Raziel: "You said it yourself, Kain: there are only two sides to your coin."
When you christen a show with a name like "Forgotten Gems",
you will unavoidably face a problem of definition.
Which games actually qualify as a 'forgotten' gem?
Must they be entirely lost in oblivion
and will viewers call you a fraud if they still vividly remember them?
Are there maybe different ways in which a game can be regarded as .. forgotten?
Because even though there is an uncountable amount of
completely overlooked titles out there
that pretty much no one has ever even heard of -
today, I want to scratch the itch to talk about a gem that is very dear to me
and that, of that I'm certain, many of you will have heard of or even played it
- especially when you're a child of the Playstation-Dreamcast and PS2-XBox era.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and its direct successor Soul Reaver 2
came out between 1999 and 2001
- they were beloved by fans, critically acclaimed and financially successful.
So, by no means, we are talking about an overlooked, obscure misfit of video game history,
but despite its overall success
- and despite two more installments of the Legacy of Kain saga in 2002 and '03
and a rather unsuccessful free to play online game set in the same universe...
the general interest in the series and especially the two Soul Reaver games
slowly faded away over the years.
So in a way, this is good news, as it qualifies them for me to revisit them.
They have a lot of substance that makes them worth revisiting:
its visual design, prototypical and strongly influential game design,
an expansive universe filled with a fascinating and philosophical lore
and a cast of truly memorable and iconic characters,
that make Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
(and its sequel)
one of my favorite.... forgotten gems!
One of the reasons Greek Mythology is so timeless
is because these guys really knew how to write compelling, tragic characters,
who often ended up suffering completely out of proportion
punished by whimsical gods for their mortal sins.
I mean, they... basically invented the whole tragic hero
and all the tropes and terminology that comes with it.
Characters like Sisyphus, who was punished for his craftiness and deceit
by having to push a giant boulder up a hill,
see it roll down again and repeat this process for eternity.
Or Prometheus, who outsmarted Zeus and was therefore chained to a rock,
condemned to have his liver pecked out by an eagle
and have it grow back, every single day until the end of time.
In this vein, the story of Soul Reaver could be taken
right out of this prosaic universe of cosmic... schlimazels.
It takes place in the land of Nosgoth
- a lavish amalgamation of various real world mythologies.
For exmaple with elements of Hebrew, Norse and Celtic folklore
embellished with its own mixture history, characters and struggles.
At the center of it all is Kain,
a classic anti-hero character who was condemned to become
the first in a lineage of immortal vampires
and eventually subjugated the entiretyof Nosghoth
in a crusade that spanned over a millennium.
Hence the series' title: "Legacy" of Kain
Now, the origin story of Kain himself is - in good parts -
told in the predecessor, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen,
which is, in its own right, a fantastic top-down action RPG
that puts you in the shoes of the patriarch himself.
It is not stictly necessary to have played and finished it
to understand the plot of Soul Reaver,
but veterans of the game will find a handful of really rewarding
nods and throwbacks to it in Soul Reaver.
But oh well - Blood Omen on its own would make another fantastic topic for this series.
But I digress.
In Soul Reaver, you don't play as Kain, but assume the role of Raziel
- Kain's firstborn son and he is a textbook example of a classic tragic hero.
For a thousand years, he had served his father faithfully
as a lieutenant in his army on his conquest of Nosgoth
until one day, he became the first of the vampire kin
to evolve and surpass his master physically.
By growing a pair...
of wings.
His reward for this was hardly what he expected:
Kain felt threatened by his newly acquired prowess,
broke his wings and ordered his brothers to toss him into the abyss
- an endlessly deep pit of water
(umm... little side note: in this universe,
water has an agonizingly acidic effect on Vampires).
But this didn't simply mean his demise,
but he would instead find himself constrained in motionless agony
to the bottom of the abyss,
condemned to burn and dissolve for hundreds... of years.
Speaking of disproportionate punishment.
But after an eternity of perpetual torment,
Raziel suddenly found himself freed from the pit,
by an ancient, eldritch force that grants him the opportunity
to avenge his father's betrayal.
But the centuries of agony didn't leave him unscathed.
Hollowed out and tattered,
he finds that his being has undergone a terrible metamorphosis.
He no longer feels the vampiric hunger for mortal flesh and blood,
but instead finds himself possessed by a deeper, far more primal hunger.
He now craves to devour the souls of his victims
to nourrish his life essence.
He's become a Reaver of Souls,
unbound and out to kill his brothers and his maker
in order to avenge their treachery.
This is where we take control.
Raziel's path of revenge is played in classic, early 3D-era action adventure style.
We control him from a third person perspective
and traverse the ruined and decayed land of Nosgoth,
while taking on a variety of different foes mostly in melee combat.
It's in many ways a game of its time,
kind of like a mixbag between the early N64 Zelda titles
like Ocarina of time and God of War.
Aside from impaling or torching your foes
and devouring their souls to finish them off,
we explore the semi-open world Metroidvania style
- meaning the places you visit are often restricted by obstacles
that require Raziel to gain new abilities in order to pass them.
Like learning to scale walls, to phase through gates
or to swim in water without dissolving.
The gameplay is also spiced up with occasional puzzle passages
- often times of a "move blocks to the right position" kind
and one of my pet peeves:
Early 3D platforming.
Crowd: "Booooh!"
Now most of the times, this not much more than a bit cumbersome
if you're used to the comforts modern 3D platforming controls,
but a handful of parts are nothing short of infuriating
when you have to land pinpoint accurate jumps
without the amount of precision necessary for it...
Sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet if you wanna enjoy the rest.
But aside from that,
one of the most noteworthy aspects of Soul Reaver's gameplay though,
is its death mechanic.
Raziel, as we said, is no more bound to a mundane existence of flesh and blood,
but he possesses the ability to transcend between the mortal - the material realm
and the realm of souls at any time.
This adds a very interesting layer to the way
you observe and interact with your surroundings.
Sometimes for example, certain parts of the level architecture
turn out to be subtly different in the spectral realm
- like a thin fault becoming large enough to traverse it
or walls and pillars subtly changing their shape and height.
Or the fact that objects in the spectral realm,
including yourself, don't have any weight.
So you have to cleverly employ the differences between those two worlds
in order to overcome obstacles that would otherwise be
... uh ... un-over..comable.
And as in any good open-world-ish action adventure
your path isn't completely linear.
Like in classic Zelda games or Metroids for example,
there is a standard order towards which the game nudges you
to approach each of your brother's lairs, but...
if you use your abilities and the spectral realm cleverly,
you can sequence-break good parts of the game
and also acquire a load of optional abilities and power-ups for the observant player.
All in all, the combat - albeit somewhat repetitive over time -
feels very responsive, visceral and satisfying.
There's just something primal to first impaling your enemies
and then sucking their very souls out of them.
And all of this is topped off with a cast of interesting boss fights
that are mostly rather designed like puzzles under pressure
than mere reflex challenges.
It really didn't feel like it's already 18 years old to me...
But alright so far... this... describes the journey of the first game,
Raziel's merciless path of revenge on which he obliterates
his treacherous brothers and eventually faces Kain himself.
But at the end, it becomes apparent that this is only half of the story
and that the sequel will serve as the essential conclusion
that was planned all along.
These two games are inseparably intertwined
- two necessary sides of the same coin and frankly,
it's the sequel where the narrative arc really unfolds its true storytelling genius.
In terms of gameplay, the changes we experience are rather subtle:
Raziel luckily maintains most of his abilities acquired in the first part
and gains a plethora of new ones, but all in all,
everything will feel very familiar if you've just beaten the first game.
A very pleasant transition that allows you to focus
on the true star of this duology: The story.
Where the first game played in a post-apocalyptic decayed time and age,
long past the glory days of Nosgoth, with the second game,
we are starting to chase Kain through different time periods
and are allowed to witness the land in its prime.
What's so genius about it is that the writers had the audacity
to actually make the entire first part to be
basically just the setup to unleash all the narrative bombshells
during the course of the second game.
Revisiting different time periods of the history of Nosgoth
brings Raziel to some deep, introspective moments,
in which he discovers the origins of his kin, as well as his
- until that point, obscure and hidden angelic heritage.
And the story starts to delve into some really Nietzsch'ean concepts
like the irreversibility of time and the notion of eternal recurrence
- that everything happens over and over again
and how each person plays a tiny role in a much grander scheme,
orchestrated by ancient, explicitly titled "eldritch" forces
that steer the fates of all life, matter and existence.
His omnipotent benefactor - the one who saved him from the abyss
in the beginning of the first game
is a decidedly Lovecraftian entity:
a "giant squit" that slumbers beneath the earth,
who can hear every man's thoughts and wishes
and speaks directly into Raziel's soul.
Giant lovecraftian Squid: "But the wheel must turn.
Death is inexorable and cannot be denied!"
His sigil that we find scattered everywhere in his lairs and temples, by the way,
is the spiral: The symbol for an ongoing cycle of life
that gets more painful and excruciating with each iteration.
Moebius: "Death comes for us all, Raziel... it's just a matter of time."
Raziel's tragic hero journey gets turned up to 11 in this one
- when he uncovers, bit by bit, how his actions
- taken in good faith and motivated by an apparently honest cause
for rightful vengeance - ultimately turns out ot be
a seminal cause for Nosgoth's eventual downfall.
As if he's stuck in a pit of quicksand made out of dramatic irony,
Raziel learns that his naive motives and actions
inexorably make everything worse, the more he tries to make things better.
And as you experience crucial turning points in the history of the land,
you start realizing just how much your actions in Nosgoth's past
- depicted in the second part of the game -
were already reflected and foreshadowed in the postapocalyptic future of the first game.
It's one of those tales that feel straightforward during your first playthrough,
but that unravel layers upon layers of mind-blowing details upon revisiting them
- when you re-approach them with the full knowledge
of where Raziel's path is leading.
All of that completely underlines the theme of Eternal Recurrence, doesn't it?
That we all keep spinning the wheel of time over and over again
- each time a little different maybe -
but each time with the same outcome.
But ... does that mean that all attempts to improve one's fate
are ultimately futile?
Doomed to the inexorable destiny imposed on us
by the cosmically horrifying entities that
sadistically puppeteer with our lives, hopes and dreams?
Kain: "Apparently so,
but suppose you throw a coin enough times...
suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and its sequel Soul Reaver 2
are games whose memory deserves to be preserved.
Replaying them wasn't only fun from a pure gameplay perspective,
but it mostly surprised me by how much deeper
and more intricate the lore is than I remembered,
littered with -mostly- captivating and well-written theatrical acting,
fascinating art design, an original setting
and loads of intriguing archeological storytelling.
I will say that they are a bit cumbersome to get running properly on modern systems though
- since the PC ports of both games are ...
well, they're basically garbage, let's be honest.
You need external controller apps like Controller Companion or XPadder
to make them fully functional on a gamepad
- and to add insult to injury, the first game
- yes, the one with the already atrocious platforming parts -
doesn't even support analog controls at all on PC.
Only.
Keyboard.
Yep.
If you want to get the PC versions,
they're available for a steal on Steam and gog.com
- but I'd strongly recommend gog's version, since it's generally better optimized.
If you *can* though - try to go for the Dreamcast version of part 1
and the PS2 version of part 2
since they're the most optimized versions of the games
- emulate it if you have to!
I've added a link in the description to a compilation of helpful tips
to get them running on modern systems,
because it's...
been a seriously enraging hassle to get them running properly to be honest.
And I don't want you to have to jump through the same hoops to enjoy these babies
- because my goal with this video is to make Soul Reaver a little less...
of a forgotten gem!
Thank you guys for watching.
I hope you enjoyed this little excursion into video game oblivion.
Let me know if you have any suggestions of intriguing titles of the past
that have fallen off the radar at some point
- that.. you'd like me to cover in this series.
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So... ta ta for now!