Blood Omen Legacy of Kain came out for the Sony PlayStation in 1996. I bought it day 1 and was hooked. The game was a bit challenging, but the story, revolving around the vampire named Kain and his betrayal was right up my dark, foggy alley. The story gets quite convoluted over the nearly half dozen games on the PlayStation, and sequels on the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, but what a story it was. I've always hoped we'd get a film or novels based on these characters and the world of Nosgoth. The lore is there, just waiting to be explored by a Brad Lineweaver or a Kevin J Anderson.
The first game is my least favorite out of the Kain storyline games with regards to gameplay, compared to the more traditional action/adventure 3D games sequels. The top-down sorta-RPG is more of an exploration game of discovery rather than action. In fact, the action in the game is borderline dreadful compared to later incarnations. But the music, the story, the art, and the voice acting is all grand and lovely.
But this is not to say that Blood Omen is not enjoyable. In fact, it is ridiculously cool. It is a game with a vast story. Our character Kain, not so much an anti-hero as budding villain is fun to play, wielding vengeance like a weapon of war against those who conspired to use him.
My favorite character in the series did not debut until the sequel, Blood Omen 2, but he would make quite the entrance. "Give me meat! I require 1400 ounces every day," he declares, a large flaming cauldron attached to his back. He continues, after turning two guards into stew, while speaking to the slave he would have cooked if not for these guards intervening, "I've had my allotment. 1400 ounces or 20 stone. You may go!" I've heard Magnus's math is wrong so we can infer that the poor devil really was quite mad when Kain comes across the tortured vampire and former ally in the Bad Blood chapter.
The actor, Rodger Bumpass, plays Magnus hammy, and his dialogue very matter-of-fact, and I love it. This character feels like he was ripped from Hideyuki Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D stories, another long-time favorite series. He's such an iconic character in the game, parts of his brain and flesh is bare for all to see and wretch. The boiler on his back is apparently surgically attached to his back, as the meat in this pot seems to be his sustenance instead of his usual diet of drinking blood.
Something borrowed from Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles is the vampiric Dark Gifts. (Magnus is also the name of the vampire responsible for turning Lestat.) Anne Rice dubs the Dark Gift as the act of becoming a vampire, but it's also used in recognizing different vampiric traits that certain vampires gain with the blood, much how it is called in the LoK series. And like some of Anne's vampires Magnus uses the gift of telekinesis. His Dark Gift ability is that of immolation. Kain takes this gift directly from the blood in his veins after he kills Magnus, mercifully. This is considered a version of telekinesis, or better still pyrokinesis, wherein the vampire can envelope an enemy in flames, from the inside or out.
I am not a contemporary gamer, but I'm still sad that Crystal Dynamics, or whomever owns the rights to the series, haven't made a game for today's powerhouse systems. Who knows, it could be the game that makes me purchase a new Xbox or PS... For now, I'm having fun revisiting Nosgoth through the PlayStation 1 and 2.
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