Stealth - Blood Omen 2 - Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds

Stealth

Blood Omen 2 was developed during a time when Metal Gear Solid and Thief had propelled stealth action games into the spotlight. It originally incorporated that same type of gameplay - pre-release material placed quite an emphasis on it.

Obviously this aspect of the game was cut before release. Although no official statement has been made, it was probably due to the stealth elements not integrating well with the rest of the game as well as the market being flooded with titles based on the same concept.

It is uncertain how the player would have used this functionality, with one exception: the game engine has a feature where it can display a dot in the HUD to indicate the disposition of non-player characters around Kain. Most preview videos show this feature, and it is possible to enable it in the retail version by editing the game.erg file (see Hacking the PC Version). The dot is grey if no one has seen Kain, and expands in size the closer he is to being noticed. It changes to green if humans are friendly to him, yellow if they are cautious, and red if they are hostile.

The space in the HUD for the dot can be clearly seen in the preview imagery, but was removed when the feature was disabled; consequently it looks a little out of place when turned on in the retail game.

The stealth aspects of the game were separate from the Stealth Dark Gift (see Early Dark Gifts).