Legacy of Kain 

is a series of fantasy action-adventure video games developed initially by Silicon

Knights in association with Crystal Dynamics. After a legal battle, Crystal Dynamics continued the series
without Silicon Knights and Eidos Interactive became the publisher. Each game in the series incorporates
elements of action and puzzle-solving in its gameplay and all are set in the fictional setting of Nosgoth,
united by the character ofKain, the series' amoral vampire antihero. Although technically a pentalogy, the
series is effectively made up of two trilogies telling the separate stories of Kain and Raziel, both
culminating in Defiance.

To date five games comprise the Legacy of Kain series, each one developed for video game
consoles and later ported to Microsoft Windows. The series has enjoyed critical success, and has been
widely praised for high-quality voice acting, storytelling, and visuals.[1]

Contents
 [hide]

1 Development

2 Games

3 Overview

o 3.1 Desti

ny and fate

o 3.2 Time

travel

4 Music

5 Reception

6 See also

7 References

8 External links

[edit]Development

The idea behind Legacy of Kain was first conceived by Denis Dyack, the founder of Silicon Knights, as "a
game which adults would want to play", featuring a strong narrative with cinematic elements and
gameplay that demanded thought as well as reflexes.[2][3] Crystal Dynamics agreed to publish the game in
1993, and it was in development for three years, undergoing a substantial expansion mid-process which
required Silicon Knights to increase its staff level. Crystal Dynamics sent several staff to assist Silicon
Knights.[2] After "herculean efforts", Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain released in late 1996 to success and
acclaim.[3]
In 1998 Silicon Knights filed a suit against Crystal Dynamics for rights to the Legacy of Kain IP, requesting
an injunction to prevent Crystal Dynamics from marketing a sequel to Blood Omen which they were
developing without Silicon Knights involvement.[4] Silicon Knights settled its legal dispute with Crystal
Dynamics privately, and Crystal Dynamics retained rights to the Legacy of Kain franchise provided that
future games credit Silicon Knights as the original creator.[5] Silicon Knights walked away from their own
planned sequel, which would have been far different.[6] Meanwhile, Crystal Dynamics' sequel, Legacy of
Kain: Soul Reaver was highly anticipated despite several delays, and it featured on the covers of over ten
game industry magazines.[7] Upon its release in 1999 Soul Reaver was hailed as a technical achievement
for its data-streaming game engine, which eliminated the loading pauses that were so prevalent in
PlayStation-era games.[7][8] A commercial and critical success, it sold 1.5 million units worldwide,[9] and the
strong reactions of players to the game's cliffhanger ending impelled the developers to come forward and
allay concerns that it was released unfinished.[10]

While Soul Reaver was still in development, Crystal Dynamics assembled another team to create a game
that would succeed to the Blood Omen title, and when the Soul Reaver team started work on their follow-
up in late 1999, two Legacy of Kain games were in simultaneous development.[11] Legacy of Kain: Soul
Reaver 2 had an accelerated development cycle and was released after two years, despite switching from
PlayStation to sixth generation consoles early in the project.[12] At first, it was a PlayStation 2 exclusive in
conjunction with Sony[13], but eventually, a port by Nixxess Software was released for PC. Soul Reaver
2 was a sales success, though it did not eclipse that of its prequel.[14] Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain had
a longer development period, and released six months after Soul Reaver 2. A key point of focus for
the Blood Omen 2 team was the main character, Kain;[15] Crystal Dynamics had "a huge investment in
Kain as a character".[16]Despite middling critical reception it was released on four platforms and sold well.
[14]

The fifth and most recent game in the series "started life as Soul Reaver 3",[11] but the developers decided
to take the game in a new direction, uniting elements of the two sub-series into one game with re-vamped
game systems. They picked the title Legacy of Kain: Defiance to reflect the new focus.
However, Defiance did not meet Eidos' sales expectations,[17] and this, combined with the exit of two key
Crystal Dynamics staff members (director/writer Amy Hennig and game designer Richard Lemarchand)
shortly after the release of Defiancesparked fan speculation that it would become the last Legacy of
Kain game. The deaths of voice actor Tony Jay and Crystal Dynamics employee Kyle
Mannerberg[18] were regarded as further setbacks. Nonetheless, there are signs that Crystal Dynamics
has not forgottenLegacy of Kain in the form of easter eggs in Tomb Raider: Legend, and statements from
Eidos US CEO Bill Gardner expressing interest in reviving the Legacy of Kain series.[19]

[edit]Games
 Title Notes

NA
 1996
 1997
PAL

Blood Omen: Legacy || PlayStation

of Kain Windows || A 2D action-adventure game in the same vein as Diablo. The game's selling
points included its 50+ hour length and the wide array of items and abilities the player
character commands.[20] Blood Omenintroduces Nosgoth, a fictional world designed with
fantasy novel-like complexity,[21] and gives the player control of Kain, a newly resurrected
vampire seeking revenge against his murderers and a cure for his vampiric curse.

NA
 1999
 1999
PAL

|| PlayStation
Legacy of Kain: Soul Windows
Reaver Dreamcast || Based on a Crystal Dynamics game concept dubbed Shifter, which was
integrated into theLegacy of Kain universe at an early point in development.[22] The game's
staff likened the technological advance from Blood Omen to Soul Reaver to the evolution
of The Legend of Zelda series from the Super Nintendo to the Nintendo 64 - bringing the
franchise into 3D while maintaining a similar style.[23] The game introduces a new
protagonist, Raziel, one of Kain's six 'sons' and lieutenants.

NA
 2001
 2001
PAL

Legacy of Kain: Soul || PlayStation 2

Reaver 2 Windows || A direct sequel to Soul Reaver which picks up the story where the previous game
left off. The developers' overall goal was to retain the elements that made the prequel
successful,[24] but they decided to eschew the 'complete a level, fight a boss' game flow of the
prequel in favor of a more story-driven approach.[25] Raziel is still in pursuit of Kain, but now
he must uncover the mysteries surrounding his own destiny.

NA
 2002
PAL
 2002
|| PlayStation 2
Xbox
Blood Omen 2: Windows
Legacy of Kain Nintendo GameCube || Developed by a different team at Crystal Dynamics, this sequel
to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain has many of the qualities that make the series popular, but
shifts the focus more on gore and combat, while the puzzles were criticised as simplistic.
[26]
 The setting, an enormous industrial city, is a departure for the series. In this game, players
again control Kain in his campaign to conquer Nosgoth. The events of Blood Omen 2 did not
occur in the original history, and only took place in Nosgoth's timeline due to a paradoxical
event which took place in the final act of Soul Reaver 2.
Legacy of Kain: NA
 2003
Defiance
PAL
 2004
|| PlayStation 2
Xbox
Windows || The fifth Legacy of Kain game represents an effort to consolidate and re-balance
 the storytelling, puzzle-solving and combat aspects of the series, taking cues from Devil May
Cry in gameplay.[27] The player takes control of both Kain and Raziel to discover how their
destinies are intertwined, concluding on a hopeful note, but without full resolution.
[edit]Overview

The series features an extensive storyline that is expanded during each game. Most of the individual
games deal with a subset of the storyline; since the general timeline is non-linear, later games include
pieces of the story from the past, present and future. The uniting element of the series is the unlife of
the vampire Kain, but the story introduces the player to many other characters and sub-plots. Every game
in the series is narrated in past tense by either Kain, Raziel, or both.

Nosgoth is an ancient battleground for which two species have been at war since before history - the
Ancient Vampires and the Hylden. The Hylden in earlier times waged an all out war, but in modern times,
fight through surrogates and pawns. The level of sophistication their warfare has developed is staggering,
and much more realistic for such a protracted battle than the wasteful, exhaustive and ultimately short-
term warfare style originally endorsed by both species. Each species moves in some way from behind the
scenes, manipulating events slowly and deliberately, molding and preparing the lesser peoples of the
world (humanity) to act eventually in their favor, with individual moves often taking centuries or millennia
to completely unfold.

In ancient times, the Hylden had attempted to put a decisive end to the war by developing a super-
weapon which would extinguish the life of the world. This weapon violated a number of the fundamental
laws governing the nature of the world and reality, severely upsetting the balance of life and death, which
the Ancient Vampires held to be sacred. The Pillars of Nosgoth were erected in order to restore balance
to the land and ensure that these governing dynamics, which the Ancients divided into nine spheres, held
firm. Furthermore, the Vampires enacted a massive exile, banishing the Hylden race from Nosgoth. Each
of the nine pillars represents one of the governing forces of the world, and each pillar had a Guardian.
The nine spheres of law are Death, Conflict, States, Energy, Time, Dimension, Nature, Mind, and
Balance.

However, by the time of the games, their power is waning and some (most notably the Hylden) seek to
destroy the pillars entirely. It is unknown whether there was ever a time of peace in Nosgoth or whether
one will ever come to pass. It is also revealed later on that the Pillars served a dual purpose: along with
preserving the balance of the land, the Pillars acted as a gateway, banishing the Hylden into a desolate
dimension, inhabited by numerous monsters which are known as "Demons" in the games. The Pillars also
act as the lock to this gate, and as long as they stand the Hylden are trapped; this is the reason behind
the Hylden's use of numerous pawns and surrogates during the games (for as long as the Pillars continue
to weaken the Hylden are able to manifest themselves physically especially by possessing the bodies of
the dead).
Another interesting game mechanic in this series is that the player takes the role of two different
characters during the course of the games. For example in the Blood Omen games the player controls
Kain, but during the Soul Reaver games Raziel is controllable and the story is resumed from his point of
view. Finally in Legacy of Kain: Defiance the player assumes the roles of both Kain and Raziel at regular
intervals.

One of the true innovations of the Legacy of Kain series is the greatly involved storyline, with believable
characters, and shifting alliances and betrayals. Nosgoth is a dark fantasy land with an elaborate and
involved history, and that history is often revealed in reverse; new information often shows that what is
believed to be true is a lie. Furthermore, nearly every major character, or groups of characters, has both
aspects ofheroism and villainy.

[edit]Destiny and fate

An underlying element of the story is heavily concerned with destiny and throughout the series fatalism is
a strong theme. The idea that a person's destiny can be foreseen and thus altered is presented to the
player. Much of the final game, Legacy of Kain: Defiance, is devoted to discovering whether this
hypothesis is true or not. Some characters try to use this facet to their advantage by attempting to
manipulate other characters' (notably Raziel's) destinies. Free will is also challenged during the story and
a great number of the in-game characters believe that no one truly possesses free will, except Raziel.
Therefore these characters believe that Raziel is the key to altering destiny. Manipulation also plays a
major point in the progression of the story since nearly every character, at some point in the story, is
manipulated by another.

[edit]Time travel
Much of the story behind Legacy of Kain contains time travel. It is used as a method for creating a diverse
and very non-linear timeline. This time traveling ability is obtained through time streaming chambers and
the Chronoplast, all of which are credited to Moebius the Timestreamer, who is the Guardian of Time (one
of the nine guardians of the Pillars).

Many paradoxes are introduced during the story. These paradoxes further add to the confusion, as each
paradox that comes up throughout the games tends to rewrite history and the course of past, present, and
future events. The most notable and consistently mentioned of these time changing paradoxes is the one
in the original Blood Omen, where Kain travels back in time and kills a past king (and future tyrant). In the
series, the only consistent cause of these paradoxes is the meeting of a past version of the Soul Reaver
weapon with a future one.

The events of Blood Omen 2 (see below) are the product of a paradox created in Soul Reaver 2, a fact
which initially confused fans before enough time had passed for notes to be compared between games.
[edit]Music

The music of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain was composed by Steve Henifin, the composer for the Silicon
Knights sound team. For Soul Reaver the director, Amy Hennig, selected Kurt Harland of synthpop
band Information Society, then employed by Crystal Dynamics, to compose the music. According to
Harland, a colleague introduced the Soul Reaver team to his work through "Ozar Midrashim", a track from
Information Society's 1997 album Don't Be Afraid.[28] This track went on to feature in Soul Reaver as the
opening theme. Harland worked with audio engineer Jim Hedges in the creation of an adaptive audio
system for Soul Reaver which allowed the music to change based on in-game context.[23] This approach
became a mainstay of subsequent games in the series. Harland and Hedges resumed the same
respective tasks in Soul Reaver 2, though Hedges also contributed compositions. The composition and
audio programming for Blood Omen 2 were both handled by Jim Hedges. According to another staff
member, Hedges did the majority of composition work for Defiance while Kurt Harland was busy with
other projects.[29]

[edit]Reception

Aggregate review scores

Game Metacritic GameRankings

Blood Omen — 83%[30]

Soul Reaver 91 out of 100[31] 89%[32]

Soul Reaver 2 80 out of 100[33] 81%[34]

Blood Omen
67 out of 100[35] 73%[36]
2

Defiance 75 out of 100[37] 77%[38]

The Legacy of Kain series has been received positively by critics. EGM called the plot ofBlood
Omen "complex - and gory - enough to satisfy even the most die-hard RPG player."[39] GameSpot referred
to Soul Reaver as "a deep game possessed of myriad impressive little touches."[40] PC Magazine
cited Soul Reaver 2 for "stunning" graphics and a "fluid" battle system.[41] Official PlayStation
Magazine scored Blood Omen 2 at 6/10[42] and Defiance at 8/10.[43] Additionally, Soul Reaver, Soul
Reaver 2, and Blood Omen 2were all re-released on their respective PlayStation consoles as part of
Sony's Greatest Hits program.

Later games in the series were criticised for repetitive gameplay elements and unsatisfying conclusions,
and review scores of subsequent titles trend downward.