// News // 2nd Mar 2015 — 10 years ago // By Andrew Duncan

32 Minute Video & Information on Cancelled Legacy of Kain Sequel

The video contains mild nudity and is over thirty minutes long - don't watch it at work!

Mama Robotnik of the NeoGAF forum has been collecting and collating information on Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun for a long time. As such, we want to make sure they get the full attention they deserve. Head over here to find out the full story, but the highlights you can see below (and in the video above!).

Mama Robotnik obtained the pre-alpha videos (stitched together into one long video) from an unnamed source who worked on the game, as well as some of the other information.
Dead Sun was cancelled by Square Enix in 2012 after three years in development at Climax Studios. Crystal Dynamics were in an advisory role.
It was cancelled because it may not have met sales expectations.
The MMO Nosgoth, which recently entered open beta, would have been a part of Dead Sun, though not as expanded as it is now.
The story took place after the events of Legacy of Kain: Defiance, where Kain and Raziel's time travel exploits had stabilized the future with humans once again more populous and vegetation returning.
The vampires were more elegant than monstrous, but block the sun out with giant ever-burning smoke stacks. This makes the humans worship the sun, as it is so rare to be able to see it.
The respite faded, and mass sterility plagued the human race. Asher, a human, was able to achieve a miracle and father an unborn child. From unseen machinations, a Saradin Soul-Eater vampire is sent to kill Asher and his family (with orders form on high to make the assassination purposely look like a massacre) but something goes wrong: As the vampire attempts to consume the human’s soul, a freak occurrence results in Asher taking complete control of Gein's body - leaving Gein’s vampire spirit impotent as ghost that only Asher can see and hear. -Mama Robotnik

Of course, being a videogame, your job would have been to find out who ordered Asher's child murdered, eventually tying into the larger Legacy of Kain mythos.
The game was supposed to be on PS3 and Xbox 360, but as development went on it was considered for a PS4 launch title.

The following information was provided a few days after the post went up, by a mysterious source who provided proof they had worked on the game:

- This game was pushing the 360 and PS3 to the limit. A combination of sheer level scale, the twin realm mechanic and the ageing Unreal 3 engine meant it was a struggle to get this running to an acceptable level. A commitment to next gen would have possibly seen the game avoid the chop as we would have been freed from some hefty technical restraints that were holding the game back in a number of areas, including the visuals. Conversely, I can see why switching to next gen would have made the numbers even less attractive to SE top brass, given the far smaller install base.

- Having just finished Shadow of Mordor, which I found hugely enjoyable, I have to say it was eerily similar to the open world (hub as we termed them) areas of Dead Sun. From the art style, to the switching worlds, the environment traversal, character ability progression, combat and numerous other aspects, SOM was incredibly close to half the game we were making.

- The Dungeons were the other half. Given how much work obviously went into SOM, one of the most polished games I've played, I think Dead Sun was too ambitious, which probably also contributed to it getting the axe. It would have been a monster of a game - the wetlands hub area you've already seen was just one of 3 or 4 entirely different open hub areas, never mind the various dungeons that were planned. They all had distinctively different looks, puzzles and boss fights. The team wasn't big enough to pull that lot off in a reasonable time frame, to the quality level required of a AAA release.

- Which is all a great shame, as the design of the game was excellent and meticulously thought through. Whilst not a straight sequel to previous LOK games, and not featuring previous favourite characters, it had more than enough depth and references to previous games to both satisfy (most) fans and really bring the LOK series back to life in a modern format. It was certainly a lot more than a re-skinned Assassin's Creed or Batman, even if it did share some aspects with those games. But there we go, the vagaries of the games industry. Those design docs will still be around somewhere at Climax (or possibly elsewhere) - all it would take is someone with a spare $100 million or so and that'd see it up and running.

Here are Mama Robotnik's observations:

There are numerous allusions to the previous games:

One of the echoes of the dead, a market seller, claims to be selling produce from Willendorf. Willendorf is a huge city from Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (1996), and has never been mentioned in the series since then. The assassination of Asher, disguised as a purposeless massacre but orchestrated by higher powers, mirrors the human Kain's own murder by brigands directed by Blood Omen's Mortanius the Necromancer.
Gein’s execution by being cast into water – and the subsequent fall and acidic burning of his flesh - is a clear allusion to the opening sequences of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (1999). Concepts such as soul consumption, the spectral realm, the decaying world, evolving vampires, blacked out skies and a hopeless future are all continuations of the themes started in the PlayStation classic. In the video, Gein holds a sword that looks extremely similar in shape to the physical Soul Reaver blade. Dead Sun appears to have been considered internally as the successor of the original Soul Reaver.
Vampires with black wings and the ability to fly – a power Gein himself manifests halfway through the video – were a pivotal plot point in the past segments of Soul Reaver 2 (2001). The sterility of Dead Sun’s humans while faced with an overwhelming adversary, is a parallel to the sterile Ancients of Soul Reaver 2.
The echoes of bustling cities and marketplaces, humans going about their lives while brigands protect their civlisation, echoes the city of Meridian in Blood Omen 2 (2002). The green glow around one of Dead Sun’s powerful enemies, is highly reminiscent of the corrupting possession energies (Blood Omen 2 spoilers) of the Hylden race.
The worship of false deities, the cancerous presence of The Elder God, the abandonment of gods and ritualistic sacrifice all feature throughout Legacy of Kain: Defiance (2003). A decade later, Dead Sun seemed intent on continuing these story themes.