Merry Christmas from the Ancient´s Den to all my fans!
Kain is already on his way to bring you all presents! If you haven´t watched yet, why not spend a cosy evening in the presence of Defiance? Complete walkthrough with modded visuals await you below:
Next year I will record and post a walkthrough of Soul Reaver 2 in widescreen mode.
Hope 2018 will be a good year for all of us!
I have recently discovered that both Defiance and SR2 have already widescreen patches published by afterdyons. You can find them on the widescreen forum here. Just download the files and place them where your game is located and enjoy the fullscreen beauty of Legacy of Kain on pc!
Patrick Johnson aka The Hylden has posted his portfolio on Art Station. He features many high quality models he made himself, some of which will appear in Soul Revenant as well. Take a peek at his awesome skills and you can also download all of those images (they make for an awesome wallpaper for a LOK fan like me). If you like what you see, you can also support him at his paypal: pagejson1@gmail.com
After few months of silence, I am back. With new computer and new ideas, hopefully, will be back here more often! I needed an upgrade so instead of investing money in a laptop which could not keep up with the current trends, went for build my own desktop this time and finally can keep up with modern games (i5 6600 for win7 and gtx 1060 6GB). Also purchased mechanical keyboard and wow, that is a huge difference! Fully recommend it to anybody who types a lot.
The latest progress in Soul Revenant revealed the new sluagh and Dumahim and next on the line would be the Melchahim. At the moment we are bit of stuck as we need a new gameplay programmer to help with combat, so if you know anybody who would be interested to join our team, please let me know. Kyle Misko is also working hard and he recently is tackling the soundtrack of Soul Reaver, reimagined for Soul Revenant. His latest piece is for the City and shall be unveiled soon. More frequent updates are found at our facebook page.
In two weeks, Comic Con is back at the Excel Arena and I will be attending all three days. Last time we were super exhausting coming back and forth to the venue, so this time we are staying over at hotel which is closeby. I can announce that I will be cosplaying as wraith Raziel once again on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, I will be cosplaying as one of my favourite japanese horror ps1 videogames. Can you guess? If not, come and say hello at Comic Con, I´ll be wearing grey and black.
That concludes a little round up for now, I will photos from Comic Con once it´s over. Only two weeks to go! See you there!
The latest video on Digital foundry might interest most of you. It includes a great in-depth analysis of the techniques used to make the game and it contains loads of information on how loading, textures and audio works. They even included some of my SR1 beta footage in there:
Do you have any collectible figures at home? There is a new website called Videogame Collectible Catalogue which could use your help! I have already contributed some of my pictures from my collection, but if you have anything which was not put up on the website just yet, feel free to submit your photos and join in the reward system!
SE Collective creator, Phil Elliott, wants to know whether you will be
interested in LOK game made by an indie company. Show some support for
our fan Soul Revenant project if you can! Show them that Legacy of Kain fans still exist and roam this land!
Nathan McCree wants to bring you a remastered orchestral soundtrack from Tomb Raider 1 - 3 and for it to happen, he needs our help! Donating any kind of amount will get us closer to the goal and get yourself some awesome goodies in the process like a CD jewel case or vinyl.
I have put together the official storyboard which was published in EGM 115 from February 1999. Never seen this anywhere else and it is quite easy to miss it as a strip on the bottom of the page about SR1.
I have recently made a collection of DVD cases for one of my LOK friends. If you ever burned dvds with all the cutscenes on and still watch them from time to time, why not print these covers to make them match your games? Thanks goes to Patrick who made a high-res version of Kain.
Just a few weeks before the performance I was on facebook, browsing through people's posts as usual. It was then, when I saw it. I previously bought tickets for Pokémon Symphony Orchestra in Apollo on 19th of December and then when I saw that Tomb Raider Suite will be performing first time ever, I was a bit dissapointed I didn't know about it a lot earlier. About a week before the event, I got time off for Sunday as well, so thought why the hell not and bought tickets for TR concert as a Christmas present for me and my fiance.
On the night of 18th, we arrived at Apollo with quite a big crowd of Lara fans gathering around the theatre. Getting in was pretty easy as we flashed our tickets past the doors, bought the programme and made way to our seats. Surprisingly we were offered better seats as not enough tickets have been sold apparently. Indeed that was true as minute before the opening the theatre was less than half filled with many empty seats around. The darkness settled in and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra started playing the Tomb Raider tunes, then Shelley Blond made an appearance and was our elegant host throughout the entire musical journey. It is hard to describe this entire experience in word, but I'll try my best. The expert composer himself, Nathan McCree, made an appearance in an unexpected interview at the start, which made us really excited for the whole experience. Throughout the concert they were also displaying various gameplay segments from the games which made the feelings and nostalgia really strong.
Everything began with Tomb Raider 1, released in 1996, and its memorable and completely unforgettable main tune. As the orchestra started playing it, many tears were shed. It was beatifully and masterfully performed and with the crisp sound of all the instruments, the chants, everything felt absolutely right. They immersed us in most of the TR1 tracks you remember and even added a little twist. For example the T-Rex hunt theme was made longer, as McCree was finally able to realize the tracks in their full lengths, as he explained later, not being limited by the length or bit size of the individual pieces.
Then Shelley Blond narrated us the success story of TR2 and the orchestra opened with a brilliant rendition of its main theme. They even pulled the track which I thought would be really difficult to do, I don't remember the official title, but you all sure remember it when it plays as Lara sets her first steps within the temple of Xian. There I have also learned that one of my beloved TR2 tracks is actually called Vertigo, which plays when Lara tries to reach higher ground in a house in Venice. It was also prolonged and it was pure joy listening to it. Very popular was the snowmobile trick, or Skiddo, as McCree labelled it. I did not think that an orchestra coud pull successfully pull it off but it was completely the opposite and many heads rocking back and forth was the proof of it.
After that, we finally reached Tomb Raider 3 and its main theme. Again, it was masterfully played and brought so much nostalgia to me personally. TR3 was the very first true 3D game I have ever played and as such, holds a dear place in my heart. I was a bit surprised that the Jungle cutscene with the crazy scientist Tony was performed as well and it fit the orchestra like a glove. Spooky Jungle is another one of my favourites and worked well. Also the mysterious sounding Puzlle Element track made a great appearance. Of course you could not have a TR3 experience without Geordie Bob track, which was again perfectly performed and loved every bit of it. At the end, McCree made another appearance and the audience clapped and screamed with excitement. The last performance was a medley of everything we heard so far and I wished for it never to end. There were also fun parts in between where they have included one of the TR fans' reactions to the game's beatiful music which were really hilarious.
Overall, the entire experience was completely unique, deeply personal and something to witness in your lifetime, especially if you are a TR fan. Being able to see the brilliant songs made live by an amazing orchestra and its conducter, Robert Ziegler, see Shelley Blond, Meagan Marie and Nathan McCree (even Winston made a surprise fun appearance!) in person was worth every pound spent on this event. The only downside was that there were not enough people witnessing this masterpiece maybe due to not enough of promotion, which is a shame. I only hope that there will be more concerts and a CD produced from this, because such experience must be shared with everybody. Thanks to everybody involved in this project and my gratitude goes to Nathan, Shelley and Meagan for letting us see them in person and getting their autographs (asking about LOK was a joke, btw).
PS: And how did this masterpiece sound like? Have a look! Mr. McCree kindly uploaded a recording of his new track, In the blood:
He also uploaded three tracks to soundcloud.com if you want to listen.
More info about the concert, pictures and its aftermath also found here.
While I am still in the middle of planning to post some more updates on my blog, in the meantime feel free to join my newly established FB page where I will post more frequent smaller updates which will be not posted here. It should also make contacting me a lot easier. Hope you enjoy reading and feel free to comment at:
