the nexus stone and we're again back in places that look like they aren't part of nozgoth at all it's hard not to point out the great dissonance between this game and the soul reaver series you could have said the same thing before with blood omen and soul reaver but at least then there was the excuse of two separate developers and visions also blood omen has the benefit of soul reaver 2 which acted as a tie between both series bringing the lore from each and melding the worlds in a much more satisfactory way blood omen 2 doesn't have that luxury and remains an out of place enigma in the legacy of kane series did you ever think you'd hear vorador say take the subway so be it you must use the subway to reach the industrial quarter which lies in the northeastern part of the city kane finds the nexus stone with another of his vampire friends sebastian guarding it our third boss fight is a little annoying but there's some interesting mechanics here sebastian rarely attacks you directly the two of you are in a steam room and you have to grab him and throw him into the steam to damage him in phase 2 you have to trap him in the center electricity when he lunges at you finally the dice is raised and sebastian will climb on top of it or jump down to avoid you here we have to charm the dice operator and turn on the steam vents to the sides when sebastian jumps up we have to grab him and toss him down a couple of times sebastian dies and we retrieve the nexus stone before he dies he tells kane that there's a secret underground machine of vampire technology that the seraphan lord is using with the nexus stone gone the factory begins to explode and luckily a cabal vampire retrieves kane from the wreckage taking him back to the sanctuary vorador tells kane to find the seer a woman that owes him a favor she may be able to tell him the location of the device he's looking for he also tells kane that she's outside of the city and that strange demons roam the lands outside of meridian kane makes his way through the canyons fighting demons criminals and seraphan along the way he finally finds the seer an old vampire woman who is hiding out in a shack she seems to be old anyways because she still has wings she tells kane that she knows where the device is but that he'll need her gift to access it and he must drink her blood to get it just then the seraphan lord shows up and starts burning the shack down kane accepts the gift and the seer transports him to the device with her left inside supposedly burning with the shack itself kane shows up at the device and uses his newfound telekinesis to open the gate inside he finds a monstrous being who seems to know kane and is being used to power the device kane speaks with him and the beast tells him that the only one that can destroy the device is the one who built it the one who built it was part of an old race that existed on nasgoth aeons ago he tells kane of a place far to the north of nazgoth called the eternal prison this is where the builder is now with that kane heads through a tunnel to the eternal prison since we just got telekinesis one thing i want to talk about is dark gifts it's one of the few things about blood omen 2 that i actually like i think that they're all unique and interesting enough to warrant their appearance in the game berserk and fury both have their place in combat one being a weaker version of the two but costing less of our rage bar jump allows us to access further places and just feels like it works really well mist form is interesting and i feel like is used sparingly but its place in puzzles in combat make it fun to use charm is interesting as well and shows up in combat and boss battles alike i think charm would be a lot more interesting if it could be used before battle as well taking control of an enemy to start killing within their ranks and thin the herd before you go into battle yourself but that might be too much to ask i think the dark gifts are a great way to pare down the sheer amount of spells items and forms that kane had access to in blood omen 1 and it's really one of the systems that this game does well in my opinion kane travels to the eternal prison this level is one of my favorites in the game we're far away from the streets of meridian and deep inside of an ancient temple prison this feels more in line of what we've come to expect from the series so far you can hear the tortured screams of prisoners and hellish beasts assail you at every corner ah home in all seriousness the eternal prison chapter is interesting using the telekinesis ability to full effect here the puzzles are just complex enough to be fun but not too complex as to be confusing kane is assailed by the wardens of the prison who tell him he doesn't belong there he of course ignores this warning and continues on this leads to the wardens attacking him and teleporting him to different areas of the prison trying to trap him kane finds a portal and is sent to some strange nether realm and faces off against various wraith beings as he makes his way deeper in the prison he finally finds the builder this man tells him that he is of an ancient elder race and the device was created to wipe out all other races on nozgoth it was never finished and could only be powered by a vast network of energy hmm glyph energy he tells us the only way to destroy it would be to destroy the ancient creature that resides at the depths of the device and the only way this eternal creature can be destroyed is with the blood of this elder race killing two birds with one stone cain puts the builder out of his misery and takes his blood with this kane destroys the prison and makes his escape but not before this deranged prisoner chases after him he stops him at every turn dunking him in water on multiple occasions until we have our fourth boss battle this deranged lunatic uses a gift called immolate which we'll obviously gain later to one hit kill us if he catches us in his gaze we have to hide behind statues and push him off his perch when we have the chance the second phase of the battle involves us baiting him to destroy these statue weapons and then use the telekinesis symbols that appear to reverse the destruction of the large statue in the center we then bait the lunatic into attacking the statue dropping it on him and winning the battle before the boss dies he reveals himself as kane's greatest warrior magnus kane belials him as a traitor turning him to the seraphan at the last moments of battle and puts him out of his misery by taking his dark gift with that kane heads back to the device and speaks with the beast who tells him that the ancient race that created the device is called the hilden it's all coming together now we put two and two together and realized that they were the ones warring with the vampires ages ago the beast also tells kane that the leader of the hilden is the seraphan lord himself destroying vampires under a new guise he also tells kane that the hilden were banished from the material plane long ago kane heads down through the device and makes his way to the center finding the eternal being the mass that lies within he uses his blood to destroy it and makes his way back to the top of the device when he arrives the beast that he saw there before is no longer he is changed he reveals himself to be janos audrey janos tells cain of their past and how their race was once great and divine he tells cain of the hilden vampire wars of long ago and how they banished the hilden from the face of the earth to their own plane the seraphan lord opened a gate to the material realm and he is bringing others through to marshall an army and take back nozgoth kane's new mission is to destroy the hilden gate thus destroying the hilden on nazgoth kane and janos head back to the sanctuary and vorador is surprised to see janos janos tells vorador that his story of resurrection is for another time they develop a plan to journey to the hilden city and close the gate but they need to bring the barriers surrounding it down first kane and uma head to the wharves to try and find a ship to the hilden city before they can enter the docks uma steals the nexus stone from kane telling him that she knows he'll betray the cabal once the seraphin lord is defeated later in the wars kane finds uma cornered and saves her before she can be cut down she was still mortally wounded and asks kane to give her his blood to save her yes cain i thought you were to bring the sarafan lord to his knees i thought i know it seems i was wrong i could not carry the fight alone you were brave to try [Music] kane i'm dying yes you are i need your blood please you can save me i know tell me child do you see me ruling noscope yes yes i see it now and do you believe that nosgarth rightly belongs to me i do i believe it cain please then you may die knowing the truth kane cuts her throat and says that she could have been his queen she dies at his feet kane makes it to a ship and heads for the hilden city at the gates of the city the seraphan commander confronts kane telling him that his efforts are futile he tries to kill kane but realizes that he holds the nexus stone this does not dissuade him as he says that the hilden gate is still open and nazgoth will be theirs for the taking kane shuts down the magic that powers the city shields and is connected to vorador and janos who say they are on their way the two teleport into the city and vorador wonders where uma is kane tells him that he killed her after her betrayal vorador is shocked and says he was wrong to trust kane janos tells the two that they have bigger things to worry about and the seraphan lord shows up and attacks janos and vorador janos stays to tend to vordor and teleports kane to the hilden gate kane finds the hilton gate and of course the seraphan lured with it he tells kane that he is the better lord and the humans and vampires will continue to bend their knee to him his cause is just and keynes is not them's fight in words and it's time for our final boss battle the seraphan lord shoots energy blasts from the soul reaver and we can't get too close or he'll teleport away so we have to hit him with telekinesis and then jump attack him off the ledge he appears again and we drop the nexus stone into the hilden gate now the lord is attacking us head on we have to build up a rage bar and hit him with immolate he drops the soul reaver and jano shows up to help us the seraphan lord i'm still calling him that even though he's a hilden expresses his disgust at janos and explains that this is justice for the vampires banishing him and his race he begins beating on janos and kane grabs the soul reaver but not before the seraphan lord tosses janos into the gate thus banishing him to the demon realm that gate begins to close and the platforms explode around the two we finish the seraphan lord off with the soul reaver with his dying breath he tells kane that the hilden are immortal and they will return kane tells him that he'll be waiting for their kind when they do and stabs the seraphan lord through the chest killing him kane walks outside of the hilton city and reminisces on uma while he watches the city burn he walks away from the explosion because he's a cool guy and vows to begin his conquest of nazgoth again blood omen 2 certainly has its flaws of which i think i've covered in great extent here in its third act the story starts to become more interesting and its purpose in the overarching story of legacy of kane is there its significance just isn't that great we did learn a lot about the hilden and that will come back up in defiance i know i spent a lot of time [ __ ] on this game but one thing i really did love about it was its size each chapter felt enormous and the areas themselves were huge you can tell that a lot of work went into this game so i praise it for that alone the way i see blood omen 2 is not like soul reaver 2 it's like soul reaver 1. even though this was the second in its own series running parallel with soul reaver and its releases blood omen wasn't a proper enough introduction for crystal dynamics this game created a new introduction to kane and i think given a sequel it would have given this team proper time to explore what they were trying to in blood omen 2. there were some interesting ideas some of them executed well and some executed poorly overall most of the game just felt so far from what crystal dynamics were already building up in soul reaver 1 and 2 that it just doesn't feel right [Music] there's not a lot of cut content from blood omen 2 a few areas are missing from the retail game in the lower city the eternal prison the wharves and the hilden city really not much is known about these areas and some of them may not have even survived the concept stage the icons for each of the dark gifts were changed a bit before release as well but it's not anything too notable some of the dark gifts themselves were changed pre-release as berserk was originally speed which would give kane the ability to move incredibly fast like sebastian does in his boss fight i'm assuming this was changed because it would have been very unbalanced and made the player much too powerful there's also an early version of the game that includes a much heavier basis on stealth you can see remnants of this in the retail version with mist form these small sections act as stealth moments but aren't really fleshed out all that much i can easily see how this game could have become kane sneaking around meridian trying not to get caught by the seraphan i'm gonna be honest i don't have much in the way of development information on defiance primarily because there just isn't a lot of information out there there isn't really a ton of information out there on defiance in general i'll talk about why i think that is at the end but for now let's get into the game i was pretty excited to get into defiance because i had never really played it when i was younger plus i wanted some more time-streaming world-ending eldritch nosgoth to wash the taste out of my mouth after blood omen 2. defiance opens slightly recapping the events of soul reaver showing us the cinematic from the first game with kane's voiceover talking about his choices but does one ever truly have a choice one can only match move by move the machinations of fate kane is infiltrating the seraphan stronghold trying to kill mobius he overhears some guards talking about killing vampires and were given control as i'm sure a lot of you know one choice can make or break a game be it a small one or a large one someone standing up in a development meeting and saying i think that we should have a fixed camera can make or break a game well that's probably exactly what happened with defiance i was jarred as soon as i started the game the odd thing is i know exactly why this decision was made looking back at soul reaver 2 the entire genesis of the game was the vision of a cinematic experience and that comes through entirely in that entry so the idea to include a camera that stays stationary and moves when you travel to different rooms could make a lot of sense when wanting to create an even more epic and cinematic experience than you already had this is a great idea in premise but its execution is incredibly poor so much so that the camera in defiance has become somewhat of a meme at this point in the lok community by the way i don't know if it's exactly called a fixed camera but that's how i'm going to refer to it so you can stop writing your comments correcting me if i'm wrong it's not only that this camera is annoying i think it actually detracts from the world of the game some of the most amazing moments from the lok series have been just looking around at the grand places you're in you can't really do that in defiance you have to trust that the developers are showing you everything that you need to see there's also a lot that's hidden behind the camera you have to kind of run into it in these really weird awkward ways sometimes to find secrets there's even a moment in the tutorial with kane where the game is teaching you to feed from these urns that are stashed around various areas and the urn is off screen under the camera out of your view and god forbid you get into a battle on the precipice of a doorway it's something that i eventually kind of got used to a couple chapters into the game but there were always moments when i dreaded having to jump across platforms it's a bad sign when a player sees a jumping puzzle you've laid out before them and they think man i hope the camera in this game doesn't prevent me from completing this the real problem with defiance is that everything else is pretty amazing it's sad to say but the combat puzzles collectibles and story are on such an even kilter with each other and if it weren't for the camera this would be easily one of the best games in the series i can't say this game isn't cinematic though because it is the opening looks exactly like an lok movie and a lot of the gameplay does as well watching it looks pretty cool playing it isn't as cool kane infiltrates the seraphan stronghold looking for mobius to do this he must find different talismans and artifacts to open doors in the fortress he finds mobius first underground speaking with his masters kane confronts mobius who easily shrugs him off and tells kane that he's not this omniscient presence that he thinks he is how humiliating it must be for you to come begging at my doorstep for um enough wordplay don't threaten me [Applause] you see i have the upper hand how remarkable that the great cane should succumb to the scepter's power like any common vampire kane continues through the stronghold finding mobius tower he confronts the sorcerer again pinning him against a wall trying to get his answers of how to free raziel mobius tells kane that he shouldn't free razael yet as he still must complete his destiny by saving razael kane has doomed himself because raziel's destiny is still to kill kane kane needs to find the other pieces of the balance emblem for some reason we're not sure of yet kane makes his way to the pillars hoping to find his answers there raziel wakes up in the underworld being chastised and tortured by the elder god the elder god wants raziel to pledge fealty to him and become his loyal servant once again raziel eventually does so knowing that it's his only possible way out of the spectral realm he does the elder gods bidding and consumes some souls eventually he finds his way out of the underworld and into the surrounding cemetery securing an alternative method to switch to the material plane he comes across some vampire hunters overhearing their conversation about a ghost at the pillars with this he realizes he's been in the spectral realm for 500 years which means he's woken up around the time of blood omen raziel finds the gates out of the cemetery which lead towards the pillars of nazgoth but he needs a dark attunement and a light attunement to his reaver to activate it which he doesn't have yet this is one of the annoying things about defiance is it re-introduces forges re-using the forge idea isn't that bad of a concept but the game also makes us re-attune our reaver to dark light fire and air which should have already been attuned from soul reaver 2. i'm sure there's some lore reason for this maybe when kane pulled the sword out of raziel he was so weakened that he lost all reaver upgrades or maybe being in the spectral realm for 500 years caused them to fade these aren't the same forges from soul reaver 2 though they're a little different these forges are definitely a little watered down compared to the ones in soul reaver 2. each forge has a temporal thing in the middle that you use to upgrade your reaver you usually have to defeat some mini bosses to fill it and then a tune your reaver and get out by solving a couple puzzles with said attunement raziel attunes his blade to the dark and light again but finds murals in each ruin that show him what he had already seen in the last game a great war between the vampires and an elder race the vampires created the pillars to defeat them and then were cursed with blood hunger with both attunements gained raziel heads for the cemetery exit raziel exits the gate and heads towards the pillars the pillars in this game are often seen from far away which i love we've mostly seen the pillars up close until now and seeing them often this distance extending infinitely into the sky is just amazing it provides a grandiosity to this world that can't be rivaled kane finds his way to the pillars following mobius's advice to head west of them that his answers would be there here he finds another piece of the balance emblem and another interesting puzzle kane ponders if mobius is tricking him leading a stray from his path again eventually he finds a symbol and reveals a hidden set of vampire ruins off in the distance i'm not going to talk about the camera any more than i already have but i'm just going to show you some footage of me as kane in the sequence to illustrate how frustrating it can be raziel is hot on kane's tail showing up right after him only 500 years later i really think this concept of playing both characters separated by aeons is a really good idea it gets you to explore each area slightly different having been dilapidated by hundreds of years of war and ruin each area is slightly changed but things are open to razael that are not to kane such as forges it also gives me the vibe of two best friends trying to find each other 500 years apart i almost wish there was a musical sequence at the pillars where razael and kane sing the same lonesome song 500 years apart brushing up against the same pillar are you looking at the same balance pillar that i am kane raziel shows up and opens the fire forge discovering a mural inside that shows him the man responsible for forging the soul reaver vorador he gains the fire attunement and fights two specters of the guardians the nature guardian and the conflict guardian he leaves the forge gaining access to the pillars raziel finds the pillars corrupted and ariel haunting them ariel ironically tells raziel that she has no time for riddles even though that's like her whole thing this is pre-kane's decision ariel and she still believes that kane will help her she also tells raziel that his kind's name is unspoken and that they will be wiped from this earth i think she believes that raziel is a hilden because she still doesn't know razael yet raziel asks where he can find vorador and she points the way to his fortress in the black forest kane has made his way into the vampire citadel and finds the final piece of the balance token inside he also finds murals depicting a final battle between the champion of the vampires and the champion of the adversaries he's not sure how to interpret this as he thinks his destiny may be to die raziel finds vorador's mansion in the forest and finds it filled with a myriad of riddles and puzzles the main puzzle we have to solve is that of the three gargoyles in the center fountain room they're spouting water and blocking our entrance to the waterforge to get them to stop we have to find three spears hidden around the mansion and impale the gargoyles with them these gargoyles act as symbolic effigies to the vampire's adversaries the hilden once raziel does this he enters the water forge and defines a similar mural to the one kane found in the vampire citadel it shows the two champions battling and raziel wonders if kane was the vampire champion all along destined to kill him raziel defeats the two guardians at the center of the waterforge and gains the water attunement this gives us the ability to freeze waterfalls and extinguish flames with this we have the ability to open vorador's crypt where raziel hopes he'll be waiting he is and he speaks with raziel about his fate raziel gets frustrated because vorador thinks that raziel has chosen his fate but razael has chosen nothing always being manipulated by others vorador shows raziel that he has the body of janos audrin his heart still ripped from his chest because the humans have the heart of darkness and it's still alive janos has not begun to decay vorador tells raziel that he must go retrieve the heart of darkness where it's being held in avernus cathedral then bring it back to vorador and try to wake the ancient vampire raziel agrees and heads on his way let's talk about jumps shall we legacy of kane is an action-adventure game with a healthy mix of platforming in each entry this is totally fine and in a lot of the games it works really well jumping across pillars or platforms is almost a staple to the series itself this becomes a lot more complex with a wonky fixed camera and vorador's mansion has this on display like no other there are three jumps in this chapter that made me want to pull my hair out first this jump outside of the mansion where you have to land on this pillar spectral shift then jump across first of all it would glitch and push me off the pillar while spectral shifting second the camera is at such an angle that doesn't tell me how far this next pillar is making this jump incredibly difficult on top of that if you fall you have to walk all the way to the building climb up and then spectral shift to try it again this one's pretty bad but the next two dwarf it in comparison the first one is this small pillar jump you climb this pillar hop onto the surrounding ones jump across and then jump in this window it's quite annoying but nothing too crazy we'll come back to why this one infuriated me in a second this last one has you jump up across these two pillars at this incredibly weird angle so that you can't even see the top of the pillar or how far away it is from you this jump is annoying sure but there's fog of death below you so if you die you just retry it right away only this changes near the end of the chapter at the end vorador gives you the library seal so that you can exit the mansion and head for average cathedral you have to redo these two jumps to get to the library only this time there's no fog of death you drop down into the foyer and have to walk all the way from the foyer into the fountain room back outside and redo the pillar jump again just to try the foyer jump it's incredibly tedious and frustrating this game is just full of jumps that make no sense and they're not intuitive half the time i just kind of had to jump and glide hoping that along the way i'd see something and be able to land that worked most of the time but when it didn't it meant repeating things over and over again until it was right most of my playtime was spent trying to figure out particularly annoying sets of jumps just to progress we're done with vorador's mansion though and it's by far the most egregious display of this in the entire game so now we can continue on back to kane at the vampire citadel kane ventures through portals in the citadel entering the different reaver forges razael would find himself in he sees more murals of nazgoth's history and finds that the vampires had eventually elected human guardians for the pillars they would turn the humans when they came of age but one day the humans rebelled kane sees an image of mobius and mortanius leading these rebellions sowing descent even back then kane then sees two murals depicting this final battle between the vampire and hilden champion but they both depict different outcomes one with the vampire champion being victorious and the other with the hilden coming out on top kane wonders which one is meant to be true inside the forges he finds the final piece of the balance token and makes his way back to the citadel inside the chamber at the center of the citadel he finds a pool with a nameless voice speaking to him that of the elder god i have delivered you faithfully to the very hour you desire you know what must be done cain the elder god tells him what raziel is doing heading to avernus cathedral to find the heart of darkness and revive janus audrin kane realizes this is a great mistake and wants to stop him but raziel is 500 years in the future the elder god offers to help him and even though kane doesn't trust him he has no other choice the elder god transports kane to the future and kane heads to avernus cathedral raziel is just arriving and is swarmed by cult sorcerers who are summoning the same demons we saw here in bloodhoemann raziel immediately finds the earth forge and fights the final two spectral guardians time and energy he gains the earth attunement which can be used to summon platforms and also make raziel heavier in water when back in the cathedral he opens a portal to an underground passageway raziel finds murals in this passageway that depict a different story than the ones he had seen before these were from the perspective of the hilden it showed a story of the hilden rising in rebellion against the vampire's god not wanting to submit to the wheel of fate raziel sees other depictions of the hilden hero and starts to think this may be him in the depths of the underground raziel finds a cult worshipping a god called hasha geek they are delivering blood sacrifices to him and raziel falls in the pit coming face to face with this god himself he finds out that this god is turel a deformed version of his vampire brother from ages in the future he tells raziel that he was summoned there and he is trapped he's quickly possessed by something we're assuming is a hilden and attacks raziel this is the first real boss fight in the game as i don't really consider the spectral guardians boss fights they have health bars sure but they go down so fast and aren't really a challenge tyrell attacks us with energy balls and shock waves he also has a sonic blast that we can make use of hitting a gong when he uses it to shock his ears and make him vulnerable after doing this enough we can hit all the gongs and he'll die before he dies he tells us to destroy the bindings so they can all be free we're not sure if this is the hildan speaking or tyrell himself but we pull his spirit and he gives us empowered tk blasts which we use to break a pillar securing our exit from the cathedral this whole boss battle wasn't bad i like using the environment to defeat bosses and it harkens back to soul reaver but there's a reason for that tyrell was originally supposed to appear in soul reaver but was part of the cut content that we talked about before i think slapping him in here was one a way to reuse that idea but also to tie up the loose end of why he wasn't in the original game raziel finds mortanius who is the leader of this cult maurtanius is also being possessed by the hilden but seems to know who raziel is the hilden tell raziel that they will prevail no matter what we learn that they were the ones trying to corrupt the circle from within as to break the binding that seals them from this world razeal asks maurtanius where the heart of darkness is maurtanius tells raziel that he created the scion of balance with the heart of darkness to save nazgoth raziel realizes what this means that maurtanius revived cain with the heart of darkness to try and keep the hilden from entering nosgoth the heart that he seeks is inside kane with this maurtanius teleports away kane arrives at the averness cathedral and raziel appears from the portal raziel is vengeful against kane and now paranoid that he's going to kill him you must trust me raziel our intentions for nozgoth for our futures are not so diverse i must trust you or i have not come here to threaten you raziel you say that while you hold in your hand the instrument of my doom kane is armed with the soul reaver the only thing that can kill raziel truly and the only thing that can kill kane is the wraith blade kane tells raziel that janos must not be resurrected and that the two of them can still choose the third option kane tells raziel that he is the only one in this world that has free will he has the choice to make his own destiny he's not bound by the wheel of fate because of his rebirth raziel's eyes are glowing green inferring that he may be possessed by the hilden lord raziel is so focused on this prophesied battle so concerned with destiny he is paranoid and vengeful enraged that he feels he's been played with and isn't sure who to trust he lashes out and we battle raziel as kane this battle was kind of difficult raziel is a tough opponent he comes at you with all his power shooting us with tk blasts attacking us with the reaver he's strong but with enough dodging and capitalization on weaknesses we take him down kane again makes it clear that he doesn't want to fight razael but he's persistent his eyes now flaming green they go to battle again but this time as razael this boss battle is similar to the last albeit a little easier we dodge kane's attacks and capitalize on his openings it's also playing the soul reaver theme in the background which is only fitting the music from the journey that began these two to now play them out [Music] i really like this idea of playing this battle from both sides it shows that at this point in the game we have no idea who our actual protagonist is somehow these two allies who are trying to break the wheel of fate have become enemies just from the twisting of prophecies and outside words they've turned against each other or at least one of them has raziel grabs kane and something starts leeching out to him raziel starts to fade but kane tells him that he doesn't want to hurt him no raziel they fixed us i didn't [Music] woe to the conquered i have found the heart of darkness and you go to a billion raziel turns kane's own words against him saying they victus before he rips his heart from his chest then blasts him into the portal from where he just came the green flames fade from razael's eyes and he realizes that he doesn't feel any sense of victory just that they may have walked blindly into their enemies trap he also isn't sure whether kane actually wanted to hurt him or not only that now he would never know at this point in the story raziel is paranoid he's acting vengefully towards everyone understandably so he's been manipulated used as a pawn and played in other people's machinations ever since he was pulled from the abyss he's not sure who to trust what prophecies and histories are true and who is on his side in raziel's mind at this point he doesn't have a side he's just looking for answers raziel heads back to vorador's mansion oh great and finds that mobius has taken control of it this is the same time where mobius takes vorador and publicly executes him his militia have stormed the building and blown doorways making our exits very different luckily there's no terrible jump puzzles for us to solve this time and raziel heads to the sanctuary there he places the heart of darkness in ianos's chest reviving the centuries-old vampire janos wonders where he is and raziel tells him that it's been five centuries your murders are long dead 500 years and vorador also dead your bloodline is erased the age of the vampires is coming to an end this meeting is very different than their last with raziel being annoyed and vengeful he tells janos that he didn't revive him out of benevolence but just for answers he reveals to the revived vampire of what he knows that the soul reaver is his undoing and shows him the wraith blade this shocks janos realizing that he may have been reading the prophecies wrong all along he realizes that raziel's destiny is complex and promises to show him his answers teleporting the two of them to the vampire citadel janos tells raziel that the curse of bloodthirst the vampires received from the hilden was not just that but a curse of immortality this curse forever ensured that vampires could not purify themselves through death that they would not be able to die and become part of the wheel he explains that for the binding of the pillars to be preserved they had to pass their curse onto the human successors this is the price they pay for the binding the dilemma of the vampire is that while the humans control the pillars they are corrupted giving the hilden a chance to come back into the world janos tells raziel that he is the fulcrum of their destiny and that he must journey into the innermost sanctum of the citadel to find the answers he seeks raziel finds this chamber and inside he has met again with the elder god who is blocking access to a particular font of energy this puzzle is really cool and the camera decides to stay out of the way for most of it we have to slash the elder gods tentacles revealing the font and then jump back up to charge different batteries connected to different reaver attunements each time we do this the platform gets lower and we have to use different powers to get back up at first it's just summoning earth platforms to make our way but eventually we have to freeze a waterfall and jump platform to platform all before the elder god can wrap his tendrils around the font again when the batteries are charged and the font is open we find ariel at the center she purifies the reaver telling raziel that this will restore balance raziel releases the balanced guardian spirits and gains the spirit reaver he's left with more questions than answers at this point and heads back to find janos who is looking out at the pillars this very moment is the same moment that kane is making his fateful decision he doomed the pillars to eternal ruin brazil there may yet be hope there is one who will be called you must seek the scion of balance dear god janos witnesses the breaking of the pillars and with the binding undone the hilden lord possesses him the hilden lord tells raziel that he was his pawn all along and that every event up until now he's been tricked to put janos here and to give the hilden the vessel they needed janos jano struggling against the corruption tells raziel to kill him before the hilden lord can do too much damage but raziel is not quick enough this boss battle is a bit difficult as it should be we're fighting the hilton lord who is possessing the body of possibly the most powerful vampire to ever live janus will fly up in the air and swoop down at us the only way to hit him is to catch him off guard we have to dodge his attacks and wait for an opportunity if we attack him when he's ready he'll do a spinning attack that takes a lot of health while i much prefer the environmental boss battles this one felt great it was challenging and it required me to learn the mechanics while also having great precision in my movements we beat janos but don't kill him in time and he rises up killing raziel and sending him to the spectral realm where he comes face to face with the elder god again raziel's angry slashing at the elder god but doing nothing the elder god tells him that his destiny has been fulfilled and that there's no use for him anymore he tells him every move has been one that has been planned by the elder god raziel will be his prisoner for eternity as his soul cannot be returned to the wheel of fate the elder god calls his servant mobius to this chamber and were switched back to kane kane is alive and awakens in the demon realm of the hilden he doesn't understand how he still lives he defeats these demons and makes his way back to the cathedral kane feels compelled to the vampire citadel and heads there immediately he looks out seeing the pillars broken realizing that this was the moment of his choice he wonders if these choices made any difference maybe he had missed his final cast at destiny he finds the innermost chamber and sees mobius talking to the elder god his staff doesn't work on kane's reaver realizing that the heart was the part of cain that the staff affected mobius debates for his life begging for mercy but cain impales him on the reaver mobius uses his last breath to tell him that this doesn't matter as he serves the elder god who has the power over life and death mobius appears in the spectral realm where raziel sees him and impales him with the wraith blade returning his soul to the wheel of fate the elder god tells him that his actions are irrelevant and that mobius had run his course raziel reflects on all the souls wandering around him he sees the third option the way to end this but i was armed with newfound knowledge and it burned within me redeemer and destroyer mobius had never seen his master until the soul river purified his sight even the ancient vampires had no idea what it was they so righteously worshipped you must unite all the conflict and strife throughout history all the fear and hatred served but one purpose to keep my master's wheel turning all souls were prisoners trapped in the pointless round of existence leading distracted blunted lives until death returned them always in ignorance to the wheel the coin is still turning but what hope had there been one cannot fight the unseen only then despair raziel there is no escape it was then i knew what i had to do i alone could end this kane do you so enjoy death yes brazil no yes this is how no razia the soul reaver pure of all corruption this is what it is for this is what i am for the two become one both souls together and the sign of balance is healed and i am not your enemy not your destroyer i am as before your right hand he shifts to the material realm inhabiting mobius body without realizing cain impales mobius's body impaling raziel's spirit in turn raziel realizes his destiny that the scion of balance will be healed with this action he tells kane he's not his enemy but his sword his right hand raziel dies and becomes part of the soul reaver with this kane is revealed the true enemy the elder god kane ponders casting raziel into the abyss with this monstrous beast feeling some sort of remorse for his actions this is our final boss battle the elder god we have to slash his tentacles to take down his shield and then rush over to him to do some damage eventually he'll start blasting us with some energy and we continue the same strategy until he's done kane drops the chamber on top of the elder god while he tells him that he will return and that this isn't the last of him now at last the masks had fallen away the strings of the puppets had become visible and the hands of the prime mover exposed most ironic of all was the last gift that raziel had given me more powerful than the sword that now held his soul more acute even than the vision his sacrifice had accorded me the first bitter taste of that terrible illusion hope [Music] this final cinematic shows that kane is changed raziel affected him he had become embittered with the thoughts of destiny his fatalism had led him to believe that nothing could be changed until he realized it could with razael to help him he realized that the world could be saved no matter how hard the wheel of fate churned there was always a third option raziel's story itself has come full circle spending the story raging against his destiny he finally realized it was to become one with the sword in this way he would help kane moving forward help nazgoth be saved by becoming the blade he had to sacrifice his life to do this and he was the only one that could because not only was he reborn for the job he had the free will to do so unfortunately we would never see that happen i'd like to imagine that the sequel to defiance would see us playing as kane with raziel living in the sword being our benefactor as the elder god had been in the first game [Music] before we get to the future of the series and what path it went down after this let's talk about defiance's cut content a lot of defiance's content was already scraps that had been cut from the other games the additional attunements to the reaver had been planned for soul reaver 2 and the tyrell fight sequence was originally planned for soul reaver 1. in defiance there were originally five more upgrades to cain's reaver in the game he only obtains the ones relating to conflict energy dimension and time the others states nature death and mind were planned to be included there's no evidence of this in the early versions of the game so this could have just been brought up in the planning razael would have also obtained a different fighting style from kane as there existed plans for raziel to obtain a shield distinguishing him from the vampire even further the avernus cathedral level is pretty short in the retail version but was originally planned to be much larger it had to be trimmed down due to time and budget constraints there seems to have been a prototype version of the game where we travel forward to the soul reaver era of nazgoth we would have been able to see the sanctuary of the clans and kane's throne but with modern defiance graphics and gameplay umo was originally planned to appear in defiance as well giving her character a larger backstory than she had received in blood omen 2. this would have showed her before she was turned into a vampire in a cut sequence from the ending of the game kane was to complete raziel's path returning the soul reaver to avernus for his younger self to find later the last and most wanted of the cut content was the resurrection of vorador this chapter would have explained how vorador had been resurrected which still exists as a burning question in fans eyes he appears in blood omen 2 seemingly having been brought back to life but unfortunately that explanation was cut from the final game with legacy of kane defiance we've talked about the last main entry game in the series but that doesn't mean it's the end of the story for this series that was almost 18 years ago and of course it's not like two decades have passed without anything happening actually quite a lot has happened [Music] like i said in these 18 years a lot has happened with the legacy of kane fanbase being what it is most of these games wouldn't officially see the light of day in the public's eyes but the dedicated community has recovered a lot of information making them common knowledge at this point a lot of this information i'll be talking about comes from a neogaf post by mama robotnik who chronicled all of the cancelled entries in the series in a post titled the 10 canceled legacy of kane games i put a link in the description in case you'd like a full rundown with the release of defiance idos was not very confident in the series moving forward it had underperformed in sales and it wasn't as much of a critical success as the other games in the series had been that being said a sequel still entered development this sixth game in the series was called legacy of kane the dark prophecy it was developed by ritual entertainment and was to be published by eidos interactive crystal dynamics weren't totally absent on the project as they were providing some assistance from the sidelines crystal dynamics was moving on to focus on the tomb raider franchise at the time which is why they didn't develop this entry in the first place in similar timing amy hennig left crystal dynamics for naughty dog and left a farewell letter to the fans on her blog according to daniel kabuko the lead art designer on most of the legacy of kane games most of the game would have taken place in the hilden realm the hilton had carved out a place for themselves in the demon dimension when banished there centuries ago we would have gotten to see a lot more of their people hierarchies societies and even glyph cities there is some evidence pointing to the fact that we would have had alternating protagonists in the same way defiance had we would have been shifting between a younger kane post blood omen 2 and our current version of kane post defiance there's also a large chance we would have seen a time shortly after the destruction of the pillars this could have been a great dynamic playing as kane's younger self shortly after he refused the sacrifice the team had originally planned to put raziel in the game letting kane summon him out of the reaver at certain pivotal points but this decision was vetoed by crystal dynamics as soon as they found out i think this is an interesting choice but ultimately a good one it shows that crystal dynamics wanted raziel's story to end in defiance they didn't want to drag it out longer than it needed to the dark prophecy would have been a new chapter in legacy of kane signifying new interesting characters to explore the seer from blood omen 2 was also meant to return being revealed as a vampire hilden hybrid kane was also set to regain his form abilities with his wolf transformation being able to be used by the player the elder god was also set to return being the main adversary whether from the background or in the forefront i feel like there's a lot that could have been explored here and it's far too late now to continue this story almost two decades later but seeing the hilton cities and seeing what happens between kane and his great adversaries would have been fantastic alas the dark prophecy was cancelled in 2004 the same year that it started development legacy of kane dead son is by far the most known of the two canceled legacy of kane sequels in 2009 square enix bought out idos interactive thus buying the rights to all of their projects and games at this time dead sun was already in development being worked on by climax games back then climax were best known for their works on silent hill shattered memories and silent hill origins most recently they assisted housemark on the recent ps5 game returnal square enix didn't want to cancel the game they did however have a few requirements they first wanted to separate the game from the previous series so it had to have a new main character with a story distant to the original series they also required that the game have a multiplayer component which we'll get to talking about in a bit climax was set to work on the single player component alone and psionics would work on the multiplayer component dead sun had many different formats throughout its lifespan at first being a small project that would possibly be a ps3 downloadable game this then transitioned to a ps3 retail release and eventually a ps4 launch title the story was to be set in the distant future of nasgoth mama robotnik describes it as the same way that doctor who and star trek the next generation took place in the same universe as their predecessors but were not immediate continuations of previous events a far evolved race of blue-skinned vampires now exist in nozgoth called the saradin one of the saradin gein attacks a human of nazgoth called asher gein kills and feeds on asher when asher's human soul becomes bound to gain's body asher's soul becomes trapped in gein's body and this is our protagonist first off looking at this footage it reminds me a lot of shadow of mordor the main characters being a soul trapped in another's body using that other character's powers to assist in gameplay it also has a similar looking combat style combo moves and fighting multiple enemies at once i'm not saying any ideas were stolen here i just think this is probably a case of multiple discovery asher would at some point return to his human village to see it burned and destroyed this game was obviously going for a much darker tone here over legacy of kane's previous gothic fantasy in line with this asher would attempt suicide when learning about the fate of his village eventually he would explore nasgoth using his new abilities to seek vengeance on those who caused his circumstances this would have tied to the fate of nazgoth in some way we're not really sure the game was also to include a mystery of an old vampire child and revolved around the elder god the game was an open world action adventure game with upgradeable abilities asher would be able to shift between the spectral and material realm and the shifting mechanic was supposedly fundamental to the gameplay and very fluid dead sun was never officially announced to the public we only know about it because of the lok fan base and their mysterious oracle orb ways of finding information all these ideas don't sound bad and as you can tell the game was pretty far into development apparently a ton of time had been put into the game with artists and developers coming in on weekends to try and finish work but square enix had decided that the game wasn't going to make the money it needed to and decided to cancel the project in 2012. since the game hadn't been announced yet they'd put no money into marketing and wanted to cut their losses early the only issue with this is they decided to keep that information to themselves for a little while and let development continue without informing the developers this was obviously also a massive project which climax wasn't really ready for at the time they had only worked on small focused projects up until then and didn't have the manpower or ability to work on something so large i think this is the case of something just getting out of their hands i can see how a game starting off as a small downloadable title just to revive the series could turn into this large open world action adventure game with multiple systems exploration and a huge storyline anonymous employees have stated that the reason for the slow development on the game was due to square's poor direction and unrealistic demands these unrealistic demands are probably what caused this small project to turn into a large one a lot of this information came out a year after cancellation in 2013 with employees being covered under an nda and not legally being allowed to talk about the project i think dead sun could have been an interesting idea for the series moving forward something like this idea would need to happen in the future for the legacy of kane series to continue as making a sequel to defiance at this point isn't feasible but what about that multiplayer component i talked about earlier well dead sun got cancelled but that actually kind of got released like i said before square enix had required a multiplayer component to dead sun this component was developed by psionics the same studio that made rocket league eventually with the cancellation of dead son nazgoth became its own thing nazgoth was a free to play arena style multiplayer action game now an arena style multiplayer action game sounds like the exact thing that i would want from a legacy of kane entry right this was an odd decision and was obviously motivated to make money free to play games are good at this players will usually buy extra skins or weapons or whatever things you throw at them especially because they know that they didn't pay anything for the game in the first place in 2019 free to play games generated a total of 87.1 billion dollars worldwide this turn was obviously a strange one but it made sense when looked at through the lens of square enix nozgoth took place after the events of soul reaver with kane having left nosgoth in the chronoplast to journey back in time a power vacuum was in place causing the humans to rise up and rebel more than ever the original concept was to have lore develop as the game progressed you could ally with humans or vampires and directly impact the lore of the game moving forward this was a huge promise but it was a smart decision lore is mostly the thing that we're here for so promising fans the ability to change the outcome of the story moving forward would theoretically bring the attention of lok die hards i don't think this component ever made it into the game as nosgoth never made it out of beta the game launched its alpha with plenty of bugs and performance issues but square enix wanted this game to make money it had to because they were probably looking to make back the money they lost on dead son with this title even with these issues the game trudged on and psyonix released multiple new maps and added another game mode in nozgoth you could play deathmatch and flashpoint deathmatch was exactly what it sounds like and flashpoint was basically king of the hill fighting for control of one objective teams were split into vampires and humans with the vampires being able to fly and climb buildings quickly while the humans were grounded and used an assortment of weapons each team had a variety of classes to choose from the vampires having the reaver tyrant sentinel deceiver and summoner and the humans having the hunter alchemist scout prophet and vanguard each had their own distinct play style with a variety of different weapons or abilities to choose from i did actually play nozgoth when it was in its open beta albeit my total play time was only 52 minutes so i didn't experience much of what it had to offer if there was anything there at all now i know when talking about this game i've given square enix the benefit of the doubt that doesn't mean that i don't think it was a stupid direction to take the series obviously legacy of kane is a story story-based cinematic experience some of the best moments of the series are just two characters talking so why make a game where that's never even allowed to happen this game surely wasn't for the legacy of kane fanbase and i'm sure it would have suited square enix better if they just removed the branding from the game entirely alas the open beta began in january 2015 and the nozgoth servers were officially shut down on june 14th 2016 adding nozgoth into the hall of failures in the legacy of kane series you know what is it about this series that drives you to to take on a project that's so vast and comprehensive i think it's just the whole package the presentation the characters it's just so many things the music i mean it all just just kind of works i don't know if there are obviously there are things which we don't like about the game so like oh this could be so much better if they've done this and uh i could talk about the fans all day i guess it's the writing and the characters which are in the center of this it's one of the things where they they obviously laid the groundwork of such a an engrossing mythology in a detailed world that you can yeah so really believe it and be i mean you do you do have some of the the finest characterization and voice acting certainly that there was at the time there was nothing like it yeah just atmosphere is top-notch and you just you fall in love with the world yeah that's that's a good way of saying it for for me it was really uh the the storytelling drew me in um so i uh as i mentioned earlier the first of the games that i played with soul reaver and then i went back and played blood omen none of the others had been released yet and um so soul reaver felt like a very solid world with a lot of depth to it uh and being able to go back and play uh blood omen made me feel even more so like uh this is this is a world with enormous depth to it the just the the quality of the storytelling um again that was so rare in that era it's become you know had a big influence so you know now having real voice actors and even film actors appear in a game is not anything unusual um but it made such a difference at the time um and so that attachment lasted for a while in terms of the series itself as a on the whole would be there's just a story it is literally i've played numerous games like over over the over the years i'm not not a youngster so i've been playing a game a long time and it is one of the highest highest quality storyline driven games i've ever actually played each each and every individual game had someone do like things that would grow that would grab people from their own perspectives they all brought something new to the table really i think there's a common thread here and that's story legacy of kane has truly one of the greatest stories in video games i think its dialogue is still rivaled today in its complexity and depth its ability to develop characters over time and completely turn your perception of those characters on its head while making you look completely different at the world that it's built for you the world building itself is second to none crystal dynamics and silicon nights created a world that feels full of life it feels lived in like there are actual things to be learned like the history of the world is real and needs to be uncovered it's full of mystery and intrigue and with each subsequent entry you're learning more but you're also coming up with new questions that you've yet to find the answers to there's a reason i didn't go too in depth with the story on soul reaver that's because good writing and good stories change the way that you look at them legacy of kane is one of those stories but what about the future it must seem pretty grim from my analysis and explanation ending on the failures of the series must make it seem like kane and raziel are doomed to never return and as i wrote this script soulreaver was taken off of steam to fix its broken pc port and blood omen was put on gog for the first time ever that's gotta mean something right when i started this video i figured i'd focus mainly on the past but seeing the dedication and work of this fan base has shown me that no matter if a legacy of cain game never comes out again the legacy of kane will never die it will always live and breathe through its fans if there's one thing i want this video to do it's to stand as a testament to how much love this community has for these games it should show that there's still people waiting out there and seeing all this work that these people have put in and talking with them about this series i thank them for the first bitter taste of that terrible illusion hope holy [ __ ] uh if you made it to the end of this video i really appreciate it thanks for watching this whole insanely large and long project it really means a lot that people want to watch my videos and i put so much time and work into them that i can't thank you enough seriously i love legacy of kanan i've been wanting to make this video for a while and i also recently just launched my patreon so if you'd like to support me i'd first urge you to reconsider but i will be putting the full interviews i did with baz reina ben and kevin up over there so you can see the entire things it also just works as a great way to support the content i make i'd eventually like to do this full time and just that little bit helps towards that goal i also want to thank the whole llk community they were so helpful in the making of this video thanks for letting me bug you with my questions and concerns and i thank everyone that's done so much research and work so that i didn't have to again thank you everyone that watched this video and if you liked it give it a like and subscribe to my channel because i'll definitely be making more content like this in the future bye dad

Channel: YourFavoriteSon

Views: 928,841

Keywords: legacy of kain defiance, legacy of kain series, legacy of kain lore, kain, legacy of kain, defiance, blood omen, soul reaver, soul reaver lore, soul reaver analysis, legacy of kain analysis, video essay, video game essay, legacy of kain retrospective, video game retrospective, retrospective, gaming retrospective, blood omen 2, blood omen GOG, soul reaver 2, legacy of kain story

Id: Ysxs_oErmWo

Length: 198min 34sec (11914 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/VaeVictus32]

This is awesome.