Amy Hennig, one of the creative forces behind Legacy of Kain after the move to Crystal Dynamics, left for Naughty Dog in 2004, where she’d go on to blaze her own legendary path through the gaming industry.ĭespite Defiance being the last Legacy of Kain game ever released, that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a concerted effort from multiple developers to try and bring the series back. This was apparently deemed somewhat of a commercial failure by publishers Eidos, who moved on to other projects, chief among them being Tomb Raider: Legend. Unfortunately, Defiance would prove to be the last Legacy of Kain game to see the light of day, rumoured to have sold somewhere between 500,000 and one million copies. Defiance was the first game in the series to allow players to play as both Kain and Raziel, with the story following both characters and their respective paths separately. You with me so far?Īll three games were considered decent hits, leading Crystal Dynamics and Eidos to create Legacy of Kain: Defiance, basically the equivalent of the series’ Endgame. Essentially, Blood Omen 2 was in development at the same time as the predecessor to the game that allows the story of BO2 to make sense. However, Blood Omen 2 also takes place in an alternate reality created by the events of Soul Reaver 2. The Soul Reaver series takes place hundreds of years in the future from the events of the original Blood Omen, with Blood Omen 2 seeking to bridge the gap between the two games. The gameplay was described as more akin to Tomb Raider, with action to be found but a more enhanced focus on platforming and puzzle solving. Blood Omen 2 would once again see players take on the role of the titular Kain in an action-RPG formula, while the Soul Reaver games would focus on a wraith known as Raziel, who’s seeking to take down Kain. The development of Soul Reaver began in 1997, alongside Blood Omen 2, the sequel to the original game. This is where the story, at least as fair as the game is concerned, gets complicated. The dispute between the two was eventually settled privately, with the result being that Crystal Dynamics could continue the development on their Legacy of Kain follow-up, Soul Reaver, along with other derivative works in the future, so long as they properly credited original developers Silicon Knights. Within a year, the two were engaged in a legal battle for the rights to the series. Things were looking rosy between Crystal Dynamics and Silicon Knights, but unfortunately that didn’t last. We were convinced we could truly evolve the genre.”īlood Omen would launch in 1996 on the PS1, with a PC port launching a year later, and reviewers at the time were blown away by the game’s blend of core gameplay and storytelling, something that was practically unheard of at the time in gaming. Lyle Hall, a key producer for Blood Omen, had grand plans for the game: “To me it was obvious this game deserved a Zelda-style take on a vampire action RPG, and it immediately struck a chord with Denis. Silicon Knights were pitching multiple ideas at the time, including one that would go on to become Too Human (again, worth its own weight in articles), but Crystal Dynamics felt that the pitch for Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain had the most potential. Blood Omen was devised by Silicon Knights President Denis Dyack and art director/writer Ken McCulloch as a proposal called The Pillars of Nosgoth. The original game, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, was developed as a partnership between the publisher, Crystal Dynamics, and the developer Silicon Knights, who boast a company history worthy of its own series of retrospective articles. Five games over the space of seven years is a pretty impressive turn-around for a series that isn’t an annual release sports game, but it’s a story that’s not without its own issues. The Legacy of Kain series spans five games which launched between November 1996 and November 2003. The Legacy of Kain History Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver The question we’re asking is: will we ever see a new Legacy of Kain game? There’s several PlayStation games over the years that have been created in that genre, but perhaps none of them are quite as iconic as the Legacy of Kain series.īeginning life on the original PlayStation, but with a history that also includes the original Xbox, Gamecube, the SEGA Dreamcast and PC, the Legacy of Kain was a relatively short lived series that boasts both a tumultuous development story and a, for lack of a better word, legacy that’s still being felt to this day. 3D narrative focused action adventure games might have become a trend for PlayStation’s line-up of exclusives, but if we were to look back through the history of the console, you’d find that it’s not exactly a new formula for success.
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