Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver Quotes

“Michael Bell as Raziel”

“Simon Templeman as Kain”

“Tony Jay as the Elder God”

“"Beware - those blind with rage are by destiny ensnared".”

“"Deep in Nosgoth's northern wastes, the hushed silences embrace an ancient enigma."”

“Raziel: "Am I reduced to this? A ghoul? A fratricide?" Elder God: "Elevated, Raziel. Not reduced."”

“"Raziel - Redeemer and Destroyer, Pawn and Messiah. Welcome Time spanned soul, Welcome to your destiny".”

“"Far in the eastern mountains, a stifled titan stands in mute surrender - unwilling host to a parasitic swarm".”

“Wikipedia: Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver”

“"Like a corpse in a shallow grave, corruption rises to the surface... Beyond these Pillars, the defiled victim mutely screams its outrage".”

“Kain: "...and that is why, when I must sacrifice one of my children to the Void, I can do so with a clear heart". Raziel: "Very poetic, Kain".”

“Raziel: "These apparitions and portents... what game are you playing now?" Kain: "Destiny is a game, is it not? And now, you await my latest move..."”

“"Where time is but a loop, A loose stitch in the Universal Cloth, A Streamer might seize upon a chance, a fatal slip And plunge the fate of planets into chaos..."”

“"Kain refused the sacrifice. The Pillar of Balance, corrupted to its core, stands as a monument to his blind ambition.
Now these pillars serve only to bind me here -- my prison and eternal home, thanks to the avarice of your master, Kain..."”

“To Raziel, as the earth shakes beneath his feet: "This world is wracked with cataclysms – the earth strains to shrug off the pestilence of Kain's parasitic empire.
The fate of this world was preordained in an instant, by a solitary man. Unwilling to martyr himself to restore Nosgoth's balance, Kain condemned the world to the decay you see.
In that moment, the unraveling began...now it is nearly played out. Nosgoth teeters on the brink of collapse. Its fragile balance cannot hold".”

“Dumah: Unbound at last! I thank you, brother.
Raziel: Your thanks are premature, Dumah. I have not forgotten whose hands bore me into the abyss.
Dumah: The centuries in limbo have honed my strength. Not even Kain is my equal.
Raziel: Even the strongest vampire is vulnerable.
Dumah: We shall test your thesis, Raziel.
Raziel: My blood-thirst has been superseded by an even darker hunger. I will consume your soul before this day is done...”

“So how does it work? Essentially, the game is broken down into a series of units, with each unit representing a room, hallway or path to other rooms. Once the game is running, Soul Reaver stores three of these units in memory at any point - the room the player is standing in and the two adjacent units. As the main character moves into a new unit, the furthest one from the player that resides in memory is cleared and the next one loaded. Maps are designed so that loading a new unit into memory requires less time than it takes the player to cross the current unit. Clever, right?”

“I hope it's remembered as a well-constructed game with an original vision and an engaging story, and as groundbreaking in terms of what we were able to achieve on the PlayStation at the time. Our approach to voice acting and performance was also innovative for the time, the way we brought the actors in to record their dialogue together rather than in isolation. The performance capture process we use on Uncharted today – where we involve the actors as collaborators, and have them play the scenes together on the stage – owes its origins to the techniques we established for Soul Reaver fifteen years ago.”

“In today's video games, the open world is now commonplace - a single, continuous gameplay area that offers a vast canvas for developers to populate, to varying degrees of success. At the most fundamental level, what makes these sandbox games work is their ability to stream in world data on the fly as you play, with no loading whatsoever to disrupt the flow during traversal. What is now the norm was once the most ambitious of gaming concepts - one that initially came to fruition in the console space with the classic Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver for the original PlayStation.”

“To hit the August '99 release date, we had to cut the last few levels of the game, and end on a cliffhanger that set up Soul Reaver 2. Originally, Raziel was going to hunt down and destroy all of his former brothers as well as Kain – and then, using his newly-acquired abilities, he would've activated the long-dormant pipes of the Silenced Cathedral to wipe out the remaining vampires of Nosgoth with a sonic blast. Only then would he realize that he'd been the Elder God's pawn all along, that the purging of the vampires had devastating consequences, and that the only way to set things right would be to use Moebius’ time-streaming device to go back in time and alter history (in the sequel).”