Legacy of Kain is a series of 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 of Kain, 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.
This game had everything,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 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.
Here are some detail of all the games in the series
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, moulding 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. It is not clear what the duties were of Guardians of the Pillars, known as the Circle of Nine, in Guarding his or her Pillar; nor whether the Pillars are destructible and/or subject to physical damage, inflicted by physical or magical means. The first Nine Guardians were ancient vampires whose ghosts can be seen in Legacy of Kain: Defiance. Later, the Pillars were taken over by the Human Guardians as seen in Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen. How the original guardians died is unknown. Killing the Guardians seems to be the only documented way of damaging them, though seemingly nothing happened when the original guardians died. However, major catastrophes happen when the human Circle of Nine dies in the events of Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen.
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 of heroism and villainy.
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.Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain:
PlayStation,Microsoft 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.Blood Omen introduces Nosgoth, a fictional world designed with fantasy novel-like complexity,and gives the player control of Kain, a newly resurrected vampire seeking revenge against his murderers and a cure for his vampiric curse.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver(PlayStation,Microsoft Windows,Dreamcast,)
Based on a Crystal Dynamics game concept dubbed Shifter, which was integrated into the Legacy of Kain universe at an early point in development.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.The game introduces a new protagonist, Raziel, one of Kain's six "sons" and lieutenants.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2(PS 2)
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 its predecessor successful, but they decided to eschew the 'complete a level, fight a boss' game flow of the previous game in favor of a more story-driven approach. Raziel is still in pursuit of Kain, but now he must uncover the mysteries surrounding his own destiny.
Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain (PlayStation 2,Xbox,Microsoft Windows,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. 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: Defiance(PS2,Xbox,PC)
The fifth and final 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.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.
I would also like for them to make another one. The last one has left them lots to work with.
ReplyDeleteYes I was hopinh for a update of this series.But it don't look like we are going to get it.
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