32:41 I discovered this long ago and it explained why the spanish (Spain) dub of Soul Reaver pronnounces it as "Serafan". I used to think it was an error on their part, but perhaps being given a script where it was spelled as such was the issue.
I like the element of the Hylden sneakily melding their technology & architecture into human society, thanks to SR2’s alterations allowing them to do so. Makes me wonder what the realm of Nosgoth looked like before Kain & Raziel reshaped history. ~ I also really like Ross’s style.
I can't wait, I've been wanting more videos on the humans from the Soul Reaver 1 era. So much was cut from the citadel and this channel is like a Legacy of Kain encyclopedia. Looking forward to seeing what you deliver.
When I was a kid playing Blood Omen 2 I got super lost in the Sarafan Keep and when I finally found the prison Umah was being kept in I saw the big Sarafan knight outside and thought it was the actual Sarafan Lord and I was afraid to fight him lol
I quite like the more populated Nosgoth of Blood Omen 2. The other titles all seemed very isolated, decayed, and desolate. Understandable, since it's a dying land. And that's not to say I didn't adore that rotting aesthetic. But still, I enjoyed the more lively expanse of Blood Omen 2 the most. Had some very kooky interactions, especially the Ancient Seer, the brainwashed Bishop, Magnus, and the Hylden. Oh, and the eternal prisoners were pretty fun, too. LoK 2 had the most interesting world building, IMHO.
Awesome video! Only about half way through but wanted to say that of all the hot mess that was Blood Omen 2, the Sarafan were my favorite thing to come out of it. Most of the rest, well, it can be drowned in the backwaters of passing time. :D
I'm curious about how the events of Blood Omen 2 happened in the original timeline. Well, not "original," but the timeline from Soul Reaver. Kain has to have been overthrown, and he has to have been resurrected, and he has to have retaken the world and created a new order of vampires using the corpses and possessed souls of the Sarafan. I suspect that, in the Soul Reaver timeline, an organically-resurrected Sarafan order overthrew Kain's first empire, and when he was resurrected (not by Vorador, who was still dead), he would have killed them and all of his original lieutenants. When he was back in power, he revived a bunch of original recipe Sarafan in "an act of calculated blasphemy." He probably really wanted to bust Malek most of all, but Malek's body had been destroyed and his soul was probably irretrievable since it would've belonged to the Pillars.
Man, o man! It's been some 20 years since I've played the first Soul Reaver game, which was my introduction to the series. And now, in this day and age, I'm watching some obscure channel deep diving into the forgotten series? What is this madness? Kudos for making the videos. I've been gobbling the series for the past few days and I'm not disappointed. Although my head does bloody hurt from all the information. Especially since I now know that Janos' and Kain's meeting in BO2 implies that there are 2 Hearts of Darkness existing at the same point in time. Also, I still fail to spin my head around the supposed conclusions of timelines 1, 2 and 3 (where Kain first dies to William, then to Raziel, and then Kain fails to save Raziel from being imprisoned by the blade prior to his purification). If there are paradoxes, then how did any of the remaining participants even walk back from them? Like, how does timeline 2 even start if Kain is defeated by William, meaning that Moebius, Elder God and the hylden each succeed at their efforts by removing the Scion of Balance? What's more, at least when I've played Defiance back in the day, I've had a concrete answer "Oh, the Elder God and the hylden are the bad guys here, and are probably in league". But now, after watching all of this, I discover that the ancient winged race (Vampyres, right? With a different spelling?) even without the blood curse and immortality, were magic-wielding religios fanatics, who started a holy war against the technologically advanced hylden. It's no longer even clear to me if the hylden were at this point a malicious presence in Nosgoth, since we know that the Elder God is far from a benevolent creature. Are there any good guys in this story? Like, at all?! I mean, we can probably count Ariel as the sole good-natured spirit (har-har) in this realm, but my freaking god, not even purified Kain looks like a saviour. The whole "Pillars are there to protect Nosgoth" idea falls apart because they're made to protect the realm from an evil which the ancients have created themselves in the first place! WTF?!! Man, this makes me lament the sudden shutdown of the Nosgoth servers. Was a surprisingly cool spin-off game. Especially after they've hired one of the old artists (I forgot which one) and designed the evolved skins for vampire clans.
Glad you found us in the end 😁 That's the beauty of characters from LOK, nobody's perfect and there aren't any good guys, just shades of gray. For timeline questions, please see the Timelines video or if you have further questions, join us on Lok Discord. Ancients haven't created EG, he latched himself onto the Wheel and siphoned the souls out of it. Actually, SR2 portrayed the Ancients in a good light but by Defiance, Raziel starts having doubts when he realises they were worshipping EG this whole time and it was then who started the war in the first place. He's very confrontational with Janos too. The Hylden are not innocent either, they built the Mass which was supposed to kill everything except them. Daniel Cabuco described them as scientists without morals.
Funnily enough, those are fans that were included in the mural as a nod to them - and the guy on the far right is Ben Lincoln that runs the Lost Worlds. He's had a haircut since.
34:41 Actually, Raina, you made a good point. I saw a Facebook post regarding this, months ago. And If I'm not mistaken, and you're right that it was redesigned for a different purpose. This one, is apparently one of the concept designs that Sony Santa Monica Studios later reused it for another iconic character creation of Kratos from the God of War series, but with a few modifications. Instead of the blade on a chain as depicted, they made it to have two blades with a chain on it, which became the famous Blades of Chaos/Athena/Exile as Kratos's signature weapon. So this is, as you said one of the rejected New Sarafan Order Concepts that led to/inspired the creation of Kratos. You weren't wrong at all. You're 100% correct on that.
I just read in a brazilian website that Crystal Dynamics are going to invite people who participated in that LoK survey back in 2022 to test 'something' in May. Has anyone heard of this?
Wait so... If there were to be a sequel made. Would it make sense to venture back into the world/Timeline of Blood Omen 2 again from the end of Defiance?
rewatching and getting up to date with some of your views.. a couple of minor notes.. the odd comment (like in the one on the Hylden saying that the seer was half-vampire (which would explain a number of things) but. no reference.. might have been a bit nicer but one thing that really kinda bugs me.. Chakan: the Forever Man is a Comic book by Robert A. Kraus. The Megadrive (and Game Gear) game was based on the comic. Just referring to the video game spin-off all the time as the source is.. kinda annoying me.. Not a major thing sure, but.. yeah.. just slightly annoying on the 'mm.. if they can't get this right, whatever is really wrong' side ^_^
"lok crew interviews" are referenced in the credits. You tube isn't great for links but it has been specifically cited by daniel cabuco in his interviews. As for the chakan the forever man link, it is specifically mentioned as "the Sega genesis/mega drive title chakan the forever man". That should let you know it's the game not the comic being discussed.
Blood Omen 2 was one of my favourites on the Gamecube, if anything, I preferred the linear structure of this game to the constant backtracking of Soul Reaver on the Playstation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Soul Reaver, I just found the backtracking to be something of a migraine inducer.
Admittedly, it's an interesting take but not one I fully understand. I've played it a few times in the past and can't really recall much of any real backtracking outside of certain puzzles and finding hidden powerups. My only guess is that your preference seems to be... less Mario 64, more Mario 3 in terms of level design.
Even following this expertly done lore series, the quality of the source material is just so hard to deal with. BO2 is missing so much attention to detail in the writing, it can't be taken seriously. We just had two games explaining vampire crusades either by or inspired by the Sarafan. There really was no need for a third round of exactly the same thing but with lower quality writing. It is a real waste of the whole Hylden plan build up.
One thing that always bothered me. It is established in this that Kain cannot make vampires on his own, and required Vorador to do that for him. How, then, did he raise Raziel and the Sarafan circle?
He couldn't raise vampires as a fledgling, once he was mature enough, he was able to use necromancy (different method than Vorador's line). How he did it is explained in SR1 manual.
Kain wasn't a normal Vampire. He wasn't turned like Vorador was by Janos. He was raised into undeath through necromancy by Mortanius. So Kain couldn't pass on his Dark gift because he never had it to begin with. instead he raised his lieutenants in much the same way he was. He retrieved their souls from the netherworld and returned them to their bodies and breathed some of his essence into them. This raised them as Vampires...but he also passed his corruption onto them. It's why the lieutenants and their offspring devolved into monsters. but the lieutenants at least retained their minds.
@@sor90 I would add, as Kain was the sole survivor before the BO2, he had to even figure out how to raise a vampire, as there was no elder vampire alive who could teach him. And even in BO2 era, there is clearly bitterness between him and Vorador, so I would assume Vorador didn't want to teach the technique of making more vampire soldiers to power hungry Kain, so he would still need to figure it out on his own (not to mention, he isn't a normal vampire, as you said)
IMO the only design that doesn't suck in this game is that of the Hylden Lord. All the previous existing designs were better for all characters involved and for the Sarafan armor... Even Kain looks ridiculous here. Their idea of Gothic Dark mixed with Arkham Horror is apparently Ecchi Nickelodeon.
I'd rather this part of the LOK series was never made, even the name of the game is stupid. It takes a long time to explain why. I guess I don't like the introduction to the game and the mythology of Nosgoth by some Hilden. Why did the screenwriter need this? BO1 for me was not about racism and race war. Nothing in the "second part" of the game impressed me ... This is the worst part of the series.
the gameplay and atmosphere are fantastic, the music is great and powers are good. the writing is worse and inconsistent but the game was made by a different team so its to be expected. if BO 2 is the worst in the series than that is just a compliment to the series as a whole.
32:41 I discovered this long ago and it explained why the spanish (Spain) dub of Soul Reaver pronnounces it as "Serafan". I used to think it was an error on their part, but perhaps being given a script where it was spelled as such was the issue.
I like the element of the Hylden sneakily melding their technology & architecture into human society, thanks to SR2’s alterations allowing them to do so.
Makes me wonder what the realm of Nosgoth looked like before Kain & Raziel reshaped history.
~ I also really like Ross’s style.
Many thanks for another fantastic video Raina hope you're keeping well 🙂👍
Thank you! I´m trying! :)
@@RainaAudron 🙂
I can't wait, I've been wanting more videos on the humans from the Soul Reaver 1 era. So much was cut from the citadel and this channel is like a Legacy of Kain encyclopedia. Looking forward to seeing what you deliver.
When I was a kid playing Blood Omen 2 I got super lost in the Sarafan Keep and when I finally found the prison Umah was being kept in I saw the big Sarafan knight outside and thought it was the actual Sarafan Lord and I was afraid to fight him lol
another great video, Love the fact that you guys are also elaborating on Blood Omen 2 Lore, Keep em coming
I quite like the more populated Nosgoth of Blood Omen 2. The other titles all seemed very isolated, decayed, and desolate. Understandable, since it's a dying land. And that's not to say I didn't adore that rotting aesthetic. But still, I enjoyed the more lively expanse of Blood Omen 2 the most. Had some very kooky interactions, especially the Ancient Seer, the brainwashed Bishop, Magnus, and the Hylden. Oh, and the eternal prisoners were pretty fun, too. LoK 2 had the most interesting world building, IMHO.
Awesome video! Only about half way through but wanted to say that of all the hot mess that was Blood Omen 2, the Sarafan were my favorite thing to come out of it. Most of the rest, well, it can be drowned in the backwaters of passing time. :D
give it another try.
The new sarafan order is one of the most interesting factions in the LOK universe. Great work on the video raina.
I'm curious about how the events of Blood Omen 2 happened in the original timeline. Well, not "original," but the timeline from Soul Reaver. Kain has to have been overthrown, and he has to have been resurrected, and he has to have retaken the world and created a new order of vampires using the corpses and possessed souls of the Sarafan.
I suspect that, in the Soul Reaver timeline, an organically-resurrected Sarafan order overthrew Kain's first empire, and when he was resurrected (not by Vorador, who was still dead), he would have killed them and all of his original lieutenants. When he was back in power, he revived a bunch of original recipe Sarafan in "an act of calculated blasphemy." He probably really wanted to bust Malek most of all, but Malek's body had been destroyed and his soul was probably irretrievable since it would've belonged to the Pillars.
Yeeeeeeeeees. So hyped for the new upload. Can't wait for the next entry. Cheers.
Man, o man! It's been some 20 years since I've played the first Soul Reaver game, which was my introduction to the series. And now, in this day and age, I'm watching some obscure channel deep diving into the forgotten series? What is this madness?
Kudos for making the videos. I've been gobbling the series for the past few days and I'm not disappointed. Although my head does bloody hurt from all the information. Especially since I now know that Janos' and Kain's meeting in BO2 implies that there are 2 Hearts of Darkness existing at the same point in time. Also, I still fail to spin my head around the supposed conclusions of timelines 1, 2 and 3 (where Kain first dies to William, then to Raziel, and then Kain fails to save Raziel from being imprisoned by the blade prior to his purification). If there are paradoxes, then how did any of the remaining participants even walk back from them? Like, how does timeline 2 even start if Kain is defeated by William, meaning that Moebius, Elder God and the hylden each succeed at their efforts by removing the Scion of Balance?
What's more, at least when I've played Defiance back in the day, I've had a concrete answer "Oh, the Elder God and the hylden are the bad guys here, and are probably in league". But now, after watching all of this, I discover that the ancient winged race (Vampyres, right? With a different spelling?) even without the blood curse and immortality, were magic-wielding religios fanatics, who started a holy war against the technologically advanced hylden. It's no longer even clear to me if the hylden were at this point a malicious presence in Nosgoth, since we know that the Elder God is far from a benevolent creature. Are there any good guys in this story? Like, at all?! I mean, we can probably count Ariel as the sole good-natured spirit (har-har) in this realm, but my freaking god, not even purified Kain looks like a saviour. The whole "Pillars are there to protect Nosgoth" idea falls apart because they're made to protect the realm from an evil which the ancients have created themselves in the first place! WTF?!!
Man, this makes me lament the sudden shutdown of the Nosgoth servers. Was a surprisingly cool spin-off game. Especially after they've hired one of the old artists (I forgot which one) and designed the evolved skins for vampire clans.
Glad you found us in the end 😁
That's the beauty of characters from LOK, nobody's perfect and there aren't any good guys, just shades of gray. For timeline questions, please see the Timelines video or if you have further questions, join us on Lok Discord. Ancients haven't created EG, he latched himself onto the Wheel and siphoned the souls out of it.
Actually, SR2 portrayed the Ancients in a good light but by Defiance, Raziel starts having doubts when he realises they were worshipping EG this whole time and it was then who started the war in the first place. He's very confrontational with Janos too. The Hylden are not innocent either, they built the Mass which was supposed to kill everything except them. Daniel Cabuco described them as scientists without morals.
0:33
That mural, I never noticed before, but the vampire on the far right looks like Raziel. I know it can't be him, but he totally looks like it.
Funnily enough, those are fans that were included in the mural as a nod to them - and the guy on the far right is Ben Lincoln that runs the Lost Worlds. He's had a haircut since.
@@bazlmoon Ben Lincoln is Raziel confirmed.
@@bazlmoon That's pretty cool for a symbolic message: the first humans to be given the gift were the ones supporting the franchise since back then.
Remake for this legend
34:41 Actually, Raina, you made a good point. I saw a Facebook post regarding this, months ago. And If I'm not mistaken, and you're right that it was redesigned for a different purpose. This one, is apparently one of the concept designs that Sony Santa Monica Studios later reused it for another iconic character creation of Kratos from the God of War series, but with a few modifications. Instead of the blade on a chain as depicted, they made it to have two blades with a chain on it, which became the famous Blades of Chaos/Athena/Exile as Kratos's signature weapon. So this is, as you said one of the rejected New Sarafan Order Concepts that led to/inspired the creation of Kratos. You weren't wrong at all. You're 100% correct on that.
Yes, please.
Hey, what's the name of that ost in the beginning. I know it, just can't remember the name.
Comes up as 'Sarafan Keep' on my listings
I just read in a brazilian website that Crystal Dynamics are going to invite people who participated in that LoK survey back in 2022 to test 'something' in May. Has anyone heard of this?
Yes, not likely for it to be an LOK game, though.
@@RainaAudron But maybe a prototype or at least something leading up to a possible game, surely.
@@jeanlundi2141 Embracer got the rights just last year in September, that's way too early.
@@RainaAudron 6 months for a barebones prototype? Maybe not.Whatever it is, it's clearly something where they require fans' feedback.
@@jeanlundi2141 people tend to forget there's also a pre production stage and planning needed. This is clearly something else.
Wait so...
If there were to be a sequel made.
Would it make sense to venture back into the world/Timeline of Blood Omen 2 again from the end of Defiance?
Yayyy love it. Played this game back in 2003 when i was 5 lol in 25 now haha
Geart job Mr !!!
What's the ost on the history part of the video?
That is a track called 'Furnace'. I believe it plays in the industrial sections of the Smuggler's Den and the Industrial Quarter.
rewatching and getting up to date with some of your views.. a couple of minor notes.. the odd comment (like in the one on the Hylden saying that the seer was half-vampire (which would explain a number of things) but. no reference.. might have been a bit nicer but one thing that really kinda bugs me.. Chakan: the Forever Man is a Comic book by Robert A. Kraus. The Megadrive (and Game Gear) game was based on the comic. Just referring to the video game spin-off all the time as the source is.. kinda annoying me.. Not a major thing sure, but.. yeah.. just slightly annoying on the 'mm.. if they can't get this right, whatever is really wrong' side ^_^
"lok crew interviews" are referenced in the credits. You tube isn't great for links but it has been specifically cited by daniel cabuco in his interviews.
As for the chakan the forever man link, it is specifically mentioned as "the Sega genesis/mega drive title chakan the forever man". That should let you know it's the game not the comic being discussed.
@@bazlmoon fair enough. but it just kinda bugs me ^_^ but not a major thing. Thanks for the reply
Blood Omen 2 was one of my favourites on the Gamecube, if anything, I preferred the linear structure of this game to the constant backtracking of Soul Reaver on the Playstation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Soul Reaver, I just found the backtracking to be something of a migraine inducer.
Admittedly, it's an interesting take but not one I fully understand. I've played it a few times in the past and can't really recall much of any real backtracking outside of certain puzzles and finding hidden powerups.
My only guess is that your preference seems to be... less Mario 64, more Mario 3 in terms of level design.
@@RippahRooJizah play it again.
@@zoltanz288 How would playing it *again* change my mind? I said what I said because I played through it multiple times already.
first
Even following this expertly done lore series, the quality of the source material is just so hard to deal with. BO2 is missing so much attention to detail in the writing, it can't be taken seriously. We just had two games explaining vampire crusades either by or inspired by the Sarafan. There really was no need for a third round of exactly the same thing but with lower quality writing. It is a real waste of the whole Hylden plan build up.
One thing that always bothered me. It is established in this that Kain cannot make vampires on his own, and required Vorador to do that for him. How, then, did he raise Raziel and the Sarafan circle?
He couldn't raise vampires as a fledgling, once he was mature enough, he was able to use necromancy (different method than Vorador's line). How he did it is explained in SR1 manual.
Kain wasn't a normal Vampire. He wasn't turned like Vorador was by Janos. He was raised into undeath through necromancy by Mortanius. So Kain couldn't pass on his Dark gift because he never had it to begin with. instead he raised his lieutenants in much the same way he was. He retrieved their souls from the netherworld and returned them to their bodies and breathed some of his essence into them. This raised them as Vampires...but he also passed his corruption onto them. It's why the lieutenants and their offspring devolved into monsters. but the lieutenants at least retained their minds.
@@sor90 I would add, as Kain was the sole survivor before the BO2, he had to even figure out how to raise a vampire, as there was no elder vampire alive who could teach him. And even in BO2 era, there is clearly bitterness between him and Vorador, so I would assume Vorador didn't want to teach the technique of making more vampire soldiers to power hungry Kain, so he would still need to figure it out on his own (not to mention, he isn't a normal vampire, as you said)
The costume designs for the female characters in Blood Omen 2 were just laughable.
IMO the only design that doesn't suck in this game is that of the Hylden Lord. All the previous existing designs were better for all characters involved and for the Sarafan armor... Even Kain looks ridiculous here. Their idea of Gothic Dark mixed with Arkham Horror is apparently Ecchi Nickelodeon.
@@Narcian150 Hey, Red Riding Kain is a strong design.
Reminds me of how, when I see Umah, I see "Rejected Mortal Kombat character" design.
I'd rather this part of the LOK series was never made, even the name of the game is stupid. It takes a long time to explain why. I guess I don't like the introduction to the game and the mythology of Nosgoth by some Hilden. Why did the screenwriter need this? BO1 for me was not about racism and race war. Nothing in the "second part" of the game impressed me ... This is the worst part of the series.
the gameplay and atmosphere are fantastic, the music is great and powers are good. the writing is worse and inconsistent but the game was made by a different team so its to be expected. if BO 2 is the worst in the series than that is just a compliment to the series as a whole.