The Legacy of Kain

Oh yeah, it's absolutely a Black-and-Grey Morality setting. Kain is absolutely not a good person^note Off the top of my head, he pushed humanity almost to the point of extinction, established himself as the ruler of the world, and killed his chief lieutenant in a fit of petty jealousy, but everyone around him, with perhaps a handful of exceptions, is so awful that he's kind of the hero by default.

I'm going to melt my head trying to remember all the scheming that went on in this story now. Moebius is trying a Xanatos Gambit made of BatmanGambits and Kain is playing Xanatos Speed Chess, where Raziel is the not-entirely-Unwitting Pawn at the heart of this Gambit Pileup; eventually none of them get what they want, and that was the best possible outcome in terms of actually saving the world.

Edited by artfulscruff on Jan 13th 2020 at 4:41:37 PM

You know, I'd kinda like a Wha Happun episode on Soul Reaver. That series usually focuses on Troubled Production that led to failure, which SR was most definitely not, but the explanations for why 20-to-30% of the content was cut seem to vary depending on who you ask.

Folks… this is it. TLW has started posting complete walkthroughs of the deleted areas.

So I watched all unveiling videos from both the TLW channel and Raina Audron's channel.

I'm a bit bummed that Kain's mountain retreat barely existed even before getting cut, but the little we see of it has a really cool design.

The Undercity and Turel's territory seemed to have pretty creative puzzles, even if they were unfinished. It's fascinating to finally all this content but also frustrating as hell cause it makes you want to see the finished version. TT^TT

I'm also surprised at the amount of deleted space in the Cathedral − that opening behind Zephon seemed like a weird way to access the top…

The Cathedral was supposed to be the original final area, so I'm not surprised there's a significant amount 'missing' from it.

Will you take one on Dead Sun instead?

Warning: The video shows footage that has spoilers for some later games in the series.

There is also discussion of the episode on the Wha Happun thread starting here.

Edited by Lightblade on Aug 8th 2021 at 4:32:47 AM

Amazing fan recreations of iconic Soul Reaver scenes.

Kain holds a grudge against Malek because Malek beat Kain. However I am wondering if Kain has a grudge against Anarcrothe for eluding Kain's attempt to kill him.

I have a theory that Nupraptor's Psychic attack effected Mobius long before the attack happened. Mobius ability to view all of time and space ment that from the moment Mobius was born the attack effected him and turn evil from the it

Edited by neoamon on Oct 8th 2023 at 3:28:08 PM

As the Timestreamer he is time-displaced a lot. It's possible that yeah, thanks to time travel shenanigans he went to the future and got corrupted centuries before the others or missed Nuprator's attack, but traveled back in time to get corrupted anyway.

At 4:00 PM EDT today, Amiya Aranha will be streaming Soul Reaver.

This will be the first time I've ever seen a VTuber stream this game. I also don't know if she's played Blood Omen yet.

Amiya mostly plays older games like this. There've been a lot of times where I've been surprised to see her streaming a more obscure old game I enjoyed but forgot about, or an old game I wanted to play when it was new but never got the chance to.

Mapocolops Has been doing let's plays of the Legacy Of Kain games.

He has played Blood Omen and is currently playing Soul Reaver 1.

His first Blood Omen episode:

His first Soul Reaver episode:

One of the artists who worked on Masters of the Universe: Revelation, recently got into the series and has made some great fan art re-imagining Raziel as both a vampire, and a Sarafan, on Twitter.

So why did Raziel turn into a wraith on death?

The Elder God said he was responsible for Raziel's transformation into a wrath. Whether he was telling the truth is another matter.

Pretty sure Raziel was spot on when he guessed that The Elder God was just there when he woke up.

But I forget. Do all vampires turn into wraiths, and Raziel was just the one that through sheer luck became a walking paradox, or was his turn into a wraith simply a by-product of the timeline needing something to reconcile the paradoxes he goes on to create?/have created?

There are similar creatures to Raziel called vampire wraths. Vampires souls that were stuck in the Spectral Realm that could absorb souls even if they returned to their bodies. Dumah and the Tomb Guardian have both spent time away from their bodies in the Spectral Realm.

It's also never really explained how Kain survived having the Heart of Darkness torn out of him. It's not even clear what he is anymore. He's not a Vampire since Moebius' staff couldn't affect him. But he's definitely not human again either.

My guess is that causality itself was keeping both Raziel and Kain alive since it was the only way to reconcile the temporal paradox of Raziel and the Soul Reaver. Raziel had to survive to one day be absorbed into the Reaver, and Kain had to survive to be the one to drive the Reaver into Raziel.

Then again considering Kain holds the power of all of the Pillars and is essentially a god, couldn't that be another reason?

The Pillars don't grant their guardians additional power. But the guardians are needed to maintain the Pillars.

Each pillar grants their Guardian powers associated with their pillar. The Guardians also do not age past a certain age which is the reason that Mortanius and Mobius have lived so long.

Even then, Kain was only the Guardian of Balance. He didn't gain powers from the other Pillars, and it's unclear what power the Balance Pillar actually gave him.

And the Pillars don't grant their Guardians immunity to being killed. That's how this whole mess started, with Ariel's assassination.

Edited by M84 on Oct 11th 2023 at 11:42:47 PM

They just get immunity to old age, they can die any other way.

I think the Balance Guardian was able to draw upon all the powers of the other Guardians, but not to the extent that they could? So it was basically the Master of None of the Guardians?

Also I'm pretty sure their role was to cull corruption within the pillars to maintain that "balance". Whereas the Conflict Guardian was supposed to protect the Circle from outside threats the Balance Guardian trims threats from within.

So technically Kain was fulfilling his role the whole time, even unknowingly when he refused his own sacrifice and much later ended up getting purified of Nupraptor's psychic corruption.

Even then, Kain was the only Guardian for all that time, so he wouldn't have gained powers from other Guardians.

Come to think of it, did Nupraptor's corruption prevent the birth of new Guardians? Or were there new Guardians being born one after the other, but Kain's empire kept killing them before they could realize their own destinies?

If the latter, were they inheriting the curse?