Legacy of Kain: Defiance
We take a huge look at Crystal Dynamics' blood sucking soul devouring epic. Hands on impressions and gameplay details inside.
Published: November 6, 2003
Over six years ago, PlayStation gamers were whisked away to the land of Nosgoth and introduced to Kain, an aristocrat who's attacked by bandits and slaughtered, left to die like any other prey. Kain awakens to find himself quite literally in Hell, and consumed by feelings of betrayal and revenge, he eagerly agrees to an offer by a necromancer to return to the world of the living to seek his revenge. The price he pays to cheat his fate, however, is a heavy one. Kain returns to the mortal realm a vampire, and thus begins the tale of the creature who would eventually shape the fate of all of Nosgoth.
When Crystal Dynamics first published Blood Omen (it was actually developed by Silicon Knights), gamers that were willing to overlook the top-down perspective in the midst of the polygon-fueled 32-bit craze found one of the most engrossing stories told through videogames, and though the presentation has morphed slightly over the years, the subsequent sequels and spin-offs that Blood Omen spawned have resulted in a universe that plenty of gamers have found irresistible. Indeed Blood Omen garnered a cult following that has only grown with the release of each subsequent game.
Interestingly enough, When Crystal D decided to revisit Nosgoth, they did so not through the eyes and narrative of Kain, but of his lieutenant Raziel. Raziel was the first vampire to grow active wings, an evolutionary gift that Kain saw with jealous eyes. He tore the wings from Raziel's back and cast him into a swirling vortex for the rest of eternity. But, just as Kain had found a way to return to have his revenge, Raziel was afforded the same opportunity by the Elder God, a creature with questionable intentions. Burning with the same lust for vengeance that spurned Kain, he agreed and returned, but similarly stricken with a curse. Rather than his bloodlust that existed as a vampire, however, Raziel was chosen as a soul devouring Wraith, his body decomposed and withered, constantly needing souls to stay alive - or at least stay in the material realm, since he now possessed to ability to shift from material to spectral worlds.
With two established storylines and a wealth of source material to draw from, Crystal Dynamics slowly built up more and more of Nosgoth's past and future, sending both Kain and Raziel through time and between realms to thicken up the two's involvement in the very history of Nosgoth. Each game and their complementary sequels further established the events, characters and story that would eventually become the latticework basis for the fifth and perhaps final Legacy of Kain game: Defiance.
While both series' boasted sweeping and often epic stories, they were often marred by reliance on either too much action or too much story, and as anyone who played through Blood Omen 2 will tell you, the developers' affinity for crates and Kain's switch pulling left plenty to be desired in the puzzle category. Likewise, Soul Reaver 2's fight-cutscene-fight sequences made the seemingly endless fetch quests Raziel embarked upon that much more tedious. What was needed was a balance between the two elements - combat and storyline -- and a more refined way of delivering both of them. With a few minor tweaks to the way the storyline was unfolded, the focus fell to combat.
Crystal Dynamics spent plenty of time looking at the way some of the biggest games of the past year or two looked, played and were presented. Everything from games that focused on puzzles, action and storyline - core parts of the Legacy of Kain experience - was scrutinized. Eventually, they found a way to condense the old combat truisms, dark gifts and powers from games past into a new model that injects a kind of freshness into the series that seemed like it was missing since the first LoK game.
The result? A game that boasts the inspired camera work of Ico, the all-out, multi-character brawls of The Mark of Kri and the refined and instantly accessible controls of Devil May Cry, suffusing all of them with the kind of narrative and voice acting that only the Legacy of Kain games can deliver. Within moments of picking up the controller and delving into the world of Nosgoth for the fifth time, things feel at once familiar and new.
With a tweaked Soul Reaver 2 engine and revamped camera, LoK: Defiance is easily the best playing game in the series' history, and while things feel more like Soul Reaver than Blood Omen, the new style of presentation and tweaked balance between more logical puzzles and reinvigorated combat already have us giddy with excitement. Attention to things like being able to skip cutscenes at any time, puzzles that are more logical, less of a reliance on backtracking, and a complete lack of pushable crates or pullable levers means the Crystal D boys and girls not only looked at what they thought they did wrong, but listened to what everyone else was complaining about as well.
The near-final build we've spent the past week or so with feels remarkably solid, with the only spotty area coming from the occasional drops to a lower resolution and accompanying framerate stutters that come when the engine is overloaded. Hopefully with the game now gold things are a bit more solid. It really can't be understated how well the retooled camera works with the game, and short of Ico, it's obvious inspiration, there are few games on the PS2 that feature a camera that works as well. While there are still instances where a swooping flyby or two make the next goal obvious, most of the time is subtle camera gestures that highlight a particular area that do wonders towards almost subliminally pointing the way towards your goal.
Likewise, the combat system and inclusion of telekinesis powers for both Kain and Raziel make the game incredibly fun to play. There really is nothing quite like uppercutting an enemy and then rising with them Devil May Cry-style only to bring the sword down with a blast that actually bounces the enemy off the ground and then back into a few quick waiting swipes from the sword and then a TK toss into a spike on the wall to finally finish an enemy off. The rush that comes from laying into a pack of enemies, casually tossing a few into walls with TK blasts while juggling others is indescribably fun. More than anything else, the game just feels astonishingly solid and already stands as one of the PS2's best story-driven action games.
We'll get into more critical points once the game ships next week, but suffice it to say that even in the unfinished and slightly buggy package that we received Defiance, it's easily the most accomplished Legacy of Kain game in the series so far. If this is the last game in the series (and the story seems to suggest that it probably will be), it's one hell of a swan song.
When Crystal Dynamics first published Blood Omen (it was actually developed by Silicon Knights), gamers that were willing to overlook the top-down perspective in the midst of the polygon-fueled 32-bit craze found one of the most engrossing stories told through videogames, and though the presentation has morphed slightly over the years, the subsequent sequels and spin-offs that Blood Omen spawned have resulted in a universe that plenty of gamers have found irresistible. Indeed Blood Omen garnered a cult following that has only grown with the release of each subsequent game.
Interestingly enough, When Crystal D decided to revisit Nosgoth, they did so not through the eyes and narrative of Kain, but of his lieutenant Raziel. Raziel was the first vampire to grow active wings, an evolutionary gift that Kain saw with jealous eyes. He tore the wings from Raziel's back and cast him into a swirling vortex for the rest of eternity. But, just as Kain had found a way to return to have his revenge, Raziel was afforded the same opportunity by the Elder God, a creature with questionable intentions. Burning with the same lust for vengeance that spurned Kain, he agreed and returned, but similarly stricken with a curse. Rather than his bloodlust that existed as a vampire, however, Raziel was chosen as a soul devouring Wraith, his body decomposed and withered, constantly needing souls to stay alive - or at least stay in the material realm, since he now possessed to ability to shift from material to spectral worlds.
With two established storylines and a wealth of source material to draw from, Crystal Dynamics slowly built up more and more of Nosgoth's past and future, sending both Kain and Raziel through time and between realms to thicken up the two's involvement in the very history of Nosgoth. Each game and their complementary sequels further established the events, characters and story that would eventually become the latticework basis for the fifth and perhaps final Legacy of Kain game: Defiance.
While both series' boasted sweeping and often epic stories, they were often marred by reliance on either too much action or too much story, and as anyone who played through Blood Omen 2 will tell you, the developers' affinity for crates and Kain's switch pulling left plenty to be desired in the puzzle category. Likewise, Soul Reaver 2's fight-cutscene-fight sequences made the seemingly endless fetch quests Raziel embarked upon that much more tedious. What was needed was a balance between the two elements - combat and storyline -- and a more refined way of delivering both of them. With a few minor tweaks to the way the storyline was unfolded, the focus fell to combat.
Crystal Dynamics spent plenty of time looking at the way some of the biggest games of the past year or two looked, played and were presented. Everything from games that focused on puzzles, action and storyline - core parts of the Legacy of Kain experience - was scrutinized. Eventually, they found a way to condense the old combat truisms, dark gifts and powers from games past into a new model that injects a kind of freshness into the series that seemed like it was missing since the first LoK game.
The result? A game that boasts the inspired camera work of Ico, the all-out, multi-character brawls of The Mark of Kri and the refined and instantly accessible controls of Devil May Cry, suffusing all of them with the kind of narrative and voice acting that only the Legacy of Kain games can deliver. Within moments of picking up the controller and delving into the world of Nosgoth for the fifth time, things feel at once familiar and new.
With a tweaked Soul Reaver 2 engine and revamped camera, LoK: Defiance is easily the best playing game in the series' history, and while things feel more like Soul Reaver than Blood Omen, the new style of presentation and tweaked balance between more logical puzzles and reinvigorated combat already have us giddy with excitement. Attention to things like being able to skip cutscenes at any time, puzzles that are more logical, less of a reliance on backtracking, and a complete lack of pushable crates or pullable levers means the Crystal D boys and girls not only looked at what they thought they did wrong, but listened to what everyone else was complaining about as well.
The near-final build we've spent the past week or so with feels remarkably solid, with the only spotty area coming from the occasional drops to a lower resolution and accompanying framerate stutters that come when the engine is overloaded. Hopefully with the game now gold things are a bit more solid. It really can't be understated how well the retooled camera works with the game, and short of Ico, it's obvious inspiration, there are few games on the PS2 that feature a camera that works as well. While there are still instances where a swooping flyby or two make the next goal obvious, most of the time is subtle camera gestures that highlight a particular area that do wonders towards almost subliminally pointing the way towards your goal.
Likewise, the combat system and inclusion of telekinesis powers for both Kain and Raziel make the game incredibly fun to play. There really is nothing quite like uppercutting an enemy and then rising with them Devil May Cry-style only to bring the sword down with a blast that actually bounces the enemy off the ground and then back into a few quick waiting swipes from the sword and then a TK toss into a spike on the wall to finally finish an enemy off. The rush that comes from laying into a pack of enemies, casually tossing a few into walls with TK blasts while juggling others is indescribably fun. More than anything else, the game just feels astonishingly solid and already stands as one of the PS2's best story-driven action games.
We'll get into more critical points once the game ships next week, but suffice it to say that even in the unfinished and slightly buggy package that we received Defiance, it's easily the most accomplished Legacy of Kain game in the series so far. If this is the last game in the series (and the story seems to suggest that it probably will be), it's one hell of a swan song.
