25 years previously, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver introduced the world to the monster Raziel. In the show’s opening landscape, Raziel is betrayed and executed by his master, the monster king Kain. Raziel rises millennia later as the recognizable and angry orange ghost we all know and love, endures untold anguish and disability, and continues to do so. In 1999, matches were built different. Thoroughly voiced cut-scenes and deep stories were unusual. Both Soul Reaver and it immediately became a classic.
Aspyr is pleased to release Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 &, 2 Enhanced for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 in honor of Soul Reaver’s 25th celebration.
The secret to a wonderful Remaster is, like our work on Tomb Raider I-II I Remastered, to bring a traditional game back to modern technology with sufficient physical and quality-of-life changes while ensuring the authenticity of the classic. We want fresh supporters to meet the Soul Reaver honest in reliving Raziel’s activities.
Engineering purpose: Performance with pixel-perfect protection
We started with the original website and a full set of resources because Crystal Dynamics was ready to provide us with the source code. This base ensured we could give the exact same fight, puzzles, and boss fights, with the same stability and experience, as the original.
In the 1990s, Soul Reaver pushed the boundaries of system memory with its economic story and the novel mechanics that made it possible for players to switch between the material and ethereal realms. The way we’ve developed the headline will keep that legacy for players who come back to Nosgoth or visit for the first time.
However, we did n’t want to stop at the original realm toggle. On the fly, we also added a switch between traditional and contemporary activity art, which never produced a performance of a high caliber.
Gameplay Objective: Surprise and delight longstanding, devoted fans.
The Soul Reaver activity stories are strong and exquisitely difficult. Starring Michael Bell as Raziel, Simon Templeton as Kain, and Tony Jay as the Elder God, Soul Reaver 1 &, 2 feature some of the most memorable shows in video game history. And of course, props to Amy Hennig’s function writing and directing this vision activity when the equipment to do so were burgeoning.
However, we did want to surprise and enthralle our most devoted fans, so the discussion turned to possible additions that would n’t change the original design intentions but would improve the overall experience. Here’s what we came up with:
Control Improvements: Soul Reaver launched while the D-PAD was the dominant power process. With DualShock 4 and DualSense, we made sure that digital power in Soul Reaver 2 feels and functions just as well as it did in Soul Reaver 2.
Camera Upgrades: The straight keep we’ve mapped the lens to in Soul Reaver allows us to move the lens on the Y-axis. Of course, there were n’t robust skyboxes in the original because you could n’t look up. So we made some! Enjoy right-click modeling to view the colorful clouds and platforms above.
Trophies! Just in case you’re wondering, just know that we’re using trophies as our smile and thank the community for the most memorable game moments. At a later time, we’ll provide more details.
Map &, Compass: Nosgoth is a large, empty world. Navigating, even with rapid go, can be daunting for first-timers. You’ll never experience totally lost, even if you choose to play through additional content because we added a map and compass to aid in finding the second objective. The image is a brand new, never-before-seen image of Nosgoth co-created by Aspyr, Crystal Dynamics and important people of the Legacy of Kain area. It is one of the most exquisite changes to the game and a tribute to the supporters who have kept the series dead for so long.
Photo Mode: A common characteristic from Tomb Raider I-II I Remastered results! We’ll involve our image mode so you can highlight some of the best Soul Reaver 1 &, 2 gameplay moments.
And a few more scares: Where’s the fun in spoiling anything now?
Art purpose: Photos as in’ Your Storage’
We want the game to appear exactly as they did in your imagination.
Here are some of the artistic modifications we made:
Higher devotion models are used to create Soul Reaver cutscenes, but source code is prone to do so when the cutscenes are rendered using higher fidelity models. Our architectural teams searched through the archives to locate the appropriate files so that they could provide the cut scenes with fresh, higher-fidelity assets. This makes the transition between cutting-scenes and present play mode simple.
Raziel and Kain’s fresh hero models take inspiration from the pre-recorded scenes themselves.
Glowing vision and Wraith Blade: We’ve added a warmth to Raziel’s eye and the Wraith Blade to take advantage of lighting improvements
Real-time darkness: Applied to all figures and things
New Enemy and Boss types: I’ll say these are a little sadder than I remembered!
Day and Night cycle ( SR ) A cutscene from the final film has been removed to give Nosgoth more depth and atmosphere.
Graphics change: While we did put some improvements to textures, UI, and VFX, any place during play, including in Photo setting, you can switch back to the original graphics.
Thank you Crystal Dynamics, the area, and the classic Soul Reaver 1 and 2 groups for allowing us to travel to Nosgoth and bring Raziel back to life once more.
We’ll see you on December 10. Currently, the PlayStation Store has pre-orders accessible!