These days, a developer wouldnt think of attempting such a thing in less than three years (minimum), but Eidos wanted the game in less than two.As the wounded, ostracized vampire Raziel, your goal was to avenge yourself against the corrupt vampire lord Kain and restore balance to the decaying world of Nosgoth.I particularly remember the games inspired approach to combat; your vampiric foes couldnt be killed by ordinary means, so after weakening them with hand-to-hand combat you had to hurl their broken bodies onto a sharp stake or into a patch of sunlight to finish them off.The level design was also a knockout, as Raziel was able to phase-shift into a spectral realm in order to bypass obstacles or solve puzzles.
And we have the games director Amy Hennig to thank for that As youre probably well aware, Hennig later joined celebrated PlayStation developer Naughty Dog, serving as creative director and writer for Jak and Daxter and all three UNCHARTED titles. Legacy Of Kain Soul Reaver Dreamcast Self Boot Full Story StraightRead on for the full story straight from Hennig, and be sure to leave your favorite Soul Reaver moments in the comments. The protagonist was essentially a fallen angel of death, a reaper of souls hunted by his former brethren, and now driven to expose and destroy the false god they all served. The hero was an undead creature, able to shift between the spectral and material realms, and glide on the tattered remains of his wing-like coattails. We conceived the spirit realm as a twisted, expressionistic version of the physical world. The hero was bent on revenge after being betrayed and cast down by his creator like Raziel, he was a dark savior figure, chosen to restore balance to a blighted, dystopian world. Because we were initially such a small team, we were able to work under the radar for a while, and this allowed us to tinker with some unusual ideas that might not have survived premature scrutiny or skepticism. We pared back on some secondary features we had originally planned to include shape-shifting (morphing) as well as plane-shifting, for instance so we could focus on elements that were more critical to our core concept. By the time we unveiled the game to the press, we were starting to get the feeling that we might be onto something special. But creative constraints can be inspiring and invigorating, and once we dug into the challenge, the concept evolved in all kinds of exciting ways. Legacy Of Kain Soul Reaver Dreamcast Self Boot Free Will InThe spiritual structure of the world was based on the philosophy of Gnosticism, the belief that the cosmos is ruled by a malevolent pretender god, that humans are prisoners in a spiritual lie, and that mankinds struggle is a fight for free will in the face of seemingly insurmountable Fate. I also drew inspiration from the dense, literate dialogue of historical dramas like A Man for All Seasons, Becket, and A Lion in Winter. What were the biggest challenges in realizing your original vision. I think we were one of the first developers to tackle this problem (along with Naughty Dog, on Crash Bandicoot). It proved to be way more difficult than we had initially anticipated if I recall, we were still struggling to get the textures to dynamically pack correctly, just a couple months before release. We ultimately got it working by the skin of our teeth, but I wonder if we wouldve embarked on such an ambitious plan if wed known how difficult it was going to be. Our initial plan was over-ambitious, involving texture-morphing as well as geometry-morphing, but we realized pretty early on that our texture memory (and time) was too limited to achieve this. We came up with the idea of leveraging the 3DS Max animation timeline to attach spectral values to the vertices in the geometry i.e., frame 0 was the material world, and frame 1 was the spectral realm (or vice versa; I cant remember for sure). This way we could alter the x,y,z coordinates of each vertex, as well as its RGB lighting values, to create a twisted, more eerily lit version of the physical realm. Conceived as an open-world, Zelda-esque 3D adventure game, Soul Reaver was incredibly ambitious. Crystal Dynamics Gex engine gave us a leg-up on the 3D technology, but in essence we were writing a game engine from scratch, while developing a new IP.
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