So... Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

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One interesting part of the vampiric and hylden prophecies is that their messiah is Raziel in both cases, and he combines physical elements of the two. That's because Raziel had the potential all this time to be one or the other, to be a redeemer or destroyer as Moebius told him when they first met.

The story is surprisingly coherent considering they were often just making shit up on the fly.
Accidentally, is there any explanation for BO2's "Suddenly Vorador!" (apart from time travel fuckery, I don't have to explain shit)?

There's also the reference to him as a pawn and messiah, which is also true because despite being the only one with true free will in the game afoot (with Kain and everyone else involved getting to act freely only through Raziel), he's also the one who's manipulated at every turn and often just rushes straight into the traps laid for him despite having the ability to avoid them time and time again.

Then again, like Amy explained the key duality between Kain and Raziel as the protagonists was that Raziel does the wrong thing for the right reasons, while Kain always somehow ends up doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Events in Defiance were supposed to have him get resurrected, but budget reasons forced the planned scene to be cut.

Actually there's two big moments of "pulling it out of our ass as we go" in LoK storyline: Post-BO and post-SR. Neither of those games was supposed to ever have a sequel, but first Soul Reaver was turned into a LoK sequel early in the planning phase instead of a new series, but even then it was supposed to end with Kain and every other vampire dead. HOWEVER, budget constraints led to around 1/3rd of Soul Reaver being cut, which is when Amy Hennig revised to story to include follow-up games that led to the story we know. BO has probably benefited the most of this, because now many of the throwaway details without any purpose are big hints and Has'Ak'Gik's plan makes some goddamn sense.

Many things in the serie did not end up as intially intended. Blood Omen 2 wasn't supposed to be a Legacy of Kain game but a sequel to Chakan on the Genesis (I still have nightmares about this one; I should try to finish it some day) but was then refurbished as the game we know today. Not exactly the best episode, but it has its moments.

Well, it does have a :emotionengaged: moment when Kain kills Umah. And it's exactly the kind of shit Kain would do.

On the other hand it has the Seer, whatever she was.

I think Vorador might be alive in BO2 because Moebius gets killed before he can kill him in the new timeline? Or something like that anyway.

Moebius was permakilled right after he was killed by Kain, which is just after Vorador was beheaded.

Basically it was the worst day ever for Moebius, first he gets killed by Kain, then he gets killed by Kain again moments later, and finally he gets his soul devoured by Raziel.

The only way to beat Chakan properly is to play it on the hardest difficulty. And I think you only have one chance to beat the true final boss, otherwise you have to start from the beginning. Unless you use save states. That game is a true curse on humanity. But interesting that Blood Omen 2 was supposed to be a Chakan game. Didn't know that.

The new Chakan game was originally developed for Dreamcast, with plans to release on PS2 and Gamecube. The devs boasted that only 5% of players would get past the first couple of worlds, which had the effect that they spent most time polishing those since they'd be what people would be stuck on most of the time. In the end, the early demise of the Dreamcast and the fact that hard games were difficult to sell at the dawn of the Age of the Popamole just ended things for the Chakan sequel. Technically, BO2 was still developed from scratch but it recycled a huge part of the concept art for Chakan 2, and the similarities between the two designs are too great to be coincidences. There is even a picture of a dead Chakan at some point in BO2.

The most hilarious thing is that Moebius hasn't foreseen any of this, apart from death number one.

In the meantime, best burrow deep.

I haven't played BO (sadly, technical reasons), nor BO2 (luckily), but SR->SR2->Defiance was pretty .

Each of those games has some crippling flaws, though - SR has wonky controls (though easily the best combat in the series as it focuses on killing vampires for real, with human opponents being rare, dangerous, but incredibly fragile), SR2 has... shit I don't remember, but I remember it has something seriously crippled, Defiance has "cinematic" camera (and it's of oh god why grade).

I really loved some puzzles in SR1, plane-shifting really adds an extra dimension to the game.

Out of the three Raziel games, you mention Soul Reaver as the one with wonky controls?

I'd say there's two things with Soul Reaver's controls: One is that it doesn't use the analog stick and has fairly stiff pad controls, another is that Raziel jumps really fucking fast.

Dewd, check your emulator. Analog controls always worked with SR... I know because it might have made the game unbearable otherwise.

Oh wait, indeed they did... But somehow (I've got it on PSN, played through it last winter using only directional pad) they always felt like the damn things were even clunkier.

Well, there were certain places you absolutely needed to go in one direction (any jumping puzzle) where d-pad could've been a better alternative because Raziel really did have very sensitive movement. However, for normal gameplay, I'd think trying to get around the world (especially the non-euclidean spirit levels), doing the puzzles, doing the shitloads of running around... yeah, analog all the way.

Ah yes, Defiance's glorious camera. I liked how it changed cameras mid-flight, along with camera angles, which in turn changed your flight direction and caused you, instead of landing on a platform like a boss, to park your vampiric ass in the nearest water source, prompting a respawn. But it looked like in a movie!

Also, have you seen these?




Tony Jay

:nevarforget:

KB, man.

I can see by the rise in your toga that you're well pleased.

I loved Cave Story and "Hell level" definitely raped me (since I suck at platformers in general), I stopped trying after like 1000 deaths - I never got past the Elevator boss.

I'll probably give the original SM a go, then. It sucks that I missed out on it back in the day.