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secret-engima · 4 years

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OH BUT as long as we've got the whole canon-meets-au thing fresh in mind, imagine Regis meeting Regina. Or Regina!Noctis casually breaking everyone's minds when he tells them his mom is Queen Regina and it's really weird seeing her counterpart as a man -

*screeches in* YOOOOOO DID NOT MEAN TO FOGRET I HADN’T ANSWERED THIS BECAUSE IT’S AN AWESOME IDEA. BUT I’M HERE NOW SO LETS RAMBLE (note that I shall refer to the canon counterparts of everyone but Regis as C!Name to differentiate from Regina’s crew):

-It’s C!Cid that encounters them first. Because of course he is. They trickled into Hammerhead after an Encounter with Solheim magic, and C!Cid gets this ... feeling of confused doom when he sees the Regalia plus like- two motorcycles trundle into Hammerhead.

-The feeling of doom multiplies when out of the Regalia climbs a lot of familiar faces, plus three not-so-familiar faces and one face that should be familiar except its FEMALE.

-Regina gets off her motorcycle (that Cor is perched on the back of btw) looks around this larger, busier Hammerhead with fascinated eyes, then turns and grins at her Sun, “Found civilization!”

-Cid and C!Cid are already staring at each other, and Cid just- SIGHS heavily at Regina’s chipper mood, “Ah blame ya for everything about this, ‘Gina.”

-Regina just laughs and C!Cid can feel a headache coming on.

-C!Cid, after hearing their jumbled story and learning why the group is both bigger and younger than it was in his timeline (TIMELINES. FRAGGIT REGGIE THIS IS YOUR FAULT SOMEHOW HE KNOWS IT), grumbles and herds them all off to Insomnia. Because this is Reggie’s problem and he’s going to deal with it. Not C!Cid thank you.

-Needless to say, this was NOT how Regis expected his afternoon to go. A servant comes to inform him that Cid Sophiar is waiting in one of the guest lounges with a sizable group of young adults and teens, Regis and C!Clarus exchanged baffled looks before rounding up C!Cor and trundling down to greet their old friend and his apparent gaggle of strange young ones.

-They walk in right as Cor tries, yet again, to best Regina in combat as per their deal for his coming along with them on this trip. Regina doesn’t even blink as she disarms the feral Bby Cloud and pins him to the floor with her boot on his neck, still casually chatting with Ardyn and Titus the entire time.

-Regis and the C!Co all stare. Because What.

-Seeing the goggle eyed king, C!Cid greets his old friends, then immediately yeets them under the bus by calling over Clarus and saying, “Clarus, this is Clarus. His Reggie did something stupid in them old Solheim ruins and now they’re here. Ah figured they’d have a better chance getting home here than in Hammerhead.”

-While C!Clarus gapes and younger Clarus eyes his older counterpart with some wariness, C!Cid takes possibly too much glee in introducing the rest of Regina’s motley cast of misfits (Cor is still struggling under Regina’s shoe, turning slightly blue in the face because of his refusal to yield). Weskham is all polite manners and mischievous smirks as he greets the C!cast and ... admittedly stares in worried fascination at Regis (a MALE Regina, that must have been an interesting change to their childhoods, he’s so ... off balance too, Regina hadn’t even blinked at the dimensional travel problem, yet this counterpart looks like he needs a good sit down and a glass of water, and is that a CANE he’s using? Whatever for? He’s not that old-).

-C!Cid, because he is a troll at heart, introduces Regina LAST. Admittedly, Regis and C!Co should have been expecting it by the time they were introduced to the counterpart of Sylva and C!Cid had pointed out the wheezing, snarling Corling on the floor, and YET-.

-Regina looks up with perfect timing from where she’d been trying to talk Cor into just yielding already before he passed out, smiles a smile that is positively Fae and introduces herself, “Regina Lucis Caelum, Crown Princess of Lucis, daughter of King Mors and current runaway fugitive from said father.” She tilts her head as Regis makes a faint dying whale noise, her grin still in place as she muses, “Somehow I thought I’d be ... taller if I was male. But we’re about the same height actually.”

-C!Clarus manages to stay upright himself long enough to help Regis to a chair. Then they both sit down hard. Weskham calmly begins pulling a tea set out of armiger out of sympathy while Titus just- sighs and Ardyn shyly points out to Regina that she could have broken the news a little more gently and also Corling is eighty percent passed out so she might want to let him up now.

-”Not until he yields,” Regina retorts cheerfully, then looks down at the twitching Cor and comments, “You know that if you pass out, I’m going to do something embarrassing to you. So pick your poison, Murder Child, the embarrassment of yielding? Or letting me do whatever I want while you’re unconscious?”

-Glaring pure murder and hate, Corling slaps the floor three times with a hand. Regina takes her boot off his neck and lets his wheeze curses into the floor as she turns and examines the C!cast with a critical eye. She spots adult C!Cor, who has been drifting steadily closer with a feral fascination in his gaze, and smiles like the sun, “Murder Child! You grow up into such a lovely Murder Adult!”

-Cor wheezes something profane from the floor while C!Cor raises an eyebrow and Cid sighs heavily as he helps Cor up from the floor and gives him a canteen of water to help his throat.

-In the midst of watching this ... entire Thing play out, something finally clicks into place in Regis’s brain and he manages a strangled, “Runaway fugitive?”

-Regina casually flops onto the arm of the chair Regis is sitting in, kicking her legs almost like a child as she chirps, “Yep! Ran away at fourteen because Prophecies, but Daddy Dearest,” there is a definite sneer when she says that and a flash of almost murderous magic in her eyes, “didn’t believe me. So I’m a fugitive from his Crownsguard. Have been for a few years now. Murder Child over there was the latest attempt to bring me back to the Citadel, but it didn’t work and now he’s my Cloudy Murder Child.”

-”Stop calling me Murder Child!”

-”It’s that or Baby Cloud, Murder Child, take your pick.”

-Cor snarls at her while Titus snickers and Clarus looks to the heavens in exasperation. Regina continues her story to an increasingly horrified Regis, “Anyway, ran away at fourteen, was not believed that I was on a Holy Quest, or that I had good reasons for asking the Oracle Princess to come with me on my quest.”

-Sylva, from where she is loyally lurking next to Ardyn and sipping on Weskham’s tea, points out, “You broke into my room in the middle of the night and we left before dawn. I’m fairly certain the world thinks you kidnapped me, ‘Gina, my mother’s proclamations to the contrary or no.”

-”Kidnapped, asked, semantics,” retorts Regina, blatantly not caring when C!Clarus makes a garbled noise of protest at that (and HOW is Regis’s counterpart this ... blasé and insane? Seriously being a different gender should NOT make this much a difference right? RIGHT?)

-C!Cor who is the only canon member coping with this well (C!Cid is already drinking the whiskey Cid passed him in sympathy), asks, “And the Chancellor of Niflheim is with you because....?”

-Regina tilts her head at C!Cor with genuine confusion, “Who? Ardyn? He’s not Niflheim’s anything. I broke him out of Angelgard.”

-In the horrified silence that follows that proclamation, C!Cid dryly comments, “Does yer pa think yer planning a coup or something, cause it sure sounds like ya are.”

-He Regrets™ opening his mouth an instant later when Regina spaces out at the wall with a LOOK in her violet-tinted eyes. Clarus’s head snaps around from where he was holding a staring contest with C!Cor and goes very pale, “Regina no.”

-Regina curls her lips into something too inhuman and cruel to be a smile as she whines, “But my Storm-Shield....”

-Clarus stomps over to physically collar her, as if that will stop the idea from taking root, “No. We’re in enough trouble as it is.” He narrows his eyes at her and growls, “If you plot a coup against Mors so help me I am NEVER doing paperwork for you again. Ever. You’ll have to deal with every scrap of paper your mess generates from now until the end of time. Besides,” he adds with a hint of hysteria in his tone that indicates he is well and truly trying to talk Regina out of an idea (that indicates that Regina is taking C!Cid’s sarcastic comment SERIOUSLY), “Ardyn’s already lived through one royal coup, you’re not going to make him live through one again are you?”

-Regina’s expression falls into a pout as she glances at the suddenly very subdued Ardyn, “....Fine. No royal coups.”

-Cor makes a noise of vague disappointment that makes C!Cor stare at his younger self in alarm, and in the various strangled noises from the C!Cast, Weskham calmly begins passing out cups of tea to soothe the nerves. Weskham sees Regis’s wide-eyed look and smiles a little ruefully, “I would like to say, Your Majesty, that she isn’t usually like this, but I’m afraid I would be lying.” Weskham looks innocently over at C!Clarus, who looks a half-step away from having some kind of heart attack, and asks, “Your Regis wasn’t like this as a teenager?”

-The resounding, scandalized NO from C!Cid, C!Clarus, and Regis himself makes Regina cackle.

#SE asks #hamelin-born asks #Forged in Fury verse #Melodies and Manuscripts #Secret Engima Rambles #Regina meets Regis #Regis is not prepared #no one is prepared #all of the canon cast are two steps from a heart attack #except Cor #because Cor #and yes #Regina calls her Cor 'Murder Child'#because it fits and she finds it funny #Cor tolerates only because the alternative #is Baby Cloud #and his ego cannot deal with that

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annakie · 4 years

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An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part Nine

Previous Posts: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Wheren we run out of sidequests, so we head back to the Citadel already.

With the quest log pretty empty, I didn’t feel like flying around the galaxy hoping to bump into something Hackett wanted me to do already, so let’s go finish up some of those loose sidequests and pick up some more!

I didn’t grab a screenshot of this, but one of the mods (faster elevators maybe? Or MERe? IDK!) COMPLETELY removes the scanning component from getting on and off the ship.

I don’t remember the exact origins of this, but one tick Annakie Shepard has is... she really really fucking hates being scanned. And it probably was because of how long the scanning bit of getting on and off the ship here took, but I used to always try to outrun it if possible, or at least put up the effort. I’m so glad it’s not here at all.

The only acceptable scan is Chakwas scanning her for medical reasons, and even that is just barely ok.

Anyway, here we are, freshly not-scanned, heading right down to C-Sec to... oh no what’s this?

Ah. Yes. Mikhailovich. Here for inspection.

One of the reasons I cheat in Paragon points is that it’s nearly impossible to ever make Mikhailovich happy unless you don’t come back to the Citadel for a very long time. So maybe I could have gone to Noveria and done the Paragon Point Cheat, but one cheat or another, doesn’t really matter.

The Mikhailovich encounter is another one of those things that didn’t have to be in the game, but is great worldbuilding. Not everyone agrees with the Normandy being built, or the turian design, etc. Mikhailovich is right that some of the things we built here could have been tested in a lab, you know. It was a huge chunk of money, but it’ll be wrong later in thinking it’s a waste. He also again shows that people aren’t sure that working super close with the turians is a good idea, which, again, he’ll be wrong about, but it’s a good thing to see differing opinions on a lot of things.

Anyway, I like this bit not only for that reason but to see Kaidan’s salute.

Finally, after lingering at the dock for who-knows-how-long while the Admiral inspected our ship, we get down to C-Sec, ready to...

Oh what’s THIS now?

Time for another interview, this one a little more voluntary.

Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani, Westerlund News.

She’s a character I have very mixed feelings about.

On one hand, well, I used to love to punch her out. And now I never do.

She’s clearly digging for an angle here in her interviews. She’s reporting for humanity, not the council races or galaxy as a whole. But answering her diplomatically here, she’s another character who questions you and what you’re doing, but doesn’t actually step over any lines. It’s more when you get testy with her here, she gets touchy back.

It would be a shitshow with the fanboys I think if you took out the option to hit here. But wow that moment... didn’t sit right, especially when it was an MShep doing it but it’s not a great look for Femshep either. Nobody should hit ANYBODY unless it’s actually necessary. Getting your feels hurt by a few tough, even unfair questions... does not call for punching.

Especially today when we’re already getting scary close to losing freedom of the press. Being diplomatic with her really nets the best responses in 2 and 3, as well.

And maybe if we hadn’t just gotten raked over the coals by Mikhailovich it’d be less grating to then get questioned by a reporter. But I find it interesting how the game keeps pushing and questioning Shepard, and maybe even trying to find holes where maybe Shepard or the Alliance isn’t completely right, or could be questioned.

Damnit, Chorban and Jahleed. Just kiss, already, neither of you are trying to kill the other!!

I do love that Chorban figures everything out based on your scans... just like... a couple of years too late. Anyway, I already finished all the scans, no way I’m not finishing this quest with Chorban for that sweet XP.

And YOU, using a girl with no undercover experience and putting her in Chora’s de-- what’s that? Conrad dies if I end this quest early? SIGH.

Also... Gideon Emery. So you’re fine. All is forgiven. I’ll do your dirty work.

Helena Blake! I DEFINITELY won’t forget to go speak to her, get back on the Normandy, do another planet quest, realize I didn’t speak to her, then go back to the Citadel just to actually pick up this quest, then pretend later on in this update that I remembered to speak to her all along!

I mean, speaking as if I were someone who hasn’t played the next two games, this is DEFINITELY SUSPICIOUS right?

I guess in a way, we did pull our gun on Conrad all along.

Just give me the damn mods.

Honestly, I love this part of the quest because you can COMPLETELY fuck up by being too goody-goody. I have probably had to reload after mindlessly clicking paragon answers more times than I care to admit. This time, I remembered to not obey the law.

The second reason I wanted to come back to the Citadel is that after one planetary mission, Morlan’s Iconic Armor shop (which, again, is thanks to ME1Recalibrated) sells special armor for Kaidan, that looks like his ME2 armor, so he has his own unique look.

A picture from later, once the armor texture is loaded correctly. (Turns out it required a restart.)

I LOVE IT. Thank you, MERecalibrated team! Welcome to Kaidan’s look for the rest of the game.

Let’s head up to the presidium!

Whoops, shoulda brought Ashley along. I’m sure whatever he wanted to talk about can wait til later.

BTW, that gif isn’t sped up.

If you don’t have the console enabled and aren’t setting your out of combat runspeed to at least 800 whenever you’re anywhere you have a lot of running to do, then consider doing so. I’ve found 800 is the perfect amount of fast without leaving me slamming into walls constantly

The annoying thing is that every time you have a major area transition or have to reload the game, you have to do it again, but after the first time it’s 4 keystrokes.

` then up arrow, then [enter], then ` again.

Also your companions may fall behind, but that’s only an issue for the places they have ambient dialog. So mostly I start using it on the Citadel after going everywhere once, and then most of the time on the Normandy and sidequests.

Oh let’s talk to this nice lady. Oh no, her sister has been kidnapped, how sad!

Well, the poor woman deserves my help, I’m sure it’s all on the up-and-up. Sure, I’ll rescue your sister! I’m glad we have this friendly relationship that will be profitable and non-lethal forever!

You DID know that Anderson and Udina comment on each major mission afterwards, right? It took me more playthroughs than I care to admit to discover this.

Also, this is a kind of humanizing moment for Udina here. He tells us how the council isn’t happy that we lost the prothean ruins at Therum, then Anderson stands up for us (we love you, Space Dad), and then he actually really backs off and says in a much softer tone “I know, I know. But we all get judged on how you behave.”

And again, we’re not meant to love how he says it, but um, Udina is right. Everything we do has repercussions throughout the Citadel, and sometimes the Galaxy.

Poor Liara, the only one left without an iconic armor in ME1.

Also, like Tali earlier, she hilariously has lines in quests we turn in or make updates to that she has no business knowing about. I guess she read all the questlogs while traveling back to the Citadel.

While we’re here on the Citadel, let’s take a flycam visit around to the edge of the room, shall we?

So we’re heading out, towards this building, past the Mass Relay sculpture.

What you can see as soon as you’re near it and then over it, is that that building hides the seam where the water meets map.

From just beyond it, there’s the apartment-looking building, for whatever reason you can see through the textures on the other side, leaving just the roofs/floors visible (the slats).

It took quite a while to go this far, but eventually, you can find the invisible wall where the cars spawn from, and not long after, the map ends. The map is very curved, btw, that’s no illusion. There’s no chance you could see this far without flycam.

Looking back, you can see the bridges in the distance, but the Relay sculpture and where Shepard is standing is very far away, quite difficult to see even if the full-sized screenshot.

I love how huge these maps are. It makes the illusions really work and the sense of scale works BECAUSE it is actually just... that big.

Well, back to smaller issues.

Again, a great quest not only from a memorability perspective, but a worldbuilding one.

How does religion work in this galaxy? Well, some people still have it. Enough that there’s laws in governing how people are able to spread that religion. I think that the council actually enacted a fairly sensible law here -- they cannot allow zealots to take over near the seat of government, but also people should be free to worship as they please.

I myself am a person of faith who, despite being brought up in a HIGHLY Evangelical movement, now very much believes that people should be able to worship as they choose, (or not at all!) but also that faith is a private matter and shouldn’t be forced on others.

So yeah, the hanar is being unreasonable, but should still be spoken to with respect. It’s good that this particular hanar takes it well.

I am honestly dying to know how the hanar deal with the absolute proof that the Enkindlers were just... people. I mean we saw the one hanar in ME3 react to Javik, but you have to think that the religion as a whole must get shaken up a great deal after the game ends.

Also... seriously read Mass Effect: Annihilation (the quarian ark book).

Anyway, I like resolving this peacefully and getting the hanar to leave peacefully. Calling someone a big stupid jellyfish is hilarious in the moment, but not so nice once you think about it.

Ah, Michael and Rebekah.

I love this quest because... it’s not cut and dry.

I don’t think either of them is wrong. I think they’re facing a tough choice and they both have good points.

For a long time, though, my response has been that it’s Rebekah’s body, her choice.

But the funny thing was, this time when I was playing, I didn’t see this as just an allegory to a woman’s right to choose. From Michael’s POV, it’s more of an allegory to Anti-Vaxx. Obviously back in 2007 when the game came out Anti-Vaxx wasn’t nearly as much as a concern as it is now, so I love that this small part of the game actually grew more meaningful over time.

Yes, there’s a SMALL chance you could hurt the child from the procedure, but a greater chance of harm if you don’t. I had a harder time choosing this time, like, oh, am I going to lean a bit more towards being pro-choice, or pro-vaxxination? I’m pro both of those things??

I still sided with Rebekah. Mostly because I know the kid turns out OK either way.

Well, for a couple of years, at least.

Emily! You changed your clothes! What’s that? You want me to plant bugs? Won’t someone notice?

Guess not. Not even this bug.

I’m sad that this is the last we’ll see of Emily Wong face to face. But hey, a good reporter, and good person. :salute:

Kahoku... thank you for finding out about Cerberus and telling us. The first time we hear the word I think, in the game?

You will be avenged.

Welp time to head up to the ship and go off on some sidequ--

I mean... Uh, time to go talk to Helena Blake, OBVIOUSLY.

(Also Liara you cannot climb that wall, stahp.)

I love them having just a bad bitch like Helena with her sneaky-plan to kill her business partners so totally above the board by Shepard, but hey, she’s just a concerned citizen giving tips to law enforcement, right? She’s awful, and she knows it, and she’s cool with it.

Well, since Ashley magically appeared in the party without me going to the Normandy AT ALL, as long as we’re here, let’s go talk to Samesh Bhatia

A great moment for Ashley, remembering her friend, and treating her husband with so much care and kindness. OBVIOUSLY we can do this very easy thing for him.

Fuck, this just got a lot more complicated.

I love this quest because it puts you between a rock and a hard place. Again, neither side is wrong. Samesh SHOULD have his wife’s body back. But it IS important research.

For a long time, I didn’t give a shit about the research and would get the body back, no matter what.

But so many more lives are saved with the research. So this time I ask him to understand, and he does. But it never sits quite right, either way.

As my other SciFi favorite franchise* reminds us in one of its most poignant moments... Sometimes the needs of the many do outweigh the needs of the one.

Okay now we’re heading back to the Normandy for the first time this update, and next time, back out into space!

*Star Wars is a Space Opera, not SciFi.

#mass effect #kaidan alenko #liara t'soni #ashley williams #conrad verner #bioware #gaming #video games #annakie's mass effect stuff

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wearepaladin · 5 years

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(This might be the wrong blog to ask, but...) What would happen if a demon drew a balance card (alignment swap) from a deck of many things?

Well. Let’s take a look. Inspired by the question of the Cult of the Redeemer Queen and their patron, the Demon Lord Nocticula that I received earlier.

In another place, Honos Kel, a Paladin and Emissary of several greater gods of the Light, might be tempted to explore this archipelago. He’d always been fond of islands and the cultures they grew. But the Midnight Islands were not formed of time and the birth of new land over stretches of blue water. The Ocean surrounding them was black and viscous, the islands rising from those depths spurred into being thanks to the perverse pride of the ruler of this place. Only the light of an alien moon framed this place, saved perhaps for strange strands in the sky, looking more like blood draining from the darkness than any star.

Kel doubted even a single ounce of starlight could ever breach that darkness naturally. The Abyss by its nature, twisted all that crossed it unaware. Screams intermixed with the laughter of the damned as he made his way forward.

Each island was born of murder, each piece of the archipelago framed on a conquest of the mistress of this place, honoring their assassination and murder of many victims across the worlds. Each island reflected as much, illustrating both the enraptured demise of the victim and the sensuous hunger of the killer in turn. With each island he walked across, his private doubt about this mission succeeding dropped. The demons who dared force his hand as he made his way to the heart of this place sensed not an ounce of this doubt, flinching away from the righteous aura that brought the rare presence of true light in this place.

Finally, gates of a great citadel barred him entry, prompting the paladin to ring a bell. He did not wait long before being surrounded, as all variety of demon appeared, chiefly among them all manner of concubi, incubi, and succubi. He passively noted multiple enchantments bounce off his awareness, the demons natural talent to influence and dominate the mind of would be victims finding no purchase. Even so, it took effort to find the gaze of the lead concubi, their androgynous beauty likely to divert any mortal eye.

“I come representing the Cult of the Redeemer Queen. I have a gift for their mistress, who rules this place.”

An undercurrent of beautiful if mocking laughter surrounded him. The concubi’s canines glinted as they flashed a carnivorous grin. The door’s opened, and the paladin entered the ultimate domain of Nocticula, the Lady of Shadows.

Naturally, for a place devoted to darkness, much of what could be seen was obscured, granting the paladin only the briefest glances as was guided further into the heart of this place. Some of what he saw made his heart race with want, while others chilled his blood. For all the shadows around him, it wasn’t hard to imagine the dreams and nightmares that ruled this place reaching out and pulling souls close with the twisted desire this place represented. But, like any shadow, these wants were fleeting in the face of light. And if he could teach the one who ruled this place that lesson, then perhaps there was hope to be found even here.

Finally, he was led to what could only be the profana sanctorum, the unholy heart of this abyssal plane. It rose towards the false moon like a grasping set of talons, sensuous sculptures of intertwining acts of lust, murder, each escalating to the point where he could no longer tell where the division lay. But he knew when the true master of this place revealed herself, as the center sculpture became alive.

He’d felt her presence long before he’d met her gaze, for the first of all succubi was only like her kindred like an ant’s shadow was like the darkness between the stars. To be called a demon lord is no mere title, but evidence of a dark puissance that only a true god of darkness and evil could be above. And here, in the heart of her domain, the difference between goddess and demon lord was very thin indeed.

“Well, well, well. What have we here?”

Nocticua, Lady of Shadows, towered over the Paladin, even seated on her throne. The form she took currently was one he recognized from rumored description and obscure text, a shapely woman with near translucent skin that suffered no hint of any exposure to sunlight, her thick raven hair designed into a crown of horns that framed a face that somehow matched every notion of beauty and desire he’d ever known, her demonic nature unveiled by her height, dark talons, hooves clad in red iron, great wings clad in unholy runes, and three barbed tails. If she wore clothing, it seemed to fit her like shadow, less to obscure and more to entice.

She grinned with a perfect smile, pale white eyes looking the paladin up and down hungrily, and it took all his effort to meet that gaze without wandering.

Where the lesser demons he’d encountered thus far found their enchantments utterly ineffective against his divine immunity to such charms, he could feel Nocticula’s power and allure to the point that where an infinite army of her children would find no purchase, she could will all his protections away with a practice of will. He could even feel her considering it, shivering as the sensation of warm talons brushed across his neck, riding that thin line between pleasure and harm with expert ease.

“A paladin of not one but six gods marches into my realm uninvited, leading no army or crusade, declaring that he speaks for one my cults, and further, that he bares a gift for me. Truly, I wish I could say I orchestrated such a thing. Though, it wouldn’t be the first time a holy man graced my islands.”

She snapped a finger, and shadows parted as six spectral forms were unveiled. Paladin Kell studied each with a grimace, recognizing the divine icons of his six patrons rotting against the spectral bodies of what he recognized as the souls of fallen paladins. Their souls were being corroded into demonic forms of some kind, the fate of many a mortal soul that found their way to the abyssal plane.

With a smile, Nocticula shooed the fragmented souls away, looking at Honos Kel as though deciding whether an animal was worth more as food or as a pet.

“So you have my curiosity, Paladin. Or shall I call you Kel? Your original culture puts the family name first, doesn’t it?”

He blinked, feeling small pieces of his memory pulled to the surface of his mind, and even more stirring. With a will, he forced the tendrils of her influence our of his mind. He met her gaze squarely, recognizing what she was doing. The demon was exercising that she was capable of not only chilling levels of power, but great subtly as well. He hadn’t even known she was probing his mind until she’d said something.

Her expression remained unchanged during that brief practice of influence, and he had to concede that if it came to a fight, she would have the upper hand. His best hope lay in the pouch he’d brought alongside him.

“Kel is fine. I bring a gift on behalf of your worshipers on the world of Golarion.”

He said, working to keep his tone even. A raven brow rose on Nocticula’s head.

“Why you and not one of my acolytes? I feel the marks of Milani, Iomedae, Sarenrae, and the Triad of Celestia upon you. Why would you be their emissary?”

She asked, her expression finally shifting from something other than hungry amusement to small curiosity.

“Because I alone could find and deliver these.”

Kell reached into the pouch and pulled out two ivory decks, and within each a single card lay. Magic of the greatest arcane might thrummed in each, and even Nocticula blinked at their appearance, her expression wary with recognition.

“Each of these decks contain one card of the whole set. The Balance card. The Cult of the Redeemer queen wishes to help you leave your demonic nature behind as their doctrine, written by you, claims you desire.”

He watched her carefully as he explained. It had been a long quest to achieve two decks that only had these cards remaining in them, but the boon the cult had asked of him required nothing less.

As for Nocticula, the revelation of the nature of the cards had made her expression close, and she leaned back into her obsidian throne. “...I see. That same doctrine says that I must become a god to thus be unburdened. They would defy my will to enforce the shackles of benevolence and order upon me, before I even claim my divinity.”

Her voice, once hot with amusement and want, was no cold with the true shape of hate. The darkness around her grew jagged, and her face now terrifying in its perfection.

“Why should I not have their souls rendered into dust for such an affront towards their chosen god?”

Ice and shadow was pooling in the air, and Kel knew this would be the deciding moment. He pointed at once of the feminine scupltures that decorated the sanctum.

“Because you love her.”

For a moment, all was still, and the “sculpture” remained still, before flame ignited around it. He’d felt the presence of her demonic nature even alongside the greater presence of Nocticula, and was unsurprised to see the nascent demon lord Shamira, another ascended succubi. But where Nocticula was darkness, Shamira was fire, clad in great burning wings over vision of beauty that rivaled even the Lady of Shadows.

“Perceptive insect.”

Shamira condescended to Kel, though her luminous emerald eyes were locked on Nocticula. Kel likewise kept matching his gaze with the greater demon lord.

“Your love of Shamira, the one demon lord with your closest counsel, is known to the cult. If there was one thing to prompt you to change your very nature, it might be your love for and her love in turn for you. Otherwise, the pair of you would forever be trapped, your love corroded in twisted games of ambition. You could love her without fear of betrayal, or of your own fear turned into harming her first. You could both be free of that self destructive malevolence. If you each take a card.”

He held both decks out, a single card in each, waiting to be pulled. To his eyes, both Shamira and Nocticula began to look truly human, as they looked upon each other and the cards, possibilities roaring in their minds at the notion of choosing their love for each other over the ever present demonic hunger and cruelty that was bred into their bones.

It could have been moments. It could have been a thousand years. Kel wasn’t sure, enraptured as he was witnessing the silent communication between the two immortals. He’d seen the power of both as he’d walked in, but only now did he see vulnerability. Finally, each approached him, their movements mirrored as they watched each other, torn half way between the expectation of betrayal and the hope that their love could surpass their demonic blood.

Love is not the solution to every challenge. But it can be the motivator to become more than we are for what he hold dearest in our hearts.

Two pairs of clawed hands pulled the Balance Card. The false moon in the sky exploded moments after, as Dawn finally arrived on the Midnight Islands.

---------------

In the years to come, the Cult of Redeemer Queen would become known as the the Temple of the Burning Shadow. Its two patrons, fire and shadow intertwined, called to those who sought warm in the dark, and the promise that love could reach anywhere, heal and guide the most twisted of hearts.

As for the Paladin Honos Kel, his debt fulfilled, he continued on his way. But that’s another story.

#finished #asks #paladin #nocticula #shamira #deck of many things #balance card

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lechevaliermalfet · 5 years

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Vae Victis! – A Look Back at Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

It was the mid-1990s. We were in the fifth generation of video game consoles, and gaming as a medium was eager to prove that it had grown up.

This had been going on before the fifth generation, of course. The Sega Genesis sold itself on its contrast to the status quo. “Sega does what Nintendon’t,” and all that. Sega’s whole image was bound up in being the cool kid, the one who’d outgrown all those pokey “kiddie” games like Super Mario Bros. or Kid Icarus or Mega Man. Sega fans played games like Mortal Kombat and Eternal Champions. Even a mascot game like Sonic the Hedgehog had a kind of snide adolescent streak to it; leaner, meaner, and less patient. Nintendo themselves had to butch up a little, even. When their bloodless version of the first Mortal Kombat got outsold by Sega’s, which kept all the gore – despite otherwise being technically superior in every measurable way – they relaxed their standards and left all the blood and fatalities intact for the second and third games, and saw a jump in sales accordingly.

The 90s were in part a decade of cynicism and ironic detachment. Sincerity tended to be frowned upon as being kind of silly and naive, or else a cover for motives less savory. Strong skepticism was the default mode, and in fiction, anti-heroes were all the rage.

Which brings us to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, described by its developers as a Legend of Zelda “for adults”.

Of course, any self-described adult who can’t bear to play a Legend of Zelda game because they feel it’s not grown-up enough needs to sit down and re-assess their idea of adulthood, and how secure they are in it. If a tolerance for violence (if not a craving) is all it takes, then I was an adult at about eleven, when I was single-handedly mowing down whole armies of Nazis in Wolfenstein 3D.

But those were the times, and that’s how Blood Omen got pushed. Which is unfortunate, because it misses the more thoughtful parts of the game’s story that actually did make it material mostly for adults.

“...the first act in my theatre of Grand Guignol!”

We begin in the world of Nosgoth, and if there’s a made-up fantasy word that screams “dark supernatural fantasy” more than that, I haven’t heard it. Our main character is Kain, a nobleman caught out at night in a town where he can’t find an inn or tavern to stay for the night. He is cornered by assassins and murdered, whereupon he goes to hell. Or at least, we can assume it’s hell; I don’t think even a death metal band’s idea of heaven involves being cuffed to twin posts overlooking a literal lake of fire with a sword stuck through you. Anyway, that’s where Kain is, cursing the fact that he can’t get revenge. Which seems a little warped, on the surface of things. You’d think if you were stuck in hell, then getting out, however impossible, might seem more important than getting back at the people who killed you. But if you’re the kind of person who winds up in hell after being murdered, I suppose it stands to reason that your priorities may not be in order.

While Kain is in hell, lamenting his impotent rage and generally ignoring all the fine mid-90s CG scenery, he is approached by a necromancer named Mortanius.

The necromancer offers him a way back to the world of the living, and thus a chance at revenge. Eager to oblige his overdeveloped sense of wrath, Kain takes him up on the offer, and fails to consider that there are only a few different ways, traditionally, that a dead person can cross back through the veil. And none of them really involve returning to life exactly as you were.

Kain rises from his grave as a vampire, stronger than he ever was in life, and only too happy to hack up his assassins when he encounters them not far from the site of his crypt. However, as he comes down from his vengeance-high, he hears a voice in the back of his mind – Mortanius’s voice, in fact – suggesting that his assassins were “the instruments of your murder, not the cause”. Mortanius then urges him to seek out the Pillars to find the real reason for his murder, and its true culprits.

We need to rewind a bit.

IN THE BEGINNING, there were the Pillars of Nosgoth (in fact, “Pillars of Nosgoth” was the game’s working title for a while). Rooted who knows how deep in the earth below, and reaching up to the clouds, the Pillars are a structure that should be physically impossible. They are somehow both integral to the natural order of the world, and also the embodiment of certain elemental principles. There are nine of them, embodying – in no particular order – conflict, energy, states (of being, not political), dimensions, death, nature, time, the mind, and balance. Each Pillar has its guardian, a human endowed with powers according to the Pillar’s defining principle, and tasked with overseeing that Pillar’s particular province.

A good while back in the past (how long is not detailed in this game, but probably centuries) there was a genocidal crusade of sorts against vampires, who were evidently a serious scourge of some kind. In fact, the game opens on a view of a field – practically a forest – of stakes, with a vampire impaled on each. Vlad Tepes would be proud. This crusade was ordered by the Circle of Nine (the collective group of Pillar guardians), and carried out by the fanatical religious order known as the Sarafan Brotherhood.

Monsters that they are, the vampires did not take this well. One of their number, an elder vampire named Vorador, decided to strike back. Vorador was by this point in his unlife no longer quite human looking, with mottled grey skin (later series installments would make this varying shades of green), odd three-clawed hands, and giant bat-like ears. Blood Omen never elaborates on the reason for this difference. At any rate, he singlehandedly stormed the citadel of the Pillar guardians while most of the Sarafan brotherhood were away (presumably looking for more vampires to stake), and wound up killing several of them (one of the sequels gives the number as six). In the process, he even managed to beat down Malek on his way out, perhaps the greatest warrior among the Sarafan, and the one specifically tasked with safeguarding the Circle.

For screwing up his one job, Malek was punished by being made to do that job for eternity. It might seem inadvisable to take the guy who failed to guard you and then make him your guard forever, but it helps if you rip his soul out of his body and bind it to his armor, thus making him a sleepless, tireless, unfeeling, and ever vigilant warrior fueled by pure wrath. Which is what they (or rather, Mortanius) ultimately did. At some point between this time and the present day of Blood Omen, Malek became the guardian of the Pillar of Conflict, so evidently he was fit for his role in the end.

Now we fast-forward a bit, to a point just moments before Kain’s birth. In fact, later games place this at the exact moment of that birth.

Somewhere around thirty years before Kain’s murder outside a nameless tavern in a random town, Ariel, the guardian of the Pillar of Balance, is murdered. This is bad news for all the usual reasons, and also one or two unusual ones. It turns out that her lover is the guardian of the Pillar of the Mind, the mentalist Nupraptor. Her murder drives him insane, and being a telepath (among other things), his insanity infects the guardians of the other Pillars as well. This turns them from their usual purpose of upholding the natural balance, and instead sets them to destroying it. This in turn corrupts the Pillars, symbiotically connected to their guardians, turning them from pristine white to a pitted and cracking grey. With both the Pillars and their guardians respectively corrupted and insane, the natural order of things begins to fall apart. Bad news all around.

Blood Omen is somewhat unusual in that it’s one of the few probably rare instances in fiction where a woman is stuffed into the fridge at the beginning of the story, and in order to drive the villain to extremes of behavior.

So.

Now we have Kain, in the present of our story, given to understand that his death was in some way connected with the Pillars and their corruption. He makes his way to the Pillars, where he meets Ariel’s restless spirit. She’s the one who lays out for him part of the business about her murder and Nupraptor’s madness, and the threat posed to the world by it all. Kain is only interested in a cure for his vampirism (now that he’s had his vengeance, he wants no part of this undeath business), but Ariel persuades him that his best bet is to deal with the corruption of the Pillars. So Kain storms off to go take care of Nupraptor, and ultimately to cleanse the Pillars by severing their connection to their now-insane guardians, solving the problem of their corruption by reference to his sword. Go with what you know.

It’s at this point that Kain’s personal arc begins to unfold, as he becomes increasingly alienated from humanity, both the species and the concept. While initially at odds with his vampirism, Kain spends the story coming to grips with the hypocrisy and corruption of human civilization, all the while becoming more and more comfortable with the seeming monstrosity of his new existence. This is a matter of some necessity. He has things he needs to do, he has to stay alive to do them, and so a certain amount of blood-drinking and slaughter seems inevitable.

In his travels, he comes across Vorador’s manor, situated deep in a swamp teeming with monsters. Kain seeks his help to destroy Malek. Vorador, for his part, spends the encounter being lordly and largely dismissive of Kain’s quest. He advises the fledgling vampire that meddling in mortal affairs is nothing but bad news. Better to sit back and sate one’s hunger – or thirst, in this case – and let the mortal world turn as it will. Humans are to be preyed on, not helped or manipulated or otherwise gotten involved with. Best to stay above such passing concerns. Nevertheless, he takes a liking to Kain, and gives him his ring to summon him at need.

Say a word often enough, and it starts to lose its sense of meaning. Actions likewise lose significance with repetition. They become rote. And as time wears on, Kain seems to begin making a turn. There’s a certain honesty in being a monster. You always know what you are, and you always know how other people see you. Kain may sneer at Vorador’s decadence when they meet, but at least the elder vampire is never less than one hundred percent honest about what he is.

And as Kain goes on, it begins to seem that Vorador was right. So much of Kain’s and the world’s difficulties seem to stem from the selfishness, greed, shortsightedness, self-absorption, and general malice of the people he runs up against. Eventually, he winds up accidentally sparking a second genocidal crusade against his own kind. This has mostly to do with him traveling back in time to kill a man in the past who would grow to become a tyrant in his current era. This mistake no doubt has its roots in his not having not grown up in a world with a whole sub-genre of fiction concerned with the merits or otherwise of traveling back in time to kill Hitler.

We will have such fun with time travel as the series goes on, let me tell you.

The game ends by offering the player a choice. Kain’s efforts to cleanse the Pillars and restore balance to the world have made him the new guardian of the Pillar of Balance. Yet, like all other Pillar Guardians slain at his hand, he himself is corrupt, and must die to complete the task. So the player is asked: Will Kain willingly sacrifice himself for the greater good of Nosgoth, or will he refuse the sacrifice and choose to live in an increasingly broken and corrupt world.

The sequels take the second ending as canon, and honestly, it’s hard to argue. This isn’t a story about hope springing eternal, after all. The few people in it who are unambiguously good are either killed (Ariel) or largely ineffectual (King Ottmar, who comes to prominence briefly toward the end of the story). The player may feel differently, but there’s little reason to believe that Kain would. Proud, haughty, vindictive, wrathful, and growing ever more cynical and mistrustful of the motives of those around him, tired of being used as a tool for other’s schemes... Why would he choose to sacrifice himself?

And so, canonically, we close on a shot of Kain sitting on a throne at the base of the Pillar of Balance, with it and all the other Pillars lying in a broken ruin around him. He drinks from a goblet, and muses that Vorador was right after all: “Vampires are gods – dark gods – and it is our duty to thin the herd.”

The End.

“Nothing is free. Not even revenge.”

So that’s Blood Omen as a story. What about as a game?

On the balance it’s kind of uneven.

On a technical level, it’s fairly impressive. In its time, it stood as a testament to the potential quality of two-dimensional graphics in gaming, even as the entire medium was leaping into the third dimension, ready to ditch and decry anything made in 2D as inferior. The result from a technical standpoint is that Blood Omen has in some ways aged better than a lot of other games of its vintage, including its first sequel.

But then you actually play the thing, and see where it sort of falls apart.

Let’s get the easy part over with, shall we? The load times in Blood Omen are godawful, just the worst possible combination of long and frequent. It seems almost like a joke at times: “Really? We’re loading again? It was one fucking room!” Were it not for the fact that it began development as a totally unrelated game, I would strongly suspect that the sequel, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, used its data-streaming technology to avoid loading times altogether purely as a response to this criticism. I still think that may be the case.

Once we dig past the issue of loading times, though, the game reveals other issues.

There are good ideas on display here. Let’s start with that. The game has a day-and-night cycle, and while you can walk around during the day, you deal less damage (and take more) while the sun is up. Water is like the touch of acid to a vampire, and any time you’re in it, you’ll take constant damage. Rain and snow will likewise damage you, and while there are power-ups that are supposed to eliminate this problem, I’m not sure they actually work. At least, not on the PC version of the game, which is what I’ve mostly played.

The game also requires that Kain drink blood periodically. His health naturally drains very slowly, but constantly, so you always have to be on the lookout for a way to top yourself off. There are some more abstract health restoration items, as well as a consumable item you can use, called the Heart of Darkness (this item will become obscenely important in later installments). However, the game is structured such that most of Kain’s health restoration will have to come from either enemies or, more often, helpless innocents. This ties nicely into the game’s theme of alienation from humanity, though the way the game often presents these situations –random strangers chained to walls all over the world, for no apparent reason – seems a little odd at times. And it has interesting ideas about different creatures having blood that might actually be harmful to Kain, or inflict him with a long-term poison.

In addition to the graphics looking nice (the CG cutscenes are definitely of their time, but the in-game sprite work and lighting effects are quite nice), the game has a great soundtrack, dark and moody and ominous. And the voice work is superb. All character interactions are handled with voiceover rather than on-screen text, and the cast knocks it out of the park. Not just “good for the mid-90s video game voice acting”, but great, period.

The puzzle-solving is a little lackluster, though. For something pitched as a “grown-up Legend of Zelda”, its puzzles largely consist of pulling levers and pushing buttons, and navigating mazes. Which is fine, but again, any game that’s going to self-consciously compare itself to The Legend of Zelda needs to bring its A game, especially with its puzzle-solving.

The game does offer you a lot of tools to use, in the form of different weapons, spells, and magical items. But a lot of these boil down to more inventive yet questionably practical ways to kill enemies. And considering that setting up a selection of these items for immediate access involves going back and forth to the inventory menu (requiring a load time both ways), it’s easier to just stick with your weapon and a handful of the most commonly used spells and items and call it a day.

Weapons themselves are another problem. You’ll find that your iron sword from the very beginning of the game is the most generally useful. The mace will let you stun human enemies to drink their blood after just two hits, but it lacks the crowd-control effect of the sword, and also lacks the stunning effect on the non-human enemies that make up the bulk of your later-game foes. It’s also useful for knocking down certain stone barriers, but these are few and far between, and necessary for progress only very rarely. The twin axes let Kain cut down trees barring his path, and also let him cut down enemies by spinning like a saw blade… but this means you’ll frequently kill enemies before you have a chance to drain them. The flaming sword burns enemies alive and leaves only ashes, preventing you from drinking blood that way. And then the final weapon, the Soul Reaver (also an item of incalculable importance later in the series), deals massive damage as long as you have magic power to fuel it. But while thus empowered, it detonates the enemies it kills, making them impossible to drain. And when not empowered, it’s only as damaging as the iron sword, but slower and more awkward.

Combat in general gets frustrating at times, thanks to the iffy hit detection. One enemy might walk right through your sword swing, while another you could swear was out of range will register a hit. It never becomes a total deal-breaker, but it’s a point of frequent irritation as you go.

Let’s have another positive: Kain also gains the ability to transform into various other states as the game goes by. In his wolf form, he can leap over certain obstacles, but his attack in this form has no combo ability and a long wind-up, making him vulnerable. He can use his bat form to fast-travel between beacons and certain landmark locations, while his mist form allows him to walk on water without taking damage, as well as cross certain barriers without opening the door. There are also two disguises he can use. One transforms him into a peasant, while the other turns him into a human-looking version of himself so that he can pass as a nobleman. The use of both of these is largely situational, required in a very small number of situations and then mostly pointless outside of them.

But perhaps the thing that stands out the most is its linearity.

This is to some extent mandated by the story. Unlike The Legend of Zelda, to which this game invites much comparison, Blood Omen’s story is very much at all times front and center. A Zelda game will leave you with bits of story here and there, and largely leave you to explore or puzzle your way forward or dick around in town or otherwise do your own thing for long stretches of time. The story in one of those games is the starting point of the experience, a backdrop against which you play out the adventure. Hyrule is to some extent defined by that openness, with its plains and deserts and vast forests and so on.

Blood Omen lacks this. Its story is the entire point and purpose of the game. The path forward is always clear and rarely has room for deviation or discovery. There may be things hidden off to the side, but these tend ultimately to be cul-de-sacs, connecting to nothing else. This is even subtly expressed in the game’s environments: lots of indoor areas, caves, narrow trails, canyons, and so on. There’s little opportunity to go off the beaten path. Blood Omen’s pathways not only discourage exploration, they often disable it. This is not your experience to own; it is Kain’s story for you to be told.

I feel like in story terms, that’s ultimately the difference. Legend of Zelda’s story always exists to serve the game that Nintendo crafts. Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain’s game exists to serve the story.

And just to be clear, none of this is bad at all. It’s every bit as valid in terms of game design and mechanics as any given Zelda. But if you’re going to compare your game to The Legend of Zelda and then fail to do the most essentially Zelda things in it – not just do them poorly, but not do them at all, missing the point entirely of what a Zelda game is about – then it’s worth commenting on. I like Blood Omen, but I had to get used to thinking of it on its own terms. The Zelda comparisons are easy to make. Even without the developers making them, the look and structure of the game seems to invite them.

Like a good book, Blood Omen is a (mostly) straight shot from start to finish. Its linearity is what allows it to control the story, to unfold its plot and explore its themes at a pace of its choosing. The game to some extent revels in its edginess, but to be honest, it was perfect for me at the time. I was sixteen when I first played the game. Sixteen, and a bit of a loner with an odd and private (but intense) interest in vampires. It was probably the perfect game for me at the time. And it’s still ultimately enjoyable today, if you take it as what it is. Not as a Legend of Zelda game for adults, but as a decent action-adventure game with a good story and top-notch presentation. If you don’t mind the linearity and the relentlessly dark and sometimes disturbing story, it’s just about perfect.

Post-script the First: Likelihood of Re-release, and Current Availability

Eeeehhhhhhhhhh...

Here’s the problem: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain was originally dreamed up and created by Silicon Knights and published by Crystal Dynamics (who also had a hand in the development, late in the process), with distribution to be handled by Activision. Crystal Dynamics eventually got full ownership of the Legacy of Kain brand, and used it to make the first sequel to Blood Omen, titled Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Silicon Knights was against this, but had less deep pockets than Crystal Dynamics, so they were ultimately the losers of the resulting court battle over the affair. The lone bone thrown to them was that Crystal Dynamics had to acknowledge in the game that Soul Reaver was based on characters and ideas created by Silicon Knights.

By the time Soul Reaver rolled around, Crystal Dynamics belonged to Eidos. Then, in 2005 (not long after the last Legacy of Kain game was published), Eidos was completely bought out by Square Enix, and was mostly refocused on creating western-style games under the Square Enix umbrella. Crystal Dynamics still exists as a division within Square, where they’ve been making various Tomb Raider games almost exclusively ever since the acquisition.

The problem with any hypothetical remaster or re-release of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is that, for several years, it would have required some three-way legal wrangling to determine who really owned the thing, and what they could do with it (if anything), and under what conditions.

As of about 2014, Silicon Knights ceased to exist (about which more later, because it’s a fun story), but that still leaves the rights an open issue. Square Enix seems to own the larger Legacy of Kain intellectual property, but there’s the question of ownership regarding Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain specifically, and I’m not sure that question has ever been answered. Silicon Knights doesn’t exist, but many of its personnel are still around in some capacity, and would presumably have something to say about anything involving it.

Venues like Steam and Good Old Games have released the every other installment in the series digitally (even Blood Omen 2), but nobody’s touched the original game. Probably CD Projekt Red and Valve don’t have much desire to try unsnarling the ownership and licensing issues themselves, and none of the owners seem all that keen on it, either.

And it will probably stay that way. The Legacy of Kain series in general has always been pretty solidly in the B tier of video games, from back when there still even was much of a B tier in the first place. The fanbase for that kind of deliberately overwrought gothic supernatural fantasy was loyal, but never very big, and I’m not sure how much that’s changed. Moreover, I’m not sure either Square is willing to bank on it having grown in the interim enough to do anything about this first game in the series. The more time goes by, the less inclination any party has to make anything of the series, especially an early entry whose ownership may be contested. An indirect sequel, and also some kind of MMO, were both in the works at various points. The MMO vanished after not very long at all on the market, and the indirect sequel never made it out of development.

Legal options for playing Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain are limited. You can play the original PlayStation version on the PlayStation 1, 2, or 3. It’s also digitally available on the PS3, although not for the PSP or Vita. Infuriatingly, it’s one of a small handful of games that can’t even be side-loaded (a process that involves downloading a digital PS1 game onto your PS3, then copying it uninstalled to the Vita). The PC version, meanwhile, can still be played, though there’s a special program custom-made for it that you’ll have to get in order to install it and run it on modern systems. And this tends to run a little slow. Music and sound are fine, it’s just the game actually moves slower than normal. Or you could install a virtual desktop and play it that way.

Post-script the Second: The Death of Chivalry

So whatever happened with Silicon Knights?

Well, the story is… not complicated, exactly, but not entirely straightforward, either.

Development of Blood Omen was troubled. As we would later learn, this was not an especially novel situation for Silicon Knights to be in. Two of their other big projects later on underwent some turbulence in production. Blood Omen was originally to be created by Silicon Knights and published by Crystal Dynamics. Later on, after Crystal Dynamics became part of British publisher Eidos, they were able to somehow leverage this connection to strongarm their way into ownership of the overall Legacy of Kain intellectual property. They used it to make the first sequel to Blood Omen, titled Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. This had begun life as a brand-new IP (originally titled Shifter), which helps explain some of the tremendous thematic, aesthetic, and design differences between the two games.

Silicon Knights later maintained that they’d had their own ideas for a potential Blood Omen sequel, but never got around to it, and after Crystal Dynamics started making their own sequels, Silicon Knights lost interst. I’m not sure how much of that is real and how much is just so much sour grapes. Anyway, they went off and did their own thing for a while. They published the survival horror game Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for the GameCube, after having signed an exclusivity deal with Nintendo around that time. It had originally been in development for the N64, but was ultimately moved up to the newer hardware after development delays. For anyone who’s wondering, Eternal Darkness an excellent game, on the shortlist of must-own GameCube titles, even if you’re not necessarily a fan of survival horror. It’s not perfect (among other things, you have to beat the game three times to see the true ending), but it does a lot of interesting things.

They also developed the GameCube remake of Metal Gear Solid (likely under heavy scrutiny and supervision form Konami), dubbed Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. Much as I tend to prefer the original version of the game for its restraint (Twin Snakes has a lot of ridiculous high-flying wire-fu maneuvering in its action cutscenes), the remake is worth any Metal Gear fan’s time. Among other things, series creator Hideo Kojima has apparently declared it the canon version of events. It also saw a re-dubbing of the entire script, since apparently when the original audio was played back at a higher sampling rate, you could hear the traffic in the background, which the ramshackle soundproofing used in the original hadn’t been able to entirely shut out. The re-dubbed script also has the benefit of having allowing Jennifer Hale and Kim Mai Guest to ditch their put-on accents – Guest’s being particularly irritating, and borderline racist (maybe actually racist; I’m a white dude, and not totally clear on these things).

After this, they moved on to the Xbox 360 with their passion project Too Human, which had been troubled from the beginning. Its on-again, off-again development cycle spanned a decade and three console generations. It began development for the original PlayStation, then shifted to the GameCube when the developer did in the early 2000s. It went quiet for a few years, then resurfaced as an Xbox 360 project that was ultimately delivered in 2008, two years after its projected release on that console.

Too Human was a notorious, news-making flop, and Silicon Knights responded to this failure not simply by pinning the blame on someone else, but by doing that and then actually suing them. Specifically, they sued Epic Games, from whom they had licensed the Unreal Engine 3 to make the final version of Too Human. The accusation was that Epic deliberately sabotaged developers who licensed their engine by providing an incomplete product, and that the difficulties stemming from this had caused development delays. These delays, and the compromises they brought about, were supposedly ultimately responsible for the failure and the financial losses of Too Human.

Epic responded by then counter-suing, which was the beginning of the end for Silicon Knights.

Epic’s counter-suit stated that Unreal Engine 3 was a work in progress, and that they were making it essentially on the fly as they developed the first Gears of War. The counter-suit further stated that it was readily and openly acknowledged that the engine was unfinished, and that when it was done, it might ultimately not turn out to be useful for the licensees. Epic’s suit further indicated that these facts were all known and laid out in the licensing contract, and so like all licensees, Silicon Knights knew this when they signed for it.

But it gets better (which is to say, worse, at least for Silicon Knights). Epic’s counter-suit also included the allegation that Silicon Knights had knowingly and wrongfully copied code wholesale from Unreal Engine 3 and incorporated it into their own engine without permission from Epic. They had then gone on to use this hybrid engine on other internal projects without the permission of the people they’d cannibalized it from.

Now, I’m not one to root for a big corporation, even (especially) a game developer. But Silicon Knights had the misfortune of being run by Denis Dyack, a known con-man, grifter, shady bullshitter, and general ambulatory phallus. He maybe wasn’t in the same category as a Randy Pitchford or a Bobby Kotick, but that’s less a matter of capacity and more a matter of opportunity. Given the chance to operate on their scale, I don’t doubt he’d have fit right in with that crowd.

As far as the court case went, the evidence was overwhelmingly in Epic’s favor. In addition to their own court costs and damages awarded to Epic, Silicon Knights was forced to recall all unsold copies of Too Human and X-Men: Destiny (another game they’d developed with their Unreal Engine 3 hybrid), as well as scrap all projects using the engine, which seems to have been literally everything they had in the works at that point.

So what happened, essentially, is that Silicon Knights sued Epic Games in an effort to offset their losses by making money out of the Too Human debacle somehow, and it backfired so comically that they broke themselves against their opponent.

But their end, one way or another, was probably inevitable in that console generation. Looking at their release history, there’s really nothing that stands out as a hit or an absolute classic. Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes were both fine games, this much is true. But Eternal Darkness was a GameCube exclusive, and the GameCube didn’t sell the way Nintendo hoped. Meanwhile, The Twin Snakes is certainly nice, but as a remake of a different developer’s game, it has little in the way of originality, and very little of the material can really be said to “belong” to Silicon Knights, since it was someone else’s brainchild right from the start.

They were never a hugely prolific publisher, with eight games published before they folded, and according to Wikipedia, seven known titles cancelled at various points during their existence. These cancelled projects included two sequels to Too Human (which had always been planned as a trilogy). Given the cold reception received by the original, both from critics and consumers alike, that seems questionable. In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. But however you look at it, they didn’t have what you’d call a good ratio of finished to unfinished projects. And while it’s worth mentioning that many of those unfinished projects were upcoming games they were forced to cancel because they’d been made (or begun) with their illegal Unreal Engine 3 hybrid, the fact is that when your business plan hinges on stealing another developer’s game engine to make your own games, you’re already in a bad place.

Silicon Knights pretty firmly slotted into the middle tier of video games. For my money, the middle tier is in some ways the sweet spot. It’s more high-tech and technically involved than the indie set, yet not so high-budget that developers in it can’t feel free to experiment. But that middle tier has all but vanished these days. It’s questionable whether Silicon Knights would have hung on long enough to find a spot in it today, even if they hadn’t destroyed themselves going after Epic, just based on the iffy reception of their games. That’s without considering the general skullduggery it took to keep them going in the first place. And I also tend to think of X-Men: Destiny as a bad sign. There’s no shame in work-for-hire; it’s how a lot of major development studios (like Blizzard) started out. But that’s the key: you start out doing work-for-hire projects to make the money to strike out on your own. Silicon Knights was moving in the opposite direction, and that’s a bad sign.

Vae Victis, indeed.

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