Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver (better than OOT) is 20 years old today

Vampires and shit.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-08-17-as-legacy-of-kain-soul-reaver-turns-20-lets-remember-why-it-was-brilliant

As Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver turns 20, let's remember why it was brilliant

Suck it in.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver turned 20 years old on the 16th August 2019.

Crystal Dynamics' influential PSone, PC and, later, Dreamcast classic was one of the best single-player adventure games on Sony's console, and is credited with influencing the genre and its subsequent standouts, such as Uncharted.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver was praised for its story, characters, world design, evocative atmosphere and the mechanic of shifting between two world states, which at the time was hugely impressive.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver was directed and written by Amy Hennig, who took to Twitter to say it "holds a very special place in my heart". Hennig, of course, would go on to play a key role in the Uncharted series at Naughty Dog.

Back in 2012, Hennig talked Soul Reaver secrets in a post on the PlayStation blog. Initially, Hennig revealed, Soul Reaver wasn't supposed to be a sequel to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, rather a new IP called Shifter that was loosely inspired by Paradise lost.

"The protagonist was essentially a fallen angel of death, a reaper of souls hunted by his former brethren, and now driven to expose and destroy the false god they all served," Hennig said.

The Shifter concept was "the genesis" of Soul Reaver. "... the core ideas were all there. The hero was an undead creature, able to shift between the spectral and material realms, and glide on the tattered remains of his wing-like coattails. We conceived the spirit realm as a twisted, expressionistic version of the physical world. The hero was bent on revenge after being betrayed and cast down by his creator - like Raziel, he was a dark savior figure, chosen to restore balance to a blighted, dystopian world.

"When we were asked to adapt this concept into a sequel to Blood Omen, our challenge was to take all these ideas and merge them creatively into the Legacy of Kain mythos."

Hennig and the development team pared back on some secondary features during the making of Soul Reaver, including a plan to include shape-shifting as well as plane-shifting. The biggest challenge, "hands-down", was getting the data-streaming working to allow the game to have a seamless, interconnected world with no load events.

"I think we were one of the first developers to tackle this problem (along with Naughty Dog, on Crash Bandicoot)," Hennig said.

"It proved to be way more difficult than we had initially anticipated - if I recall, we were still struggling to get the textures to dynamically pack correctly, just a couple months before release. We ultimately got it working by the skin of our teeth, but I wonder if we would've embarked on such an ambitious plan if we'd known how difficult it was going to be!"

As you'd expect, implementing the real-time morph between the two environments - that is, figuring out how to store two sets of data for the spectral and material realms - was also a challenge.

But the "ultimate challenge", Hennig said, was schedule and scope - a common challenge in video game development.

"Conceived as an open-world, Zelda-esque 3D adventure game, Soul Reaver was incredibly ambitious," Hennig said.

"Crystal Dynamics' Gex engine gave us a leg-up on the 3D technology, but in essence we were writing a game engine from scratch, while developing a new IP. These days, a developer wouldn't think of attempting such a thing in less than three years (minimum), but Eidos wanted the game in less than two. In the end, we shipped Soul Reaver in under 2.5 years, but not without some unfortunate 11th-hour cuts which still pain me today. The scope of the game was definitely too ambitious, but if we had shipped the game that fall, instead of that summer, I think we could have reduced the scope of the game more elegantly."

To hit the August 1999 release date, the developers had to cut the last few levels of the game, and end on a cliffhanger to set up Soul Reaver 2.

"Originally, Raziel was going to hunt down and destroy all of his former brothers as well as Kain - and then, using his newly-acquired abilities, he would've activated the long-dormant pipes of the Silenced Cathedral to wipe out the remaining vampires of Nosgoth with a sonic blast," Hennig said.

"Only then would he realise he'd been the Elder God's pawn all along, that the purging of the vampires had devastating consequences, and that the only way to set things right would be to use Moebius' time-streaming device to go back in time and alter history (in the sequel).

"So the story would have arrived at a similar place, just by a different route. In the end, as much as I hated its bluntness, Soul Reaver's 'To Be Continued' ending probably turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I think it opened up more interesting story options for the sequels."

And sequels came. Soul Reaver 2 launched on PS2 and PC in October 2001, Blood Omen 2, which was directed by Dead Space co-creator Glen Schofield, came out just a year later in 2002 as a sequel to the first game in the series, before Hennig returned to direct 2003's Legacy of Kain: Defiance.

Since then, Legacy of Kain has remained dormant. The ill-fated Nosgoth, a free-to-play multiplayer action game developed by Rocket League maker Psyonix, didn't make it out of open beta. Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun was a more traditional Legacy of Kain game, developed by Climax Studios for Square Enix Europe, but it was cancelled in 2012 after three years of work. (For the inside story on Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun's demise, check out our in-depth report.)

So, 20 years after Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver came out, it remains for many fans the best game in the series. And with no new Legacy of Kain in sight, perhaps it'll stay that way for years to come.

Great games and definitely need a sequel or remake imo!

Snoozefest imo. I remember when the developers were hyping streaming the levels off the cd.

I tried replaying it a few years ago, didn't age very well unfortunately because Soul Reaver, & Blood Omen 2, Defiance games are legendary. Don't get me wrong, Soul Reaver is still a great game, although the controls kind of suck for PC. Soul Reaver was amazing for it's time, but Ocarina of Time manages to age well compare to Soul Reaver.

(OoT already got it's fair share of remastering on the 3DS version but not Soul Reaver so it really edges out from Soul Reaver if you want to go their of course)

@davillain-: Disagree.

20 odd frames per a second (even the Playstation version ran 30fps), a large empty field of nothing.

Tons and tons of fetch quests.

Very little story, and what's there basic.

Only aspect I would really agree is better puzzle design and a better is lock-on system.

Even then combat difficulty is inconsequential as the game gives the player harts literally everywhere. It's pointless in most Zelda games.

Soul Rever had large interconnected metroidvania world design, but it never felt bare or padded, extraordinary for the technology (weaker than N64) that it ran on.

It's story-telling was leagues ahead as was it's atmosphere. The writing is better than the majority of games today, it's like a stage play writing and acting team was unaware this game was designed for teenagers.

If I was forced to go back to gun point to choose a game by ISIS or progressives, it would definitely be Soul Reever, if only for the lack of running back and fourth fetch-quests in that opening 2 hours.

Wiped with floor with OoT.

One of the greatest games ever made. Period.

TLHBO

God DAMN I am old.

Cool. While I certainly enjoyed Soul Reaver I found Ocarina of Time to be a much better game.

It's camera and controls suck, but the bones are strong. Definitely needs a remaster or reimagining.

Dude, you just love your clickbait, don't you?

As bad as Ocarina is, the soul reaver games are probably even shittier.

Lots of games are better than Ocarina of time.

The Dreamcast had the best version. Better than even the PC one. I coupled it with Rayman 2: the Great Escape as my two favourite 3D platforming adventures that emerged from 2D games: Legacy of Kain and Rayman. The game gets tame after a while though. Strong beginning, but just like Tomb Raider The Last Revelation, it didn't know where to end. Speaking of which, isn't it nice that the Playstation stepped out of the tank controls scheme, to offer fluid movement and camera with Soul Reaver? Late games, and a few next generation ones, still employed the former.

Wow, I’m old....

Yes. The Legacy of Kain games were soooo top notch. Every one of them was just so much fun to play, and omg that STORY. In Defiance when Kain kills Razeil and his souls is absorbed into the sword, and his last words are “I am and always was, your right hand” ( or something to that effect) I remember I just went crazy. The way the whole epic story came full circle and you realized all this mind blowing stuff.

I agree with this thread 100%. The games themselves haven’t aged particularly well, but they are so, so special.

Oh, and the soundtrack....... Kurt Harland of Information Society did the soundtrack for all the Kain games, and imho it’s the best soundtracks ever done. The sound, mood, and tempos are just so spot on.

Good stuff, top to bottom.

@jg4xchamp:

>Ocarina of Time

>Bad

I’m not huge fan of the game but holy hyperbole.

The sequels were better and OOT eats the first one for breakfast.

Yeah great game.

No way. Soul Reaver was a good game, but not great. It doesn't come anywhere close to OOT.

Soul Reaver 2, on the other hand, is a great game. It improved on the original in almost every way. Only SR2 deserves to be compared to OOT.

Better than OoT my ass.

Tumbling, burning with white hot fire, I plunged into the depths of the abyss. Unspeakable pain, relentless agony, time ceased to exist.

Only this torture and a deepening hatred of the hypocrisy that damned me to this hell. An eternity passed and my torment receded, bringing me back from the precipice of madness.

The descent had destroyed me, and yet, I lived.

Meanwhile in Metal Gear Solid

*sigh* I swear, sacred cows are always beyond reproach.

Okay lets go over this

Combat: yes it predates Devil May Cry, but I am not beholden to the idea that something not existing means the games before them were allowed to do something poor. I am not a person who believes video games age, they always have their pros n cons throughout life, some games just become exposed over time.

In the case of Ocarina its combat is basic lock on combat, you the player have fast swipes with no trade off, the enemies have slower swipes. You can dodge side to side, roll, back flip, or jump attack bonus. But the basic layer of neutral play in OoT is wait, attack, wait, attack, wait, attack. None of it has any sort of synergy with each other, as they work specifically at the one thing they do, and the combat space plays little to no impact in the fight sans the Iron Knuckle and one boss fight.

Bosses are hit them with the dungeon item, stuns them, kick its ass, rinse n repeat.

That is what the combat is, which is shallow. And even in 98, while no one had really figured out how to make good 3d Melee combat, doesn't mean that shallow games weren't shallow games. Ocarina is that.

Puzzles: Beyond just being straight forward and simple, dungeon items are keys to a lock, so most of the dungeons you know you're just trying to find some texture that your item can interact with. Outside the Water Dungeon (where admittedly the consistent menu pausing is a deal breaker for people), the other dungeons are painfully simple n dull. You're really not going to get stumped in that game unless you're like 10, which is about the age people were when they played that game. But a functioning adult? not so much.

3D Zelda is wack, I don't like any of them that aren't BoTW, its because those games are wasteful. It's not that they aren't deep, it's that they are shallow to boot. Dope music, killer presentation for their relative eras, but dull as **** gameplay.

A lot of gen 5's would be classics, are frauds. A lot of that gen benefits from new car smell. Ocarina is an important game to the history of the medium, it however isn't a good one, and I would argue it's deserving of being considered a bad game. It is a wasteful franchise, and demonstrably downgraded from its 2D iterations.

You want another hot take: Action/adventure games are a misnomer. At the end of the day those games are just action games, with really bad combat. Especially that gen, be it Zelda, Soul Reaver, or something like Tomb Raider. Just different flavors of wack.

@jg4xchamp:

@jg4xchamp:

I’ve read your rants about 3D Zeldas a million times so I don’t even know why you bothered typing this tl;dr. This just in: A game has flaws and if you ignore all its strong points(not sure the point of puzzles is to be hard either) and focus on the two weak points you listed, then it is a bad game.

Well no shit champ. As I said I’m no fan of the game and I think it gets outclassed by Majora’s Mask in well everything. Same goes for TP which is undermined by its awful padding but it has a lot of qualities and much to offer. Being "painfully dull" is huh meaningless and so opinionated I won’t even waste my time with that.

And when you went over the puzzle part, you stripped it naked to its most basic form once again, ignoring the nuances between the various dungeons, their themes and the way you handle the puzzles. Are they zomg amazing!!? No but they're sure as hell more compelling than you're pretending.

Exploration, graphics, music, controls, scope/scale, level design, art direction hell even many puzzles are actually quite clever and fun. Then compare it to its contemporaries.

Combat is weak but 2D Zeldas barely have anything even resembling a combat system. Bad game? Fuckin’ come on. You're better than that.

@jg4xchamp: You think Ocarina of Time is bad? WTF?

Yeah game sucks.

I focused on its gameplay, not two minor aspects of its design. It's core gameplay.

It's not a good puzzle game, because there is no thought process to the puzzle solving. Puzzle games, good ones, Braid, Portal, Stephen's Sausage roll present you a puzzle, your tools, your rules, and results of interactions of your tools with whatever they are supposed to interact with. As the game goes on they add more variables, alter the rules, and add what's called "noise" to the level. Usually a red herring meant to get you to interact with it, but it's really just a trap to trick you, with a simpler answer staring you in the face.

Breath of the Wild's better shrines are closer to that type of interaction. None of the pre-existing Zelda games have puzzles that function that way. Okay, so at the least you would think the dungeons would be like the water dungeon where doing something in one room impacts another, Majora's Mask certainly does this with its 2 good dungeons. But that's not the case with the rest of the Ocarina dungeons. The shadow temple, you literally use the all seeing dungeon item, and then walk straight make a left, walk straight again, grab the key, wam bam boss time.

So no it's 'stripping" the puzzles of what they are, its actually playing other puzzle games and recognizing the Ocarina and its ilks puzzles for what they are. Dull, mindless, shallow interactions.

The combat complaint with 2D Zeldas is wildly misunderstanding why 2D Zelda games are fun tho. In those games micropositions matter, any small enemy placement chances the combat space in terms of making the player work for position to hit the enemy. Especially because full sword can shoot a sword/beam shit, and non full health actually has to touch the enemy.

You can certainly argue 2D Zelda is easy, it is, but one play through of a Ys game highlights how good top down Zelda's combat set up is on a basic level when there are enemies to challenge you, that and you can do the exploring in 2D Zelda while combating, doing things in one room has impact in other rooms in games like Link's Awakening and Link Between Worlds.

Exploration? Appreciated, less interesting than exploring say the mansion in Resident Evil, the police in Resi 2, or the exploration found in the likes of Thief: The Dark Project. And those are its contemporaries, much less what would be done later, or exploration of 2D games like Super Metroid.

Graphics music? All dandy, not incapable of being found in a bad game. I am not beholden to some idea that a game needs to be broken to be considered bad. Simply functioning is not praise worthy, it's the bare minimum a game should be expected of doing, even a bad one. Rockstar's pretty ass visuals and quality taste in music don't stop me from thinking Grand Theft Auto 4 is a shit barrell.

What are the good points of Zelda's gameplay? or its level design? It plays no role in the combat sans two very specific scenarios. It doesn't provide any sort of compelling puzzle solving, what's it offer? Visually distinct spaces? Sure, but I can get over visually dull if it's more interesting to play. For instance I think Breath of the Wild's dungeons while slacking, are still a shit load better than what the dungeons used to be. To me it a myth that they got worse in BoTW.

I don't think this game is better than Ocarina of Time in any way, shape, or form

Agreed. It's industry perpetuating an established lie than objective reality.

Same with Goldeneye. Doom 64 was a better game.

@uninspiredcup: Tbf it seems like people have mostly turned on Goldeneye. I've often seen it listed as the worst aged classic. Ocarina still is often listed as the greatest game ever. I like the game but constantly being named as the best game ever feels very undeserved.

This game, Draconus: Cult of the Wyrm, had better combat than Zelda without lock on, because the camera stood behind the character moving with tank controls, who could strafe with the triggers. It's more combat based (i.e. Dark Souls-ish) than adventurous, although it features exploration, but it's not a puzzle like Ocarina of Time.