Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered releases on December 10th, a very cool thing happening this year. But did you know that Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain 1 & 2 were given the ‘PlayStation Classics’ treatment on November 19th? Being classics, they’re included in the Premium tier of PlayStation Plus. Not part of the Kain gang, having never played them before, I decided to hop in and look at the first game. Only playing for an hour or two, I managed to get hooked and now I’m about eight hours in and loving it. As interesting as I’m having such a good time with this game, even more interesting is the content of the game itself, secrets that eluded players for over twenty years, and the stories about the game’s creators.
The Story of Kain: Lore and Revenge
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is a peculiar game. Shown to the player from a somewhat isometric/top-down perspective, you control Kain, a vampire. Kain starts as a nobleman, refused service at a local tavern, and is subsequently slain outside only to be raised in his crypt as a vampire. A tale as old as time, what’s the first thing you want to do after being risen from the dead as a vampire? Find your family and loved ones? Use this newfound power for good? Nuts to that, Kain wants revenge! Now, that’s a glib interpretation of what’s happening. Kain is using his powers to restore balance to Nosgoth by killing the corrupt guardians now plaguing the lands. The story and the lore is surprisingly deep for a top-down hack n’ slash from the mid-90s. You’ll learn about the world through interactions with people and enemies, as well as vista markers resting on the ground as little red symbols, occasionally showing you an up-close picture of a waysign or even an image of some far off location.
Immediately I was struck by the general feeling and look of the game, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain looks like it could be an Infinity Engine game, Bioware’s in-house engine for games like Baldur’s Gate 2 and Planescape: Torment, . The animations are slow, the combat is clunky, and the blood is ample. The hud displays an image of Kain as a vampire flanked on both sides by vampiric skulls. Kain’s armor and weaponry change depending on what you have equipped in the game. Below each skull are the health and mana indicators. Health is measured by an expanding blood vial while mana is measured by blue runes above a blue orb. Both can be expanded upon by finding empty blood vials and lightning runes throughout the world. Immediately below Kain is his equipped spell followed by a sun and moon indicator and a sundial. The time of day and moon phase is important to finding secrets throughout the world.
When Kain gets hit, blood empties from his health vial. What’s a vampire to do? Luckily, though the world is full of monsters and creatures from vampiric lore, it’s also full of humans. Navigating around dungeons you’ll find all manner of humans chained to walls begging to be set free. Thanks to the dedicated ‘drink blood’ button, Kain will hold out his hand and blood will be sucked from the human followed by blood dripping from the top of the screen of Kain’s blood vial. Truly remarkable stuff, the attention to detail puts this game ahead of its time. Likewise, attacking human enemies can put them in a bit of a dazed state which allows for blood sucking. The second weapon you get is a mace and two quick whacks of that put almost anyone in a daze, their blood ready for the taking!
Primarily, Kain can attack in the four cardinal directions though he’s capable of attacking diagonally, it’s very difficult. Even using a joystick, Kain prefers to attack his opponents straight on. Occasionally shouting, “Vae victis!” or laughing maniacally as he slaughters enemies becomes more humorous when you get the mace and start attacking rocks. I like to imagine Kain had some great tragedy befall him at the hands of rocks and it amuses him greatly now that he’s the rock crusher. Kain can take on other forms, like wolves, bats, mist, or disguise himself so guardsmen or bandits won’t attack him. And throughout the world, you’ll find single-use spell cards that Kain can bank to use at a later time. The spells have names like ‘flay’ and ‘implode’ with images of blood on them to evoke a horrific idea of what’s happening to the poor people you’re inflicting these spells. Of course, the enemies in the game just burst into bloody pixels, but you get the idea.
Though Kain seems very powerful, lots of things can hurt him easily. Sure, magic and steel will drain that blood vial quite quickly but the sun, snow, rain, these are the silent killers. Exploration is key in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and if you are exploring you will find fountains of blood that empower Kain. Some of them will allow Kain to walk around in snow and rain without taking damage, but the sun is an insidious killer that will not abate. The boss fights are tough, and heck, even some of the regular fights can be tough early on before there are more equipment options. The rewind/save state functionality of PlayStation Classics has been invaluable in seeing me through this game. And as I’ve been exploring, it’s easy to see how something could be missed for quite a long time.
Blood Omen’s hidden pirate ship, the H.M.C.S. Bitter
In 2010, a group of Russian fans set out to recreate Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain in 3D. No easy task, they managed to extrapolate a lot of data from the game, and lo’ and behold, a secret area was discovered. The H.M.C.S. Bitter resembles a large pirate ship named after the captain and potential tavern proprietor. On discovery, it was determined that, without a walk-through-walls cheat the H.M.C.S. Bitter was impossible to get to and was simply unused content. In 2017 however, game director Denis Dyack confirmed that there was a legitimate way to gain access to the H.M.C.S. Bitter, it just hadn’t been found yet.
“But you can go to different corners of the world and trip invisible switches – and there’s four of them throughout the world – and you can actually get to that pirate ship.” – Denis Dyack
It wasn’t until 2020 that a video was uploaded showing where to find the invisible switches to legitimately access the H.M.C.S. Bitter.
Just think about the timeline for the H.M.C.S. Bitter for a moment. In November of 1996, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain was released. Fourteen years later, this PlayStation 1 game is loved so much that a group of people far, far away from the Canadian studio that produced it decide to try and recreate the game in 3D only to discover what they think are unused assets. Ten years later, someone finally uncovers how to access this boat legitimately. It took twenty-four years to discover how to legitimately access the H.M.C.S Bitter.
Denis Dyack is an interesting fellow too. After co-founding Silicon Knights in 1992, the Canadian game developer not only directed Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain but also Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for the Nintendo Gamecube and Too Human for the Xbox 360. Too Human, a sci-fi game marrying technology with Norse mythology looked really interesting and received considerable buzz when announced. Unfortunately, Silicon Knights sued Epic over disputes regarding the Unreal Engine 3, lost, and was subsequently countersued for $4.45 million. Whether or not this is the reason Silicon Knights went under in 2014 is up in the air, but it no doubt contributed.
Why Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain Still Deserves Your Attention Today
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain has an interesting, for lack of a better term, legacy. Over a three-and-a-half year development cycle, Silicon Knights created a very fun and influential game with a story that reaches beyond the limits of the game world. It’s almost silly I’ve waited this long to play it but with the Soul Reaver games getting remastered, it was a nice treat for Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain to be released into PlayStation Classics. I know this year has been full of games and you’re probably looking forward to ending out the year trying to get through all of them. But if you find yourself looking for a break from big releases to something a little more retro, give Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain a look.
