As some of you know, I've been being a hermit, working to finish up some software for my multispectral photography project. That took me over a year, but the first release is finally done, and I feel like I can take a break for awhile.

In the meantime, some interesting events have unfolded regarding Legacy of Kain:

Crystal Dynamics released a DLC add-on for Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light which replaced the two main characters with Raziel and Kain.

The first playable demo of Blood Omnicide was released! This is a fan-made 3D update to Blood Omen, and is easily the most impressive fan project I've seen.

Vincent Chevalier released a complete playable fan-game - Legacy of Kain: Revival - done in the style of Super Metroid / Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

It's been long enough since the other major fan game (Legacy of Kain: Prodigal Sons) was announced by its creator that I still get emails asking me if I know about it, because the update where I posted a link has rolled off of the main page. It still seems to be being actively worked on, but there haven't been any releases since the original demo, which came out something like two years ago.

There are some exciting things planned for The Lost Worlds this year, but I'm going to keep most of them a surprise for now. One of the things I can reveal is that I'll be working to update a few of the applications (e.g. Soul Spiral) that don't work correctly on Windows 7 (or, at least, the 64-bit version).

In some of the time I've taken off for the last couple of weeks, I finally got around to playing Darksiders, which is a game from 2010 that several readers recommended to me. Now that I've played it, I wish I had paid more attention when it came out.

Darksiders is by far the most Legacy of Kain-like game I've ever played - even more so than inFamous, which is quite a feat. Hilariously, the game's creator claims that Legacy of Kain was not really an influence, but don't let that laughably ridiculous statement dissuade you from checking it out. It seems to be extremely polarizing in terms of the opinions it inspires in gamers, but I am definitely one of the people who thought it was excellent. In my mind, it is the closest thing we are likely to see to a modern remake of the original Soul Reaver, reimagined in a somewhat different setting, but built the way that Soul Reaver was originally intended: a stand-alone, complete story, with a nearly unbelievable amount of abilities and items (for an action/adventure game) to unlock. The writing isn't as strong as the Kain series, but the rest of the game is so strong that I'm willing to overlook that one minor flaw.

Here are a few of the many ways that Darksiders reminded me of the Kain series. Most of these are minor spoilers, so ignore the rest of this post if you want to play it without knowing anything.

• The game is set in the post-apocalyptic ruins of a world that was destroyed a century before the bulk of the main story takes place.
• ...however, the introduction takes place prior to that apocalyptic struggle.
• The story borrows heavily from various mythological depictions of heaven, hell, demons, and angels, but reshapes them to its own ends.
• The protagonist is a sword-wielding outcast on a quest for revenge who can glide (but not fly), can see into a shadowy alternate world, and consumes the souls of his slain enemies.
• Like Soul Reaver, the adventure/ability/puzzle aspect of the gameplay is (very) obviously influenced by the Metroid series. In particular, it is an open world, but most areas require earned abilities to access, and as one progresses through the game, they will notice little hints about things they will be able to do later on once more abilities have been earned.
• The bosses are of the Soul Reaver / Blood Omen 2 style where they are puzzle-based, in contrast to the regular combat used against non-bosses.
• The ruined future-world is presided over by an enormous tower, constantly looming in the distance.
• The introduction plays out as a cinematic, then a playable sequence prior to the protagonist's fall, very much like the beginning of Blood Omen.
• The "Serpent Hole" areas look exactly like a modern recreation of the more supernatural parts of the Eternal Prison in Blood Omen 2, and function identically to the Warp Gates of Soul Reaver.
• The major characters all have tribal-style symbols, just like in Soul Reaver.
• Like Defiance, it combines Soul Reaver-style action/adventure gaming with Devil May Cry-style combination-based combat.
• Most of the weapons can be "imbued" with either different powers or elements, and they change colour to indicate this.
• Like Soul Reaver (but taken to a whole new level), in addition to the standard weapons, it's possible to grab objects from the environment and use those instead.
• Numerous areas are extremely similar in appearance to the Human Citadel in Soul Reaver, some of the more fantastic Steampunk areas of Blood Omen 2, and the Sarafan Stronghold of Soul Reaver 2 / Defiance.

There are quite a few lesser aspects of the game that I could add to that list, but hopefully that gives you some idea of why it feels to me like a "spiritual remake" of the original vision of Soul Reaver. There are even a few block puzzles (but nothing like the block puzzle onslaught of Soul Reaver). If you liked any of the Kain games - but especially if you liked all of them - I highly recommend giving Darksiders a try, especially at its current bargain price. I liked it so much that I feel a little badly not having paid the original retail for it.

Finally, a bit of Darksiders: The Lost Worlds. I dusted off my hacker's hat and went poking around in the game code to see if there were any unreleased codes (besides "The Hollow Lord"). There aren't, but I discovered that the "Shadowflight" ability appears to have been originally named the "Tempest Cloak", and the "Mask of Shadows" was called the "Eye of Lilith". For you Zelda fans that are convinced that it was that series and not Metroid that influenced Darksiders), the "Abyssal Chain" is referred to internally as the "Ghost Hook", and the "Crossblade" is in fact referred to as the "Boomerang" in a couple of places.

Umah Bloodomen from the Eidos forums was kind enough to negotiate the release of Daniel Cabuco's previously-undisclosed concept art for Umah in Defiance. Thank you Umah and Daniel!

The Blood Omnicide team asked me if I could help decipher the compression method used on the image tile and map files used in Blood Omen, and after a bit of reverse-engineering work I succeeded. The result is the Blood Omen Decompressor, whose main use at the moment is to convert the GRPnnnnn.CTM files into regular TIM images.

I've added a new build of Soul Spiral that recognizes nearly all of the filenames in Blood Omen and corrects some minor bugs. Thanks to Andrey Grachev for providing me with some of the filename information.

The filename list is complete enough now that I've been able to verify that there is no map 66 in the game, so the Map Survey article has been updated accordingly.

Some of you may have read Rusminin's post at the Eidos forums or Divine Shadow's post at the NeoGAF forums about a surprising discovery - an area deleted from Blood Omen which can still be reached by using a walk-through-walls cheat. I've created an article about this ship - the HMCS Bitter - with quite a few screenshots, maps, and a saved game file that PC gamers can use to access it themselves if they don't want to use the Blood Omen Trainer for some reason.

This is not an April Fools joke. Rusminin's post was originally made back in February, but I didn't see it until Divine Shadow tipped me off. I deliberately waited until well after April 1st to post this, which also gave me time to investigate Blood Omen in depth to see if there were any remaining buried secrets. Unfortunately there do not appear to be, but the results of my investigation are available in the Map Survey article. There is also a new build of Soul Spiral available which recognizes most of the filenames in Blood Omen (and incorporates an experimental hex editor feature that Andrew Fradley sent me several years ago). A version which correctly recognizes all filenames for that game should be forthcoming.

The Russian fans who discovered the Bitter did so while doing research for their ambitious project to recreate Blood Omen in 3D. If you haven't seen their work-in-progress Blood Omnicide) yet, it is most definitely worth a look.

For April 1st this year, Divine Shadow was kind enough to let me post not one, but two of his epic April Fools jokes from the early 21st century.

Some of you may remember the first - Doll Reaver - Legacy of Turelzevir. This was a fairly involved production on the part of Divine Shadow that had its own website at the time (although it is no longer available at its original address). This presentation includes not only all of the original content, but some special bonuses such as the full-resolution trailer videos.

The second is a bit of a "lost world" all its own - Anacrothe's Adventures was an even more ambitious project from the early 21st century which would have resulted in a fully-playable fan game. As it is, Divine Shadow graciously provided the fourth (and final) playable beta to give everyone an idea of what direction it would have taken. Most of the regular visitors to Nosgothic Realm were in on the secret at the time, but I had no idea until a few months ago.

I've finally reposted Andrew Fradley's excellent article Creating The Defiance PC Trainer, which describes some of his hacking work to create that piece of software. That article was one of a handful that got lost in the shuffle when I rebuilt the site in 2007, and I apologize for taking so long to get it back online.

Along those same lines, I've added back the pages about two demo versions of Soul Reaver that were also misplaced during the redesign: The Quest for Melchiah and The Fire Glyph Demos.

Finally, I've posted the 1.02 patch for the English version of Soul Reaver 2 (see Soul Reaver 2 PC Patch version 1.02). I've gotten numerous emails indicating that Square Enix no longer makes it available, and it fixes numerous common issues with that game.

Andrew Fradley has just released a new version of ModelEx. He's been working on this one for quite awhile (the last official release was almost 3 years ago), but it was worth the wait. This version can load the models and textures from all three versions of Soul Reaver, and it can export the results in .x format so they can be imported into a 3D modeling application. This includes both the Material and Spectral versions of each area, as well as both model variations for objects that have two (vampires, humans, etc.).

As several of you have let me know, Soul Reaver is now available in the online Playstation store. Like the release of Blood Omen in this format a few months ago, this is great news for anyone who never had a chance to play the original game, or doesn't have their disc anymore.

Despite the end of United Cutlery, there is still an effort to convince someone to manufacture a licensed (and accurate) replica of the Soul Reaver sword. If you'd like to chime in to add your support, that link will take you right to the forum thread at Epic Weapons.

In my last update, I neglected to mention that Blood Omen is now available in downloadable form from the online Playstation Store (at least in some parts of the world). This is great news for anyone with a PS3 and/or PSP who has had trouble tracking down a secondhand copy of the game.

I finished playing through Uncharted 2 last week, and in an unprecedented feat, it manages to leap past the spectacular original both in terms of the stunning visuals and the gameplay. Obviously I have a personal attachment to the story and setting of Legacy of Kain, but judged on its own merits, Uncharted 2 is by far the best game that Amy Hennig (director of Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, and Defiance) has made. There are already a chorus of voices praising Uncharted 2, but it is one of those rare titles that truly deserves the recognition being heaped upon it. It has outstanding action and puzzles, a great story, and plenty of ancient ruins, including some that make use of ultraviolet light to eerie effect. Which brings me to an announcement I've been wanting to make for quite some time now:

For almost three years now I've been spending almost all of my free time working on a new hobby - multispectral photography (specifically, infrared and ultraviolet photos in addition to "visible light"). I finally have something to show for it too - a new website where you can see some examples of what I've done so far, and an explanation of what the images represent. To bring this back to the topic of Legacy of Kain, the first outing I went on to take a lot of pictures in the field (back in 2007) involved me heading down to Los Angeles, where I was honoured to have lunch with Amy Hennig, Richard LeMarchand, and Michael Bell(!). It's been a very interesting project for me, and I hope at least some of you think so as well.

It's hard to believe that it's been close to a year since I posted an update to The Lost Worlds. There is a good reason for that, and I'm going to have some exciting news to share soon. But enough about that for now.

Tomorrow (13 October 2009), Uncharted 2: Among Thieves will hit store shelves. Uncharted 2 is the latest game that Legacy of Kain director Amy Hennig and designer Richard LeMarchand have been working on for Naughty Dog. The original was a truly spectacular adventure game, and based on the previews I've seen of this sequel it looks to be even better. I've had my copy pre-ordered for quite awhile, and I cannot recommend more highly that you check it out.

A few months ago, Daniel Cabuco (another former long-time member of the Kain team) sent me some original texture files from The Undercity and The Temple, one of the major areas deleted from the original Soul Reaver, and they are now available on that page. Thanks Daniel!

In other prerelease/deleted material news, Raina Audron (a fan of the series in Slovakia) has put together a really comprehensive and interesting comparison between two different beta versions of Soul Reaver and the final (retail) version of the game.

Legacy of Kain: Prodigal Sons is one of the more promising fan efforts I've seen over the years. Creating a complete game is still a daunting task, but I'm looking forward to seeing how Jake Pawloski's project turns out.

As part of this update, I've removed the download-limiting functionality from TLW. It was causing a lot of people to have trouble downloading the Soundtracks, which I apologize for. As far as I can tell, it was something related to differences between PHP4 and PHP5, because I switched hosts last year and that's the only change I'm aware of (my old host was using PHP4). It could also just be that PHP is a terrible language. All I know is that the scripts worked fine on the old host, but not on the new one. This new host doesn't cap my bandwidth, but if the crazy Russians or Brazilians (or anyone else, for that matter) start downloading the same thing over and over again I will just outright ban them from the site because I don't want to aggravate my provider unnecessarily.

Removing that functionality involved performing a complete rebuild of TLW using an updated version of Charon, the batch software I wrote to create and maintain the site, so if you notice any bugs (broken links, etc.), please let me know using the Contact form. Note that you may need to clear your browser cache in order for the site to display properly, since some of the links and code are different now.

Finally, I know it's a little late in coming, but for those of you with access to a PS3, I'd recommend giving inFamous a look. I actually bought and played through it when it came out earlier this year, and I was blown away by what a solid adventure game it was. I noticed a lot of aspects that made me think that the design teams were big fans of Soul Reaver, even though the setting (a modern-day city) is very different on the surface. I don't want to provide any spoilers, but this feeling only intensified the further I got into the game.

A lot of this site's visitors are still anxious for news about a sequel, so I'm posting this even though it's probably not the news most of you want to hear.

Back in March of this year, forum member Rabban sent me a link to Ranjeet Singhal's portfolio, which includes a composite image of a Kain model partway in-between his appearance in Blood Omen 2 and in the Soul Reaver games. At the time, I didn't really understand the full meaning.

Then in October, Nosgothic Realm forum member FallenVVarrior found the portfolio of Aaron Hausmann (an artist from Ritual Entertainment) which included a few screenshots of a project titled "Legacy of Kain: Canceled Sequel".

Now, Divine Shadow has returned to tie it all together (mostly). His thread describes the available information in detail, but from what he pieced together, this project seems to have been started shortly after Defiance shipped, but was canceled after about 3 months in development. All three of the artists who mention it work(ed) for Ritual, who would later go on to work with Eidos on 25 To Life. The title (according to Jason Muck's portfolio) was Legacy of Kain: The Dark Prophecy.

The available screenshots aren't much to go on, but there are some interesting clues about what might have been. Please keep in mind that just because this particular sequel was canceled doesn't mean that there is no possibility of a different sequel being made at some point in the future. Game developers and publishers cancel projects frequently before they're ever announced publicly. For example, Eidos themselves canceled Core's remake of Tomb Raider: Anniversary and gave the concept to Crystal Dynamics to build from scratch.

Speaking of Tomb Raider, Underworld ships next week (for the PS3, Xbox360, PC, Wii, and PS2 - the latter three being significantly cheaper). I thought Crystal Dynamics did a fantastic job on Anniversary and Legend, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what they've done with their first title built from the ground up for next-gen systems. The team that made Underworld has a number of names that will be familiar to fans of the Kain series, including Riley Cooper (who did design work on Blood Omen, both Soul Reaver games, and Defiance) and Chris Bruno (who has tested or been in charge of testing all of the Kain games).

Some people were still running into problems downloading the Soundtracks.

I've updated the download script to work a bit better, and it should be more visitor-friendly as well.

It supports resuming of transfers now (although that will still count against your total number of downloads of a particular file, so don't use this feature unless you have to). It will not even allow you to attempt downloading the same file multiple times within the space of a few minutes (rather than allowing the attempt and then adding to the count of times you've downloaded the file). Also, as long as your browser has JavaScript enabled, the download link will disappear after it's clicked on to prevent people from clicking more than once and downloading the same file multiple times.

Sorry for any hassles this has caused. I wish I didn't need to use the script at all, but there are a few people out there who think it's clever to download the same file literally hundreds (or thousands) of times. I've already had to ban entire ISPs in Russia and Brazil from accessing the site altogether because of the actions of that small number of people.