Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal
Guest
Some of the best writing, best dialogue, best aesthetics and atmosphere, best story/plot, best characters, best music, and absolutely legendary voice-acting in any video game to date. Moderntarded AAA skinnerboxes aren't even remotely attempting to engage any of their players' higher brain functions, while most of the indie crap is made by cucked soyboys without any grand vision or ability to put together an intricate plot.
What's even more interesting, is that if you explore the behind-the-scenes of how this series was made: http://thelostworlds.net, you will realize a most stunning truth: neither Blood Omen nor Soul Reaver were supposed to have direct sequels.
Blood Omen was supposed to end with Mortanius revealing that he intentionally killed Ariel and plunged the Circle into madness as a calculated means of eradicating it... simply because he did not feel Nosgoth no longer needed a Circle. Or at least, this Circle. There's a soundbite of Tony Jay delivering a magnificent speech to Anacroth (before he killed him), that completely got cut... I guess because it wasn't convincing enough? Or because the final boss fight would have been either too easy, or made no sense whatsoever (Mortanius has no reason to put too much effort into fighting Kain). So they threw in a random demon at the end, and then had the player choose between a "good" ending where Kain kills himself and restores balance to Nosgoth, and an "evil" ending where he stays alive but Nosgoth and the pillars are ruined.
If Silicon Knights were to make a sequel to this game, it likely would have followed the "good" ending, and had a completely different protagonist (Legacy of Kain was originally the subtitle, Blood Omen the main title). However, Crystal Dynamics took over the IP, and then merged the mythos and backstory of Blood Omen with a different game they were developing about a tormented specter (who ends up being Raziel) returning from the dead to exert vengeance over his creator. And so Kain appears again, this time as the villain.
What's even more amazing is that Soul Reaver was also never supposed to have a sequel, in fact, it pretty much excluded the possibility of a direct sequel, the way it was supposed to end (with Raziel killing Kain and activating the Silenced Cathedral that would destroy all vampires in Nosgoth, including Raziel himself). The entire stuff about the Elder God being the real villain, Kain's motivation being more than petty jealousy, the Hylden, the ancient prophecies, etc. was never originally envisioned.
Thankfully, Crystal Dynamics ran out of their budget about 2/3 into the game, and had to slap a quick together a quick cliffhanger, with Raziel following Kain through a time portal, only to be greeted by a jubilant Mobius... I doubt anyone on the team had any idea where they were going with this, but their instincts were pure gold, judging by how they developed the story and reincorporated elements from Blood Omen into Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance.
Then there's the midquel Blood Omen 2, which takes place between Blood Omen and Soul Reaver chronologically, but in an alternate timeline that did not exist prior to the time-altering events of Soul Reaver 2. It has some of the weakest writing in the series, both in terms of plot and dialog, and doesn't amount to a whole lot in terms of the greater story... but it had a radically different aesthetic (because, like Soul Reaver, it was originally developed as an unrelated game - Chakan 2, and then retrofitted into the epic saga of Nosgoth), with steampunkish elements, the entire setting being an enormous city never before mentioned despite being called "the capital of Nosgoth", and weird characters called Glyphwrights, that ended up being the Hylden in disguise.
Perhaps, if Crystal Dynamics got to make the sixth game, Dark Prophecy, they would have shed more light on the Hylden in general, and how the ending of Blood Omen 2 impacted the larger story (about the only thing that changed was the fact that the Hylden now had poor Janos Audrin as their captive in the Demon Realm... for what it's worth, considering the genocidal device that they needed him for was destroyed). As it is, we can only speculate what would happen, once Kain finally returned to the post-post-post-apocalyptic Nosgoth that he left all the way back in Soul Reaver...
