NOT NEW GAME RELATEDNOT NEW GAME RELATEDNOT NEW GAME RELATEDThere'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 ProphecyThis 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. 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. This stuff goes into obsessive, unhealthy amounts of detail.
Pineapple smash crew game. 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. 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.
Crystal Dynamics' The Legacy of Kain series is both a storied and a somewhat sad one, as it hasn't seen a follow-up entry since the developer and parent company Square Enix released Legacy of Kain.
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 scriptscelebrated 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. (to put the quality in perspective, )A 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.Story answers from one of the series leadsThis 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,. 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: That I found inspirational.
I may try my own take on Raziel's devolved form just for kicks. 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. I have a question about Defiance's deleted chapters. Since it's been a nearly ten years after the game release probably you can reveal something you know?I am interested in deleted final chapter.
Can you give any hint how Kain was supposed to take out the Elder God? Just a little hint.Thanks for your question.
I don't think there was anything deleted out of the end of Defiance. Meltys quest cheat engine. It wrapped up the way it was supposed to: Raziel's cycle was complete, Kain was given a chance at hope, and the Elder God, though defeated, was set up to be an adversary in the next game. There was no next game. If Kain were to ever defeat the Elder God, I am sure it would require the restoration of the pillars and somehow 'pinning him down' before finishing him off with some Epic use of the Soul Reaver.
It could be a level or the intent of a whole game to beat him, involving multiple locations where you track him down and destroy key areas that he dwells in or uses as anchors to keep himself in our world. In any case it shouldn't be a single encounter or small thing to beat him.Hope that answers your question.
According to the Lost Words, Defiance was supposed to have the final chapter, where Kain was suppoed to return in the SR era and restore the world.Have and Amy you ever duscussed what is the Elder God? Does he really control the Wheel of Fate?Oh yeah, I totally forgot about Kain going back to SR1. I vaguely remember something about Kain going to the future SR1, using the blade to purify the pillars then going back to Pre-BO1 era time to leave the Soul Reaver at the base of the pillars.
(For William the Just or Moebius to find) This was a very loose set of ideas, and we it wasn't so much deleted content as a rough idea we didn't have time to implement. By the time we got to the end of the game, we wanted to leave it open ended so it could help set up the next one. (See how that turned out. )m, so the blade was supposed to be used to restore the Pillars? This leads to another question.At the end of Defiance Raziel says: 'The two become one. Both Soul Reavers - together'.
So, I want to ask you - if Kain was supposed to use the Soul Reaver to save the world, then Amy originally intended both the purified Wraith Blade and Raziel goind into the Reaver? I am asking because later Jen and Kyle said that the purified Wraith Blade never entered the sword, but was 'dispersed' into Kain.And what is the Elder God? Have Amy ever talked about? Or he (it?) was always supposed to be uneplained evil?The purification was of Kain, not the reaver. Remember that he was always flawed and therefor any vampire he created would also be flawed (hence the devolution). The pufified spirit of every balance guardian healed Kain of those flaws.The Reaver, with all the embued elements is a conduit.
Make no mistake though. Raziel is in that sword.The Elder God is a constant. A DemiUrge, or false god, that convinced the Vampires to worship him. I don't think we need to try and lay out his motivations. That would just make him less epic of an enemy.
What inspired the look of the vampire wraiths in the game?The Vampire Wraiths are a funny story. Amy had given me the description for them one day and as I had just finished work on the Sluagh.
I kept churning over in my head what those fettered souls would look like. I wanted to do something super detailed, but the PS1 level graphics were pretty limited. I was pouring through all my art books to get inspiration and get into the groove. I think I went through just about everything I had at the time, from Gundam to Dark Crystal. I have a belief that when you put good things in your head, great stuff comes out. I went to bed exhausted and just let it all sink in. I woke up at 4 in the morning, unable to sleep further.
Something was rattling around in my noggin'. At the time I lived a few blocks from Crystal D, so I got dressed and sort of jogged to work. I got into my drawing table and just started drawing cool shapes.
I realized that, actually, the less I showed of them, the better they would look, so I grabbed my book of mummified bodies and started riffing on the design from there. (yes, I have a book of mummified bodies. Doesn't everyone?!) Looking at death shrouds and wrappings,I then grabbed my old Frazetta book and looked up Death Dealer. Then that led me to look at Alan Lee's paintings of Nazgul. Before I knew it I had knocked out the design by 8 am and had turnarounds done by 9:30 when most people started coming in.
I showed my design to the programmers, and was happy that I could come up with a design that didn't require a ton of bones for the legs. ( I felt like I had used my creativity to come up with a good design that not only looked good but solved a bone count issue with some of our enemies) Hoo that became a long story, lol. At which stage of the development where the remaining Reaver forges cut from the game and why?
(stone, water, sunlight, sound). I read in many reviews before SR´s release that you could imbue the Reaver with several elements but was puzzled when there was only the fire forge in the game. Do you know where in the game could Raziel find those forges?Ah yes, the remaining forges. Let me tell you, this game ate up a lot of weekends and late nights.
Even with that extra time in, we didn't have enough days to finish the game the way it was imagined. There was just too much stuff. Designers had planned the forges and powers that went along with them. One day, we had a come to Jesus moment where we just had to look at the (extremely large) overhead map and just start Xing out areas, powers, and abilities. It was painful and difficult. Each forge was tied to an ability, and each ability was supposed to unlock a new area, AND new mechanics. So it was all interwoven.
Each cut was not minor. It literally tore apart pages of well thought out design. (It was like killing your baby. But Game Devs are the only ones who cry over it.
And people who find out about it later LOL). It was cut about 2/3 into the game. I think all the remaining glyphs were cut at the same time. Sometimes having too many ways to kill a Vampire can be bad too. We realized there was a lot of redundancy as well.
It takes resources from every department (Character, Environment, Engineering, Audio, FX, UI, Design, and Production) to get a single feature realized, so we made cuts that helped as many departments as possible, and sharpened the overall experience. (This happens EVERY GAME, btw) The locations of most forges was adjacent to a boss room. In the next cancelled game I wanted to have Kain be able to look BO1 humanoid but as soon as his skin touched direct sunlight, it would harden into The SR era look. That way he could walk through uschtenheim or other human cities unaccosted.
I did a drawing of it on my old website under Young and the Restless Kain.Beast and Wolf forms were supposed to make come backs. The Dire Wolf form was up for redesign, since my first pass felt too much like Raziel (skinny tummy) and Kain should feel more Burly. But they would have been fun to work on. Looks very much like Raziel in both beta and retail. After turning its head looks like the wraith Raziel, in TLB he looks like his vampire self instead. His eyes also don't glow blue in TLB and he appears to have black tears.2.
Seems like Kain, since he is in the middle. His face changed to more inhuman bit from beta to retail.3. My guess would be Dumah, or maybe Turel. His face also seems more human in retail version.4. This one really puzzled me - is it Rahab or maybe the Priestess? I was really thinking that after seeing in beta, the figure has no glowing eyes and looks pretty feminine.
However, in retail, eyes are red. Do you know why?5. My guess would be Zephon since figure´s hair seems to match it.6. Now I have no idea who this might be, since the change from beta to retail is pretty significant.
I would say that in beta it seems to be Rahab, but in retail I have no idea.7. This is an alternative possibly to no. In beta, figure seems to have hair while in retail, he is bald (seems like Melchiah)8. The Bearded man is a mystery, possibly Dumah or Turel?Could you explain if these are close to what they really are?I busted my ass on the 11th hour on this one. It was one of the last things we put in the game, and I championed it because I thought it made the game cooler. You know UI is the first thing you see in a game.
I remember making the image and going 'You know what would be cool. If their faces turned to face you and they became all vampiric!' Cory Stockton was all 'yeah that sounds great. Good luck with that one, dude.' I hadn't realized the crapload of work it would take to make that image work, I animated each head by hand, but wasn't happy with the animation aspect of it. So I had my friend Colin put in 3D heads that were camera mapped, had them turn over a few frames, rendered it in MAX, then HAND PAINTED head frame of each head on top.
I had great support from the programmers to get this in too. Technically we put it in after the content lock deadline (shhhh!) but everyone thought it was cool so we kept it. Did you guys like it?
Did it freak you out at first? I hope so.Anway, Except for Raziel, they're all abstractions of Kain and the bretheren. Red eyes are for vamps, blue is for the Reaver. I generally thought of Kain representing the middle, and you're pretty much spot on for all the statues.
I wanted them to be a 'shadow knows' kind of reveal (like spectral)1. Dumah (reminiscient of the dumahim shape)4. Priestess (Even though she was cut. It rounded out the image)5. Zephon (Kind of made his representation look like a brat lol)6.Rahab (shielding himself from the sun)7. Melchiah (bald and hiding his percieved ugliness)8. Who is and what is her story (you once referred to her as 'Vorador's mystery woman' )?
All we know is that her portrait appeared and Defiance, she's not Umah, and she's 'a character who is part of the backstory and not revealed in the games'.Initially, we had the ability to create murals and pics in the game, then run them by Amy to make sure they were open ended enough for her to write in a back story if she wanted to include it. It's sort of like a 'hook' what Amy could write in if she wanted. Sometimes she asked for specific images (like William and Kain) and sometimes she let us riff a bit. This woman is one of those riffs. I created her to be someone he was fond of. In my mind she was a lost love, perhaps a powerful sorceress. It was always my hope that someone would write a good story for her after Defiance ended.
Maybe one of the fans could? If it's engaging, I could draw an illustration for it. What do you think, would someone be up for it? (But it would have to be a good story. It's been conjectured a few times that the faces of a few of the characters were partially designed or re-designed to loosely resemble their voice actors (uh, well, the characters who have faces, that is). How true is this? I can definitely see it in Kain (Simon) and Vorador (Paul), but it would be really nice to have an official comment on it.Actually, its sheer coincidence.
I hadn't seen Paul Lukather or Simon Templeman's faces prior to designing them. Maybe it's the magic of the voices that made them look alike. Something ephemeral about voices.
Trying to picture what they look like. (though everytime I meet a voice actor he's never what I think they look like. Ie Lion-o haha).
Few questions about eyes. With only a few exceptions (such as ), almost every single vampire seen throughout the series has yellow eyes. Is this deliberate? Is it perhaps a side-effect of the Hylden blood curse?A couple of other characters also have unique eyes: and both have washed-out, desaturated pupils - almost like cataracts - and seems to have no pupils at all in Defiance. When Janos is possessed by the Hylden Lord in Defiance, his pupils also seem to disappear or fade.
What is the reasoning behind these design elements?Obviously Turel's could relate to his blindness, and Mortanius to his possession, but that still leaves Moebius. Somebody came up with an interesting theory that it has something to do with his knowledge of the future: Kain says in SR1 that 'as a man, I could never have contained such forbidden truths'.
Well, Moebius is a man who has to contain them, and it's ruined his vision.:lol:Yep, the washed out pupils help show whose 'side' they were on. Moebius had washed out eyes because he sees the time stream. His pupils were actually becoming hourglass shaped like the Elder Gods to show how in alignment he was with him. I seem to remember that when he played the doddering old soothsayer, that he also played either blind or nearsighted.
It all played into that.Vampires had yellow eyes, Rahab's changed because he was becoming water resistant. Regarding The Dark Prophecy, I'm particularly curious about one thing.
When Divine Shadow first uncovered it, he came across, which was created by Ritual Entertainment, and seems to depict Kain transitioning into his SR1 emperor incarnation, probably some time not long after BO2. You had also painted a 'Young Kain Proposal' in 2002, which was up at spectraljin.com.As a result, we all started speculating that The Dark Prophecy might have been intended to follow the structure of Defiance, but with players alternating between young and old Kain instead of Kain and Raziel. That's an idea I think could've had enormous potential if done right, but was it ever seriously considered for TDP? If not, do you know if young Kain supposed to appear anyway?Dark Prophecy would have been cool. We had a version of Kain that linked BO2 with SR. The thought was to either play Kain in this Era, or use it as part of his disguise, which would fade in direct sunlight. There was a lot of back and forth on the story but either one would have been cool.
I loved this desingn for Kain too. One thought was to have Elder Kain in the Hylden Realm, and Young Kain in the material realm, playing different chapters. Even having Kain 'help out' his other self from the shadows, taking out heavy foes that would have outmatched his younger self. (And get this. Getting caught in a Moebius time trap that put him on the field facing his younger self from BO1. He'd have to 'throw the fight' and dissipate.
But it would have been cool to see. And not before sending some hell Moebius' way before he left) We had things like summoning Vorador, or Jumping between Demon/Hylden realms too. This is regarding Umah and Vorador´s appearance in Defiance.What was Umah´s intended role in Defiance and where would she appear? Would she encounter Raziel or Kain?Also, this concept which you drew of her:Have you drawn her as a human or a vampire in that picture? Jake and I are wondering, because the colour of her eyes and her skin seems unnatural to a regular human and she seems to be wearing Voradors symbol. So we are thinking she is either a vampire worshipper or a vampire. Thanks a lot!Did Vorador originally appear more times than in the final game?
Was his resurrection (as he is in BO2) planned to be explained? If so, can you tell us who would resurrect him after his beheading by Moebius´ mob?Umah was intended to be a vampire worshipper/consort to Vorador. As you correctly guessed, she was to play a similar role to the Vampire Priestess originally envisioned in Soul Reaver. Dangit, we could never get one in the game! LOL She was always meant to be 'special' and quite a powerful sorceress, hence the eyes. But the concept you have is meant for a human Umah, with lavender eyes. (she has too much of a tan to be a vampire)She wears Vorador's symbol because she's meant to be part of his clan, soon to be transformed into a vampire.
I think when Raziel visits Vorador after he is beheaded, your job is to go to the statute holding his head, retrieve it, and bring it to his body. Much the same as the way Janos was resurrected, Raz would help raise Vorador. Umah was the mission giver and as a reward would be turned into a vampire.We had to do a lot of reconciliation with BO2. And had to cut it for time. (also, the fact that Raz would rez both Vorador AND Janos seemed. Redundant)It's important to remember one thing: Defiance was a part of the SR trilogy with Raziel as the hero. It wasn't about giving equal screen time to Kain.
He already stole a ton of spotlight with his few chapters.I don't think BO2 Kain would have been good because then Vorador would 'owe Kain one' so to speak.Kain did have a mission in Vorador's mansion but I think it was to meet living Vorador. We wanted to have Kain be able to summon him afterwards with the ring. Vorador seeing how powerful Kain had become would be distrustful. And would pass that to his clan (ie Umah)There was also the idea you could see Umah being turnedOkay, so the reason I think the young Kain should resurrect him as an alternative even if it causes Vorador to 'owe him one'still makes sense as he was up against the Sarafan Lord right? Vorador probably returned this favor by building him an army.So I guess it could have been rewritten to be either the old or the young Kain to end up doing it?Yeah it was actually more of a huge deal to see a Vampire being made, since that wasn't something that was ever shown.
Traditional 'embrace' or some bizarre Necromancy?Raziel had to resurrect Vorador to show that A) he had he power of 'jump starting' bodies with his power and B) needed something important from him to find Janos. It was all really to reconcile BO2. (and there was a lot of. To do)That said, elder Kain rezzing him would have been cool too. There'd be a cool smackdown talk there.