Soul Revenant FAQ update and screenshots

 We have been asked so many times in the last few months about the status of Soul Revenant and I am sorry I couldn´t post anything new earlier. I have been very busy but finally I got some free time to fully start working on Soul Revenant and made some progress.

Today I can finally reveal some new screenshots and information about the game. If you have any further questions, feel free to leave a comment.

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What is this project and why are you doing it?

Ever since I have learned about the deleted content and the ending of Soul Reaver, I craved to roam those areas. I had many dreams where I was trying to find the entrance to the Undercity or got lost on a search for Kain´s Mountain Retreat.

Most of this content was cut due to time restraints and hardware limitations, but I always wondered, what would the game be like if there hadn´t been any?

For years I was waiting, but it became clear that the game will never be remade as its sequels were produced. We want the game to be like a sister project to Blood Omnicide, and we think now it is a good time re-introduce this game back onto pc platform, in the wake of the release of a new mp game War for Nosgoth.

Our goal is not to surpass the original Soul Reaver, which would be impossible due to the amount of work needed, but to honour it. Only Dreamcast got a superior version back in 2000 and ever since, it never came to the pc.

The second main aim is to include the much eluded cut levels like the Undercity, Turel´s lair and the Mountain Retreat back into the game. Reconstructing them won´t be easy, as there are only few scraps of concept art, dialogue, videos and screenshots left. I will do my best to bring them back in form as close as possible to the original intentions of the authors.

The name and idea of Soul Revenant has been conceived by Jake and I took upon myself to direct this project since he is busy with Prodigal Sons and his other games. He is still on the team and helping out a lot.

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Are you using the same engine as Soul Reaver had?

No,  it´s running on a commercial engine (3D game studio) which does not have the limitation of original Soul Reaver (It has its own in return, though) and the game is being built using some of the assets from Soul Reaver1, 2 and Defiance and rest is custom models.  Game´s code is being written from scratch to play and behave like the original Soul Reaver game by our programmer.

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Will it still play the same?

Bear in mind that certain things could not be achieved only mimicked to best of our ability, as being a team of three people with no budget can only go so far. We did invest a lot of time into this project so I hope you will commend our efforts. We cannot reach the professional level of quality of the original Soul Reaver, but at least try to achieve a similar experience. Certain gameplay changes will be necessary but we will do our best to direct them in a manner which won´t interfere with the current gameplay mechanics.

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What would I need to play this?

In order to play Soul Revenant, you must legally own Soul Reaver 1, 2 and Defiance. It will require a simple check for these games on your hard drive, to prevent any legal problems (just like in the case with Blood Omnicide). We are using updated Raziel, Kain and Ariel models from Defiance which had been modified by me and retextured by the Hylden and the Pillars and Sluagh models are from SR2. Everything else is either from SR1 or custom made.

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Will there be a demo?

Yes, we plan a demo release and some trailer/gameplay video later.
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How far along is it and when it will be done?

So far it has been in development for two weeks and is being worked on almost daily. It´s still in a very early stage of development and lots of stuff is unfinished or temporary, so please bear that in mind when looking at the screenshots below.

We got a basic movement for keyboard&mouse and joypad input, character can run, jump, glide, attack, crouch, devour souls and shift realms. Animations need work but for now, we focus on making it playable at first, polish stuff later. I´ll post updates as the development goes further along.

As for the environments, Underworld, the path from Pillars Sanctuary to Abyss is done, for both spectral and material realms. They are currently just placed in the game, no additional models or decoration are in yet. The phase which we are in now is the assembly of the levels and programming all necessary actions for the game to work properly.

For a release date, I think when it´s done approach is best and updates will let you know how we are progressing.
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How is it an improvement over the original pc release?

In certain areas, it can never match the original game (e.g. animations), however, we strive to bring it as close as possible with certain improvements in mind:

- higher polygon characters and enemies
- improved distance visibility
- high res textures and menus
- additional level decoration
- includes the full soundtrack which was omitted in the pc release
- includes the cut levels, dialogue, abilities and story
- subtitles with language choice option
- gameplay changes (less block puzzles)
- lip sync
- bosses revamped
- enemies´ health and strength will vary
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Will it run on my pc?

Hardware-wise, this game won´t be too taxing on your pc, so you should be able to play this on most pcs with Windows.
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Is it for free?

Yes, there is no need to pay for anything BUT you must own the original Legacy of Kain games. If you do not have them yet, get them from GOG.com

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Can I help?

Yes, you can by submitting and contributing your ideas as how to improve the original gameplay of SR (ideas for puzzles, interactions, levels, etc.). You will be credited for any contributions which helped the development of this game. You can send your ideas and suggestions to ancientvampire(at)centrum.sk

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The SoulRev Team:

The team consist of me as a director and designer (doing basically everything except programming), programmer Kelly (which tackles all the issues with the code and the engine) and Jake Pawloski, who helps out with lot of additional art, textures and ideas.

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Disclaimer:

This is a non-profit, non-commercial project made by fans for fans of Legacy of Kain. We do not claim any ownership of the original game ideas, story, mechanics or assets. All of the original content is a copyright of their respective owners, e.g. Square Enix/Eidos and Crystal Dynamics.

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Screenshots:

War for Nosgoth FAQ available & new Dead Sun info

Since the information about War for Nosgoth was spread out on many pages on Eidos forums, Corlagon suggested to make a thread just with the Q&A alone. So I collected all the info and posted in this FAQ thread on Eidos Forums. It´s very useful for those not familiar with this game or if you simply want to recap what we know about it so far.

Meanwhile on Neogaf, Mama Robotnik posted more news regarding Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun, showcasing videos, screenshots and more information regarding it´s status.

New sections on blog added

I was contemplating to add About and Contact for longer time but I only got around to it today. I wrote a bit about myself and how I got to gaming. And since I documented my game collection, I have added a separate page for it as well. There is also a Home button which you can use together with the current blog logo pic. Hope you enjoy these new additions.

Amazing wraith Raziel cosplay!

It´s not often that Legacy of Kain cosplayers are seen around. There have been sightings of Umah, vampire Kain and Raziel, even Ancients, but wraith Raziel is a tough one to get right. However, this new one is one of the best wraith Raziel cosplay ever done! See for yourself in the gallery by SketchMcDraw.

Defiance Kain and Raziel promo poses

Here are some pics inspired by the promotional materials from Soul Reaver. They show edited models from Defiance with awesome skins from the Hylden and some of my own edits on Raziel. I will post some more pics in this post too, so check back later. Hope you like these!

Blood Omen 2 in-game OST

Hello LOK music fans,

it´s been years now since I recorded the BO2 in-game soundtrack for NR, but Tenaya, the owner of NR has been gone all this time, so I decided to upload it on sendspace in the meantime. Tenaya helped me with making the covers for this ost, so if you read this Tenaya, thank you and hopefully you will get online soon. Everybody else, enjoy this latest addition to LOK universe. If you want to listen to the remixed tracks from BO2, you can find it on the Lost Worlds.

Download Blood Omen 2 Soundtrack

Modified Defiance Kain for Soul Revenant

I have edited the model from Defiance so it matches the SR1 intro Kain as much as possible. Thanks to Hylden´s amazing skin skills, it was possible and I edited parts of his body which I thought need overhaul (mainly face and the shoulder strap). It still needs some smalle editing here and then, but after that it will be ready for rigging. Hope you like it!

Left Kain is the standard Defiance Kain with his original skin, middle one is standard Defiance Kain with Hylden´s skin and right one is edited Kain model with Hylden´s skin.

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.