Mama Robotnik
Member
NOT NEW GAME RELATED
NOT NEW GAME RELATED
NOT NEW GAME RELATED
There's been some Legacy of Kain developments that might be of interest to fans of the series. There's enough to be thread worthy I feel.
Legacy of Kain: The Dark Prophecy
This one is a bit self-centered, if you'll bear with me. I've posted about this before, but there is a lot more content now.
You might be aware that I've recently produced some extensive threads detailing all the cut content in the Metroid Prime series. What I didn't say there was that techniques I used to obtain all that sourced material, were learned during my years of research into the cancelled sixth Legacy of Kain game.
For those unaware, Legacy of Kain: The Dark Prophecy was in development for a few months at Ritual Software, under the supervision of Eidos and the guidance of Crystal Dynamics. The project was unfortunately, unceremoniously cancelled at some point in 2004. It took nearly half-a-decade for images, materials and media from this project to appear on the net, in various portfolios.
As I started making discoveries, Legacy of Kain expert Ben Lincoln of The Lost Worlds asked me to write up my findings for his website. This turned into a gargantuan project of research, informed guesses, story theories obtained by comparing the discovered content with that in the released games, and speculation as to how the plot of The Dark Prophecy could have unfolded. The result is an extensive, evidenced best-guess as to how the unfinished Legacy of Kain series would and concluded its epic story.
This stuff goes into obsessive, unhealthy amounts of detail. If you are interested in my research, then take a look for yourself. The handle "Divine Shadow" is an old internet alias of mine from the Legacy of Kain communities. The work is still half-finished (more sections are being drafted on new characters and abilities) but the sections that are already presented are thorough. The content is too extensive to fit in a NeoGAF thread, so I can't repost it here in its entirety.
Any feedback from Legacy of Kain fans is, of course, appreciated.
The Soul Reaver series is now on GOG
Soul Reaver ($5.99)
WIDESCREEN PATCH
Soul Reaver 2 ($5.99)
WIDESCREEN PATCH
Legacy of Kain: Defiance / Soul Reaver 3 ($5.99)
WIDESCREEN PATCH
The series has never been available digitally before, and the ports are by all accounts very well done. They've been tinkered to be fully compatible with Windows 7 and 64 bit processors, and upscale to 1980x1080 with full anti aliasing fantastically. Just to give you an idea, here is Soul Reaver, originally a 1999 PSX game, running in HD in this rerelease:
If you are interested in playing one of the best written, best acted stories in the gaming medium, these releases are certainly worth a look. The first Soul Reaver in particular is a cracking Metroidvania exploration game in a post-apocalyptic vampire empire. The series goes on to be a time-travel epic.
Blood Omen scripts
Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds celebrated its birthday this year, and did so in style. Somehow, the webmaster was able to get hold of the original Silicon Knights/Crystal Dynamics scripts for Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. These are fascinating.
The scripts are in a zipfile ready to download if you are interested. There are significant differences between these and the story and dialogue in the final game, and a read through will give you a perspective on an earlier iteration of the Legacy of Kain origin.
Blood Omen Fan Remake
(to put the quality in perspective, here is what this section looks like in the original game)
A team of Russian Legacy of Kain fans are remaking Blood Omen Legacy of Kain using a very nice looking 3D engine. They are being very extensive, with a team of artists, programmers and musicians remastering the audio and visuals of the 1996 game. A substantial playable demo of the game (from Kain's murder and resurrection, his fight out of the mausoleum, the battle of the brigands, Ziegsturhl, the forest, and the Pillars of Nosgoth) has been released. It would be nice to hope that the project will be finished someday (updates are regular and steady), but even if it isn't, the demo itself is a very interesting take on the Legacy of Kain world.
Demo download.
Story answers from one of the series leads
This is a very recent development. One of the leads of Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2 and Legacy of Kain Defiance has, over the last week, set up a forum to give fans the opportunity of asking him any questions on the unresolved plot of the franchise. Some of his answers are well worth a look for die-hard fans. I've compiled some of the more interesting questions and answers below.
MASSIVE SPOILERS.
NOT NEW GAME RELATED
NOT NEW GAME RELATED
There's been some Legacy of Kain developments that might be of interest to fans of the series. There's enough to be thread worthy I feel.
Legacy of Kain: The Dark Prophecy
This one is a bit self-centered, if you'll bear with me. I've posted about this before, but there is a lot more content now.
You might be aware that I've recently produced some extensive threads detailing all the cut content in the Metroid Prime series. What I didn't say there was that techniques I used to obtain all that sourced material, were learned during my years of research into the cancelled sixth Legacy of Kain game.
For those unaware, Legacy of Kain: The Dark Prophecy was in development for a few months at Ritual Software, under the supervision of Eidos and the guidance of Crystal Dynamics. The project was unfortunately, unceremoniously cancelled at some point in 2004. It took nearly half-a-decade for images, materials and media from this project to appear on the net, in various portfolios.
As I started making discoveries, Legacy of Kain expert Ben Lincoln of The Lost Worlds asked me to write up my findings for his website. This turned into a gargantuan project of research, informed guesses, story theories obtained by comparing the discovered content with that in the released games, and speculation as to how the plot of The Dark Prophecy could have unfolded. The result is an extensive, evidenced best-guess as to how the unfinished Legacy of Kain series would and concluded its epic story.
This stuff goes into obsessive, unhealthy amounts of detail. If you are interested in my research, then take a look for yourself. The handle "Divine Shadow" is an old internet alias of mine from the Legacy of Kain communities. The work is still half-finished (more sections are being drafted on new characters and abilities) but the sections that are already presented are thorough. The content is too extensive to fit in a NeoGAF thread, so I can't repost it here in its entirety.
Any feedback from Legacy of Kain fans is, of course, appreciated.
The Soul Reaver series is now on GOG
Soul Reaver ($5.99)
WIDESCREEN PATCH
Soul Reaver 2 ($5.99)
WIDESCREEN PATCH
Legacy of Kain: Defiance / Soul Reaver 3 ($5.99)
WIDESCREEN PATCH
The series has never been available digitally before, and the ports are by all accounts very well done. They've been tinkered to be fully compatible with Windows 7 and 64 bit processors, and upscale to 1980x1080 with full anti aliasing fantastically. Just to give you an idea, here is Soul Reaver, originally a 1999 PSX game, running in HD in this rerelease:
If you are interested in playing one of the best written, best acted stories in the gaming medium, these releases are certainly worth a look. The first Soul Reaver in particular is a cracking Metroidvania exploration game in a post-apocalyptic vampire empire. The series goes on to be a time-travel epic.
Blood Omen scripts
Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds celebrated its birthday this year, and did so in style. Somehow, the webmaster was able to get hold of the original Silicon Knights/Crystal Dynamics scripts for Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. These are fascinating.
The scripts are in a zipfile ready to download if you are interested. There are significant differences between these and the story and dialogue in the final game, and a read through will give you a perspective on an earlier iteration of the Legacy of Kain origin.
Blood Omen Fan Remake
(to put the quality in perspective, here is what this section looks like in the original game)
A team of Russian Legacy of Kain fans are remaking Blood Omen Legacy of Kain using a very nice looking 3D engine. They are being very extensive, with a team of artists, programmers and musicians remastering the audio and visuals of the 1996 game. A substantial playable demo of the game (from Kain's murder and resurrection, his fight out of the mausoleum, the battle of the brigands, Ziegsturhl, the forest, and the Pillars of Nosgoth) has been released. It would be nice to hope that the project will be finished someday (updates are regular and steady), but even if it isn't, the demo itself is a very interesting take on the Legacy of Kain world.
Demo download.
Story answers from one of the series leads
This is a very recent development. One of the leads of Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2 and Legacy of Kain Defiance has, over the last week, set up a forum to give fans the opportunity of asking him any questions on the unresolved plot of the franchise. Some of his answers are well worth a look for die-hard fans. I've compiled some of the more interesting questions and answers below.
MASSIVE SPOILERS.
Hello, I am a fan of the Legacy of Kain series and the art you used for the characters has both inspired and helped me in improving my own art. But one thing I have always been extremely curious about is Raziel’s character design after he becomes a wraith. I’m also extremely interested in anatomy, and I’ve noticed Raziel seems to always be depicted with two spinal columns. I’m wondering why he has two spinal columns. What was the rationale behind giving him two spines? I’ve been trying to puzzle this out off and on for years, but come up with nil, so I decided to just ask. Get it from the source, so to speak. Thank you very much for your time and for putting your character designs out there for other artists to learn from.
That's a great question. We wanted to make Raziel a pretty unique character, and the dual spine helped show that he was evolving (or devolving) when he grew his wings. Remember that all of Kain's gifts were tainted, and if Vampire Raziel was left alone, he would have devolved into a bat or dragon like creature, similar to his bretheren. The dual spine was the very beginning of that, and was part of his central anatomy as a winged Vampire. I think I would have designed him as a dual winged, dual spined vampire.When he got turned into a wraith, it simply revealed his spine since his flesh was burned away.
I am glad that my artwork has helped inspire you and your artwork.
Was Janos ever planned to escape the demon dimension, or was he written to be there permanently?
Was Raziel ever going to be returned to vampirism or a wraith, or did he fully dissipate into Kain at the end as the wraith blade?
Janos was left open to redemption or destruction. We hadn't planned on deciding his fate until next game. A lot of ideas were batted around, but we wanted to introduce new enemies. DP had to do with the Hylden realm so his escape might have been seen into that.
As I mentioned earlier, the SR trilogy wrapped up Raziel's story. As much as we all loved him, we wanted to either refocus on Kain, or some new hero. I think we had proved we could make compelling new characters. ;-)
We at CD were really happy to wrap up Raziel's story line and focus on someone new. Even after Amy left, we wanted to preserve that part of the legacy.
We know that Legacy of Kain: The Dark Prophecy was a brief, cancelled project that took place after Defiance. If you are unable to comment on this question then I fully understand, but do you know if any of your designs were being used in this abandoned project, or were you given any insight into the direction the series was going to go after your fantastic work on Defiance?
Ritual did a great job trying to make Dark Prophecy into a Kain game. They flew myself, Richard Lemarchand, and Jen Fernandez in as consultants. I really liked working with these guys. Ultimately it's hard to know exactly why it didn't go forward.. politics, economics, or what have you. They did take the art style into a more 'heavy metal' direction, with I tried to steer them away from when it came to the original SR time. It was more City of Lost Children/Lost Steampunk kind of a look. Much of the game would have taken place in the Hylden Realm anyway, so their style worked really well for that.
Did you have any idea of the form that the Razielim, or Raziel's evolution would have taken? The same question could also be asked of Dumah's final form, before his impalement and suspended evolution.
I get this question a lot, and given the wing design on Raziel, I always thought either a giant bat creature or dragon/bat creature would be his evolution. An artist on Deviant Art, named Emilee made a cool drawing: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=lornemilee#/d4lnmmo That I found inspirational. I may try my own take on Raziel's devolved form just for kicks. So yeah.. bat dragon.. thingee. Dumah's would have been more Oni/Rhino/Juggernaught like. The armor would have been fused into his being and bony blades would have been popping out backwards from his wrists in a fan shape. I know there's an awesome drawing in there... let me thow on the headphones with 'Two Steps from Hell' and start sketching. LOL