I knew about the Lost City, Vorador's ring, and the trick with the humans in Soul Reaver, but everything else blew my mind, especially the cartoon versions of Kain and Raziel. Now I want plushie versions of them to own.😂
My favorite secret is the Human City in SR. Found it by accident, and ever since, I've been in love with post-apocalyptic settings, "after the end" of the world so to speak. When I did research online, I found there was supposed to be a quest involving the city with a vampire worshiping cult running the city, and Raziel killing to cult leader, but this was ultimately scrapped. I'm glad they kept the human city at least.
Was it a secret? It’s been long since I played. But if I remember it was pretty linear. You needed to cross human citadel to complete the quest if I remember correctly.
@@Username-ng8jy I was thinking more about how you can become friendly with the humans and the city itself lorewise. Also, the city was supposed to have a larger part in the main story that was cut from the final release, so I counted that as well as a "secret".
My first time playing I was convinced that I missed something in the city and it would give me a different ending. The ending of Soul Reaver left me more than a little confused as it was one of the first games that I had played that ended on a cliffhanger, no resolution with Kain and the Chromoplasts visions confused me even further. I spent a lot of time looking for hidden passages in the water tower. Little did I know I was onto something!
@daniell1483 Yes, the Human Citadel is a farm controlled by the vampires to abduct humans from above and bring them below into the depths of the Undercity. As you say, it's managed by a human vampire worshipping cult. I talk more about this in my Soul Reaver Prime video, where I cover the deleted content of the game.
Vae Victis getting that as my next tattoo and having Raziel and Kains symbol right next to it, also might get Voradors dragon tattoo as well. Also thank you Strictly Fantasy for all your hard work on keeping interest in this amazing world alive and hopefully we will see this world come back once again.
If we got decent sequels as the story needed them, and if raina audron didn't sell out for money to trick her misguided fans to give money to square enix, Nosgoth could have been a cool idea for a multiplayer game if it was WAY more true to the source material! Personally I'd want a single player open world team tactical heavily-stealth-focused game in the pre-SR1 era with 1 vampire of all 6 clans on your team. Kinda like mixing: Vampire The Masquerade Redemption with X-Com Bureau Declassified and Thief 1&2 and maybe FarCry/AssCreed.
So _that's_ what the teleporter in the pub was for... to go to a pirate ship covered in more HoD's than I could carry. The Lost City was another of my favorites, and I wish they would expand on that lore. While the architecture alone was a completely different style from the rest of Nosgoth, the Motifs were what caught my attention. You don't see serpents anywhere else throughout the game... except one other place... Moebius' staff.
I think if Legacy of Kain gets a remastered trilogy like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro and Tomb Raider did, The lost city should have a mini-boss that resembles Cornell from the Castlevania Lords of Shadow reboot that’s not connected in anyway. And the Pirate ship will also have a mini-boss where you’ll have to fight against the pirate captain.
Maybe some of you might know this, but there's a secret mechanic in Soul Reaver 1 where you can walk under the water if you grab a rock or a vase. You can only do this with Rahab's power
Man, I love your theory on the Lost City and the Werewolves! My experience in the past is that most LoK fans just want to write off the Werewolves as a transient idea that never went anywhere after the first game, but I love the theory you propose here about the city being destroyed and perhaps even the Elder God playing some elusive role! Really cool stuff!
I completely missed the Human Citadel on my first playthrough, and most of the power-ups along with all the glyphs except for stone and force. I stumbled on the fire forge completely by accident as I was desperately trying to swim out of the Abbey. It was fun going back to complete it 100%. I Iove games where you don't necessarily have to do things in a certain order or have all the power-ups to defeat the final boss. Silent Hill was like that too. That open world concept was gone in Soulreaver II and Defiance. I hope any remake goes back to that. Thanks again for keeping the fandom alive!
I never would have even made the connections between the Bitter and the derilict ship in Soul Reaver, and especially not the Lost City and the Spectral Realm ruins (mainly because I never found it), without this video. Geezes, I love this series so much. It always gets deeper with each revisit.
I don't really think that there is a strong connection to be made between the Bitter and the ship in Soul Reaver though. Both are ships. That's kinda it. One is an actual sailing ship, the other is far more industrial, has no sails at all, some weird shark mouth at the front, and so on. So yeah, I guess it might be a nod since it is situated about where the teleporter to the Bitter was, but I think the commonalities stop there
@@BlueDragonKnight77 well yeah, they're obviously two very different ships, but it's the placement of the SR ship as a possible homage to the Bitter that makes the connection.
Great job, as always. Fingers crossed for a worthy, new installment in the series, it would be great to have some new lore for you to break down! Although what you're currently doing never ceases to amaze me, with every episode you raise the bar higher, shedding light on the darkest corners of the world of Nosgoth. Respect.
We need people like you, my man. This fandom is too small, and those like you bring so much life into it while allowing others to get into the games and the fandom easier. Bless you.
The toon version of Kain and Raziel is probably one of my favorite things even. Also, this is unimportant but I never expected that Academia was an actual real life location.
I love learning about the hidden implications in my favorite games. They usually fly way over my head. The idea that the starting area of soul reaver is the lost city had never occurred to be before! 🤯
I'm so hype everytime I see a video of yours in my feed and my heart stops a little when I check if it's new or not and when it's not it beats a little faster of excitement. You are like a continuation of this beloved series. I thank you sir for your hard work.
A sentient race of Lycanthropes (Werewolfs) within Nosgoth is very interesting. Even after all these years there is still much we simply don't know about.
One thing I’ve always wanted to know is if vampires have a choice in how they will look when they “enter the state of change”, or is their evolution caused by their living habits, or chosen by the life force that keeps Nosgoth together even when the Pillars are collapsed. The reason why I’ve wondered was because of that evolved crown branching out from Kain’s forehead that looks so similar to the Seer from Blood Omen 2. Could Kain’s crown be genetically gifted to him by the Seers blood that perhaps still runs through his veins?
I hadn't played beyond the first Soul Reaver but I recall the lore being to the effect that Kain (and subsequently his generals) would go into those metamorphosis trances and just assumed any changes to their forms were automatically better. I suppose fine motor control in their digits wasn't as important as claws that could still hold a blade or goblet like Vorador's aged form.
Probably not. Remember that he has the crown before that change in the timeline. BO2 never happens in the original timeline. It's a result of them changing history in SR2. Everything after SR2, including BO2 and Defiance, takes place in a new timeline.
I believe i read this in the wiki a long time ago but i think the crown shape in Kains head and his skin tone(greenish-goldenish) its related to Kains desire to be the ruler of Nosgoth, to be king and stop being the pawn.
@@matthewseelig6377 yes. The mystery continues. Whatever the answer may be, The Legacy Of Kain lore is hands down the greatest Vampire story ever created, one of the top greatest stories in gaming history subsequently becoming one of the greatest tragedies in gaming history brought on by corporate greed. It was such a sad disaster to see such an amazing story thrown away like dust in the wind
Fun fact: the design of toon kain is an ascended fandom meme. In 2003 The Lost Worlds (the lok fan website) pulled an April fools gag suggesting 3 games would be released that's year: SR3, SR1 special edition and a gta/cart racer style game called vehiculum futurus maximo (grand theft auto in Latin). The developers saw the reaction to the gag and used the design of kain from vfm as a nod to the fandom. They've also included fans and developers in murals before
It's been a really long time since I watched a LoK video that taught me something I didn't already know. This one taught me a few things. Really great work.
Fascinating! I hadn't made the connection between the Hidden City and the spectral realm architecture in Soul Reaver. Knew about it, but hadn't realized it was in the same spot. Awesome vid.
I like it that they changed Kain's hair colour to black from blonde. Otherwise, we would kinda have a vampiric clone of LOZ's Link. Kain is the Edward Hyde to Link's Dr. Henry Jekyll.
AS TO vorador's revival, I always thought it was Janos, after sending Raziel to the Spirit Forge, he left for a bit. During that time, he could have revived Vorador, but left before he regained consciousness.
@@strictlyfantasy easily explained by some kind of connection between Vorador and Janos. Most vampire lore says that a vampire always can feel/find those he made
You must have read my mind. I was hoping for more BO/LOK videos and here you upload.Yay please keep up the great work. I absolutely adore the world of Nosgoth. Great video once again. Can't wait for more.
I *LOVE* the fact that a game this old has something that is legit as the HMCS. It's so insane to think that hundreds of people, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands....and not once have I seen or heard of anyone mentioning such a secret. The game flow of BO:LOK is really tight, I didn't even think that there would be secret switches. Developers really do not get enough credit for their products.
@Icemario87 HMCS stands for Her Majesty's Canadian Ship. I believe Silicon Knights was a Canadian developer, and so the HMCS name is also a refernce to the developer's home country.
On the tube reaver and the cartoons. If I remember correctly a member on the Nosgothic realms forum made a cartoon Kain with a cardboard tube as a joke. And it ended up in the game. (Maybe it was The Real Moebius (Of the time streamer) or Fangy? (Of the Dark angel colony) but I can't remember, it was over 20 years ago). The cartoons were a call back to a april fools on the lost worlds site (Ben Lincoln) , that they were going to make a GTA style LOK game. It's a pity that NR closed, there was a good community there. You don't really seem to get that as much on the internet anymore. Everyone was from all around the world, but we all knew each other.
I remember the april fool's joke. It was a pitch for a toony GTA style Kain game called maxime furtum vehiculum, or something to that effect. The art only featured Kain, which is why his toon version is much more stylized than Raziel's. The tube was a reference to a running gag going in Penny Arcade at the time.
In an earlier video, you brought up how Mobius allowed his fellow Circle members to be slaughtered by Vorador. The theory you put forward was that maybe the slain members were planning to get rid of the Timestreamer, thus he got rid of them first. My take was a little different, to my knowledge there were no other human guardians after the Ancient Vampires were overthrown in the rebellion led by Mobius and Mortanius. Perhaps the other guardians were present as well. Mortanius eventually had a change of heart, perhaps Mobius saw that some of the others would as well and so he allowed them to be killed by Vorador. Janos Audron's murder not only rendered the Ancients extinct, but also triggered Vorador's revenge. Mobius would've seen that and banked on it. Raziel, due to his remaking, might've been hidden from Mobius' omniscience (the micro managing that the Timestreamer had invest in manipulating Raziel is evidence of that) but everyone else, including Kain, were pawns for Mobius to move about as he chose. The Timestreamer was master of the greatest lie of all: the truth. He simply put it out there and let others interpret, or misinterpret to their peril, as evidenced by manipulating Kain to kill Willaim the Just. Speaking of which, maybe just having an earlier version of the Reaver blade turned William into the Nemesis? It was originally a vampiric blade before raziel got stuck in it. The Nemesis seemed more interested in destroying than conquering. Methinks William's nemesissing around might be due to the sword's enchanting filling him with a taste for blood. But all this is just IMHO.
I remember playing Blood Omen way back in the day...and I'd love for the series to make a comeback starting with game one. Soul Reaver is the more well known of the series but it's always best to start at the first game in a franchise if you are going to bring it back...but it seems everyone wants a Soul Reaver revival more than a Blood Omen one, personally I liked all the games and would like to see them all with updated graphics and the like...though I do worry about 'modern values' having an effect on the story in some way...these games are not happy by any means in the way the story goes and it's that way on purpose so trying to 'lighten' it up a bit to avoid offending anyone would kill the deeper plot points.
There's this cool "Kingdom Hearts" fanfic focused around Roxas (that the author told me plans to return to this year) in which one of the worlds he visits is Kain's. I wished I could say more, but I don't want to hand out spoilers, so suffice it to say Roxas, by this point, has earned his warrior title of "Destiny's defiant/destroyer", a title he worked towards to earn after refusing to merge back with Sora. The name is "The Twilight Will".
I remember this ship the HMS Bitter in Soul Reaver. I thought it was random part of the scenary as it was seen along the pathway towards Rahab's domain of the Drowned Abby. I remembering the area kinda giving me goosebumps because it seemed like an abandoned ship in the middle of nowhere. Now I understand its significance after watching this video.
Here's a WEIRD thing that I only realized a few days ago: when you finish SR1 and continue over in SR2, Raziel chases Kain through the chronoplast, therefore you now basically have 1 older Raziel and 1 older Kain roaming around in a much earlier Nosgoth. Therefore, you'd think there's a chance of their younger versions coming in contact with their older counterparts. Raziel actually does, as towards the end of SR2 he faces his sarafan self and has a battle with him (ironically killing him, which is why he dies, which is why Kain later resurrects him as a vampire, so you go full-circle). However, Kain never manages to come across his younger self, nor you while playing as Raziel. Remember that all of Raziel's encounters with Kain throughout SR2 are between their older selves, the ones that went back in time from the SR1 era. I think it would've been so amazing to have old (wraith) Raziel cross paths with young Kain, who would not yet know who Raziel is. Or even older Kain with young Kain, with some intricate philosophical dialogue exchange...
FWIW, the cardboard tube sword is a reference to Penny Arcade's Cardboard Tube Samurai, which was also referenced in the PC version of Hitman: Contracts. Both games were published by Eidos Interactive.
the earring was the first thing that sprang to my attention in SR1s intro. made me instantly root for that future Kain. thanks so much for giving the additional infos on it, though. Should be a fan shop item.
awesome video. there were quite a lot of secrets in those games I never knew about. I have heard of the pirate ship but never found it myself as I got stuck in Vorador's mansion and couldn't complete the game. I never knew there was a lost city filled with werewolves. I did discover the human citadel and your effect on the humans if you didn't kill them outside the city. that was a cool feature of the game.
Very cool video! I got Blood Omen : Legacy of Kain when it came out as a birthday gift. My mother said she wouldn't have bought it if she had known it was so violent! She never spoke English, so I just didn't have to mention it beforehand and said : "It's OK, I would have bought it anyway (I was a paperboy and could afford a game in 2 weeks roughly). The secret area is interesting, but the problem always was that exploration just gave you more items you already had in spades unless you chose to wander and not go straight for completion. It was far from perfect, but it remained very special for its art direction, voice acting and atmosphere. One of the coolest thing to do is to listen to every item description. This game was ahead of its time for voice acting. In Soul Reaver 2, you could unlock videos of the actors' work directly in the studio. Priceless for wannabe voice actors, check it out! Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 2 Voice Sessions on RU-vid.
My friend Andrew and I were the biggest LoK nerds for miles when we were kids. There was a time when we couldn’t go a day without saying “Fear. The Tube!” To each other.
Do a video about unanswered questions of LOK. For instance, why didn't Kain's human death fix the balance pillar or lead to the birth of a new balance pillar guardian? Were the pillars too damaged in the 30 years Kain was alive to choose a new guardian? If souls go to the spectral realm after death and are either hunted by it's life forms, eaten the elder, or reincarnated via the wheel, then where did Kain go after his human death at the beginning of Blood Omen 1? The Hylden prison dimension? Was it a trick made by Mortainius?
I never realized the earring was a ring until a friend of mine told me, but thank you because now I know whose ring it actually was. 🙂 The human worshippers I knew about because I didn't harm them my second time around. That was a neat feature. Thanks for the video. Really enjoyed it. 😊
Every time I learn something new about Blood Omen 2 - it becomes more apparent that the people who worked on it were a bunch of hacks, all down to that Ross guy and his clumsy Hylden plot lines.
There are basically two distinct ways of pronouncing latin - classic (as the Romans most likely pronounced it according to reconstructive linguistics), and medieval, which is how people in the middle ages accepted latin should be read. The way most latin phrases are pronounced popularly is medieval latin, which is historically accurate for middle ages and therefore I think still fitting for Nosgoth and the character of Kain. I think a really cool use of classic latin was in Fallout: New Vegas, where Caesar's Legion larping as Romans insisted on using the historically correct ways to pronounce their words, while the rest didn't care.
Oh fantastic video to wake up to. I think I stumbled across the werewolf village once and had been trying to find it again. I had no idea there was a fan remastered version as well. However, I want to say the mechanic of people seeing Raziel as a savior was a known mechanic. I want to say it was in the manual but it's possible I read it in a game magazine before the first Soul Reaver was released.
This saga really needs a full fledged high quality remake, probably involving Amy and some of the original devs to "police" the remake. With the same voice actors. The ones who can at least, the voice actor of the Elder God is deceased, which is very sad, he had such a cool voice :(
That first one is interesting, since as it's pronounced in classical Latin would be "Why Wictis", but in Ecclesiastical Latin (Church Latin) it is as Kain pronounces it. This is because classical Latin does not have a "v/veeh" sound. It has the letter "v", but it takes the place of what we would see as "u" and "w" in English and other romance languages.
