#the crypt being alive itself.... SUCH a cool concept

[rhythmmortis]

"these metal veins... i can feel them pulsing with life. maybe i can follow them to their beating heart."

[lechevaliermalfet]

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.

[blaperile]

Hiveswap Episode 1 Reaction Part 8: Descending the stairs in Joey’s house!

Whoops, yesterday and the day before we returned home pretty late, so we didn't get to continue playing Hiveswap. Let's make up for that today! We were just going to enter the second part of the hallway, to finish up the remaining item combinations, and then we'll be continuing downstairs probably, exciting! Starting at 6:10 PM now.

Pet treats && Lamp/Cabinet ==> Pffff, I actually hadn't realized yet how there are so many things with mouths around here: dolls, paintings, stickers, pictures... even the Lord English castle has a mouth! xD Pogs && Box ==> That would indeed be pretty silly. On the other hand, I'm surprised Joey doesn't think of it as a serious idea considering how much she hates those pogs. :mspa: Oh man, haha, plainWonder's right, sneaky "tombs" and "crypts" reference right there. I would have totally missed that, haha. Ballet slippers && Box ==> Huh, "extra pair"? Where's her main pair then? Is it at the ballet school itself, perhaps? That would make sense. Also, I always love it when Homestuck/Hiveswap decides to go down the route of discussing metaphors literally. :P Pogs && Lite Brite ==> Ahahaha, yes that does sound really similar to each other. Thank goodness Lord English doesn't have a pog leg. :mspa: Pogs && Jude's door ==> Pffff, it would be amazing if that's the ending to Hiveswap: Joey gets a heartful reunion and then Jude is suddenly like: "What did you do to my pogs?!" xD Pet treats && Jude's door ==> Well, at least that confirms Jude's pet would EAT those things. That means it's at least a SOMEWHAT normal pet. :P Oh boy, now it's time to move on! Now we should be right at the top of the stairs. I wonder if the stairs themselves will also be part of what's loading now or it if it will load separately? Also, I'm really curious to see all those pictures above the stairs!!! We've seen plenty of them in concept art before, but it'll be really cool to see them up close in the game now, and see what Joey has to say about them! Plus, I also just realized we haven't seen any pictures of Grandpa so far, only Joey's drawing of him and the paper figure. Meanwhile, we HAVE seen pictures of Joey herself, Jude, Tesseract, Ms. Claire, and the babysitter already. I wonder if Jude's got some pictures of Grandpa in his own room? That's probably something we'll only discover in Hauntswitch. .... Oooooooooooooh! :O Gosh just look at all those things. Let's start on the right: looks like a picture frame was broken there! Probably by the monster when it was chasing Joey to her room. I wonder if we can pick it up and look at it and/or put it in our inventory? I wonder what's on the picture... Or maybe it was just a little mirror? We can't immediately see any picture lying there and just some glass shards. What are all those small colourful things on that desk? They kinda look like mini-Scalemates to me and/or like those Pokémon substitute dolls. xD There's also a paper with some colours on it on the desk... I was wondering what that is, but plainWonder's probably right that it's one of those games (I have no idea what it's actually called) where you can like put your hand in and show little pieces of the paper one at the time (okay I'm explaining this terribly you probably all know what it is anyway xD). And then... THE PICTURES!!!! First of all, the Ms. Claire picture! Looks like it was a gift to Grandpa (who has now officially been confirmed as being named Jake in B1, not that there should have been any doubt about it)!! "To my biggest fan" or something? To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if he never actually came for the dancing (I mean, we haven't really seen any hints yet that Grandpa/Jake likes dancing/dancers), but just because he thought Ms. Claire was beautiful. And plainWonder made a very good remark, we can see the initial of Ms. Claire's first name, It's A!!!! He does have a good point that it sounds familiar and that we've probably seen it in concept art before. And I believe he's right that when we first learned that I theorized her first name would be Anna! To fit in with people's theories that Nanna's real name would be Anna (before we met Jane) and the meta poke at it in Pony Pals! Anna Claire does sound really nice, and it would fit nicely with the 4-6 letter patterns in the first names and last names of all members of the human Prospit Dreamer family, and even Joey and Jude follow that pattern (yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense that they would be Prospit Dreamers :) ). After that, there's some really adorable pictures of Joey, Jude and Tesseract, n'awwww. Including some pictures of Joey and Jude as babies right near the picture of Ms. Claire at the top! And then, the pictures to the left are the ones I'm REALLY excited about, and which we've sadly also already seen in concept art before. First of all, the picture of Nanna, Grandpa and Halley! I'm just really glad that Grandpa didn't entirely forget about Nanna and carried her around with him, in a certain way. Also, looks like there's also a picture there of just Grandpa and Halley, possibly taken after they'd ventured off alone. Then, the wedding picture of Grandpa and Ms. Claire!!! We've also seen that before, but something that just occurred to me is that Grandpa appears with EYES there! That's a first. Which is also making me realize... Ms. Claire is always depicted with eyes as well! So in that regard it seems like adults are being drawn differently in Hiveswap than they were drawn during Homestuck, that's pretty interesting to see! Heh, I also just realized that if you think away Ms. Claire's eyes she'd kind of look like Mom! And her eyes do look somewhat similar to Rose and Roxy's. Next up is the picture of the babysitter with Joey and Jude! I don't really have anything new to say about that, other than I just noticed she's also wearing her cat symbol on there! Nice. :D And finally... the picture of Grandpa and the deer. Oh deer god (sorry), Dammek's probably going to get pretty angry about that when he sees it, considering his relationship to deers. Actually, I imagine there'll be plenty of Grandpa's exploits that he wouldn't approve of. Alright, that's all I've got to say for now. Let's see what we can examine closer here! ...Welp, okay, we can't examine anything at the top of the stairs. Let's just assume that frame was attached to a little mirror or something and didn't have a picture. Pffff, Joey's "mostly-great" family. Yeah, I wonder what she'll have to say about Grandpa when we examine his pictures. :/ Ooooh, so now we can see them from a bit closer and examine each of them individually! Hell yes. Uh... that picture of Baby Joey up there. Is that... her on top of a cat? That reminds me of the picture of Tesseract with a cat on Joey's door. I wonder if one of them (or both) are cats of Mom and possibly related to Jaspers/Mutie? I wonder if Joey will mention something about it when we examine the picture! plainWonder has a good point that perhaps Ms. Claire had cats herself too? Also, d'awww, in that one picture of Joey and Tesseract she's actually being licked by her dog, n'aww. And look at all those toys in the picture of Joey and Jude with their babysitter. I imagine they'll have had a lot of fun times together! Is... is that a Loch Ness-like monster toy in the foregound? xD I really like how you can tell the difference between the older and the new pictures, by the way. Not just by the picture itself which of course doesn't have as much colour gradations, but also the frames! Those frames of the older pictures look much more decorated and gold than the new ones, which seem like more modern and normal picture frames. That's a nice detail. Alright, let's start examining the pictures closer, I'm really curious what Joey's going to say about them! Pfffffffff, "GLAMNIFIQUE" :D That entire little piece of narration as she examines Ms. Claire's picture is brilliant. Sadly, no comment about the message/name on it though. Good dog, best friend! D'aww. Also, I just realized that Tessseract's tongue looks a bit greenish in that picture, hehe. I also think it's pretty funny how Tesseract's eyes are not on the picture, making it almost seem like he doesn't have any, just like Bec. :P D'aww, so Joey wanted to make a picture of Ms. Claire, Jude and herself together. Yeah, it doesn't look like there's any pictures featuring Jude and Ms. Claire together. I still wonder what the deal with that is, but I really wouldn't be surprised if he was only born after her death, considering Ms. Claire died when Joey was still a baby. I mean, I find it highly unlikely that Jude's actually a meteor baby and crushed Ms. Claire upon landing, but I guess we just don't know! Oooooh, so those pictures of Joey and Jude are school portraits! Makes sense, especially considering how Jude seems to be having a hard time putting up a proper smile. :P And actually, I like how Joey's smile also looks faked, when you compare it to the more natural picture of her together with her babysitter and Jude, where she's with a more natural smile! I wish they did backgrounds for school portraits at our school too. :mspa: And yeah, I also didn't have a clue what diptych meant until we just looked it up, haha. So apparently that's literally just the name for a combination of two pictures like this. Welp, Grandpa never told Joey anything about Nanna. Looks like he kept that to himself. :( I wonder if he ever told about Nanna to Ms. Claire? Also, hehe, yes Nanna was sort of Grandpa's "sister" and at the same time she wasn't. Joey, be glad you don't know how the actual story is behind that. :P Pffff, Joey thinks Nanna might have died young. I love how it's basically the opposite of that, with Nanna having lived a long life until John landed, and even then after 13 years she came back to life (sort of) and after the end of Homestuck she's still alive and kicking (x2 combo!). Oh Joey, if you only knew. Also, plainWonder has a good point about how Joey doesn't have a second cousin YET, considering how John has yet to land on Earth, haha. It's pretty sad that Grandpa and Nanna didn't stay in touch. Otherwise after Ms. Claire's death perhaps Grandpa would have left them with Nanna and they could have grown up together with Dad! That would have been an interesting alternate timeline to see, one where John grows up with not just a dad but also an aunt and an uncle! Well, it's good that Joey realizes the bad sides about Mom, that while she's trying very hard she's definitely not flawless. Also GODDAMMIT, Joey's in the dark about how Mom grew up just like us. xD I mean... I guess we do know a little bit more than she does, what with the room inside the Skaianet lab and all, but there's still quite some unanswered questions about all that. Guess that's something we either won't ever know, or will only find out some other day. :P ...Eesh. plainWonder just came up with the theory that perhaps Grandpa found her after her meteor landed and observed her in the Skaianet lab, as she grew up there. That's... kind of a bit dark to think about. Let's move on! ....OH MY GOD. THE REACTION TO OBSERVING THE WEDDING PICTURE IS SIMPLY THE BEST. Sadly, he was indeed born with those spectacles on, ahahahahaha! xD That's an amazing meta joke. (Also, let's all be glad he wasn't born with the moustache instead) I also just realized how you can see the bridge between Jude's glasses, while there's no such thing for Grandpa! Another indication how it's glasses that cannot be removed? :mspa: Huh... that reaction to examining the Grandpa/Halley picture is quite fascinating! I actually hadn't realized yet how Grandpa made such an immense 180°-turnaround on animals. He seemed to care a lot about Halley, but then he became a hunter! Did something indeed happen that made him change his mind, like Joey seems to be suggesting here? That's something I've never thought about before, but I have no freaking clue what could have possibly caused it. Especially not something Halley could have done...? ...Eesh. That reaction to the Grandpa/deer picture is pretty cold. Yeah, it looks like Joey and Grandpa were very different from each other. I like how there's a sneaky stab at how Grandpa is normally never depicted with eyes and thus didn't [i]look[/i] at her, but still. That's pretty sad to hear. I would love to hear Grandpa's side of the story sometime. We know what Nanna thought of him, we know what Jade thinks of him, and we know what Joey thinks of him, but how does he look at all those things? I'd love to hear his own thoughts about why he left Nanna, why he left Joey and Jude, why he is the way that he is... I guess... maybe the answer actually lies with Jake? We know that Jake learned that he prefers being alone, so maybe Grandpa also never saw himself as being really capable of raising Joey and Jude and that's why he simply avoids everyone? Pfff, so if we try using any of our items on these portraits we simply get the same prompt and examine the pictures anyway, haha. Alright, looks like we're done here! Let's see if there's anything more in this room before a new one gets loaded. Kind of weird those purple smears on the right side... GAMZEEEEEEEEEEEE *shakes fist* :mspa: Alright, at the bottom of the stairs a new room gets loaded! Looks like there's a window here, and to the right downstairs there seems to be a picture! So there's probably more stairs here to go further down, I imagine there won't be anything else here other than the window? ... A STATUE!!!!! :O Oh god that looks A LOT like a Denizen statue! And plainWonder's right, it's probably meant to look like Abraxas! Seeing as it appears to have feathers AND of course that is supposed to be Jake's Denizen, so it makes sense that there'd be a reference to that Denizen (I mean, I guess Typheus would also have been possible, seeing as Grandpa DOES have a Typheus Minion :P). Haha, that's a really cool way to get Denizens into this, I wonder if we can examine the statue and see Joey's reaction to it. Also, I wonder if we can look outside the window? Pfff, "what is this guy so happy about anyway?" That reminds me of John's reactions to some of the pictures in his house. But uh, Joey does raise a pretty good point. Grandpa must have gotten it from SOMEWHERE, so where did he get it from? Did he already visit the B1 session at this point and was that statue somewhere over there? Was it somewhere in the Frog Temple? As a matter of fact, does this mean Grandpa had already visited the Frog Temple prior to moving there together with Jade? Looks like we can't look out the windows here! Pogs && Abraxas statue ==> Ahahaha, I like how it's like Joey's making a sacrifice to please the gods or something. Also, there she goes again with using the word "serpents". :P Pfff, I love how for a second it's like there's something mysterious about the statue and that it actually swallowed the pog or something. But no, that would be quite silly. xD Pet treats && Abraxas statue ==> Joey really doesn't like snakes, does she? :P Cherub Key && Abraxas statue ==> It probably reminds you of snakes because there are Cherub snakes depicted on your key, Joey. :mspa: Also, I guess they are SORT OF related to each other, in the way that both of these things have a mysterious connection to Sburb, and we have no clue where either of these things come from and how they got here in the first place. Ballet slippers && Abraxas statue ==> Congratulations Joey, you just succesfully managed to dodge a snake statue. That's one step towards dodging real snakes, right? :mspa: Ooooh, I thought this would be all in this "room", but further up ahead there's a really cool coat of arms of Grandpa's, apparently! I love how there's blunderbusses on it on one hand (interestingly the first time actual firearms are shown in Hiveswap!), and on the other hand also a dog head which seems to be a reference to Bec! :D I mean, obviously it's supposed to reference Halley, but I like how the eyes are depicted so small that it almost looks like they aren't there, just like with Bec. Alright, we're calling it a day here, at 8 PM! Let's examine the coat of arms and move on next time. I'm pretty satisfied with where we got now.