Today we have a new video focusing on analysing all the enemies found within Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. It appears that the textures from the alpha stages have been greatly downsized in the release version. PlayStation and PC version appear to have the worst texture quality (with the exception of Dumah), with the Alpha being the best and Dreamcast is close second. Below are the screenshot comparisons found within the video:
since the joyous discovery of the alpha version of SR1, the complete soundtrack v8 has been re-packaged into a special edition. I have re-arranged all the tracks to match the new progression throughout the game (Cathedral comes after Necropolis now, for example) and also split indoor Lighthouse tracks into Smokestack and kept outdoor ones for the Lighthouse. Pillars-tomb indoors became Oracle's Cave instead.
There were also brand new prototype tracks discovered and are now part of the OST3 (Necropolis, Cathedral, Pillars-Tomb, Drowned Abbey, Ruined City and Smokestack) and I have added Necropolis - spectral - puzzle which I somehow forgot to include last time! Read Me file has more detailed descriptions of all the changes. Hope you'll enjoy this new arrangement!
UPDATE 29.5.2020: Added 2 tracks to OST3 (Drowned abbey - sus v2 - proto and spectral danger) and also replaced the PlayStation credits version with the one from Dreamcast as it is much higher quality.
Thanks
to the recent alpha leaks, we now know that Soul Reaver underwent
extensive changes during its development process. Several years ago,
a few beta builds have been exposed and I did an extensive beta comparison with the final version of the game. That showed us the
transition just before the game's
shipping in mid August in comparison to the May and July builds of
the game. Some of the changes were more subtle, but unfortunately,
they did not contain any of the cut content of the game such as the
Undercity, Smokestack, Kain's
retreat or deleted forges.
Examining
the different beta builds, I was able to compare in detail on how the
game progressed and what type of changes were made between these
versions. With the newly emerged alpha builds, this gives me further
material to compare and come to the conclusion that the retail
release version has been somewhat downgraded since its alpha stages.
This is mostly apparent in the resolution of game's
textures, which has been notably lowered but lighting has on the
other hand was more or less improved. The draw distance is a bit hit
and miss and areas which had a farther draw distance are often found
to be the opposite when comparing between the alpha and the retail
version. Notice also the shift from strangely colourful spectral
realm to a more unified bright blue/green colours as seen in the
retail version. There is also a case of missing polygons on Raziel's
body in 16th Feb build. It seems that in an effort to
maintain his chest and lower jaw visible even with the cowl on, the
developers accidentally flipped over certain polygons on his body. In
the case of top of the buildings, these seem to be more conscious
removals in an effort to improve framerate and remove anything not in
player's sight from the
screen.
Below
are examples of the most notable changes in the different builds. If
there were significant changes in more than one build, I have
included them in the comparison. I have split this up according to
the areas and always tried to included the exact shot from all
builds, or at least an approximation. However, there are certain
cases where this wasn't
possible or that the location has moved. If you prefer to view the screenshots in higher resolution, download below!
