Legacy of Kain / Soul Reaver

[Egosphere]

Unofficial HD remaster released:
Download

https://www.sr1hdremaster.com/home

Stalk the land of Nosgoth like never before!​

About the project​

Soul Reaver was a groundbreaking title when it released in 1999 and it is still fondly remembered by many to this date. However, the graphics quality across the three different published versions have not been consistent and while the Dreamcast version runs at 60fps and has higher poly models for Kain and Raziel, the textures for everything else are actually lower quality than PC or even the PlayStation version. With the advent of emulators being capable of extracting textures, I finally had the means to upgrade Soul Reaver to higher resolution graphics.
This texture pack requires Flycast, a Dreamcast emulator, capable of extracting and loading textures externally, which enables anyone to mod Dreamcast games. I decided that after the upscaled texture pack I released in August 2020 and a demo version for Tomb Raider 2 HD on pc, the time was ripe for me to try something more advanced and challenging. I have started working on this project in July 2021. It has been a long road with many obstacles I had to overcome and I learnt much about working with textures.
To be able to accomplish this, firstly, I obtained a large library of textures. I purchased several sets from Marlin Studios and also bought copies of texture reference books from the acclaimed photographer, Judy A. Juracek. As her books were published during 90s and early 2000s, they are quite expensive and not the easiest to find with a CD-ROM attached. Luckily, I managed to track down Surfaces, Natural Surfaces and Architectural Surfaces, all of which proved to be an invaluable reference material.


Finishing this project would have not been possible without any help. Dear friend and LOK fan, Terry from Team Vivisect, helped me search for these textures and contributed several textures themselves as well. It was Terry's utter dedication to make their own project look as faithful to the original as possible which inspired me to do the same for Soul Reaver.
To make things even better, Daniel Cabuco, the super talented artist from the LOK series, also tremendously helped with this and allowed me to use some of the original SR1 textures. My project would never have looked as authentic without him. Check the credits section for a full list of all the people who contributed. Other languages are also supported as well.


I spent several hundreds of hours working on this, but I hope the wait was worth it. The download also includes a brand new HD version of the original manual I made so make sure to read through it first!
16. 08. 2022 Update: All the download links are now available!
Enjoy all the trailers below and the anniversary stream will be posted here as well!

ah played this for the first time on an emulator maybe 6 or so years ago. voice acting was so good, it pretty much made the game (although combat, lore and the puzzles were pretty good too). platforming is trash, at least on keyboard, but its not too great a hurdle to overcome

 

[Egosphere]

i like the track for that remastered trailer very much, as well. close to the original, but an original take on it.

 

[United Nations]

Unofficial HD remaster released:
Download

https://www.sr1hdremaster.com/home

Stalk the land of Nosgoth like never before!​

About the project​

Soul Reaver was a groundbreaking title when it released in 1999 and it is still fondly remembered by many to this date. However, the graphics quality across the three different published versions have not been consistent and while the Dreamcast version runs at 60fps and has higher poly models for Kain and Raziel, the textures for everything else are actually lower quality than PC or even the PlayStation version. With the advent of emulators being capable of extracting textures, I finally had the means to upgrade Soul Reaver to higher resolution graphics.
This texture pack requires Flycast, a Dreamcast emulator, capable of extracting and loading textures externally, which enables anyone to mod Dreamcast games. I decided that after the upscaled texture pack I released in August 2020 and a demo version for Tomb Raider 2 HD on pc, the time was ripe for me to try something more advanced and challenging. I have started working on this project in July 2021. It has been a long road with many obstacles I had to overcome and I learnt much about working with textures.
To be able to accomplish this, firstly, I obtained a large library of textures. I purchased several sets from Marlin Studios and also bought copies of texture reference books from the acclaimed photographer, Judy A. Juracek. As her books were published during 90s and early 2000s, they are quite expensive and not the easiest to find with a CD-ROM attached. Luckily, I managed to track down Surfaces, Natural Surfaces and Architectural Surfaces, all of which proved to be an invaluable reference material.


Finishing this project would have not been possible without any help. Dear friend and LOK fan, Terry from Team Vivisect, helped me search for these textures and contributed several textures themselves as well. It was Terry's utter dedication to make their own project look as faithful to the original as possible which inspired me to do the same for Soul Reaver.
To make things even better, Daniel Cabuco, the super talented artist from the LOK series, also tremendously helped with this and allowed me to use some of the original SR1 textures. My project would never have looked as authentic without him. Check the credits section for a full list of all the people who contributed. Other languages are also supported as well.


I spent several hundreds of hours working on this, but I hope the wait was worth it. The download also includes a brand new HD version of the original manual I made so make sure to read through it first!
16. 08. 2022 Update: All the download links are now available!
Enjoy all the trailers below and the anniversary stream will be posted here as well!

ah played this for the first time on an emulator maybe 6 or so years ago. voice acting was so good, it pretty much made the game (although combat, lore and the puzzles were pretty good too). platforming is trash, at least on keyboard, but its not too great a hurdle to overcome

Remaster from a veteran player's perspective is borderline pointless.

The polygon count is way too low, not surprising since it's a PSX title, so the sharper textures don't really improve the game enough to entice me to play it again.

Right now we need a total remake, something that no mod using the game's current engine can accomplish.

Besides the lack of sufficient visual improvement, the core game mechanics and general presentation are severely outdated, and it's still at its worst, nothing more than a wordy Tomb Raider clone.

I really like certain elements of the cancelled sequel, Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun, which was supposed to reboot the franchise with an all-new character arc.

The Nosgoth MMO footage I watched on YouTube looks like shit in comparison.

 

[toughasnails]

Derringer
Blood Omen 2 is hardly a DMC clone. I'm not sure how I'd describe it save as an action adventure in the older sense. It's not bad per se either, it's just that visually it felt out of date (it looked like a Dreamcast game) and very obviously lacked the budget of Soul Reaver 2 (just compare the cutscenes in two games). And I guess you can argue that the story feels forced in and unnecessary to the rest of the series. It wasn't even meant to be a Blood Omen game and was repurposed into one later in development, kinda like what happened with Soul Reaver but that obviously worked out way better.

 

[Egosphere]

Unofficial HD remaster released:
Download

https://www.sr1hdremaster.com/home

Stalk the land of Nosgoth like never before!​

About the project​

Soul Reaver was a groundbreaking title when it released in 1999 and it is still fondly remembered by many to this date. However, the graphics quality across the three different published versions have not been consistent and while the Dreamcast version runs at 60fps and has higher poly models for Kain and Raziel, the textures for everything else are actually lower quality than PC or even the PlayStation version. With the advent of emulators being capable of extracting textures, I finally had the means to upgrade Soul Reaver to higher resolution graphics.
This texture pack requires Flycast, a Dreamcast emulator, capable of extracting and loading textures externally, which enables anyone to mod Dreamcast games. I decided that after the upscaled texture pack I released in August 2020 and a demo version for Tomb Raider 2 HD on pc, the time was ripe for me to try something more advanced and challenging. I have started working on this project in July 2021. It has been a long road with many obstacles I had to overcome and I learnt much about working with textures.
To be able to accomplish this, firstly, I obtained a large library of textures. I purchased several sets from Marlin Studios and also bought copies of texture reference books from the acclaimed photographer, Judy A. Juracek. As her books were published during 90s and early 2000s, they are quite expensive and not the easiest to find with a CD-ROM attached. Luckily, I managed to track down Surfaces, Natural Surfaces and Architectural Surfaces, all of which proved to be an invaluable reference material.


Finishing this project would have not been possible without any help. Dear friend and LOK fan, Terry from Team Vivisect, helped me search for these textures and contributed several textures themselves as well. It was Terry's utter dedication to make their own project look as faithful to the original as possible which inspired me to do the same for Soul Reaver.
To make things even better, Daniel Cabuco, the super talented artist from the LOK series, also tremendously helped with this and allowed me to use some of the original SR1 textures. My project would never have looked as authentic without him. Check the credits section for a full list of all the people who contributed. Other languages are also supported as well.


I spent several hundreds of hours working on this, but I hope the wait was worth it. The download also includes a brand new HD version of the original manual I made so make sure to read through it first!
16. 08. 2022 Update: All the download links are now available!
Enjoy all the trailers below and the anniversary stream will be posted here as well!

ah played this for the first time on an emulator maybe 6 or so years ago. voice acting was so good, it pretty much made the game (although combat, lore and the puzzles were pretty good too). platforming is trash, at least on keyboard, but its not too great a hurdle to overcome

Remaster from a veteran player's perspective is borderline pointless.

The polygon count is way too low, not surprising since it's a PSX title, so the sharper textures don't really improve the game enough to entice me to play it again.

Right now we need a total remake, something that no mod using the game's current engine can accomplish.

Besides the lack of sufficient visual improvement, the core game mechanics and general presentation are severely outdated, and it's still at its worst, nothing more than a wordy Tomb Raider clone.

I really like certain elements of the cancelled sequel, Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun, which was supposed to reboot the franchise with an all-new character arc.

The Nosgoth MMO footage I watched on YouTube looks like shit in comparison.

wordy is doing a lot of work here. I'm a huge fan of tomb raider 1, but its combat was literally running in a circle and holding down X whilst Lara shot something trying to track you off screen. Imo LoK would have been better if it hewed closer to TR than it actually did - the back and forth in the world of LoK is subpar compared to the giant levels arranged linearly in TR.

 

[HereticGuy]

Nothing good can come out of this and the survey is proof: it all boils down to “which modern AAA game shall we copy because we are mindless hacks?”.

That's depressing, but you're right... Here's an Ozar Midrashim rock cover from 2006 (shit, it feels like yesterday!), for the memory of original Soul Reaver. Cheers!

 

[Deadyawn]

Soul Reaver>Blood Omen>Soul Reaver 2>Defiance>Blood Omen 2

 

[Baron Dupek]

https://www.polygon.com/24206416/legacy-of-kain-soul-reaver-remastered-crystal-dynamics

 

[Tao]

Idk.

On the one hand I'm not thrilled with the idea of a remaster at all. 0 faith in the industry today to even let them do a remake. I'd rather they did new things without sullying the past.

On the other hand.... it's one of my favorite series. :S

 

[PlanHex]

Well, it's remastered and not remade, so hopefully they're not doing something stupid like redoing the voice work, but mostly just redoing the graphics and maybe tweaking combat?

 

[Rahdulan]

We can only hope for a Shadow Man Remastered effort.

 

[Tao]

Btw this reminder me that i watched this a few days ago



tldr: they also anounced a new graphic novel, so people speculated we could be seeing movement with the IP. It seems that it was true

 

[Harthwain]

Soul Reaver>Blood Omen>Soul Reaver 2>Defiance>Blood Omen 2

What is your logic behind that?

For me it's:

Soul Reaver 1 > Soul Reaver 2 > Defiance > Blood Omen 1 > Blood Omen 2.

Soul Reaver 1 has great atmosphere, the best out of all Legacy of Kain games. Soul Reaver 2 expands on its story in an amazing way, linking both Soul Reaver and Blood Omen together. Defiance is the culmination of the two previous games (in terms of the story). Blood Omen is simply great voice acting by Simon Templeman and a nice walk through across all known vampire tropes. Blood Omen 2 is my least liked Legacy of Kain games, because while it also has Simon Templeman it doesn't particularly excel at anything to be interesting on its own. It barely ties Blood Omen with Soul Reaver/Defiance and that's the extent of how much good it does. If I were to recommend skipping a single game of the series, Blood Omen 2 is absolutely it.

 

[deama]

Man I love the setting/story/narrative in these games, but god how I hate to actually play them.
I usually just rewatch them here and there on youtube, there's "movies" of them. In that regard, soul reaver 1/2 would be considered best. As games I think they're kinda meh.

These games need a remake badly, because compared to something like gothic, that still holds up for me, I sometimes replay them fully. But legacy of kain games? Nope!

Probably the remakes would need to be souls like, I can't really see them doing anything else.
Which is worrying, as it'd be really easy for them to just copy dark souls and not do anything more interesting with it.

Ideally I think they should copy a lot of aspects of dark souls, or better yet, if the budget allows, elden ring, sort of like a open world. And combine soul reaver 1 and 2 together since they were originally meant to be 1.
I'd also like to see a change to the shifting, I always hated how you have to stand on those stupid circles to be able to shift, I found that really annoying and a waste of the mechanic.

Combat I'm not entirely sure what to do with. Probably dark souls, but I've played too many souls games now, so more on the bored side.
I think best would maybe be dark souls combat, but add in a lot more metroidvania elements to it instead of doing weapon upgrades etc... even more metroidvania than the originals.

Yeah, I think an elden ring + metroidvania mix would be good. Start off with remaking blood omen 1 like that as that's the smaller game, and then fine tune it with soul reaver 1/2. Forget blood omen 2, cap it off with defiance, and then if it goes well, do a proper ending sequel.

A man can dream...

 

[Darth Roxor]

Man I love the setting/story/narrative in these games, but god how I hate to actually play them.
I usually just rewatch them here and there on youtube, there's "movies" of them. In that regard, soul reaver 1/2 would be considered best. As games I think they're kinda meh.

These games need a remake badly, because compared to something like gothic, that still holds up for me, I sometimes replay them fully. But legacy of kain games? Nope!

Probably the remakes would need to be souls like, I can't really see them doing anything else.
Which is worrying, as it'd be really easy for them to just copy dark souls and not do anything more interesting with it.

Ideally I think they should copy a lot of aspects of dark souls, or better yet, if the budget allows, elden ring, sort of like a open world. And combine soul reaver 1 and 2 together since they were originally meant to be 1.
I'd also like to see a change to the shifting, I always hated how you have to stand on those stupid circles to be able to shift, I found that really annoying and a waste of the mechanic.

Combat I'm not entirely sure what to do with. Probably dark souls, but I've played too many souls games now, so more on the bored side.
I think best would maybe be dark souls combat, but add in a lot more metroidvania elements to it instead of doing weapon upgrades etc... even more metroidvania than the originals.

Yeah, I think an elden ring + metroidvania mix would be good. Start off with remaking blood omen 1 like that as that's the smaller game, and then fine tune it with soul reaver 1/2. Forget blood omen 2, cap it off with defiance, and then if it goes well, do a proper ending sequel.

A man can dream...

Fuck off and do not come back to this thread.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Souls Reaver 1 > any Dark Souls

 

[catfood]

Blood Omen 1 is the best game of the series.

 

[Deadyawn]

Soul Reaver>Blood Omen>Soul Reaver 2>Defiance>Blood Omen 2

What is your logic behind that?

Soul Reaver was something of a technical marvel back during the PS1. While combat is wonky across the entire series, having to use the environment to kill enemies is cool, and the semi-openess of wasteland Nosgoth after centuries of decay is an awesome world map.

Blood Omen commits to the vampire experience, there are different weapons and a good amount of items and powers to use. Still, after a point, it's just better to run past enemies in wolf form.

Soul Reaver 2 looks good. Seriously, the cutscenes still look really great, and they have some of the best lines and voice deliveries. But it's very repetitive, also another one where after a point you just run past enemies, except in this one the entire world map is a hallway. Decline compared to Soul Reaver 1.

In Defiance you really have to take the good with the bad. While it offers something of a conclusion to the story, a lot of its runtime is spent reiterating things we already learned in Soul Reaver 2. You now play as both Raziel and Kain, which is good. You have to run through some maps twice with each character, which is bad. Also, the shift to a Devil May Cry type game fucking suuuuuuuuuuuucks.

Blood Omen 2 has very little to do with the rest of the series, let alone Blood Omen 1, and even though it came after Soul Reaver 2, compare the cutscene quality for a laugh. It's alright, but most definitely the black sheep of the series.

 

[Elttharion]

Leak:

Celebrate Soul Reaver's 25th Anniversary.

Experience the epic conflict of Kain and Raziel in original form or with remastered graphics.

Included Game Titles
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2

Experience the Legendary Narrative
Centuries after your former master, Kain, betrays and executes you, you rise again and embark on a relentless quest for revenge.

Wield the Powers of a Wraith. Slay your former vampire brethren with your claws, bolts of telekinetic energy, and the elemental Wraith Blade. Grow stronger by devouring the souls of your enemies.

Shift Between Realms. The Elder God has granted you the ability to shift between the Spectral and Material Realms. Traverse the realms to solve puzzles, reveal new paths, and defeat your foes."

Trailer

 

[Necrensha]

Garbage. Just used AI to upscale everything and called it a day.

 

[Baron Dupek]

 

[deama]

I like the higher polygon/texture count, but I don't like the more cartoony shader look to it.
That first boss from soul reaver 1 looks the worst transition wise, looks too cartoony, the original looked way scarier.

 

[Elttharion]

Literally soul x soulless

 

[Darth Roxor]

Showing a guy with a sword floating above his hands as a promo pic of your 'HD remaster' is an unorthodox move, I'll give them that.

 

[JC'sBarber]

Yeah this looks way too cartoonish. It's almost as if developers are afraid of grit, and in a horror-themed series no less.