Legacy of Kain Dead Sun - What Happened?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to another episode of what happened the show where well why why am i suddenly so soft and bulbous my organic matter is now so plush oh yeah tired of everyone having none of you whenever you enter the room want to be an irresistible kitty magnet with charm for days do you yearn to absolutely be swimming instead sopping kitty then you need to hit the link below that'll bring you to the campaign for the official matt mcmuscle's what happened plushie you can squish him hug him or use him as a voodoo doll go nuts act now and you'll receive this bonus tote bag for all your toady needs if we reach 200 pre-orders production can officially begin but there's only 15 days left to make this dream a reality so pre-order now welcome to another thirst quenching speech spewing and soul reeving episode of what happened the show was specifically made to talk about mismanaged and abandoned fan favorite franchises that just so happened to be locked up in the dusty coffins of the video game industry and honestly there's few that can compare to the long slumbering legacy of kane the idos interactive vampire series that has a long and oh so complicated history in fact we touched upon the beginnings of it in our two human episode as the war betwixt silicon knights and crystal dynamics was an unmitigated pissing contest of legendary proportions and if that's something you'd like to bone up on please do but for our story today we'll be jumping ahead a bit but but we'll still be in the past but after the release of 1999 soul reaver after several delays crystal dynamics breathed a sigh of relief as that game wasn't without its own developmental issues despite it being a critical darling and innovative in terms of storytelling voice acting and technical level design the small team struggled to keep things off of the cutting room floor and had to compromise their original vision multiple times they sought to correct these shortcomings with soul reaver 2 and while that game was indeed a polished more ambitious version of its predecessor the franchise as it evolved always seemed to have something holding it back typically due to tight deadlines and budget restrictions on idos interactive's part in the early to mid 2000s the uk-based publisher was on the ropes due to flagging sales of well most of their library which was an oozing financial wound poked even further by the disastrous angel of darkness which hurt the company so much that bankruptcy was a very real possibility no no please i have a wound there oh come on don't spoil everything crystal dynamics meanwhile pushed on with more kane sequels but it wasn't exactly the easiest string of releases for fans to keep track of the first game blood omen legacy of kane was released on pc and playstation 1. its sequel legacy of kane soul reaver also then added a dreamcast version to the mix that was then followed up by soul reaver 2 a legacy of kane series and was a ps2 console exclusive blood omen 2 a prequel released on the xbox ps2 pc and gamecube and finally legacy of kane defiance which was released in 2003 but dropped the gamecube like a hot purple potato starting from soulreaver that's 4 games in 5 years and maybe because of this sales dipped lower and lower with every subsequent release as the blood was being squeezed from the stone at an alarming rate something idos had a tendency to do but the final straw was when they shut down core design and then handed the keys of the tomb raider franchise over to crystal dynamics and set them to work even though they hadn't even finished defiance yet this caused a ruffle with certain members of the studio which led to a small exodus of talent including the legendary amy hennig who had been the narrative voice of the franchise for half a decade since crystal dynamics would then be too busy to continue telling tales in the happy-go-lucky world of nozgoth idah sought out ritual entertainment to continue where defiance left off legacy of kane dark prophecies development lasted for a few months before it was staked through the heart for reasons that are largely unknown cancelled and largely unknown are words you're gonna need to get used to cause if you wanna get technical this was not the only game scrapped in the franchise and it's not even the third or the fourth or the fifth all told about 10 some different games that either starred kane raziel or whatever manner of fanged protags had started development but were either rebooted or scrapped altogether with legacy of kane dead son being the most famous of them all so what happened when tomb raider legend released in 2006 it marked the turning point for both idos and crystal dynamics as its fresh story and positive reviews saw it selling almost 3 million copies in its first year and almost 4 million in total across all versions crystal dynamics then became the de facto factory behind the series putting out anniversary and underworld and even scaling down for the warmly received guardian of light and temple of osiris downloadables this then of course left legacy of kane without a dedicated studio to champion it so it wasn't long before our favorite boisterous vampire boys were tossed into the dungeons of neglect alongside other idos misfits like gex akuji and the guy from headhunter every so often fans would get a get a whiff a a lick of a revival with the most notable evidence being kane and raziel's playable appearance in the aforementioned guardian of light are you enjoying this cane is this what you wanted you bastard why do that if you weren't prepping for a big new game well turns out they weren't or were they no they weren't kinda around 2009 climax studios had made a name for themselves by making the best western develop silent hill games which is not something open for debate they featured really solid writing and captured some subtlety and nuance while still retaining some over-the-top moments that might mesh well if applied to other franchises being based was also a big plus as it placed them within spitting distance of idos interacta's main london headquarters now idos was aware of the many requests and fan fervor to resurrect the ip and since tomb raider had come roaring back most figured it was only a matter of time before kang got his shot i mean that makes sense the the franchise was always seen as a distant second or third in idos's back catalog ah my poor neglected urban chaos so with a capable willing studio free to work on it a grand new adventure in nozgoth was greenlit but things started off not exactly on the best foot because [Music] 2009 was also pretty eventful elsewhere as square had made a bid to buy idos outright and they were more than willing to sell essentially they would become more of a western publishing arm for western things like shooting stuff cyberpunk and yes even vampires now usually when new management takes over the first order of business is to cancel everything old management did fortunately square was fine with dead sun so its development was allowed to continue but word came down from either them or idos or both that this new legacy of kane project would need to adhere to a few very not negotiable mandates it had to have a multiplayer component for some reason i don't know about all of you but when i think of dialogue and cutscene heavy action adventures involving vampires time travel and old gods i think about kill streaks and respawn times fortunately cooler heads did prevail because since climax was a smaller studio employing about 100 staff the multiplayer mode was to be delegated to another studio in this case psionics yes supersonic acrobatic rocket powered battle cars rocket league psionics pretty crazy to think they were working on this for a time but just hold that thought for now i'm going to get back around to it aside from both components using unreal 3 as a base and both employing a similar unified art style they're going to be drastically different from each other leaving climax to focus on the single player campaign which was internally known as black cloth while the multiplayer was called war for nozgoth in terms of where on the timeline this game was set well the team did a variety of pitches but one of those rules square was reticent on was that considering almost 10 years had passed since defiance's release that it was risky to produce anything close to a direct sequel thus the decision was made to focus on a brand new character and storyline which is why the world of dead sun took place in the far future placing it outside the bubble of influence of the past games the new pro tag was going to be a character called gain slash asher a dual entity composed of a human soul inhabiting a vampire body which would lead to a tumultuous relationship between the two this far-flung version of nozgoth was designed to look closer to real-world ancient architecture with a slightly more ethereal look in a move i'm sure most fans would love square felt that these environments should be both grounded and gritty rather than fantastical and gothic yeah can we lose the tentacles in time travel and do more of a game of thrones thing logically the game's size then started to balloon with every milestone with idos i'm sorry square enix west pointing to games like assassin's creed as an example for climax to model after thankfully the game's core was going to be very similar in gameplay style to the original soul reaver it would just be far more open ended gained would collect unique powers and upgrades which in turn would allow him to access new areas hell you were still even able to shift to the spectral realm which was going to be a big element so with all this stuff going on this was definitely gearing up to be the most massive game climax had ever taken on but the problem was that they simply did not have the staff and experience to build it in a timely fashion their previous efforts were all focused small scale titles like silent hill blood forge and ghost rider while assassins creed entries had veritable armies behind them which is how ubisoft pumped out so many this made for slow but steady progress but anonymous employees within climax said a good portion of that slow progress was due to the direction of square enix upper management which was charitably described as fractured and inconsistent ever-changing and unrealistic demands of what the game should be something all too common in the industry were regularly handed down and it took climax a while to suss out exactly what was wanted this of course resulted in some friction in the partnership as climax tried to push back against these directives whenever they could but always have to relent in the end square meanwhile was frustrated at this glacial process and as time went on grew unsure of the game's sales viability if i didn't mention this before dead sun was never officially announced thus the marketing machine had yet to start revving up so the casual fan at the time had no idea this even existed it's thanks largely to the investigations of the legendary mama robotnik the number of kane related projects and behind the scenes content came to light in a series of illuminating posts complete with screenshots and artwork they confirmed and clarified the bulk of what we know about dead sun including its many guises the target format of the game changed rapidly during development at one point it was envisioned as a small project possibly downloadable and then as an xbox 360 ps3 retail release in its final form the game would have been a playstation 4 launch title i am unclear whether an xbox one or pc release was also planned a large amount of work went into the game with a tremendous amount of hours contributed by the artists development had progressed to the point in which some voice acting slash motion capture had taken place if you want more insight into mama robotnik's findings then check out the link in the description below fascinating stuff despite the game starting to come together however square enix came to the decision that it somehow wasn't and when they factored in the estimated marketing costs they came to the conclusion that the game would fail to meet their sales expectations now reportedly they had come to this decision by themselves which meant they did not tell climax for an undetermined amount of time which was um pretty shitty why this is shitty is because the team was still coming in on weekends and late nights plugging away on their biggest project completely oblivious to the invisible writing on the wall climax was eventually told that square would not be investing any further into the land of nozgoth and the game was quietly cancelled sometime in 2012. thanks to mama robotnik though dead sun's existence was made public via their investigative posts in mid-2013 as climax themselves were not legally allowed to disclose anything as square had shackled some iron-clad ndas around their collective necks when this news started trickling out fans were understandably a little very upset another canceled game title and it had gotten really far in development back in 1999 lines of communication to publishers were limited but in 2013 the online discourse made its way to square very easily to the point that they had to address it this unenviable task fell to poor some george kellyan square community manager who was put in front of the firing squad i can confirm that dead sun was a project which had been in development but which was cancelled i i know it's disappointing to hear about these things out of context and and whilst some of the details are accurate some details are not you know game projects can be canceled for a variety of reasons and i know it's very hard to tell from images and info alone but in the end legacy of kane dead son just wasn't the right game at the right time but you'll have to take me at my word on that i'm afraid climax ceo simon garner for his part also addressed the leaks but obviously was very tight-lipped as you would expect we are covered under nda and really don't have anything to add many games never see the light of day for lots of different reasons especially over the last few years where business models and markets have been evolving rapidly we continue to have a good relationship with square enix i mean do you though because climax never worked with square ever again so obviously things might have gotten a little strained two years later in a slightly ironic twist climax would then go on to develop their own assassin's creed titles but in the form of the downloadable chronicles trilogy ever since then the studio has retained a low profile with some understated releases although they did assist house mark with the recent return funnily enough even though square apparently felt that dead son was the wrong game at the wrong time felt that war for nosgoth the multiplayer component was the right game at the right time so they had psionics morph it into its own standalone free-to-play mmo thing and simply called it nazgoth doing stuff like this was something square was all jacked up on back then as evidenced by the tragic triad wars the multiplayer mmo spin-off of sleeping dogs that precisely zero people wanted and was instrumental in destroying united front games unwanted by fans was something that triad wars shared with nozgoth no one who grew up with a narratively robust action-adventure series wanted it to live on and free-to-play dreck and thus and never even left early access on steam and was completely shut down with all development suspended less than a year after it debuted psyonix for their part seemed to have done okay for themselves in the end i guess as of 2019 square enix has said there are no plans to bring the franchise back which i'm sure most fans are delighted to hear this is one of those situations where if a company couldn't care less about a particular ip they should maybe think of selling the rights to someone who will hell maybe they could at least consider re-releasing the first couple of entries of the saga on modern platforms with shiny new ports night dive studios has done some wonderful work on that front with doom 64 turok and the recent shadow man remastered which is excellent by the way i mean that can't be too costly can it square buddy if you're fine with bleeding money on avengers every single month then i don't think it's too much to ask to allow fans both old and new to experience these vampiric classics one more time i'm just saying thanks to rast for becoming a big boss down at the flophouse vip patreon and nominating dead son for this week's episode and if you know of any other long forgotten games movies or etc you'd like me to cover you can do the same in the comments below over on my twitter and you can also politely bug square enix for more legacy of kane at these accounts on your screen see you next time and remember favictus [Music] you

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 230,441

Rating: 4.9573269 out of 5

Keywords: Legacy of Kain What Happened, Matt McMuscles, Legacy of Kain Dead Sun, Crystal Dynamics, What Happend?, wha happun, Video Game Documentaries, Legacy of Kain Retrospective

Id: x3JYev-4lOc

Length: 19min 52sec (1192 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ParaphrasingParrot]

Love this channel, but if he says, "This is such good 'What Happened' material!" one more time I am going to furrow by brow a bit.

That's the whole point of the show. To answer that question. It's like an awkward title drop in a film, except he does it every episode.

[u/pgtl_10]

People in this thread are quite critical of Matt. I love the Wha Happun series. I learn quite a bit on how game development works.

[u/Towelenthusiast]

I haven't watched this video yet, so I'm not sure if it's the case or not, but I've stopped watching his videos if I don't already know the backstory of the game featured.

While I get that the games are flops, his summary of the actual game flop isn't explored enough. He goes through issues in development but without a clear understanding of how broken the game is I'm just not interested.

With the last videos I've seen from him this information is very brief and skimmed over. I wish he spent a few minutes explaining some of the bugs or issues in it so I'd have some context.

Edit: after watching a bit of this one my criticisms don't apply to this video though as this game was cancelled so there are no gameplay issues to discuss.

[u/Step_on_me_Jasnah]

I love the legacy of kain series, and it's so sad that you can't even play the games anymore. I have them on GOG, but I couldn't get them working they don't work on a modern OS (edit: without putting in a ton of extra effort). the first soul reaver was on psn for the PS3, but not PS4.

The games were amazing and unique, but the team has moved on and I don't expect to ever see a revival.

edit 2: apparently I'm wrong. last time I tried to run them they didn't work and I wasn't able to get them running.