What was his fucking problem?
>>736971943he was seeing destiny being put into motion. coin landing on its edge, if you will.
He got a glimpse of things to come
Diehard contrarian.
>>736971943he was given the choice whether to rule a corrupt and failing empire or to challenge the fates for another throw, a better throw, against one's destinywhat was a king to do?
>>736971943Moral posturing
>>736971943>What was his fucking problem?(((They)))
>>736973929I still don't have a fucking clue why Moebius did anything. I love the moment to moment writing in all the games, but the Moebius-Raziel-Kain triad of "Raziel, you must listen to me! I am not your enemy!", "Hmmm... It seems fate has made a cruel mockery of me after all," times ten makes everyone's plans seem completely absurd.Even Kain's sacrifice of Raziel at the beginning of Soul Reaver. What's the point of Kain continuing to antagonize him throughout Soul Reaver if this was his master plan all along?
>>736971943Crystal Dynamics sabotaging everything after Blood Omen.
>>736974534>What's the point of Kain continuing to antagonize him throughout Soul Reaver if this was his master plan all along?he needed to motivate raziel. turns out vengeance is a fairly good motivator.
Pic related
>>736975169I like the design in Blood Omen more than in subsequent games. His hair growing out from between his brows just looks...incorrect, like someone's parody of Selma Blair. The models in BO can look a little goofy in cutscenes (Kain always looks surprised, which I guess isn't inaccurate).
>>736973929
>>736976184>mfw constant disk-read in the PS1 version made accessing inventory something I dreaded
>>736975169Kain having a receding hairline and having it grow back with every evolution to the point it covers his entire forehead is my favorite detail
>>736976482>have a receding hairline in human life>die>get resurrected>still have to suffer the balding humiliation ritual>as a vampire you evolve over centuries>still have to suffer the balding humiliation ritualThe Elder God is a cruel god.
>>736971943The Heart of Darkness.Reputed to have been ripped from the chest of the greatest vampire to have ever existed, Janos Audron, the Heart of Darkness restores vampiric unlife. Life is precious, Janos discovered - as it was torn throbbing and bleeding from his own body.
>>736976687>Kain's true reason for overthrowing fate is because the Elder God gave him a receding hairline
>>736976482The creepiest part is that it's growing from underneath/behind his brow, which has weird implications. I love SR1 but Kain's design is probably my least favorite.I appreciate that he looks different from Vorador but more normal hair would have have been preferred. He isn't escaping the Elric allegations regardless.
>>736971943Mama didn't raise no bitch.
>>736971943He had the blueprint
>>736971943There was no free will, he did what he had to do in order to create Raziel into what he was always going to become over a thousand years earlier. People conveniently forget what Raziel was always destined to become later when remembering that Kain had him thrown into the Lake.
>>736971943>LET'S DROP THE MORAL POSTURING SHALL WE? WE BOTH KNOW THERE IS NO ALTRUISM IN THIS PURSUIT, YOUR RECKLESS INDIGNATION BROUGHT YOU HERE; I COUNTED ON IT. THERE'S NO SHAME IN IT, RAZIEL. REVENGE IS MOTIVATION ENOUGH. AT LEAST IT'S HONEST. HATE ME, BUT DO IT HONESTLY.As if they couldn't spell it out louder for you to notice that the coin he's constantly talking about in Soul Reaver 2 IS Raziel.
>Elder god is le evil because he is le ugly and powerfulGreat moral posturing Raziel and Kain
>>736978660In that scene specifically?Being a massive fatalist that knows fate is unavoidable. He saw himself do this so now he has to.
>>736978538>imagine a modern writer trying thisLET'S FUCKING DROP THE MORAL SHIT OKAY? WE BOTH KNOW THERE IS NO FUCKING SELFLESSNESS IN THIS SILLY STALKING, YOUR HURT FEFEES BROUGHT YOU HERE, MOTHERFUCKER; GOTCHA!. THERE'S NO SHAME IN IT, THOUGH! REVENGE IS FUCKING REASON ENOUGH. AT LEAST IT'S FUCKING HONEST. HATE ME, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!
>>736979190You don't have to imagine it. Just play the new game. It captures none of the pathos LoK did as a series. It really is abject degradation in terms of quality because no one today would write a game in this manner.
>>736978538It makes you appreciate certain scenes.
>>736979190>not even one tv show referencefake and gay, fr fr ong
>>736979379the newest show i have seen is the bazinga one, until they turn into turbo normalfag winners. i don't think zoomers let alone alphas watched that crap. imagine kain looking at the camera, doing a silly face and saying "bazinga" *wink*
>>736979587>>736979379>>736979190>>736971943>What was his fucking problem?He should have been a better man !Casting him in is not a proper way to treat your wifes son.
>>736971943>either die only to let Pillars eventually rot under humans and let Hylden invade>or explode Pillars right off the bat but keep himself aliveWith second option he was able to stay alive for long enough to abuse Time Machine and learn about a dude who will end up being a walking paradox>hmmm, either Nosgoth gets fucked, Nosgoth gets fucked OR I bet everything on this wild card for a 0.00001% chance for Nosgoth to not get fucked>whoops, I also need to be a total asshole to him for this plan to work!The end justifies the means
>>736971943>What was his fucking problem?The concoction of chocolate. A dessert fit for mortals.
>>736979934thirty-fourth post best post
>>736979362I've always hated that scene, to be honest.
>>736978538>the coin he's constantly talking about in Soul Reaver 2 IS Raziel.It's a metaphor retard.
is the remastered version of defiance any good? i'm playing soul reaver remastered with OG graphics and seems better if only for the camera controls, but if i recall correctly defiance pc version sucks
>R: Look Kain, i turned myself into Coin Raziel ! Wubba Lubba dub-dub>K: Bazinga !
>>736976734>greatest vampire to have ever existed, Janos Audron>is a complete pussyLets be real, Vorador was the GOAT vampire.
>>736980414Janos Audron was always too good for he world he inhabited. Ironic when you consider how history demonized him.
>>736980374>is the remastered version of defiance any good?Yes. It's the best way to play the game by far.
>>736971943
>>736971943he didnt gitgud and punished someone that didthen they gotgud together
>>736971943reminder that there is no good story in the history of videogames or all media, ever, that involves time travel. There is none.
>>736971943Cast him
>Nine pillars linked to the health of the material realm is simultaneously the lock to the demon realm that the vampire race created to lock away their enemy>Why the over the top lock tied to such a critical part of the world>DunnoCOIN FLIP TIME!
>>736979190More like>Uh, Raz, my guy, newsflash; this thing you've crashed out about me doing? Yeah, look in a mirror. May want to dial it back a bit, 'cus I knew exactly what vibe you were on.>Like, I get it, I really do, just be real with me here, ok? Hate on me all you like, just be real, k?
CAST HIM
>>736984557Because the imprisoned demon faction was created in a second time, and fitted in the lore retroactively. a retcon if you will
>>736974534>What's the point of Kain continuing to antagonize him throughout Soul Reaver if this was his master plan all along?He needs to push Raziel into killing his human-self in the past so that he could be broken free of the cycle of rebirth. Once broken free he can inhabit the Soul Reaver and Kain can kill the Elder God with it.Do you think Raziel would go>Oh, why of course Kain, allow me passage into the past so I may rend myself from the realm of the living all so your master plan can come to fruition.He'd think he's being fucked with
>>736984493Jack Blackhttps://youtu.be/yMKpV5BOibY
>>736984879I know the reason dipshit. What you fail to understand is that I'm mocking the elaborate lock.
>>736981838>Raz: Kain was jealous because I grew bat wings.>Kain: Raziel, I can transform, fly, and teleport. I don't need a flimsy pair of wings sticking out of my back.
Would you do it?
>>736971943He had a bunch, actually.The biggest problem is that he was born a corrupted soul thanks to the machinations of the Hylden, and was unable to fulfill his purpose as scion of balance. Sacrificing himself would only delay the planet's decay, so he lives on to find a cure that so far has eluded him.The next biggest problem is that he's got access to a time machine that has showed him his fate and it's...complicated. He learns that he'll betray his favorite son, that son will become a monster, try to kill him, and wind up stuck inside the soul reaver. But he also learns that in becoming that monster his son will become truly free, able to alter fate as no other soul can, and so it has to be done. It's the only action that has even the tiniest probability of leading to a good ending.Kain here is in agony and trying not to show it.Also Kain was right
>>736971943>Throw him into the midna arseholeHe said this btw
>>736971943I still love how in Soul Reaver 2 Raziel alters the timeline so hard that there's an earthquake and Kain's mind is flooded with the events of Blood Omen 2Of course the sight of such a terrible game frightens Kain beyond belief, resulting in one of the very few scenes where he loses his composure out of fear
>>736984692I hate that ebonics has become so ubiquitous now that talking like an uneducated nigger is just the norm.
Any other series that made the bad ending canon in a sequel?
>>736985752the new xcoms had xcom 2 be the followup to a failed campaign run of enemy unknown
>>736985612>RAZIEL, JANOS AUDrON MUST STAY DEAD!>Resurrect Janos you say? Yep, right, on itNigga please.
>>736986456Kain was too shocked to remember that Raziel always does the opposite of what he's told
>>736985752Shadow Hearts and KoudelkaAlthough with Shadow Hearts both endings are canon
>>736980214Enough of your elaborate metaphors Kain!
>>736984557Because it was supposed to be a self sustaining lock, an everlasting binding, so it makes sense that's it's tied to the world as a whole. The ancient vampires likely knew it was doomed from the moment they became immortal, so diminished and disillusioned, they placed their final hope in the prophecy they tried to bring to life.
>a million years ago>play soul reaver ps1 demo>see kain fucking up raziel>thought it was due to being jealous>this thread says otherwisecan you elaborate for an anon who has no idea about the background
>>736987582they retconned it into a time travel 4d chess at the last second
please help me kind sir
>>736985094I, am nosgoth.
>>736985752little goodie two shoes kind of?
>>736987658The original plan to blow out the entire vampire population's eardrums with the giant doomsday vuvuzela could have been interesting.
>>736987582Kain has a time machine and can see the future. He needs to do what he did in order for the soul reaver to be what it needs to be. The soul reaver IS raziel and in 4d chess time fuckery he gets a soul reaver with TWO raziels. Something that shakes the foundations of reality itself as it should simply not be. Something that can kill an elder god because it's reality breaking.
>>736987582raziel is a literal walking time paradox so the eldritch god can't eat his soul. this put him outside the wheel of time and was the only pawn in the game that had true free will. kain knew this and as part of the plan raziel had to become a wraith.
>>736985752Warcraft as canonically orcs won in Warcraft 1
>>736987582Ok so the lore is extremely convoluted and in some cases contradictory so here's just the quickest possible rundown it is not wholly accurate so don't fucking @ me loremasters>There are two big enemies, the Hylden are trapped in the torture dimension by the pillars that are crumbling and the Elder God (read: giant parasite) is a soul-eating time-adjacent fuckhead slowly killing the planet and gorging on the dead>Kain builds an Empire on the crumbling pillars and uses his eternity of life to try and figure out what the fuck to do about any of this>Finds a fucking time machine that shows him free will is a lie and there's fuck-all he can do no matter what he knows>except....>The timeline as it stands creates a paradox. Through a bunch of convoluted fuckery the events of Soul Reaver lead to Raziel bonding with his own time-duplicate soul which breaks reality and lets Raziel and Raziel alone alter the timeline.>Kain sees that the current timeline ends with a barren Nosgoth and that Raziel is the only one that can change that, and so he plays his part in the intro.tl;dr sorry raziel I have to kill you and antagonize you because it's the only way here's even a remote chance of things ending well for anyone
How's the new game? On a scale from pretty great to legacy tarnishing dogshit, where does it land?
>>736988197The story is based on a bad fanfic comic and the gameplay is below average.
>>736987935>>736987986>>736988181lol so kain was a good guy all along?I thought he was a mean vampire specially after seeing a short gameplay of blood omenthanks anons <3
>>736987658Time travel was already part of the series>>736987582Time travel in fiction adds narrative complexity that is not just hard for an audience to follow, but writers can easily mess up. Kain got control of Moebius' toys after the time-guardian's canonical death and got to see the game he was originally used a pawn in, but he could do nothing to change it: Time abhors a paradox. He saw that he would raise Raziel and his brothers as vampires, and saw that Raziel would selectively evolve wings rather than as the others copy Kain's mutations centuries later. Vampires that were turned are themselves a cursed version of true vampires that were once born as they were, with wings and beauty. Kain already missed that opportunity and his other lieutenants evolved into monsters. Because he saw this all long before it happened, he had time to investigate and figure out why it would happen at all. One thing about looking into the time-stream in LoK: you can only see time as it exists, not every possibility and not what will happen when you change something when it isn't yet part of the time-stream. So when Kain beheld Raziel's 'betrayal', he knew he was looking at part of an original sequence of events based on his present at the time he was observing. According to Kain, a 'bootstrap paradox' is impossible: every loop caused by time-travel must have a cause that didn't begin with time-travel...
>>736988197Apparently it's based on the really really poorly-received book that came out recently and the voice direction is ass>>736988343Good guy is a reeeaaaaaal stretch.More like he really fucking hates to lose.
>>736988343>lol so kain was a good guy all alongno he is genuinely an asshole but he doesn't want to see nosgoth destroyed either.
>>736988387..which means there was a version of Kain that attacked Raziel and had him murdered, with no knowledge of time-travel: the original act was one of spite. Kain understood though that he was watching himself, and that he had already been watched by the same means, by both Moebius his enemy, and himself. In order to not alert Moebius to anything he would plan, Kain would have to act his part as history foretold until the opportunity to change time came about once again, and the only way he knew it could happen is if two soul reavers from different points in time were to meet in the same place, because it had been used on him before.
I'm still kind of mad about how bad the Defiance remaster looks. Awful new designs and needlessly bright.
>>736971943He knew he lacked free will, so he created a being that would have it. The being in question did not appreciate the process.
>>736988965I honestly can't be mad considering you can always switch back to OG graphics.>but what's the point thenJust having it work on a modern PC. Oh, and all the restored content.
As far as i remember, the Pillars kept the Hylden imprisonwd right?Why didnt they appear during Blood Omen or Soul Reaver? They had enough time pass from one game to the other.
A brief recap of the paradox as it stands in the unfinished(?) story of The Legacy of Kain. For clarity, the rules of time in LoK appear to be based on Novikov's self-consistency principle: any object travelling back in time will encounter itself and change it's trajectory such that it never travels through time at all, which Moebius figures out how to loop-hole, with the help of a monster that its own cross-sectional perception of time. Start with them because they start the paradoxxing. >Moebius, guardian of time, at some point does something monumentally wrong and makes himself aware of an extra-terrestrial entity that eats souls, and he starts worshipping it and feeding it. Moebius knows the circumstances of his death, which probably has something to do with his corruption: no seer should ever 'just check' out of curiosity how and when they will die, or how the world will end (devoured by the entity). Moebius fears death.>The entity credited as the Elder God (voiced by the late Tony Jay) experiences the world but not its linear time: from its point of view it has already devoured the world and all its souls as an inevitable event. It can manifest in the physical world but is mainly present in the spirit plane where most of the souls of the dead it feeds on are. It has a problem with the existence of cursed vampires because they do not die normally and can resurrect even as corpses. Their souls in the spirit world gain strength and can even compete with the Elder God for food. >Vampires being cursed with immortality is where the Elder God's problems start: the memory of devouring the world can not be real if there's metaphysical poison in the carcass. This is a consistency paradox: the Elder God can not historically devour all souls, and any souls bound to eternally to life.
>>736989476The way they talked about it during the multiple games, it seemed like the pillars needed to be in an advanced state of disrepair AND not have a vampire guardian. Blood Omen 2 kinda goes against this with the one hylden that slipped through but that game's story was made specifically to fuck up the franchise's out of spite of being forced to be a LoK game.
>>736987935>The soul reaver IS razielNot quite. The Soul Reaver is a sword with Raziel's soul in it.
>>736990135They may have had the wraith form in mind when referring to it, since that’s also just called the soul reaver too (or I think usually just the reaver?)
>>736990327When the Soul Reaver is shattered, Raziel mentions that it was freed from its corporeal prison, but that might just be poetic license as Raziel is an unreliable narrator.
>>736989476The Hylden only return because of the events of Soul Reaver 2. Seeing as they are the next step in my recounting of the structure of LoK paradoxes:>The Elder God exists even before the Pillars are corrupted, as we see in SR2, but it comes from directly under them, with Raziel suggesting it has been trying to tear them down already.>For some time, the Pillars have been protected by human guardians, but originally the Pillars were raised by Vampires to banish the Hylden. The Vampires were angelic, the Hylden were demonic and both had wings. >As they realised what was happening, the Hylden cursed the Vampires to have some of their physical and spiritual weaknesses: the need for blood, the bane of sunlight, the bane of clear-water, and crippling immortality. This caused humans to fear Vampires, many of whom couldn't control the blood-thirsting and Hylden tendency to massacre. Vampires would also lose natural procreation for having to pass their curse on to humans, but this became necessary to preserve their culture, and the Pillars, because they would eventually die out or be mutilated beyond recovery. >The return of the Hylden is prevented by the Pillars, but they are a parasitic race and humans are too weak, and they cursed the Vampires. Raziel coincidentally discovers that he can possess the bodies of the recently deceased to get into the physical plane without the Elder God, but their bodies crumble as his own form asserts itself. He also realises that his wings are not Vampire wings, but Hylden. The only True Vampire left in the world is Janos Aldren, and the Hylden need him to be alive.
>>736990570>It turns out Janos may have had deep-lore conversations with the Vampire time-guardian back in the day, because he recognises Raziel immediately even though human Raziel is still alive when they first meet in that time-line. What he doesn't understand is why Raziel is a walking corpse, when Janos can have his heart taken out minutes later, then put back again and he's fine. It's eons later from the perspective of the heart: Mortanius uses it to speed-run Kain's transformation into a Vampire, he never realises it's inside him the whole time.>Janos was originally dead, his heart taken, when the Pillars were corrupted. When Raziel returns his heart and him to life, he knows what's going to happen: without the protection of the Pillars, he is overwhelmed by Hylden spirits who can use his powerful True Vampire body to open the way for the rest. >Moebius it turns out did not expect the Hylden to show up but doesn't consider them a threat(the Elder God who can't devour immortal monsters likely disagrees).Next, Kain and what happened to him..
>>736991140There are two integrals to understand with Kain: before he witnessed the time-stream, and after. Human guardians can live a long time but don't have the advantages of the Vampire guardians; Kain actually has more understanding of time than Moebius does, he has had much longer to study the time-chambers by the time of Soul Reaver. What he does not know until the very end of Defiance, is that Moebius was being guided by an entity with a vision of time from outside of it. When Kain executes his plan in Soul Reaver 2, he's beaten Moebius at his own game, but the Hylden had foreseen it just as the ancient Vampires had and recorded their prophecies. What was Kain's plan though?>Kain had been tricked into travelling back in time with the Soul Reaver, to slay the beloved King William the Just, before he could become the great Nemesis>To Kain's surprise, the young King already has possession of the Soul Reaver even this early on>Kain's successful slaying of William created a new timeline where Moebius used the incident to ignite genocide against Vampires, but Kain later deduced that two Soul Reavers from disjointed origins in time had been necessary for it to work.>In Soul Reaver 2, Kain plans to replicate the circumstances that created this paradox, the 'grandfather paradox', which forces History to re-write itself.>Kain remembered that he broke William's Soul Reaver in two during the duel, so Moebius had a plan to mend it sometime in the future, because Kain can't do the deed with a future instance of the sword otherwise: the sword had killed it's own grandfather>As planned, Raziel enters the tomb of William with the broken Soul Reaver laid there. Kain isn't present for this, but he knows what will happen: if Moebius doesn't make sure it will happen, History will resolve it another way, so Moebius is there to witness it without his staff that prevents the wraith blade emerging.
>>736989130>Raziel supposedly has free will>everything he does leads up to fulfilling an ancient vampire prophecylol
>>736990570>Vampires being cursed by the HyldenI've been thinking about this for a while on how they were able to do this and I think I have an answer. The curse is a prototype version of the Hylden's scientific research into immortality. The ailments the prototype immortality has were eventually eradicated in a newer formula, but the prototype version was cast on the vampires like a WMD disease when they were sealed in the prison realm the vampires constructed. I've always seen the Hylden curse as something very weird to do to your enemy, unless it was some failed discovery. Makes more sense as the motive for the war between the Hylden and the Vampires is because the Hylden made themselves immortal
>>736992658tbf he's actually self aware of it at least
>>736985320I would simply choose integrity
>>736971943He actually isn't that upset, his face is just frozen in a perpetual state of agitation. His real reaction is (contrary to what Raziel claims) intrigue and realization. As for why he throws him in, this is actually way simpler then anyone realizes: to make Raziel predictable. Since he is destined to kill Kain a pretext could come up at any moment that would, eventually, lead to Raziel killing Kain in some rebellion. In fact, in that very intro Raziel reveals signs of growing arrogance soi he could just rebel out of pride.
>>736988343Keep in mind that Kain had literally a thousand years+ ????? years time traveling. Whatever chip on his shoulder he had was worn away from the ebb and flow of time.
>>736974534I know it is hard to believe but Moebius never did see what the giant squid looked like. While the players see him just hanging out right there, that is something only Raziel sees.
