Ken McCulloch, co-creator of Blood Omen, arrested by the police

As Kotaku informed, police has pressed charges against Kenneth McCulloch for child pornography. I would almost not regard this news, but the fact that McCulloch was the lead artist and writer for Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, makes it hard to miss. McCulloch was consequently fired from Precursor Games, company which formed out of Silicon Knights, which were devastated by a 9 million dollar lawsuit from Epic.

An old Soul Reaver preview and review from PSM

I dug through my old Czech PlayStations magazines and decided to scan everything LOK related. The articles are very interesting since they contain very early images and information which never got into the game itself. I will post more stuff soon.

This first set of pages is from PSM no. 12, which includes a Soul Reaver review. Apart from getting Raziel´s name wrong ("Ralziel"), it features a lot of very early screnshots of areas and template enemies. It even features the test room and early Glyph icons. The review also mentions imbuing the Soul Reaver with elements of water, fire, sun light or souls of your enemies.

Download the PSM review

 

The "clawed" title

Early shots of Melchiah, Dumah, Ruined City and the Lighthouse

Early Rahab, the test room with glyphs and Blood Omen comparison

More shots of early enemies

Shot of Abyss and some strange star ornament in the Cathedral

Zephon and Glyphs

Undercity Lair screen on top left

Here is the preview from PSM no. 11. It mentions that Raziel constructed his wings right before Kain got his own, or that Raziel will face Kain three times and Kain having the strength of eight bosses. It also describes that by imbuing the Soul Reaver into fire, ice, water, etc., it can destroy specific enemies.

Download PSM 11 SR preview

 Notice the picture of fledgling Turelim with glowing red eyes

 Early vampire and Undercity screenshots

Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun revealed *UPDATE*

Divine Shadow uncovered yet another great find about Legacy of Kain. By doing research he discovered that a single-player Legacy of Kain game was being made from 2010 till 2012 and got cancelled by Square Enix, because they believed it could not reach the expected sales amount. Legacy of Kain Dead Sun would have taken place in Nosgoth´s far future, much further after the SR1 desolate wasteland. Revolving around the story of blue skinned vampires which could shift between planes and reave souls, it would have Gein as the main protagonist, a Saradin vampire. According to Divine Shadow, the gameplay would be very much like SR1, with open world and exploration as its focus. It would have featured brutal fights and also frequent spectral realm shifting. It would focus heavily on the story of the Saradin vampires and their order, and also uncover secrets of the Elder God. (Source: Neogaf post by Divine Shadow).

UPDATE: Nosgoth´s community manager, George Kellion, provided an insight into Dead Sun and some additional artwork. He also confirmed that mp game Nosgoth will not reuse the same assets as Dead Sun nor it will share its story.

All images in this article have been originally posted by Divine Shadow

Defiance Overhaul Texture pack by the Hylden

The Hylden made an amazing texture overhaul of Defiance, adding additional details to characters/environments/particles. Below are few examples of his awesome work. You can download the texture packs by clicking the link above (google drive). You will need TexMod to run this.

The pack includes new textures for all the main characters, Sarafan warriors, areas and also a Reshade. It also enhances several environmental textures in the Sarafan Stronghold, Reaver particle effects and spells, Earth Reaver platforms and jump and bat beacons.

UPDATE: The link in this article was linking to the old Eidos forums, which has been fixed now. 

 

Nosgoth in active development, says SE Community Manager George Kelion

Square Enix sent an official statement to VG247, explaining the recent rumours regarding the mysterious new Legacy of Kain title called Nosgoth. He explains that even though “Nosgoth exists and is in active development, but is not a traditional Legacy of Kain action-adventure game”. I am really worried by his words that "The community should not be thinking of Nosgoth in terms of a single-player experience.” which basically confirms that it is multiplayer game only (the recent finding of BCMPGame.exe in AMD drivers log confirms this as well). Also, he said that the game won´t be announced at this year´s E3. He also confirmed that it is not being developed at Crystal Dynamics.

You can follow Kelion´s twitter account, where he was asked by fans about the new game (Thanks for the link, Corlagon!) or read the Eidos forums, where he communicates with the fans.

Newest AMD patch logs include War for Nosgoth *UPDATE*

The new Pillars logo

LOK fan Corlagon unearthed, that War for Nosgoth is mentioned in the files of the latest AMD patch. The list includes many recent games like DmC, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Far Cry 3, Resident Evil 6, etc. The game on the list is entitled as "BCMPGame.exe" and it supposedly means "Black Cloth MP game" (thanks to Corlagon figuring it out). E3 is just around corner and perhaps we learn more about War for Nosgoth there.

UPDATE1: The game was spotted in Steam database under the name Nosgoth. It mentions Psyonix Comp and the app itself was added 4 months ago under codename: Black Cloth. Twenty days ago they changed the name to Nosgoth and logo was added. The profile it seems is being constantly updated. Interestingly enough, Psyonix had previously worked on a vampire themed game called Vampire Hunter: The Dark Prophecy, which was cancelled for unknown reason.

UPDATE2: Kevin Riepl (made music for Gears of War) states on his LinkedIn profile, that he was working on Nosgoth for Square Enix/Psyonix. You can see his portfolio also on IMDB.

UPDATE3: Kevin Riepl renamed the title "Nosgoth" to "Unannounced Title =) (VG) Square Enix/Psyonix", the same case as with the story board artist Richard Buxton earlier this year (he completely removed the picture and any reference to it).

UPDATE4: Nixxes, the company which ported all previous Legacy of Kain titles in the past, has posted two unnanounced titles on its page. Could one of them refer to War for Nosgoth?

I think as of this point of time we can deduce, that the game indeed exists and it might be announced very soon. In an article about Psyonix´ game, Gamasutra mentions their background:

"Founded in 2001, Psyonix is an independent game development studio focused on original IP creation and cross-platform Unreal Engine based productions. Located in San Diego, the studio has contributed to a number of blockbuster titles including XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Mass Effect 3, Bulletstorm, and Gears of War.  Clients include EA, Epic Games, Microsoft, Sony, 2K Games, and Square Enix." (Cited from GamaSutra)

Psyonix specializes in using Unreal Engine, so this new Nosgoth game must use it as well. They only did one small title for PSN themselves, as they are more specialized in providing outsourcing for bigger developers such as Epic, Microsoft, 2K, etc. (Source: Psyonix official site).

Soul Reaver Walkthrough part 3 & 4 out

After a long pause, I have returned to continue my Soul Reaver walkthrough. Part 3 continues right where part 2 left off, after obtaining the wraithblade and heading east to the Silenced Cathedral. As the area itself is so huge, there are only two sidequests present - the first eldritch energy upgrade located in Necropolis and the second is getting a health piece after solving a block puzzle in the Cathedral. I also switched from widescreen picture to 4:3, since the picture was too stretched. Part 4 contains acquiring the Stone Glyph and uncovering the secret of the Sarafan Tomb.

Part 3 - Silenced Cathedral

For those who missed the previous parts you can watch them here:

Part 2 - Confrontation

Part 1 - Quest for Melchiah

Blog news and Raziel model editing

It has been a while since I updated my blog, so decided to post a short update on what is new. For an easier navigation on the blog, I put up pictures with links onto the right side. Since the soundtrack page has been buried under newest articles, now you can access it with ease. The "Why was Legacy of Kain cancelled?" article is now featured there as well.

I have also started to work on improving Raziel´s model from Defiance. Below you can see the original model on the left and the edited model with SR2 textures on him on the right. I have slightly modified his head as you can see below. The hair bump on his head is now much less exaggerated, I have fixed his long ears and made them less sticking out. Not all of his textures are fully replaced, as this in still work-in-progres.

 

 

 

 

Square Enix registers War for Nosgoth domain name

According to Siliconera.com and many other sites such as NeoGaf, Square Enix had recently registered a new domain name titled warfornosgoth.com, which implies there might be indeed a game in the works. This would explain the constant "no comment" about the questions of the franchise´s resurrection. It is unknown as to what plans has S-E with this domain, but this means the series has not been forgotten just yet.

UPDATE: According  new OXM article, it seems that in 2011 artist Richard Buxton made a Legacy of Kain-ish storyboard and when asked about the piece, he replied he can´t comment on that. Is that another hint that something is going on?

UPDATE 2: Buxton took down the storyboard image along with description altogether...

Here is what the storyboard could possibly represent:

Amy Henning interview from EGM

Amy Henning shared her info from her years working in Silicon Knights and Crystal Dynamics. The full transcript was taken from the magazine by Laura Organa Solo and is found here.

New Soul Revenant wallpapers from Jake

Hey LOK fans, hope you spent your holidays well. Here is a small present by Jake from Soul Revenant - a first set of wallpapers. Who would have thought chased by Melchiah could have been even more scarier! The other brethren will be posted as well. You can vote in the poll to decide which brother do you want to see next for wallpaper. In the meantime, enjoy Melchiah.

Previous poll results
In the last poll, 39% of voters stated that they bought the Steam versions of Legacy of Kain, 30% owns GOG versions only, 20% of voters owns retail games, 9% owns both GOG and Steam versions. Glad you still support Legacy of Kain even after all those years.