Psh, stupid Silicon Knights

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FullCircle	Psh, stupid Silicon Knights	Lead	[-]
Posts: 241 (08/11/09 05:45 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	I'm just reading through the SK Blood Omen FAQ, having a look at Behind the Scenes, and it says the following: The Vision of Kain Kain was conceived to be a game which adults would want to play. The character Kain was modeled in part after Clint Eastwood's character in the movie "Unforgiven". In this movie, there were no "good" or "evil" characters, they were all "gray". The vision of Kain was to create a game where the player is put in the position where everyone believes you are evil, perhaps even yourself. We wanted to ask the questions of "What is evil? Perhaps it is merely a perspective". We wanted to create an "anti-hero". Other inspirations were the "Necroscope" series by Brain Lumly because of the great visceral nature, and "The Wheel of Time" series by Robert Jordan because of its rich world and finely woven story lines. Nice try guys, but in BO, everyone in Nosgoth comes off as evil, except for guards and village/city-dwellers, who just come off as brainless. Kain was a true prick, who only seemed like a nice guy if he killed himself at the end, which was down to the player, not Kain at all. He wasn't an anti-hero. Amy remedied that. And The Wheel of Time? Yeah, BO was a pretty rich world, and the storyline was finely woven, but just mentioning the Wheel of Time makes Nosgoth in BO look like rubbish in comparison. But then, maybe that was more than anyone else could have expected from a game back then. Elder God: "I am the Wheel and it's turning. I am the circle of life and death." Raziel: "And I am beginning to think the vampires committed suicide only to escape your voice."
edge of the coin		#1	[-]
Posts: 59 (08/11/09 08:55 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Well to be honest, there are people in BO1 who make Kain the nicer one out of the bunch, take Mobius for example, he's a total bastard, because of him perhaps thousands of people are blinked out of existance and others killed needlessly, and Kain is just an arrgoant noble, a prick as you say but not totaly evil at least in comparison to others.
rabban		#2	[-]
Posts: 5848 (08/11/09 11:12 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	there are enough characters in nosgoth during bo1 to give it a shade of gray william the just and king ottmar for sure. but just like the stories that inspired bo1 no one are 100% good or evil. and for the most part you have to recall everything was fine in bo1's story arc the circle of nine were ok if it weren't for azimuth and mortanius untill THE ENTIRE WORLD WAS CORRUPTED!!! "Only God can judge me" "Damn right and the rest of you better tread carefully before i splurt some ink in your eye. see ya on the wheel of fate biotches!"
Corpse87		#3	[-]
Posts: 5972 (08/12/09 07:34 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	I don't get your complaints. The nature of good and evil are put to question. Most characters in Blood Omen are simply driven by their interests or agendas and only so often stop to think of moral dilemmas. It's vastly different from the clear cut good/evil of most plots. Keep in mind that "good and evil" are our bullshit little human concepts. And we try to fuse them to most of the stories and plots. The Birds ARE watching you.
FullCircle		#4	[-]
Posts: 242 (08/12/09 07:55 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Oh, but I'm perfectly aware of the rubbish concept of "good and evil". But I don't think Blood Omen really challenges those concepts all that well. Most people that think of good and evil as real things would just say what I said, that most of them are evil. Of course, no one is pure evil in Blood Omen, the only time anyone is ever "pure evil" is when they work for some "god of evil" in a ridiculous fantasy story, but even then it's rarely plain evil. I mean, is there a clear-cut good/evil to most plots? Beyond the nursery rhymes and stories aimed at children, I can't think of a well-known plot that has a clear good-evil dichotomy. It's not until the Soul Reaver games that you see any substantial anti-heroism in Kain. Until then, there was nothing to suggest he cared about anything, he was just a villain whose goals required acts of good. And the entire world being corrupted doesn't really challenge the good-evil dichotomy; anyone who believes in good and evil would just say "they were good, then they became evil". Yes, it's still grey, but BO doesn't seem to really address that grey. Actually, I think Ariel is a good example of the grey. Elder God: "I am the Wheel and it's turning. I am the circle of life and death." Raziel: "And I am beginning to think the vampires committed suicide only to escape your voice."
rabban		#5	[-]
Posts: 5849 (08/12/09 04:58 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	It's not until the Soul Reaver games that you see any substantial anti-heroism in Kain. Until then, there was nothing to suggest he cared about anything, he was just a villain whose goals required acts of good. "An anti-hero is not the opposite of a hero, but a specialized kind of hero, one who may be an outlaw or villian from the point of view of society, but with whom the audience is basically in sympathy." your saying you did not sympathize with kain at all in bo1 then?...did you play it at all? in bo1 the original quest is to find a cure for vampirism, but like many well thought up stories the "call to adventure" has to be rejected or at least given the appearance of rejection by another character so that the hero can choose a new quest. And The Wheel of Time? Yeah, BO was a pretty rich world, and the storyline was finely woven, but just mentioning the Wheel of Time makes Nosgoth in BO look like rubbish in comparison. wheel of time? don't you mean wheel of fate? and i don't see how that addition makes bo1 look like rubbish "Only God can judge me" "Damn right and the rest of you better tread carefully before i splurt some ink in your eye. see ya on the wheel of fate biotches!" Last Edited By: rabban 08/12/09 05:12 PM. Edited 6 times.
Corpse87		#6	[-]
Posts: 5973 (08/12/09 06:51 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	I think he meant the book series with the wheel there. The Birds ARE watching you.
blincoln		#7	[-]
Posts: 401 (08/12/09 07:23 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	You have to remember that over the last decade or so, it's become much more fashionable to base various kinds of fiction around the "shades of grey" concept. When Blood Omen was being written (about 15 years ago) and released (about 13 years ago), it was not nearly so common. It wasn't unheard of, just much less common, especially in mainstream media. Silicon Knights writing a "shades of grey" story in the mid-90s is sort of like J. Michael Straczynski writing Babylon 5 as a sci-fi TV series with a predetermined 5-year story arc back around the same time. Almost everyone does that today (or at least has season-long story arcs), so if you weren't around to see it when it was originally airing, you don't remember how at the time it was unusual because virtually everything else followed the self-contained episode model where you could watch the episodes in any order you wanted and not be confused. Look at the top-grossing movies of 1995 and 1996. You'll see a lot of movies like Independence Day, GoldenEye, etc. Movies where the heroes are heroic and the villains are villainous, and there really isn't any middle ground. If you want to get really specific, compare the James Bond of the Pierce Brosnan era with the Daniel Craig of today. I prefer Craig's Bond, but it would not have flown as a mainstream, big-budget Hollywood production back in the mid-90s.
rabban		#8	[-]
Posts: 5850 (08/12/09 08:50 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	'nuff said "Only God can judge me" "Damn right and the rest of you better tread carefully before i splurt some ink in your eye. see ya on the wheel of fate biotches!"
Corpse87		#9	[-]
Posts: 5976 (08/12/09 09:13 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	It may have been the spirit of the times to have the good-vs-evil blockbusters(at least as a fall off from the eighties), but anti-heroes were always popular in one way or another. And as far as plots go Blood Omen was much more sophisticated and better written than most game stories at the time. In fact it remains the best-written Legacy of Kain game to date. I may be slightly biased, as someone who played it when it was released, but the good/evil concept is much more obvious in all other Kain games. The Birds ARE watching you. Last Edited By: Corpse87 08/12/09 09:23 PM. Edited 1 times.
rabban		#10	[-]
Posts: 5851 (08/12/09 10:21 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	well, kain is much more of a good guy in lok now. he is cured of his insanity, he fights to fix the world, and humanity is painted as an unenlightened and fearful race. so your stuck with kain being the only hope for good and all that. "Only God can judge me" "Damn right and the rest of you better tread carefully before i splurt some ink in your eye. see ya on the wheel of fate biotches!"
FullCircle		#11	[-]
Posts: 254 (08/13/09 09:35 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	rabban wrote: It's not until the Soul Reaver games that you see any substantial anti-heroism in Kain. Until then, there was nothing to suggest he cared about anything, he was just a villain whose goals required acts of good. "An anti-hero is not the opposite of a hero, but a specialized kind of hero, one who may be an outlaw or villian from the point of view of society, but with whom the audience is basically in sympathy." your saying you did not sympathize with kain at all in bo1 then?...did you play it at all? in bo1 the original quest is to find a cure for vampirism, but like many well thought up stories the "call to adventure" has to be rejected or at least given the appearance of rejection by another character so that the hero can choose a new quest. And The Wheel of Time? Yeah, BO was a pretty rich world, and the storyline was finely woven, but just mentioning the Wheel of Time makes Nosgoth in BO look like rubbish in comparison. wheel of time? don't you mean wheel of fate? and i don't see how that addition makes bo1 look like rubbish That's my point - if an anti-hero was just a likeable villain than, yes, Kain is an anti-hero. But an anti-hero is a specialised kind of hero. Kain of BO1 is no kind of hero. Yeah, as Corpse said, I meant the novel series. The Wheel of Time is insanely complex and finely woven. The detail is enough to cause headaches. blincoln wrote: You have to remember that over the last decade or so, it's become much more fashionable to base various kinds of fiction around the "shades of grey" concept. When Blood Omen was being written (about 15 years ago) and released (about 13 years ago), it was not nearly so common. It wasn't unheard of, just much less common, especially in mainstream media. Silicon Knights writing a "shades of grey" story in the mid-90s is sort of like J. Michael Straczynski writing Babylon 5 as a sci-fi TV series with a predetermined 5-year story arc back around the same time. Almost everyone does that today (or at least has season-long story arcs), so if you weren't around to see it when it was originally airing, you don't remember how at the time it was unusual because virtually everything else followed the self-contained episode model where you could watch the episodes in any order you wanted and not be confused. Look at the top-grossing movies of 1995 and 1996. You'll see a lot of movies like Independence Day, GoldenEye, etc. Movies where the heroes are heroic and the villains are villainous, and there really isn't any middle ground. If you want to get really specific, compare the James Bond of the Pierce Brosnan era with the Daniel Craig of today. I prefer Craig's Bond, but it would not have flown as a mainstream, big-budget Hollywood production back in the mid-90s. This is true. I take back my dispute with BO about good/evil. Corpse87 wrote: It may have been the spirit of the times to have the good-vs-evil blockbusters(at least as a fall off from the eighties), but anti-heroes were always popular in one way or another. And as far as plots go Blood Omen was much more sophisticated and better written than most game stories at the time. In fact it remains the best-written Legacy of Kain game to date. I may be slightly biased, as someone who played it when it was released, but the good/evil concept is much more obvious in all other Kain games. I suppose, yes, the good/evil concept is much more obvious in all the other Kain games. But, my main issue with their attempt to make Kain an anti-hero, which was somewhat of a failure in my eyes. Elder God: "I am the Wheel and it's turning. I am the circle of life and death." Raziel: "And I am beginning to think the vampires committed suicide only to escape your voice."
an ancient		#12	[-]
Posts: 3510 (08/13/09 10:44 AM) The Last Ancient Vampire Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	I'd just like to state the obvious, that a series of books can not be compared to a game series.
blincoln		#13	[-]
Posts: 402 (08/13/09 05:50 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Corpse87 wrote: It may have been the spirit of the times to have the good-vs-evil blockbusters(at least as a fall off from the eighties), but anti-heroes were always popular in one way or another. I think we could go back and forth on this endlessly. I remember very few anti-hero main characters in mainstream entertainment from the 20th century. The main ones would be Roy Batty in Blade Runner, and the criminals in Heat. There are some cult films like Taxi Driver that I could see being argued as featuring an anti-hero, but even including those (and the handful of westerns and Heat-style crime dramas) I wouldn't say it was extremely common. As a kid growing up in the late 80s, I certainly remember being shocked to discover Michael Moorcock's Elric novels (written in the late 60s/early 70s), because they were so unusual in having the focus of the story be an evil character - the cast of those books is more shades of black than of grey, for the most part . A little later I got interested in William Gibson's early work (Neuromancer, Burning Chrome), for similar reasons - it was unusual in that it told the story from the point of view of murky, morally-ambiguous people. The other thing to keep in mind is even if I were totally wrong about other forms of entertainment, the videogame world in the mid-90s was a far more tame place than it is today. The Playstation was only one generation removed from the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Everybody does "shades of grey" stories now, but you wouldn't have seen Sonic the Hedgehog beat a confession out of an imprisoned Doctor Robotnik, or Samus Aran sacrifice a few civilian populations in order to win the larger war against the space pirates. The Playstation era was the first time that console makers really started producing games that were targeted mainly or exclusively at adults. Corpse87 wrote: And as far as plots go Blood Omen was much more sophisticated and better written than most game stories at the time. In fact it remains the best-written Legacy of Kain game to date. I think the overall story of Blood Omen is very well-written, and I think a lot of the dialogue is good (especially in comparison to other videogames), but a different subset of the dialogue also teeters on the edge of melodrama. The main reason it sounds good is because of Simon Templeman's delivery. The change to a more classically-inspired style of dialogue is one of the things I really appreciated about Soul Reaver. Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds http://www.peak.sfu.ca/~blincoln/lok/
Laura Organa Solo		#14	[-]
Posts: 1128 (08/14/09 12:14 AM) Kain's Personal Elf Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Ben said all there is to say before I could get here. I would like to counter that the Wheel of Time series is one of the most overrated, overblown series I've ever read. They're also incredibly derivative (primarily the first couple of books -- Eye of the World was almost outright bad though) and about as original as Star Wars. :B So I think that freaking out over poor Denis Dyack saying he was inspired by the series and somehow linking that statement to a comparison of LoK vs WoT is kind of funny. LoK isn't Shakespeare and Blood Omen 1 is pretty over the top but in terms of video game writing, LoK is still worlds ahead of... just about everyone, especially in terms of more recent games (maybe with the Metal Gear Solid series as an exception). † † † On an unrelated note, Japanese Nazi robots drive Nazi soldier to commit suicide while singing about angels questioning God. For great justice.
rabban		#15	[-]
Posts: 5853 (08/14/09 02:12 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	But an anti-hero is a specialised kind of hero. Kain of BO1 is no kind of hero. but that's just it! the player follows kain's descent/ascension and it is up to the player to decide at the very end what kind of hero kain is. if kain would sacrifice himself or rule a doomed nosgoth. you decide what kind of hero he should be. i think the sequels may blind your judgement of bo1 fullcircle. bo1 is a sort of rorschach test at the end. "Only God can judge me" "Damn right and the rest of you better tread carefully before i splurt some ink in your eye. see ya on the wheel of fate biotches!" Last Edited By: rabban 08/14/09 02:18 AM. Edited 1 times.
FullCircle		#16	[-]
Posts: 258 (08/14/09 10:39 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	But it is only at the end where you can chose whether Kain is a hero or not. Up until that point, the dialogue makes it clear that Kain's actions are purely self-serving. Elder God: "I am the Wheel and it's turning. I am the circle of life and death." Raziel: "And I am beginning to think the vampires committed suicide only to escape your voice."
Laura Organa Solo		#17	[-]
Posts: 1130 (08/14/09 02:43 PM) Kain's Personal Elf Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	FullCircle wrote: But it is only at the end where you can chose whether Kain is a hero or not. Up until that point, the dialogue makes it clear that Kain's actions are purely self-serving. Self-serving but not necessarily evil. You are given the option of being an evil %%!%#@+ and killing all the poor peasants you come across. It's not required or necessary. You can even run away from human guards. â� â� â�
Corpse87		#18	[-]
Posts: 5978 (08/14/09 07:18 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	Self-serving but not necessarily evil. This. The Birds ARE watching you.
blincoln		#19	[-]
Posts: 403 (08/15/09 07:57 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	I've done some additional reading on this subject now, and ironically enough it doesn't seem like there's a lot of agreement on what exactly the differences are between an anti-hero, a likable (or at least understandable) villain, and a flawed or tragic hero. For example, I ran across an article supposedly about anti-heroes in science fiction, and most of the characters on the list were what I would consider underdogs and/or heroes with a few flaws. The only two characters on the list that jumped right out at me as being anti-heroes were Rorschach from the Watchmen, and Vin Diesel's Riddick. I thought that was an interesting contrast, since Rorschach is bent on serving justice and Riddick is interested in serving himself, but they end up having similar attitudes and methods. Also, something I should have realized myself but didn't is that of course the perception of those roles has been changing for quite a long time. Apparently most people used to (and some people still do?) consider Batman an anti-hero character, because he's a vigilante. Maybe I am the odd one out here, but to me Batman is just an unconventional hero. I was also thinking that in retrospect it's interesting that Blood Omen doesn't really give you the option of being a traditional hero like other (more recent) alignment-based games do. In inFamous or Knights of the Old Republic, you can truly go to either end of the traditional good/evil spectrum. But in Blood Omen, the most good Kain can reach is to be a tragic hero. Even if you play him as good as possible in the interactive parts (as Laura suggests), he's still got a pretty significant flaw in the form of his vampirism, and he's still a jerk to everyone in the cinematics .
Corpse87		#20	[-]
Posts: 5982 (08/15/09 08:49 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts Report Post	blincoln wrote: ....it doesn't seem like there's a lot of agreement on what exactly the differences are between an anti-hero, a likable (or at least understandable) villain, and a flawed or tragic hero. Jackpot. Semantics slow down academia. The Birds ARE watching you.

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