Here, doomed souls wail, and physics are contorted.
You’re also in possession of the eponymous Soul Reaver – a blade of spectral energy bound to your right arm that only manifests when you’re at full health, and what you will use to reap the souls of the damned.īecause you have been revived as a wraith, your physical form decays in the material world (dressed up with all its decaying 19th-century industrial architecture) and the game will often force you to shift into the spectral realm instead.
The game, and series as a whole, loves its dramatic irony. A hub that was also the scene of your execution, for what it’s worth. Phasing through walls, swimming, climbing, and constriction each allow you to open up new areas, and explore further and further from the hub from which you emerge back into Nosgoth. As you absorb their souls, you gain their powers. Spare no clemency.īecause this is a video game, this ‘redemption’ arc also sees you collect powers handily enough, each of your rival lieutenants has also evolved in some way in your absence. Wreak havoc on the hypocrites that damned you.
A dormant god, irritated that vampires and their free will have got in the way of all his divine machinations, has revived you, setting you on a path of vengeance: seek out your brothers, and kill them. It’s an analogy that hits pretty close to home even now, some 22 years later.Īs your head clears and the intro music fades, you discover that you have become a fallen angel complete with ragged wings made of flayed skin, remnants of your cursed evolution. The world is twisting, dying in agony at a glacial pace, and the vampire lords – your brothers – are more concerned with their internal politics than the fate of the world at large. Humans are confined to walled cities and hunted for sport. Over time, vampires have become the apex predators of the world above. You learn that it’s been centuries since Kain condemned you to die for the crime of surpassing him in evolution. You are a wraith, cursed to feed on souls instead of blood. You awaken in a ruined body stripped of its vampiric glory. Nosgoth was infested with creatures doomed to immortality, and you – Raziel – felt hunted and vulnerable at every turn.Īfter that booming intro, things quieten down for a while. The world-building alone in Nosgoth remains some of the best I’ve ever experienced in games as a medium, and a cast of trained stage actors brought gravitas and intent to their roles.
Writer and director Amy Hennig – who would go on to write and develop the Jak and Daxter and Uncharted games – was eager to introduce players to some pretty lofty philosophical concepts (the belief that the cosmos is ruled by a malevolent “pretender” god, that humans are prisoners in a spiritual lie, and that mankind’s struggle is a fight for free will in the face of seemingly insurmountable fate) whilst pulling on narrative beats from Milton’s Paradise Lost.Ī bit much for a PlayStation game in the 90s, no? But the result was extraordinary. As a result, Soul Reaver feels like a proper tribute to the gothic origins of vampire mythology. Developer Crystal Dynamics invested a significant portion of the game’s two-year development cycle into framing vampires – and their ruined descendants – in a more authentic light. Appealing to whatever it was inside me in 1999 that would also make me a helpless goth well into the 00s, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver perfectly encapsulated the brooding vampire chic that spread like blood in water around the Millenium.īut where Blade, Interview with a Vampire, Buffy and everything else obsessed with exsanguination kept things fairly light and modern in comparison, Soul Reaver opted to study vampires properly. It was the first time I’d ever hear the word ‘deified’, it was my first exposure to a myriad of gothic tropes, and it – probably – pricked the thumbs of my first true gaming love. Who was Kain? Why did he look so pissed? What had corrupted this imposing, beautiful, terrifying land of Nosgoth? Why is Kain casting me into the depths of a watery hell? Will I ever find out? What the hell is going on?īefore you figure any of that out, the brutal, edgy shock of that flawless intro draws you in. Just like that, in a squall of squealing synths and gothic beats and carried on that hypnotic voice, I was sold.
I am Raziel, first-born of his lieutenants.” His contempt for humanity drove him to create me and my brethren. Few know the truth: he was mortal once, as were we all. “Kain is deified,” says protagonist, Raziel, over a blast of intimidating industrial music that’s liable to give even Trent Reznor gooseflesh.