Soul Reaver Prime | What Could Have Been

at last i must say i'm disappointed in your progress imagined you'd be here sooner tell me did it trouble you to murder your brothers did it trouble you when you ordered me into the apes [Music] you are lost in a maze of moral relativism cain these apparitions and poor tents what game are you playing now destiny is a game is it not and now you await my latest move when saw river was in its final stages of production one thing became absolutely clear to the developers the game would never be delivered in time under its then current design conditions so director amy hennik and the rest of the team at crystal dynamics were forced to cut nearly a third of the game's original content although soul reaver was well received for its mesmerizing script quality voice acting and immersive gothic atmosphere some fans were left bewildered by its abrupt ending which concludes with kane laughing as he escapes through a time portal followed by disgruntled raziel chasing after him it wasn't quite the ending people were expecting particularly as the story sets up raziel to be this fallen hero on the quest for vengeance against the master who betrayed him by not giving us kane's death at raziel's hands the ending is not fulfilling the promise set up in the premise and this leads to an unsatisfying climax i think the devs realized the disappointment some people might have felt towards this conclusion which is why they included kane's last bit of dialogue where he essentially explains to raziel that this is not how their story ends it's amusing because it sounds like the writers are speaking directly through kane asking players to go out and buy the sequel but to be fair to the dev team soul river was never supposed to have what might be perceived as a cash-grab cliffhanger ending in fact the crew were just over-ambitious they bit off more than they could chew at this project and some of their ideas needed to be reined in if soul reaver was ever gonna see the light of day much of the game's content including additional areas bosses abilities and original ending which brought greater closure to the story were either trimmed down or removed entirely yet despite the split latent components were left buried in the code to avoid unforeseen glitches that might have arisen from their removal for years dedicated fans have been striving to recover and bring to light as much of this material as they could and now as recent as 2020 early prototype versions have been unveiled offering a treasure trove of never-before-seen footage piecing this material together with the deleted dialogue i have reconstructed the removed scenes according to my vision of how soul reaver might have originally panned out so without further ado let's return to the bowels of an inverted clockwork as we assume the role of raziel and face off against kane once again you nearly had me raziel but this is not where or how it ends fate promises more twists before this drama unfolds completely even this small measure of cain's soul has conferred on you a great gift like your master you may now shift into the material plane at will while your health must still be fully restored you no longer require a portal right off the bat raziel splinters his former master's soul presumably due to the abilities of the soul reaper in doing so razia would have consumed the small piece of kane's fractured soul bestowing upon him the power to shift into the material plane regardless of whether or not a portal was available this would have had the added bonus of granting razia access to even more of nosgos world that lay beyond his reach up to that point places like the sound forge are opened up giving the wraith the opportunity to imbue the soul reaver with elemental energy now wounded kane flees to his mountain sanctuary so that he may recover instead of travelling to the past as depicted in the retail version return to the human citadel razial the temple despite its innocuous facade is rotten to its core and like a cancer spreads its corruption throughout the city many years ago when first traversing across nozgoff's barren landscape i always thought there was more to the city than meets the eye for sure it was an interesting area to explore with its high walls and deep moats it showed how a small part of humanity was able to survive despite being thoroughly domesticated by kane's empire however it did seem odd that such a large labyrinth full of human npcs was designed only to house a few extra power ups and the water glyph well as it turns out there's much more to this place than even its own citizens are aware of i watched unseen as shadowy figures slipped down the temple walls the city slumbered oblivious to the danger creeping just outside here we see another subclass of humans who turn their back on humanity a group of cultists have chosen to adapt to the vampire tyranny of the last millennium by serving their tormentors and worshipping them as gods these vampire worshipers are an insidious threat to the human race who gladly give their own blood and lives to sustain their masters we last saw them in the upper corridors of the silence cathedral serving the zephanim by luring victims to the cathedral to be used as sacrifices interestingly in the early alpha these indoctrinated humans are not present in the silenced cathedral and only feature outside the city's temple walls suggesting that they might have only supposed to have been found deep within the heart of the human citadel itself mysterious figures moved under cover of darkness their robes betraying occult intent this temple seemed to be a source of contagion i would find a way to infiltrate this vampire lair it is revealed that while the city may have at one time sought to keep out nozgoff's vampire plague it was in actuality secretly ruled by the vampires themselves unbeknown to its citizens and defenders the city's true purpose is that of a farm to harvest men women and children for their blood it is the perfect breeding ground for the vampires to dominate mankind by having their servants kidnap victims in the middle of the night ushering them deep into the dark depths of a hidden undercity there a victim is taken to be prepared as a blood sacrifice on the elders of ice raziel investigates the undercity the settlement is accessed via canal outside the temple leading to a large body of water and a single pipe swimming through this pipe brings raziel down into a subterranean complex surprisingly no worshipers are found within the undercity however as the location was left unfinished in development it is believed that they were intended to appear here alongside a multitude of vampire spawn the undercity mostly consists of a vast chamber with numerous tall towers crossed by various bridges you could say the area is a gigantic puzzle box which requires the player to solve its secrets in order to progress navigating these passages brazil was able to ascend to higher areas by raising the water level several times once the water was a sufficient height raziel could reach a spiral staircase leading to the uppermost room where he intrudes upon an unholy ritual conducted by the cult's notorious leader someone whom raziel knew quite well in his former life as kane's first lieutenant the priestess heretic welcome to your undoing your sorcery is useless in this holy place my faith in destiny is all i need to prevail faith faith left you when you were excommunicated by our lord cain i was executed not excommunicated you will learn the difference as the battle gets underway the priestess summons an array of vampires to swarm raziel our protagonist faces wave after wave of undead creatures who all appear to be of malkaya's clan whether this is because these ghouls were easier to control whether it's due to the devs not having enough time to implement other clans is unclear nevertheless with his upgraded abilities brazil easily defeats the sport of monsters backing the priestess into a corner no [Music] your faith has failed you where are your precious vampires now where is your holy king you are the one who has betrayed his faith his brethren his creator i have served my gods and now you will meet them in her long service to her vampire masters the priestess had learned a measure of sorcery in devouring her soul this power is conferred on you you may project your spirit and in so doing take possession of your victim's body the priestess's appearance in game differs to how she was depicted in the soul reaver comic where she wears more conservative clothing but notice the tattoos on her body each one represents a clan symbol curiously raziel's clan symbol is also featured on her lower back implying that while she considered raziel a traitor she never despised him to the point where she felt the need to scar her own body to remove his mark the elder god's comments about her long servitude as well as her brief appearance in the comic where a seer foretells her death at raziel's hands can be taken to mean she's lived for hundreds of years and likely knew raziel before his execution after slaying her razia would then devour her soul obtain her gift to project his spirit energy to possess vampires similar to how the hilden could control living beings as seen in blood omen and defiance in fact much of the deleted content from soul river one was carried over and reinterpreted into later titles like how in defiance raziel could possess corpses to shift into the material realm cain has withdrawn to his mountain retreat your only means of reaching him cuts straight through the lair of your brother to rel jurel with the position ability thus acquired brazil moves on to his next destination the industrial heartland of kane's empire a region teeming with furnaces and rivers of lava tyrell's territory is entered from a structure in the same position as the oracle's cave which was moved on release in an early alpha build there is nothing preventing raziel from simply storming the lair however it is theorised that his way would have been blocked by a door requiring a switch to be operated from a high ledge that he couldn't reach by exploiting his newfound talent razia would possess a teralym soldier to flick the switch for him entering the territory brings raziel to an impressive orae which is also viewed from above by free glass windows on the other side of these three windows a device is used to activate the orare in time raziel's journey will take him to each one of these control mechanisms but for now he must move past the structure towards a familiar sight the renowned smokestack first seen in soulriver's opening cinematic this smokestack will permit your ascent to the summit of kane's mountain sanctuary in order for him to ascend to kane's location raziel needed to find a way to operate the giant metal propeller affixed to the smokestack to do this he had to find three levers positioned on each of the fan's blades to open the surrounding doors so that he could gain access to those side chambers encircling the orrery part way through this excursion he'd discover a curious looking room though the room seemed vacant these banners clearly identified it as tyrell's audience chamber moving past the seating area brazil cautiously approaches the chamber beyond but finds it eerily vacant though for some reason or another he cannot shake the feeling of being watched quietly he puts the disturbing thought to one side and tries to find another way out of the audience chamber when suddenly approaching footsteps echo right behind him leaving so soon brother let me pass tyrell i have enough blood on my hands today my quarrel lies with cane poor raziel your rage blinds you to the bond of gratitude that we owe our master gratitude toward one who would have you grovel at his gate like a dog you once had noble aspirations tyrell now how humbled are your goals do you prosper on the scraps he casts you your insults will do nothing to blunt the agonies of your demise you killed me once behold the result i have no more to fear from you i smell water tell me have you like raha learn to swim with all these eons tyrell's backstory including his appearance in soul reaver is covered in much greater detail in my tyrell character study video but i just want to touch on how different he is betrayed here to his defiance counterpart in seoul river he's far more mentally stable than the deranged quadruped we see later on his words imply that he stayed loyal to kane never once faltering in his devotion towards his master despite the fact that he's fallen far from the esteemed position he once held just look at what being second in command of kane's empire means now his sheer loyalty has essentially reduced him to that of an unquestioning slave like raziel says he's nothing but a laptop whose sole purpose is to guard the entrance to kane's sanctuary i like to believe the tyrell we see in the first soul river is still canon to the series and is what he used to look like before devolving further into his defiance model if this entry ever did get a remake it would be exciting to see some of this deleted content reintroduced into a new game for example you could potentially have raziel battling tyrell before suddenly vanishing in a pool of light as he is pulled back to the blood omen era by azimath the planer that could be a fun scene to watch while keeping in line with the series established law in any case it's evident how this battle between brothers would have played out i imagine raziel and terrell trading blows with terrell assuming he has the upper hand as none of raziel's attacks appear to hurt tyrell you try my patience raziel i wouldn't celebrate just yet just like with his other siblings rozier would use the surrounding environment to destroy his brother tyrell's chamber lies directly beneath a water reservoir as raziel had recently raised the water levels the pressure is much higher by tricking tyrell into taking out the support pillars one by one the vampire is essentially ensuring his own demise while they fought the ceiling would start to show cracks until at last it gave way to a huge wave of torrential water crashing into and instantly killing tyrell consuming his brother's soul razia would receive the amplified force projectile a more powerful ability to his standard telekinesis allowing him to push enemies further and smash open heavy doors previously thought to be immovable raziel could then constrict the three dials as well as the orary itself triggering the fans of the smoke stack now it was only a matter of using an updraft to ascend to the summit of the sanctuary where cain was waiting upon arriving at the retreat raziel steps into a wide corridor topped by several extravagant archers the palpable imagery features a grandiose assortment of figures and faces fit for a king as raziel inches closer to his goal a dark passageway soon takes him to an equally dark hall where he comes face to face with someone he did not expect raziel i am your only hope only my spirit can empower the soul reaver to destroy cain and restore balance to nozgoth you know this is true [Music] [Laughter] [Music] listen to her raziel strike me down if you can but without her essence the blow will barely sting more of your lies only truth believe me raziel believe do you have the will to do it raziel could it be after all your posturing you do not possess the resolve for this final act can you have come this far only to fail [Music] now if you felt the scene left you with more questions than it did answers then you are not alone for me the biggest question is how in nosgoth was ariel able to leave the pillars given that they were her prison while there is no clear-cut answer the best theory i can come up with is that she was cooled by the wraith blade itself to purify it with her soul this would be similar to how the spirit forge summoned the souls of all previous balanced guardians for the final baptism of the blade in defiance given that the pillars have been described as the lock and the river as the key by the ancient janus aldrin i think it's safe to assume the wraith blade was somehow involved in freeing ariel drawing her to this place of sacrifice whither at the behest of ariel or acting on a primal impulse to rebel against his master raziel strikes her down and in so doing gains the much more powerful aerial reaver striding towards the direction he'd heard kane's voice raziel is ready for the final confrontation you have your father in you after all my father you're nothing but a grave robber kane true enough i thought i understood you kane that your jealous hatred was the root of the wounds you inflicted but this is madness you and i have both been to mobius's chamber raziel the future has always been written you'll serve me well even now you fail to disappoint shall we see if you pass the final test addressing the elephant in the room for whatever reason the developers didn't enable the aerial reaver for raziel's final confrontation with kane which is why we see raziel wielding the material river here instead thankfully the devs left in the option to initiate the final clash giving us a glimpse at how this bitter struggle between these two legendary characters might have ended ah with respect to kane's line about raziel having similar traits to his father i've seen some fans construe the sentence to mean kane new brazil's biological father personally but the way i see it kane is referencing himself here i think there is plenty of evidence to support this given how the series often refers to raziel and his brothers as kane's vampire sons by telling raziel that he has his father in him he's essentially praising raziel for doing what is necessary to make his goal a reality a strong parallel can be drawn between the moment kane refuses the sacrifice damning ariel to an eternity of torment for his ambition and the aforementioned scene of raziel violently striking ariel down so that he may at last wield a weapon powerful enough to finally put an end to kane tellingly his last line also reveals his motivations particularly as to why he sentenced raziel to the abyss despite popular opinion this version of kane did not kill raziel due to any jealousy he felt towards raziel for evolving before him no he did it because deep down kane is a fatalist within this particular cane there exists a core belief that no matter what he does or doesn't do the future will always be the same because it is predetermined unlike the king we got in later titles who sought to actively rebel against his destiny this version of kane embraces his fate after having witnessed everything play out in the chronoplast eons ago [Music] now we finish this once and for all [Music] as with ariel kane's soul is consumed by the soul reaper it's a beautifully tragic moment they would have round off kane's character nicely had this been the concluding title such a dire fate their souls commingling fettered eternally just as cain's refusal had bound them together centuries before [Music] from this summit the pinnacle of the silenced cathedral is within your reach hurry raziel with the soul river thus enhanced no obstacle can thwart your progress no enemy obstruct your path but take heed the vampires of this world can sense your intentions and will hound you in their desperate fury from here raziel takes flight gliding straight towards the silenced cathedral remembering the weapon the cathedral's original architects had devised however a horde of vampires sensing the approaching doom of their species starts to move as they swarmed after me i felt the terror that must have filled their wizard hearts they knew what i had to do here that it would spell their downfall and that i too might perish in the very act this tower had stood too long as a grotesque symbol of cain's perverse intent but time was ripe indeed past you for me to exploit my newborn talents and send a hymn of death across this land enough to banish sanity enough to set the children of the night plucking at their eyes tearing open their own throats enough to destroy every vampiric creature on the face of this bruised and bleeding land my goal was within reach all that remained was to open each and every sounding pipe fending off an onslaught of desperate creatures raziel succeeds in opening the cathedral's dormant sounding pipes blasting a deafening hymn across nosgoth and purging the world of its entire vampire population it is done raziel your destiny is fulfilled though you have destroyed every creature who might call you kin the world is born anew the cycle of birth and death stalled and stagnant these long years once again begins to flow you have done well my servant while raziel thought that he too might be slain in the act thanks to his remaking as a wraith he survived his vengeance and destiny complete raziel is congratulated by the elder god as the cycle of birth and death begins anew with nothing left to do raziel returns to the underworld all whilst contemplating his journey thus far melkaya yes brother you should have stayed with a master sent you raziel you will find nosgoth less pleasant than you remember [Applause] [Music] zephan your visage becomes you it's an appropriate reflection of your soul and you are not his handsomer as hell anymore his precious first born son turned betrayer [Music] rahab do you know what we were before kane spawned us human unbound at last i thank you brother your thanks are premature duma i have not forgotten whose hands bore me into the abyss leaving so soon brother let me pass tyrell i have enough blood on my hands today my quarrel lies with cane you'll serve me well even now you fail to disappoint shall we see if you pass the final test be wary raziel those blind with rage are by destiny ensnared my good servant i wonder old one did you truly resurrect me or were you simply there when i awakened from my torment in the abyss i suspect you found me merely convenient a durable and gullible tool for you to manipulate damn you it was then raziel knew he'd been a pawn for the elder god all along his purging of his kin had devastating consequences for the world with the vampires gone the elder was now fully in command the souls of the dead were his to feed on and the last remnants of humanity were merely his playthings to do with as he saw fit despite the guilt that played on his mind news of the elder god's true intentions deepened raziel's resolve to find a way to set things right he knew of only one way to use mobius's time streaming device to go back in time and change history raziel redeemer and destroyer porn and messiah welcome time span soul welcome to your destiny 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 while i think we can all be grateful that the normal ending gave us sequels to explore these characters in greater depth i have to point out that had the game ended as was initially planned we still would have gotten a sequel after this amy hennig confirmed as much in an interview in 2012 basically going on record to say the story would have arrived at a similar place just by a different route following a grief stricken raziel in an alternative soul river too as he contended against a more overtly malicious elder god whilst being manipulated by the devious mobius could have made for an engaging experience especially as without the presence of cain this may have all ended in tragedy i can just imagine raziel's soul being consumed by the riverblade at the end of soulriver 2 with no one there to yank it out of him ultimately i think how everything turned out was a blessing in disguise because hiding the elders intentions whilst keeping kane alive added to the mystery of the story as first-time players try to decipher each character's motivations but i'm eager to hear your thoughts in the comments below now as a special bonus i want to pay tribute to some of the other locked content creators out there in the community who have kept this series alive after all these years first and foremost reina aldrin i hope i'm pronouncing that correctly has in-depth videos on youtube covering a range of legacy of kane topics if you want something that doesn't solely focus on the story and its characters but also goes into the gameplay mechanics hidden features as well as a range of other material i highly recommend their channel ben lincoln from the lost worlds has created a website for preserving the deleted and altered material he also has a youtube channel featuring extensive research into the alpha and beta versions of soul rifa then there is basilim creator of the gold mine of information that is the legacy of kane wiki and of course i have to mention the hilden who has created some amazing 3d character models and art for the series be sure to check these guys out i'll leave links to their channels and socials in the description unfortunately i can't name everyone as otherwise i'll be here all day but know that every single one of you that found time to contribute to legacy of kane whether it be by drawing a piece of art to simply commenting on a video you have my utmost respect before record a day i'm also pleased to announce that i'm launching my first ever merch drop on the channel guys if you ever wanted to support the channel now's your chance we have a range of t-shirts hoodies and face masks all with a brand spanking new logo inspired by some of my favorite symbols in gaming you can guess which ones i really hope you enjoy remember to like share and subscribe as always stay awesome this is strictly fantasy signing off

Channel: Strictly Fantasy

Views: 193,060

Keywords: Legacy of Kain, Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver Prime, What Could Have Been, Soul Reaver Deleted Content, Legacy of Kain Deleted content, LOK, Blood Omen, Defiance, Legacy of Kain Defiance, Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2, Legacy of Kain Lore, Legacy of Kain Movie, Soul Reaver Movie, Blood Omen Lore, Soul Reaver Lore, Soul Reaver 1, Legacy of Kain Blood Omen, Raziel, Kain, Elder God, Priestess, Turel, Ariel, Vampires, Melchiah, Zephon, Rahab, Dumah, Nosgoth, Strictly Fantasy, Soul Reaver Alpha

Id: JStgRuot8lU

Length: 35min 33sec (2133 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021