Legacy of Kain

Technically the ending is complete now because the way fate works in the series and how the only thing mucking up the prophecies was Raziel's capacity for free will being manipulated. Now that Raziel has taken himself out of the picture, and in doing so armed Kain with the tool he needed to fulfill his purpose as the Scion of Balance, we know Kain is destined to return balance to Noshoth. Another game would just be seeing how exactly it happens.

It doesn't really end on a cliffhanger, I mean, that ending can be used as one but when you put the pieces together it's far from really being one. It ended one the best ambiguous note possible, open enough to give room for sequels but with enough closure to serve as an ending.

Effort to reward ratio doesn't favor it. Why alienate a potential user base because they're scared of a thesaurus?

Amy Hennig, great voice cast, theme and characterization interlocked almost every step, and for late 90s fantasy of any medium, just a really weird take that stood out compared to “Dung Age farmboi” style fantasy.

Or it took the convoluted plot of a JRPG and had a competent writer give it melodramatic flair and flowery but clear dialogue with a glaze of Shakespeare monolagues.

This but unironically. The games if released these days would be seen as "pseudo-intellectual pandering" and shitposted into oblivion.

It's similar to Morrowind in that its fantasy truly feels fantastic in how alien its world is.

God the VA and writing of this series is amazing, is there anything close to it?

>Amy Hennig
It's a shame she hasn't gotten to work on anything similar. Naughty dog had her on jak and daxter and uncharted, and then EA wasted her time for a few years on a fucking star wars game that ended up cancelled.

>cancelled
Visceral and Amy Hennig somehow wasted.

Hey, let's reboot the idea with Chris Avellone and some random ass who devs.

It was the right story at the right time. It made vampires into dark anti-heroes, encompassed gnostic themes that seeped into every character, but still stuck to fantasy conventions: destiny, machinations, heroism, but it did it with respect to more old school myth than another sword of shannera knock-off.

Besides, Kain and Raziel are great protagonists. They possess clear goals, clear developments, and clear obstacles. Even when they succeed, they still fuck up in the long term. Even as powerful as they both are, neither is omnipotent. Kain gambles on sheer luck and a twisted mentorship of Raziel and Raziel experiences his truth through Kain’s twisted illumination of the inherently corrupted state of the world. It’s actually very gnostic since it’s all about finding true knowledge to escape the shackles of the false material realm.

But yeah, vidya.

None and all of them
LoK characters are flawed anti heroes

Had no idea it wasn't cancelled. That makes it even fucking worse.

The story will make your head spin and make you awe at some points. Superbly don, to the point of putting a smile on your face.
Also the games are good.

She gets fantasy. She comes from that generation of LSD fantasy like Michael Moorcock and Frank Frazetta’s gut curvy amazons and mushroom city setting. That’s part of why her stuff was always more fun. It felt like 1970s fantasy come to life.

Kain is also retaining information at almost all times not only because he didn't trust Raziel, but because he's also an asshole.

he's not challenging Fate because he wants a better world for someone else, it's just for him. Vae Victus.

No, that game was cancelled. The new Star Wars story game that EA has been working on is basically the exact same idea though. Make a serious, grim Star Wars story game.

There's also the fact that the twists and turns of the series felt logical and never just the authors fucking around. The reveal of the Reaver's true nature is so natural once you consider the information at hand, as with Raziel's real, brutal history as a Sarafan, and basically every other big reveal.

This thread made me reinstall.

Also if you zoomers out there find the gameplay offputting you might want to consider looking up the compilation of cutscenes on youtube.

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>Have you ever fucked everything up so hard forever?
>But like real hard?
LEGACY OF KAIN

JUST ACCEPT THE SACRIFICE

>This series worth getting into now?
The original Blood Omen is great. It's also a self-contained story. Soul Reaver 1 is pretty good, but it's also noticeably unfinished and its shortcomings are ultimately what doom the series in a roundabout way. Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance are not very good games or even very good stories, but they finish the story Soul Reaver started. I wouldn't call Defiance much of a cliffhanger; it's pretty conclusive on a thematic level even if there was room for another game (which indeed was started and then cancelled).

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The games are on offer on Steam right now, dead cheap, but am I going to get fed up of clunky, repetitive gameplay after the first hour? Even if the story is so mind-blowing or whatever, if the gameplay is a slog to get through then it's probably not worth it imo. Looks like there are also some issues with the Steam versions.

tl;dr truthfully, for someone completely new to it and not a quoting nostalgiafag, is it worth it or is it a waste of time? I will give it a shot if it's genuinely worth it.

Accepting the sacrifice would've doomed the world. Kain chose the hardest path, but the only one with a chance.

Raziel:
Shall I show you the same mercy you showed the rest of the Circle, then? You blithely murdered them to restore their Pillars, yet your hand faltered when it came to the final sacrifice.
What makes you exempt, Kain? You're merely the last man standing.
Why condemn me for simply carrying out what you hadn't the courage to do yourself?

Kain:
Let's drop the moral posturing, shall we? We both know there's no altruism in this pursuit.
Your reckless indignation led you here - I counted on it.

Kain sees that Raziel is bristling at this insult.

Kain:
There's no shame in it, Raziel - revenge is motivation enough.
At least it's honest. Hate me, but do it honestly.

>TOLD

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I'm and didn't play any of them until 2014. At the very least, check out Blood Omen.

Given the choice
To rule a corrupted world

Lord knows I would

You see this? this is a shit opinion.

The gameplay isn't that bad. You'll get used to it quickly enough.

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Neither, both were just trying to do what was in their own interests and thats why i love these games, even magical deities are more human with real motivations than most npcs in other games

yes

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Keep posting these please, I lost it in a formatted hdd years ago

Ok, I'll get Blood Omen and see how it goes, then maybe the rest if I get into it. Thanks anons.

I need more LoK memes too

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>Welp I'll just kill myself if you know what I mean
>IM A GENIUS

>Oh no

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Stupid Zephonims

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Heard we were posting LoK memes.

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Don't play the PC versions

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The games are flawed in terms of gameplay. Blood Omen is a solid action top down rpg. Soul Reaver is fun in theory but it’s clunky. Reaver 2 is better, but Defiance had the smoothest gameplay. Honestly, if you just want the story, I’d watch cutscene compilations on YouTube.

>Oh man I thought I heard something stupid like pls don't kill me hear me first

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>missing all the music and environmental art
They should play Soul Reavers and Defiance at least.

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on this website

Soul Reaver 2 had a fucking awesome theme song

youtube.com/watch?v=xQ0tEZup-Qc

I'm sure eternity can't get me up here

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youtube.com/watch?v=YNWSDvDqm9g

This

Not only the games are cool, but the whole music OST was incredible, added so much to the ambience and the story, the voice acting and what was a stake. I fucking love this piece.

Post kino dialogue, you fucking pawns of fate

>But now, all your little schemes are whirling in ruin around you, aren't they? All because I chose to exert my free will for once, rather than obey the demands of sorcerers, and spirits, and demons, all singing the same tiresome refrain: Kill Kain!

youtu.be/MK2ZrCiN7XU?t=75

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Amy Hennig

The bulk of world building for the Legacy of Kain universe wasn't done by Amy Hennig, but by people like Denis Dyack, Ken McCulloch and Seth Carus from Silicon Knights. Hennig didn't even have any involvement with the first game, Blood Omen, and the majority of the writing for the second game, Soul Reaver, was done by others. After that, Amy Hennig took on a bigger role and surprise, the quality of the writing quickly plummeted, with poorly thought out retcons and convoluted time travel shenanigans for the sake of justifying more sequels.

Amy Hennig is not a good writer. Look at Uncharted, her magnum opus. It's a good example of story and gameplay contradicting each other. On the one hand, you have an adventure story that is basically a blander version of Indiana Jones. On the other hand, you have gameplay that consists of slaughtering hundreds of mercenaries and even innocent people in some cases (like the museum guard Nathan throws off a cliff). The two halves, story and gameplay, are completely disconnected from each other. Even when judged in a vacuum, the story hardly reaches the quality of the adventure pulp movies that inspired it, so what is supposed to be worthy of praise here? It's the worst of both worlds: a story that doesn't even utilize the interactive nature of video game but also aspires - and fails - to mimic cinema, a non-interactive medium

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youtube.com/watch?v=4LulD2kar9I

>Post kino dialogue
What, you want a textdump of the entire script?

>Victory? You claim to have defeated The Wheel, preposterous
>Even after gaining your so called "choice" you still can't make a proper sequel to Defiance.
>To have "free will" yet make none of it.

>Alas, I conquer. In the end all that is, comes back to me, to spin the videogames industry wheel.

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You're that one user that's super butthurt about Soul Reaver's cut content, aren't you?

youtube.com/watch?v=dWM_Vqh8qAg

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Gems from another time. Before the dark times. Before the suits fucking took over the gaming industry. We'll never see anything this brilliant again.

>tfw he chose integrity
>The two become one... both Soul Reavers... together... and the Scion of Balance is healed... And I am not your enemy... not your destroyer... I am, as before, your right hand...! Your sword...!

KAIN REFUSED THE SACRIFICE

Who?

I'm just pointing out that Amy Hennig is wrongly credited for the series when she had no involvement with the best part of the series.

You're replying to two different people. But I think most fans of SR1 in particular are butthurt about its cut content when they realize how much was cut. Any game is going to have stuff cut or reworked, but in Soul Reaver's case it's more than a little conspicuous.

To take one's existence is the utmost show of free will

Given the choice, whether to rule a corrupt and failing empire; or to challenge the fates for another throw - a better throw - against one's destiny... what was a king to do? But does one even truly have a choice? One can only match, move by move, the machinations of fate... and thus defy the tyrannous stars.

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How did Kain know Raziel would be remade in the abyss? Watching timestreams?

He was the vampire champion. Fate would not allow him to be killed.

I think so, yeah

it's implied by the ending to SR1 that he spent most of the 1000 years after blood omen in moebius' chambers, watching timestreams and trying to figure out how to change fate, and the past

I'm 28 and did this after playing Blood Omen, SR 1 & 2 were basically unplayable when I tried to emulate them and the Steam ports are apparently even worse.

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SR1 emulates pretty easy; or at least the PSX version does. I've never messed with DC emulation much.

SR2 and Defiance do have some major glitches with PCSX2 though.

he already had accepted the sacrifice though? it had been done thousands of times

play soul reaver on dreamcast emulator, its much better

What
Kain did not take it. He was the last man standing, as Raziel said. I mean, why would you, being an immortal vampire now?

did you not understand that kain had seen all outcomes and the elder god made the wheel turn continuously for eternity, kains choice was literally the only way out of the elder gods machinations

I don't think it's quite so cyclical as to be exact repetition of the same events featuring the same people.

no, but the outcome always repeated no matter if he refused or accepted, the elder god was wrapped around the pillars for a reason

What does ozar midrashim actually mean?

It means you're gay.

What if I flip a coin to see who I'm sexually attracted to?

I wonder what sort of monster Raziel would've turned if kept "evolving" like his brothers

Suppose you flip enough coins...

>Ozar Midrashim (Hebrew אוצר מדרשים) is a Hebrew term loosely meaning "Treasury of studies".

>Defiance
I never understood this. Yeah, it's just a hamfisted DMC knock-off in terms of gameplay, but the story is excellent.

>and the majority of the writing for the second game, Soul Reaver, was done by others
Not really, most of Soul Reaver's concepts were made by Hennig, read up on the development of Soul Reaver back when it was known as Shifter, also the game's story only "plummeted" when Blood Omen 2 came out which was not written by Hennig
> After that, Amy Hennig took on a bigger role and surprise, the quality of the writing quickly plummeted, with poorly thought out retcons and convoluted time travel shenanigans for the sake of justifying more sequels.
Soul Reaver 2 was LITERALLY made by the same team as Soul Reaver 1 in writing, Hennig didn't take a complete solo role until Defiance which ironically tried to wrap up everything so it's the total opposite of what you're claiming, Hennig wrote out less retcons, unless you count the retcons done in Defiance, which in actuality was the fault of Blood Omen 2 being such a poorly written game (by another studio) and yet being called "canon" by Crystal Dynamics which fucked things over for Hennig and co.

>Amy Hennig is not a good writer. Look at Uncharted, her magnum opus.
Uncharted 1-3 was actually good store-wise, it was never intended to be a magnum opus so to speak, just an Indiana Jones tribute of sorts. I do agree that it's not worth the praise that it gets and that the LoK series is far better, but I believe the gameplay-story dissonance is the fault of the other team members and not Hennig, seeing as those team members that stuck around after Hennig left are still doing the same thing over and over again, I suspect it was a choice done by the higher-ups, kinda like with Ubisoft and AC. Bear in mind Hennig didn't design any of the games, she was just director, whereas with LoK she was both designer and director, and that came out well because LoK had a good gameplay-story meshing up together with no problems. Also obligatory dumb Frogposter comment.

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Fuck you, it did not. We finally got to the point where Kain understood the true enemy and had the capability of changing his fate and the fate of Nosgoth through Raziel's sacrifice. We never actually got to see that play out, whether it actually does or some unexpected sequence takes place now that they're all no longer bound by the cyclical fate they had before.

The fact that another game began development directly after Defiance is evidence enough that they planned to cap off the story with an actual ending.

>but the story is excellent.
I've never cared for where SR2 took the story. I don't think either SR2 or Defiance has bad writing, but they're a bit soapy and self-obsessed in a crippling way. Blood Omen and the first Soul Reaver were more straightforward narratives, but the simpler plot outlines gave more room for the actually interesting stuff to breathe and the game design mostly operated in concert. Kain in BO1 in particular is a fun character to inhabit because of how well he embodies the game's ideas. It's altogether more visceral. If SR2 and Defiance had stronger game design (or even just better presentation) I probably wouldn't be as bothered by the story changing emphasis, but the script is where their hearts are and it just never captured me the way BO1 and SR1 do.

Big tweest he would have become another elder god

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The outcome was BO2 user

I would say a giant bat but Turel already exists.

So whats the best way to play soul reaver?

What? No my dude, BO2 was a result of the SR2 time fuckery and has nothing to do with the final outcome of Defiance in terms of the fate of Nosgoth moving forward. It's basically an alternate timeline that still leads into the events of Defiance.

Eh, maybe a dragon or a wyvern, perhaps a beefier winged Raziel, since he is closest in apperance to Janus

Probably Dreamcast emulator on PC, using an X1 controller. You can even enable "widescreen." It's a bit janky since all it really does is remove the black bars on the side and lets you see the environment being streamed in but in places like the Lake of the Dead, it can look pretty great.

Thanks, hopefully one day this series gets a proper rerelease

and to think that the people who did this sone, also did one of the most iconic songs of the 80's
>youtube.com/watch?v=ijAYN9zVnwg

CD and Eidos are still ANAL towards Amy hennig, the Blood Omen IP rights shenanigans are still up, and SE doesn't want to touch the Ip because it would be a "waste of money" in their eyes.

The first blood omen is so fucking good. Remember playing the pc version for ages

>The entire fucking Coin speech
youtu.be/t7SQ2Wu6PvI?t=131

Moebius.
>Time fuckwizard
>Dies multiple times for his shitplotting on nosgothchan
>Spends entire legacy of games and literally 20 years flip/flopping from pathetic whimpering and capering japery.
>Was being played by a fucking squid the whole time.

I can't describe how cathartic it was to see him get wombo combo'd and see his boss didn't wear a suit.

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Kain is that way because he personally experienced the unjust nature of power over the powerless, as he saw it.

>also the game's story only "plummeted" when Blood Omen 2 came out which was not written by Hennig
I'm talking about all the stuff introduced in Soul Reaver, shit like retconning vampires to be blue-skinned dudes who didn't even drink blood which is mindboggingly stupid. Raziel looked like that because he was thrown in the abyss, and he didn't need blood anymore because he had become a wraith.

Then you have the whole introduction of the Hylden, which makes so little sense that I don't even know where to begin.

The series world building and writing completely falls apart after Soul Reaver 1. It's only elevated by excellent voice acting.

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Yes, but its not entirely selfish (or rather he doesn't present it as such) but rather a refusal to allow the elimination of the vampire race.

It's a coin toss how much Kain's self-professed motives are valid of course, but I honestly like to think a former human noble has a natural, inbuilt refusal to let a bloodline die out, especially if it means he can't be king of it.

Meant to say:
>I'm talking about all the stuff introduced in Soul Reaver 2

Admit that you wanted to fuck the Half Hylden Chick in BO2 user

>The first bitter taste of that terrible illusion: hope.

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Not that guy, but BO2 is the only one I vaguely liked as an actual game since BO1. It seems as if I would forever be denied the twin pleasures of story and game.

Even in SR1 there was something special about Raziel. He was integral to the plans of both Kain and the Elder God, for some reason they felt he was THAT fucking important. And it all started the moment he grew wings.

Did you think the wings weren't important?
Also the blue-skinned dudes DID drink blood. They were cursed to, explicitly. They didn't used to, but they ended up becoming the 'first' vampires due to a curse. Vampirism has to start somewhere.

There uh, there's the whole "Soul reaver" thing too. Don't want to ruin that other guy's day but history was already abhoring a paradox. As if there was a planned narrative vaguely based on Gnosticism and defiance of fate or something.
I mean I don't want to be that guy, but the demiurge is right fucking there in the first ten seconds of the game. Dont really want to point out the name of the title of the goddamn game but you know I'm gonna.

Oh I agree, I was just pointing out him being wrong about the "blue-skinned dudes" in particular. I didn't feel like going on a long rant where I point out everything wrong with what he said.

>Even in SR1 there was something special about Raziel.
But ALL of Raziel's brethren gained mutations, remember? For example, Rahab gained the ability to overcome vampiric weakness to water, allowing him to swim. Like I said, everything from S2 onwards is a blatant retcon.

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Yes. They all gained mutations. None of them grew wings, nor did Kain go fucking nuts when they gained mutations he 'didn't have first'.
Kain did not decide, from the outset, that they were needed for his plans to alter Fate. Something that comes up at the end of SR1.
The Elder God did not want them as pawns in his little scheme either.
It was all Raziel. Who was thrown into the abyss the second Kain found out he had wings.

The series in unarguably the best written in Vidya, I haven't seen anything fucking top it in the time I've been alive. And unlike other games like Call of Cthulu or Penumbra or Condemned the gameplay isn't so bad the story/experience isn't worth it.

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>Even in SR1 there was something special about Raziel.
Sure, but his significance changed a great deal between SR1's original story and the ending (and SR2 + Defiance) we got. SR2 as we got it was certainly not planned from the beginning.

>And unlike other games like Call of Cthulu or Penumbra or Condemned the gameplay isn't so bad the story/experience isn't worth it.

>Condemned
>bad gameplay
??? It has the best gameplay of any survival horror game.

Though I'm not sure why you would bring it up since its writing is nothing special (and arguably bad even).

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so are both soulsreaver games and defience just sort of spin offs of the blood omen bad ending? like kain knew the ending of choosing between death or destruction was artificial so he stayed alive just to device a plan where the pillars are redeemed AND he gets to live? was that all he had for motivation?

If the wings were so much of a threat, why were they torn like toilet paper?

>Ending
The ending where he stayed alive had so much more work put into it it's obviously the canonical ending.

I think the mutations were controlled by Kain. When the world is decaying and corrupt, the mutation grew erratic so they became monsters. Raziel's was different, and it's what enabled him in particular to become a wraith.

>kain knew the ending of choosing between death or destruction was artificial so he stayed alive just to device a plan where the pillars are redeemed AND he gets to live? was that all he had for motivation?
Yes

It's writing is subpar but I think the set pieces and experience push it a above that to an extent. I would hardly call it's game play good though fighting one to any pack of mooks isn't interesting in the slightest.

subpar compared to?

It's right here you god damn...double pawn

I think they were more fond of it, but it's also worth pointing out that Silicon Knights themselves had probably intended to leave it open-ended given that their idea for continuing the series was a Vorador prequel.

Blood Omen 1, the first game, is the best in the series and well worth a playthrough

I know that but I just find it funny Kain goes out his way to tamper with metaphysics and timetravel just avoid being sacrificed. no prophecy or anything like that just plain old selfish anti hero antics.

Absolutely. Kain is not a hero. Raziel is a wraith of one at the best of times. Literally everyone else is a cunt of varying shades. There are no good people in Nosgoth.

>Don't want to ruin that other guy's day but history was already abhoring a paradox.
You know that's first introduced in SR2, right? We're talking about BO1/SR1.

None of the games ever present Kain as anything other than a selfish prick. A highly intelligent selfish prick, who realizes the good of Nosgoth is what is good for himself. But everything he does has always been self-serving.

The quote, yes. Think real hard for a second about the title of the first game, and what happens in the first game. Think real hard. Stretch those muscles. You can't google this!

The closest he ever gets is the dollmaker (entirely done for his own benefit) and Nemesis (Nosgoth is fucked if I don't do something so here goes)
Immediately bites him in the ass. In fact pretty much every act of mercy in this game comes with immediate terrible consequences. It is not a happy world, even before it goes to shit.

actually being nice to humans in SR1 doesn't fuck you over, it doesn't really do much of anything. This entire series shits on us as relevant pretty much throughout.

>The quote, yes. Think real hard for a second about the title of the first game, and what happens in the first game. Think real hard. Stretch those muscles. You can't google this!
What, that Raziel, who himself is a reaver of souls, acquires the soul reaver? That was just a cool thematic detail, that the game itself highlighted, not some OMG SHOCKING REVELATION thing that you're making out. That's something SR2 introduces, not SR1.

Also, you are seriously accusing me of not having played the games? When I've repeatedly had to correct you on your ignorance about the games?

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Plus I mean, there is an in-story reason why he is such an unrelentingly selfish prick. The fact that just like all the other guardians, he got mind-whammied. Only it happened to him when he was a fucking infant.

>I know that but I just find it funny Kain goes out his way to tamper with metaphysics and timetravel just avoid being sacrificed. no prophecy or anything like that just plain old selfish anti hero antics.

Remember, since Kain was Ariel's successor, he was also affected by the corruption of the Pillars,

> That was just a cool thematic detail,
Imagine being able to use this to mentally defend an untenable position. Imagine if someone could brand everything this person ever said with a "I know this was actually nothing important" stamp and we'd be spared their trite commentary for the rest of their existence. It would be glorious.

Everyone focuses on Michael Bell, Tony Jay and Simon Templeman as Raziel the Elder God and Kain, but Richard Doyle gives a fantastic performance as Moebius in all of the games. He can be a cowering old fool, a cunning monster and an imperious lord and switch between all the personas very naturally. I think my favourite is the very first scene in Soul Reaver 2, because there's so much foreshadowing once you go back having finished the story.

youtube.com/watch?v=I047j2TBOpg
>Raziel: You can drop the benevolent façade, Moebius. I know who - and what - you are. I should kill you where you stand...
>Moebius: Perhaps you should, my boy! But you don't.

> All great movements require a few martyrs...

>Hold fast, Malek. THIS one is the real danger to us.

>Oh but you do. And there's the greatest triumph of all, to have compelled the one player who could choose into doing exactly what we required. Well done, faithful servant. And now - I have an execution to see to.

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The original relevance of the Reaver in SR1 had nothing to do with paradox manipulation; it was the weapon of Kain's undoing (which is why Kain's satisfaction at seeing it bind to Raziel still makes sense). The original story of course does not hold, but it's enough to prove that the time paradox thing was not planned from the outset.

youtube.com/watch?v=4fvPK1WD3AI
>At last. I must say I'm disappointed in your progress. I imagined you would be here sooner. Tell me - did it trouble you to murder your brothers?

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There's a line Templeman delivers just before he goes to kill Moby in BO1, he's just been bamboozled by him and been carving a swathe through the vampire hunters who have genocided his race.

The delivery of it is perfect. It is fucking dripping with a mixture of anger and retribution.

>no actual counter-argument
Point me to any line of dialogue in SR1 that mentions all that stuff that is introduced from SR2 onwards.

What are you even arguing against? The story they had planned for S1 is widely known, since the voice files were literally on the disc the game shippd with.

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I jizz at the line when Is on explains to Daniel that he is being used and shouldn't do what he's doing and Daniel just says

>Would I be better manipulated by you Kain?

OH GOD I MADE THIS

And then I lost it in a hard drive failure. Any others you have, please post them!

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If you really made them thank you because such a little thing has made me chuckle countless times in years.

Do you have the one I made with Kain and Ariel at the pillars?

>I think the mutations were controlled by Kain
They were caused by Kain sharing his soul with them when they were raised, not controlled. Play the fucking Blood Omen 1 if you want to find out why they all degenerated with age.

I have this one

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It's a definitely truth that Kain initially chose self preservation out of self interest, but once he dug deeper into Nosgoth's past, he then came to realize that unwittingly he made the right choice, as vampires dying out would mean a definitely return of the Hylden, which would in turn lead to the end of Nosgoth and EG's total victory. The humans are not meant for the pillars, the binding is incompatible with non vampires.

That particular one I didn't make but thanks

anyone got that recent greentext that summarizes LOK?

The sad thing is that Kain felt the first stirs of normal emotions after being healed by Raziel at the end of Defiance. Nupraptor's madness made him act like a sociopathic, selfish prick for most of his life and the vampiric curse didn't help him, but you can see how much he struggles with his "cruelty" in BO1. There's even an unused dialogue line for Vorador where he says Kain still has a soul, while he (Vorador) kills for fun.

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its been a while, but even then i didnt get it after binge watching everything: How was raziel voluntarily getting into the reaver any different than other times it happened? How does that somehow disable the time-self-fixing waves that happened with paradoxes until now?

Because Raziel did a bunch of other stuff first, allowing him to knowingly and intentionally alter the time-stream as much as possible. Moreover now Kain is armed with knowledge he had never had up until that point.
The existence of the Elder God.

He entered the Reaver by choice, with a sense of serenity and finality and duty. Before he had entered it in a state of absolute despair and fell into madness, eventually knowing nothing but ravenous hunger.

The fact that the Reaver no longer tries to eat Raziel or steal the souls of his kills is an intentional indicator of this.

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>Daniel

Raziel collected all the souls of the ancient guardians before that and received the completely purified reaver froom Ariel in the spirit forge. In other loops without Kain's intervention he would be absorbed after killing all of his Sarafan bretheren, giving him no chance to accomplish all of those things.

>spent your first thirty years of your mortal life feeling irrationally angry all the time
>your more positive emotions are numbed
>get turned into a vampire and get even more mad
>find out that you have been used as a pawn and are now supposed to sacrifice yourself
>you refuse the sacrifice and become the vampire emperor of the entire land, killing and conquering without a second thought
>find out there is more to it and you actually made the right choice
>in the end your favorite son/most loyal lieutenant sacrifices himself to finally heal your soul
>you can feel hope for the first time in your millennia-long life

Being Kain is kinda suffering, actually. ;_;
>you fi

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I had forgotten how good this part was

>For the first time in your life you feel true sadness as well
>The only son you ever felt positive emotions towards died, to save you

>>spent your first thirty years of your mortal life feeling irrationally angry all the time
>>your more positive emotions are numbed
>>get turned into a vampire and get even more mad
>>find out that you have been used as a pawn and are now supposed to sacrifice yourself

Oh man, Kain had diabetes
That's my dad

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Eternity is relentless, Raziel.

When I first stole into this chamber, centuries ago, I did not fathom the true power of knowledge. To know the future, Raziel, to see its paths and streams tracing out into the infinite... As a man, I could never have contained such forbidden truths. But each of us is so much more than we once were.

Gazing out across the planes of possibility, do you not feel with all your soul how we have become like gods? And as such, are we not indivisible? As long as a single one of us stands, we are legion!

And that is why, when I must sacrifice my children to the void, I can do so with a clear heart.

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>>Gazing out across the planes of possibility, do you not feel with all your soul how we have become like gods? And as such, are we not indivisible? As long as a single one of us stands, we are legion!
>
>And that is why, when I must sacrifice my children to the void, I can do so with a clear heart.
what a cunt

Your dad is a vampire?

No just has diabetes and mood swings
Drink water

The humans are not meant for the pillars, the binding is incompatible with non vampires.
then how did it hold till "now"?

Sacrifices

Considering Mortanius and Mobius were some of the first non-vampire guardians, it didn't go on without vampire guardianship for long

>the soul reaver shatters when it strikes raziel because raziel is special somehow
>the blade is revealed to contain a soul, which binds itself inextricably to his arm
>the explanation for this is left a mystery
where the fuck else would they be going with this?

But Kain refused.

Who knows; the original ending didn't touch on it at all IIRC. I think the original implication was just that they were of like kind, so the symbiosis was a natural extension. The original point of the Soul Reaver was that, through absorbing Ariel (the previous Scion of Balance), it could destroy Kain and properly purify Nosgoth.

Is this Kain and Raziel's last appearance in a game? youtube.com/watch?v=Oxiq-pDbmkE

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>The Soul Reaver, Kain's ancient blade – older than any of us, and a thousand times more deadly. The legends claimed that the blade was possessed, and thrived by devouring the souls of its victims. For all our bravado, we knew what it meant when Kain drew the Soul Reaver in anger – it meant you were dead.

I always love that line. It has that impact, that no matter how strong/badass you are/become, Kain WILL slap your shit and you know it all too well.

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Yeah cuz dying is gay
I mean all the other Scions were gone mad as mortals. You dodged that and now they want you to join them? fuck that.

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Barely, with the hylden slipping through the cracks which enabled them to possess Mortanius and murder Ariel.

It's not, it's the direct continuation of Defiance, it's the reason why Kain tells Raziel that Yanos must not be brought back to life at the end of SR2, because he now knows that if Yanos is alive, he'll be stuck forever in the Hylden's dimension on top of being used to power their shit.

>where the fuck else would they be going with this?
It shatters because it was used to attack raziel, who is a soul reaver himself, so the blade is essentially absorbed into raziel. The game itself points this out, it wasn't supposed to be some grand mystery.

The entire purpose of the soul reaver was to eventually use it to devour ariel's soul, which would enhance it so that it could be used to kill kain

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>there's a way to run soul reaver's pc port at 60 fps but you cant see the cutscenes
should I just emulate it? what about the rest of the series including blood omen, should I also try to emulate them?

CAST

>Open it
>Very well
>AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

>but you cant see the cutscenes
bullshit? Pretty sure I played it on my pc 60fps with cutscenes and shit

KAIN REFUSED THE SACRIFICE
BEEEEEOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

DDUM
DUM
DUM-DU-DUM
WHAT ARE YOU LITTLE SOUL?

The best version of Soul Reaver is the Dreamcast vrsion, which has notably enhanced character models (and environments also, I think).

As for Blood Omen, follow the instructions here:

pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Blood_Omen:_Legacy_of_Kain

I used srhook, what the fuck did you use?
I remember reading that the ps1 version is better than the dreamcast one

Blood Omen has a great PC port thanks to Verok's patch/wrapper. I sort of prefer emulating the Playstation version because CRT/scanline filters do wonders for the game visually, but if you hate load times go with the PC version.

>I remember reading that the ps1 version is better than the dreamcast one
Depends.
>PSX has dynamic music
>Dreamcast has better character models and framerate
Seriously the frame rate is awful on PS1. It dips into the low 10s.

Check youtube for the full story summary it doesn't end on a cliffhanger. Game is epic as fuck but I don't think it will catch you nowadays since you are probably an adhd degenerate. It needs an ambitious remake from the ground up but I don't think it's ever happening.

Capitalism.
Unironically.

Don't expect an answer
These arrogant shitters always polute the discourse.

> LoK thread
fuck yes
> youtube.com/watch?v=YulwXPicfPg
does anything even come close to this nowadays?

No

youtube.com/watch?v=1HPcsNdnf78
Raziel's voice actor is over 80 years old now., oh wow

elder god and vorador are dead. he's next.

Locked in eternal limbo...

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Beware the Unspoken...

Those blind with rage are by destiny ensnared...

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There is no right or wrong, that was the whole point of the series

I played them for the first time about 4 years ago. They're now one of my favorite game series yet. The PC versions are fine. Not great, but they're decent enough.

Top comment on this video pretty much explains it:
youtu.be/t7SQ2Wu6PvI

>Taken on its own or within the context of the narrative of the whole game or the whole series, this scene right here is where Legacy of Kain separates itself from all the rest. Everything at work here is just perfect: Raziel enters this scene still burning for vengeance, but Kain quickly makes him see that something far bigger than the two of them is at stake, and the way he does it, without apologizing for his actions or justifying them, truly reflect magnificently on Simon Templeman as an actor. You can hear the resigned, weary tone in his voice: he has seen all these events unfold before and was powerless to stop them, and he's now forced to see them unfold again, to relive all the horrible things that occurred after his resurrection. You can also hear a bit of understanding and patience in his voice as he speaks to Raziel: he knows what it's like to be manipulated and to be made a pawn in someone else's grand scheme, and in both cases, Mortanius and Moebius each played off their lust for vengeance. This scene marks the real beginning of a truly profound and amazing story, where the real conflict gets underway, and though it is a great scene on its own, when looked at as a part of a whole, it really ties the whole story of Legacy of Kain together perfectly. I just cannot come up with enough good things to say about this particular scene.

that music man, that everything, what the fuck happened to gaming, I wish we'd get stuff like this again

The Hylden lord is still out there and so is the Elder god.

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It is. If you're not English, check your language VA, some are really good.

What...no mug of ale for a weary traveller from distent Corhagen? I can reward you well, for I am of noble blood."

>what the fuck happened to gaming
Greed, mainly. Dev teams stopped consisting of people passionate about games and the fantasy genre, they now consist of marketing and business types who want to maximise sales by appealing to your everyday normie aka lowest common denominator

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Sure, but the story (starting with SR2 anyway) was all about Kain and Raziel trying to navigate around fate to change the course of it. Defiance ends with Kain having the knowledge and the power to handle the Elder God. There's room for more (the Hylden are a bigger wrinkle than the Elder God himself is), but the central themes find a pretty thorough resolution.

Gaming was better when it was niche desu.
Every good thing goes to shit when it goes mainstream. I really miss the 90s and early 2000s games.
Given the state of gaming I'm fine with LoK ending the way it did. A new game wouldn't make it justice.
> that picture
I die inside every single time I see it

Blood Omen's intro where you get ready to play the game and then just get bumrushed and murdered in real gameplay is the sickest shit. 10/10 intro and a shocker even in 2019

God, I miss this series.

Music. Music and the voice-acting are all top notch.
God fucking bless Kurt Harland. Listen to Information Society's "Don't Be Afraid" album.
"Ozar Midrashim" is the reason why he was brought on board. I love the music so much.

>Heard the gameplay is lacking
More-or-less, sure. Blood Omen 1 has the most fun gameplay of all the games.
Tons of cool abilities, items, weapons and armor, too. It has SOME jank with enemy hit detection though, which could be taken advantage of by the player.
>wearing either the Chaos Armor or the Flesh armor, then casting Repel just before swapping to the axes and spinning to win

BO2 is a bit boring because of how defensive the gameplay is. At least it gives you a reason to stop and kill some enemies, but then you'll have to kill EVERY enemy...
Soul Reaver 1 pretty much forces you to use a spear the entire game. It doesn't go away when you're hit, and you can execute enemies with it as much as you want.
Its spell/mana system is dumb too. It would be excusable if you can replenish mana-points by feeding while having full health. The Fire Reaver upgrade is OP as fuck.
Soul Reaver 2 doesn't have any more enemies where you have to finish-to-kill anymore, and everything (now including claws) have finishers.
But you could just run past everything in both SR1/SR2 though and do just fine.
Defiance has you playing as both of the main protagonists, and Defiance is just Devil May Cry. It's kind of boring, but it's not as terribly bad as Dmc2.

As for the story's ending itself, it's not necessarily a cliffhanger. Kain is purified, and was the last surviving member of the circle. Nosgoth is released from its corruption.. I think it wraps up Kain's legacy, but I also think it could still be expanded upon. Maybe it could pick up what Silicon Knights originally intended?

Both console versions have dynamic music.
It's just that the PC version is bugged, so PC gamers have to emulate it.
I mean, they SHOULD emulate it if they intend to EXPERIENCE Soul Reaver on PC.
The music in SR1 was just fucking great, but the PC version pulled the dynamic music features from the game.
PC version also has some lacking controller support, too.
I own all three versions of Soul Reaver.

I also made LoK a thing in my clique and spammed my friends with Steam copies of all the games because they're SO cheap on sale. Quite a few of my friends actually played the games, too.

If a fan project to remake the games ever happened, how would you want it to handle the combat? Would it be better to unify the different iterations across the series into something more similar to how it was handled in Defiance? Or try to remain faithful to each individual game?

Dilate

I think I would want it to stay faithful to the individual games, just because they are so different, especially Blood Omen 1. All the spells and items and whatnot

It degenerated over time.

Probably Raziel for sprouting wings out of nowhere.

>reading about the shit that gets cut from every game
>the wikis/websites are uncomplete even now, as it seems that every time they think it's complete, people find out that there was another thing that was cut
jesus, that's a lot of cut shit. very impressive

Square would most likely pull the Activision card and shut it down, to be honest. But if shit ever happened, it would be nice to try to remain faithful to each individual game.