The Undercity and The Temple - Soul Reaver - Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds

The Undercity and The Temple

article by Ben Lincoln

Having obtained the Shift-at-Will ability in The_Aftermath_of_The_Chronoplast, Raziel would have been equipped to enter the previously inaccessible complex underneath the Citadel. This area and the Temple which it led to were the home of The_Priestess and her cult of vampire-worshipping humans.

The specifics of how Raziel would have entered the Undercity are uncertain. There are quite a few potential doorways in and around the Citadel. Once inside, the gameplay has been described by members of the Soul Reaver development staff as involving raising and lowering water levels - similar to one of the puzzles which remains in the final version.

A handful of screenshots of the Undercity were published by a gaming magazine which mistakenly identified them as a "stone tower". They reveal the potentially massive scale of this area. Two rooms which were part of the Undercity are also present (but unused) in the data file for the game - city 10 and city 11. One is a short corridor which connects to the other - a sizeable reservoir of water. The reservoir seems to be one of the water-level puzzles; once Raziel has jumped off the ledge at the top, it is impossible for him to reach it again.

The reservoir also exhibits some of the visual problems that were apparently one of the main reasons The Undercity was cut from the game. In the PC and Playstation versions of the game, its roof flickers in and out of visibility. Supposedly much of the area had problems with its geometry, and would have required an impractical effort to correct it.

Beneath the City

A deleted gateway to the Undercity?

City 11

City 10

Video
File	Size	Author
The City 10 and 11 Rooms	13 MiB	Ben Lincoln
Video footage from the Dreamcast version of Soul Reaver.