Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

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Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Developer(s)	Crystal Dynamics
Publisher(s)	Eidos Interactive
Series	Legacy of Kain series
Platform(s)	PlayStation, Microsoft Windows, Dreamcast
Release date	NA August 17, 1999 (PlayStation WIN) 2000 (DC)
Genre(s)	Action-adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player
Rating(s)	ESRB: M[1]
Media	1 CD-ROM (PlayStation, WIN) 1 GD-ROM (DC)
System requirements	266 MHz CPU, 16 MB RAM, 2 MB video card RAM, 4X CD-ROM drive, DirectX 6.0, 320 MB available hard disk space
Input methods	Keyboard and mouse, gamepad

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is an third-person adventure video game developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos in 1999. It is the second game in the Legacy of Kain series and the first game in the series not developed by Silicon Knights. It is a direct sequel to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, and subsequently was followed by three more games, two of which, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 and Legacy of Kain: Defiance, directly tie-into the game's plotline.

1500 years after the events of the first game Blood Omen, Soul Reaver chronicles the journey of the vampire lord Kain's lieutenant Raziel as he is killed by Kain and returns from the dead to exact his revenge. He is revived by The Elder God and becomes his "soul reaver", acquiring the sword "Soul Reaver" from Kain during his quest. The game was well received by critics and highly praised for its eerie atmosphere and a deeply intriguing gothic story, but slightly criticized for having a vast, difficult-to-navigate world.^[2][3]

[edit] Gameplay

In Soul Reaver players take control of Raziel, in contrast to Blood Omen where players assumed the role of Kain. Gameplay in Soul Reaver relies largely on shifting between the physical material realm and the ghostly spectral realm. Although the player's interaction with the environment is limited in the spectral realm, they are able to use this to their advantage by passing through water like air and phasing through otherwise impassable gates. However, blocks, doors and switches can only be interacted with in the material realm, forcing players to explore both.^[2] Players can shift to the spectral realm at any time or when they run out of health, but shifting to the material realm requires the finding of a special portal. Many puzzles are based on the differences between the spectral and material realms, such as various platforms and environment features shifting form to open new paths. Block puzzles are also common and require the rotation and flipping of large blocks and pushing them into place to progress, often while avoiding other obstacles like enemies or a timer.^[2]

Combat includes the usage of combinations of various different attacks before using a finishing move to kill vampires through impalement or other means. Players can also use the environment to their advantage and throw enemies into beams of sunlight, wall-mounted spikes or pools of water.^[2] Upon being killed, enemies leave behind a soul that players can consume to replenish their health - while in the material realm Raziel continually loses health, and he regenerates in the spectral realm. Enemies consist of humans, vampires and spectral monsters, each with their own variations. ^[2]

[edit] Abilities

Raziel uses a spear to impale a Dumahim Vampire. A campfire in the background could also be used to set the Dumahim on fire.

Players begins the game with the ability to jump, glide using Raziel's torn wings, move blocks and pick up and throw enemies. Weapons are limited to rocks, torches, spears and staffs (which function identically despite varying appearances), and the Soul Reaver, although other weapon types existed during development including a flamethrower and a crossbow.^[4] Human and spectral enemies can be beaten to death using any weapon or Raziel's claws, but vampires must be bludgeoned into a stunned state then destroyed by either impaling them, lighting them on fire or throwing them into a hazard (sunlight, water, etc.).^[5]

As players progress through the game, they acquire numerous other abilities. Players can acquire the ability to phase through gates in the spectral realm, climb walls in the material realm, swim (in turn removing Raziel's vulnerablity to water), and conscrict enemies and objects with bands of telekinetic energy.^[2] Players can also acquire the power to fire bolts of telekinetic energy, which do little damage but can knock enemies into hazards and push objects from a distance. After acquiring the Soul Reaver, Raziel's health never deteriorates in the material realm as long as he possesses the sword, but if he takes damage he loses it instantly and can only regain it by restoring his health.^[5] The Soul Reaver can later be baptized in holy flame and transformed into the Fire Reaver, allowing players to set enemies aflame instead of impaling them and enhancing Raziel's telekinetic bolts with the same power. Players can also find magical glyphs that allowing them to attack groups of enemies at once at the cost of magical energy.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Setting

Soul Reaver takes place within the fictional world of Nosgoth. In Nosgoth, the health of the land is tied to the nine Pillars of Nosgoth, and each pillar in turn represented by a guardian, although decades before the events of the first game Blood Omen, the guardians and Nosgoth became corrupted. During the events of Blood Omen, Kain killed eight of the guardians and discovered he was the final one.^[6] Refusing to sacrifice himself, he doomed Nosgoth to eternal corruption and decay and proceeded to raise his vampire lieutenants including Raziel and besiege the land. By the time of Soul Reaver's introduction, the humans have largely been decimated and the vampires have each laid claim to a region of Nosgoth and turned their attention to internal matters.

Unknown to the vampires, beneath Nosgoth there lurks The Elder God, an ancient and powerful demigod overseeing the Wheel of Fate. However, because vampires are immortal, their souls do not spin with the Wheel and this causes the land to decay as the Wheel stalls. In addition to the decay caused by the corrupted Pillars of Nosgoth, by the time Raziel is revived 1000 years after the game's opening cinematic, Nosgoth is devoid of life and the land is on the brink of oblivion.^[6]

[edit] Characters

The protagonist of the game is the vampire-wraith Raziel, cast to death by the protagonist of the previous game Kain who serves as the game's primary antagonist. In his quest for vengeance, Raziel is assisted by The Elder God, an entity dwelling deep in Nosgoth's underground who oversees a cycle of birth, death and rebirth that it calls the Wheel of Fate. Raziel also finds council in Ariel, the former guardian of the Pillar of Balance and Kain's predecessor who has been cursed to haunt the Pillars until they are restored. Raziel also meets his brothers during his quest who serve as the game's bosses - Melchiah, Zephon, Rahab and Dumah have each evolved separate powers during his absence and they are killed during the course of the game. Raziel's fifth brother Turel was left out of the game due to time constraints during development and his absence is explained in Legacy of Kain: Defiance.

Raziel's enemies are grouped into humans, vampires and spectral creatures. Humans include peasants, vampire hunters and vampire worshippers. In a feature unique to Soul Reaver within the series, the vampire hunters and peasants will see Raziel as a hero and ally with him as long as players do not attack them. vampire enemies each have powers unique to their brood: Melchiahim vampires can burrow underground, Zephonim vampires climb walls, Rahabim vampires swim and shoot acid, and Turelim vampires cause shockwaves and shoot bolts of telekinetic energy. The Dumahim vampires serve as the basic vampire with no special powers. In the spectral realm, players fight minor enemies called Slough as well as the souls of dead vampires that have become wraiths and can drain Raziel's energy.

[edit] Story

Raziel finds the spectral Soul Reaver after his battle with Kain.

The game begins with a cinematic of Raziel approaching Kain's throne and extending newly grown wings; previously, the lieutenants would evolve new powers only after Kain. As punishment for this, Kain rips Raziel's wings to shreds and has him tossed in the Lake of the Dead to burn forever.^[7] However, Raziel is resurrected as a wraith by The Elder God to become his "soul reaver" and take vengeance by killing Kain, restoring the land of Nosgoth in doing so.^[8] With the Elder God's advice Raziel adapts to his new existence and returns to Nosgoth. After finding his bearings at the Lake of the Dead, Raziel infiltrates an abandoned Necropolis inhabited by the Melchiahim Vampires. In the Necropolis he finds his brother Melchiah, who has devolved to the point where he is now a large, bestial being who cannot sustain his own flesh.^[9] Raziel kills Melchiah and absorbs his soul, inheriting part of his power, and then invades the Sanctuary of the Clans. There he finds and confronts Kain at his abandoned throne. After a short battle, Kain uses the Soul Reaver, a powerful blade that absorbs the souls of its victims to attempt to kill Raziel. However, the Reaver shatters, and Raziel slips into the spectral realm to find the blade's spectral form there. The spectral Reaver bonds with him, becoming one with him. After this, Raziel meets Ariel who restores his strength and tells him where Zephon can be found.^[10]

Raziel ventures into a large cathedral once inhabited by the humans and finds the Zephonim clan, led by Zephon. After climbing and ascending into the cathedral's spires, he finds Zephon is now a large arachnid, and the cathedral spire he dwells in a part of his body. Raziel kills Zephon and uses the power gained from doing this to infiltrate an ancient crypt. In the crypt, Raziel discovers a series of coffins for members of the Sarafan, an elite tribe of vampire hunters that had been killed off centuries before Kain's rule. To Raziel's horror, the names in the crypt are those of him and his brethren: in life, Kain's vampire lieutenants had been vampire hunters, and he chose the Sarafan to serve him as a cruel irony.^[11] Raziel ventures into a secret passage underneath the crypt and finds a flooded abbey inhabited by the Rahabim vampires, now mutated into amphibious creatures. Raziel confronts his brother Rahab with what he has learned, but Rahab is unmoved and attacks him. Raziel defeats Rahab and gains the ability to swim. Using this gift, Raziel traverses the Lake of the Dead and enters the mountain fortress of his brother Dumah. However, Raziel finds the fortress abandoned, and the Elder God tells him that the Dumahim vampires were scattered following an invasion of human hunters, and Raziel finds Dumah himself shackled to his throne with his heart pierced.^[12] Raziel frees Dumah and restores him to take revenge, as Dumah was one of the ones who threw Raziel into the Lake of the Dead. Raziel leads Dumah into a giant furnace, burning him alive and absorbing his soul.

Afterwards, Raziel discovers a series of caves known as the Oracle Caves, once used by Moebius the Timestreamer as a secret lair and hiding place for the Chronoplast, a magical time machine. Raziel finds his way through the caves and confronts Kain in the control room for the Chronoplast. Despite Raziel's rage regarding what he had learned, Kain shrugs off his accusations and responds with cryptic comments regarding destiny and free will.^[13] Raziel attacks Kain while he continues to adjust the Chronoplast's controls unfazed. Kain escapes into a portal through with Raziel in pursuit. The game ends as Raziel is greated by Moebius the Timestreamer, leading into the events of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2.

[edit] References to Abrahamic religious mythology

The game makes references to characters and events in the Judaeo-Christian mythology, most notably through the names given to many of the characters.^[14] For example, the Soul Reaver appears as a flame-bladed sword and can be transformed into the Fire Reaver - flaming swords are common in mythology and religious mythos, and one such sword was used by a cherub to guard the entrance to Eden after Adam and Eve were banished (Gen 3:21-24).^[15]

Raziel was the name of an archangel within the teachings of Jewish mysticism who is the "Keeper of Secrets" and the "Angel of Mysteries".^[16] The main character of Soul Reaver, who is called Raziel, is referred to as an "angel of death" by the Elder God.^[17] As well, the Abrahamic angel of death is called Azrael, which is similar in pronunciation to Raziel; the name Azrael itself is not given to any character in the game.^[18]

Kain possibly refers to Cain^[18], the son of Adam and Eve who killed his brother, Abel in the book of Genesis (Gen 4:1-16)^[19], hence becoming the first murderer.

Ariel is another archangel found primarily in Judeo-Christian mysticism and Apocrypha. Generally presented as an authority over the Earth and its elements, Ariel has also been called an angel of healing, wrath & creation.^[20] This mythological role fits loosely with the role of the character Ariel in the Legacy of Kain series, who watched over the Pillars of Nosgoth as the Guardian of the Pillar of Balance, and continued to haunt the shattered pillars after she was killed by Hash'ak'gik.^[10]

Raziel's brothers, who were Kain's other Vampire lieutenants, also have angelic names plucked from Abrahamic religious mythology: Turel (Turiel, Turael) is Hebrew for "Rock of God", and is the name of an angel in the book of Enoch; Dumah (Duma, Douma) is Aramaic for "Silence", and is described in the Zohar as "chief of demons in Gehinnom"; Rahab is described in Biblical legend as a demon or angel of the depths; Zephon is a cherub and a guardian of paradise; and Malek (Malik, Malec), which is Arabic for "messenger", is a guardian angel of Hell in Islamic mythology.^[18]

The opening sequence of the game has specific parallels with the story of the Fall of Lucifer as described in the Book of Revelation (Rev 12:9)^[21], expanded upon and popularised by John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. In Raziel's introductory narration he declares that "Kain is deified", implying that Kain is meant to represent God.^[7] Upon discovering that Raziel has developed wings, Kain tears them apart before having his other lieutenants drag Raziel to the Lake of the Dead. Raziel is then cast by his brothers Turel and Dumah into the Abyss and burns in agony, falling from the material realm, where he had held power and authority as a Vampire lord, to the twisted, haunted spectral realm; this is reminiscent of Lucifer's banishment to Hell (or Earth^[22]), by the archangel Michael, at God's decree.^[23] Raziel subsequently takes on the mantle of angel of death and reaps the souls of dead mortals for the Elder God, imitating the Abrahamic angel of death Azrael.^[17][24]

[edit] Development

An early version of the Human Citadel showing the original appearance of the Soul Reaver during development.

The basic concept for Soul Reaver was first conceptualized into a design document under the name Shifter, which derived from the game's plane-shifting mechanic. In its original form, the game would have incorporated a storyline similar to Soul Reaver, in which the protagonist was killed by his master and brothers and was revived to exact revenge.^[25] Shifter was merely a conceptual idea between Silicon Knights and Crystal Dynamics and not intended to be related to the Legacy of Kain series, although Silicon Knights was planning on a sequel. Shifter never went into full development and much of the concepts for it were altered to be used in Soul Reaver.^[25] Prior to its release the relationship between between Silicon Knights and Crystal Dynamics dissolved, and the rights for the Legacy of Kain series were subject to a legal battle between the two due to the original concept for Soul Reaver being derived from Shifter, and the game was plagued by several delays.^[26]

Because of its many delays, there was much material cut and various pieces of unused data exist in the game. One such pieces of data indicates there was to be another area underneath the human city, leading to a temple of vampire worshipers. A Priestess ruling over the temple would fight Raziel and give him the ability to possess others upon her defeat. The audio file for the dialogue to accompany this quest is available for download at "thelostworlds.net"^[4] Other deleted materials include various extra Soul Reaver powers, a battle with Kain at a mountain retreat, and the "Turelim Smokestacks" where Raziel would have fought his brother Turel who is absent in the final product - the smokestacks for the Turelim lair are visible in the game's opening FMV.^[4] Some of the images for these deleted materials appear in the Chronoplast as visions of alternative futures that might come to be.^[4] Screenshots from early in the game's development also show the Soul Reaver as a ghostly sword with a blue aura rather than a simple blade emerging from Raziel's hand as it appears in the final product - the Soul Reaver would eventually take on such a form in Defiance. Series director Amy Hennig has stated in an interview that Soul Reaver was intended to be a much larger game, but due to time and data constraints, they realized they had "over-designed the game", and it was decided that it would be cut into two games, which is why Soul Reaver has a cliffhanger ending and why some of the deleted materials appear in later games. Hennig has explained that these deleted materials were left in the game engine to avoid unforeseeable complications and glitches that may have occurred should they have been removed.^[27]

[edit] Reception

Soul Reaver was highly praised for its dark and gothic atmosphere. GameSpot and IGN praised the game's cut-scenes, and IGN's reviewer claims to have watched the introductory cinematic ten times.^[2] PlanetDreamcast's reviewer cited the game's music as the best the they'd heard since the film Eyes Wide Shut, and praised the emotion in the voices such as Kain's contempt.^[30] IGN noted the game's soundtrack blends in so well with the atmosphere as a whole that picking it out is difficult. GameSpot also praised the game's atmosphere for being rich but lacking the overstated drama of Blood Omen, as well as for its high quality graphics, especially in the Drowned Abbey areas with water.^[3] RPGGamer's reviewer said the music sounded more like something a baby would fall asleep to, and the sounds of the enemies were akin to the sounds of barnyard animals.^[5]

PlanetDreamcast noted the game's block puzzles are similar to the Tomb Raider series.

PlanetDream praised the control system for being nearly perfect, and keeping players on their toes by continualling bestowing new powers on them.^[30] IGN echoed this, citing that learning the powers of Raziel's brethren and acquiring them for yourself was part of the fun, and Raziel being well animated and articulated in each of his moves.^[2] GameSpot praised the camera controls for the minimal difficulty in using them, akin to Banjo-Kazooie, and said that reviewers would deliberately swing the camera to watch Raziel's movements.^[3] RPGGamer said that the game's controls were smooth and seemless, and although the reviewer was initially worried about the game's interface being similar to the Tomb Raider series, their concerns proved unfounded.^[5]

The gameplay for Soul Reaver was also said to be non-linear, with both GameSpot and IGN claiming that without clear objectives players could roam the wasteland of Nosgoth without a clue as to where to go next.^[2][3] GameSpot also criticized the game's warp system for using mysterious symbols with little or no connection to the place they led, confusing players when they tried to reach a certain area. PlanetDreamcast said the ability to shift into the spectral realm to avoid combat and regenerate health was "like invincibility in Zelda" and made the game easy.^[30] GameSpot said that while impaling Vampires with the Soul Reaver never got old, the sword made the majority of enemies negligible, and the bosses of the game were simple.^[3]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Eidos' official site
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver at MobyGames