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A new Legacy of Kain Defiance Remaster is happening thanks to files "found in a closet" and features a restored demo for a cancelled sequel no one's ever seen before.
It's probably not a huge surprise after last year's remaster of Soul Reaver 1 and 2 that the next game in the series, Defiance, would be getting the same treatment. That game saw Raziel and Kain playable together for the first time, across two timelines and uncovering the history of Nosgoth as they tried to stop each other.
This latest Remaster is packed with way more new features and unseen content than the previous games - including a playable demo for a rumoured but never before seen cancelled sequel - and it's all thanks to a hardworking closet bravely doing… nothing, for the last 22 years.
"A lot of what we are doing is based on this digitisation of a massive archive that we actually found in a closet at Crystal Dynamics' San Mateo office," explains Matt McCloskey, the franchise director for Legacy of Kain. Inside this treasure trove of video game history, the team found "all these old dat files and zip files" under the game's original title, "Soul Reaver 3".
Having access to all this material has enabled this remaster to really pull out the stops. So, as well as the obligatory remastered graphics, lighting and audio, there's fully overhauled intro and ending cinematics, a newly created combat tutorial to ease in new and old players alike, new controls, new third person camera and, probably the biggest quality of life boost - improved HUD, level maps, wayfinding, and something called a 'foresight navigation mechanic'. If you've ever spent a few hours looping around the Drowned Abby completely lost in Soul Reaver 1 as I have, that sounds like an absolute godsend.
While making the game more accessible for modern audiences is good, there's a lot of lost content that sounds really exciting if you're a Soul Reaver fan. Like the last remaster, this is bringing back a bunch of lost levels to explore. "We found over a dozen lost levels and sections of the game that were cut and we had fans pick the top nine," says McCloskey.
However, probably the biggest thing here is a complete rebuilding of a lost sequel. "In 2003, as soon as Defiance was shipped, Crystal Dynamics started working on the sequel, internally labeled LoK 6, the sixth game in the series," explains McCloskey.
Now, thanks to that closet, fans are going to get a chance to see what it would have been, and play it for the first time in 22 years (albeit only if they buy the Deluxe edition of the remaster). "It had been leaked, so fans knew about this," he clarifies, "but I don't think anyone's been able to play it. When we went back through the archives we found code, we found game design docs, we found concept art, we found a lot of material. We figured out how to get all that stuff running again and now there's a whole Dark Prophecy demo".
That's a big win for video game history generally, especially considering the checkered history of Soul Reaver sequels. When it comes to the big one, though - the near mythical Dead Sun - McCloskey doesn't have the best news: "I don't know actually if we have the Dead Sun code right now, we may be able to find it. We don't have anything to announce, we don't have plans for that right now."
