You can tell how important this is for Josh, he's in full Substitute Teacher mode all the way through. Glad he left most of the secrets for anyone who wants to play the game for themselves as well.
That opening FMV blew me away. I was scratching my head how they got their hands on quarter century old CG assets, hearing that they remade the opening from scratch is infinitely more impressive.
They didnt remake it from scratch, the company just so happened to keep everything archived including scripts, storyboards, audition tapes and older versions of the game. So they just re-rendered the already made intro to the new resolution. As an aside you should look up the recent documentary on soul reaver. Its funny listening to the audition tapes of who applied to this franchise. I believe the guy who plays spongebob was there and the doctor from star trek voyager and some others.
These games are why when people ask "who are some of your favourite actors" Tony Jay, Michael Bell and Simon Templeman are in there. And the WRITING in this game. Chef's kiss, blew my mind when I played them as a schoolboy
I was 9 when I first played and I just wasn't good enough back then to beat it and when it finally popped up on steam I thought finally, I can finish it but that version was broken to hell and back. I am so happy they swooped up this title and brought it back. It's been a good year for games for me, I'm so happy 🥹
If it's passion for the games you'd like to see more, I highly recommend watching Mapocalocops play through the whole franchise. There are honest and unironic "I'm almost crying because the writing is so peak" moments in there. And that was his first experience with Legacy of Kain, too. So the appreciation wasn't simply driven by nostalgia.
Legacy of Kain is one of the other fictional setting, with 40k, that had me OBSESSED to an Unhealthy degree. the HOURS, nay, DAYS, i would spent on Nosghotic Realms boards, discussing Lore implications and ramifications of each and EVERY character and their arcs, and the environement of Nosgoth and how the world worked with HUNDRENDS of other fans. Rare are the games that gave me such overwhelming envy to immerse myself completly in it.
Yeah i remember that. I have a question for you. If Raziel is the only one who has free will. How did kain break the chain of Raziel going into the blade. Because in order to do so he would have to use his own free will to change events.
@@charg1nmalaz0r51 He used the Reaver's power, just like he inadvertently did when he killed prince William in Blood Omen 1 and rewrote history in the process. When 2 Soul Reavers are in close proximity to each other, the fabric of reality becomes warped and fate's grasp begins to weaken. There were 2 Soul Reavers in that room at that point - the blade with Raziel's soul, and Raziel himself. About halfway through SR2, Kain used the same trick to guide Raziel into sparing him. So Kain's entire plan hinged on multiple pieces falling in sequence, like dominoes. First he had to not be dead at that point, then he had to be present for Raziel's absorption event. The timeline is vulnerable only when 2 Soul Reavers meet, meaning Kain had limited opportunities to try to change it.
1:07:40 ....surprised Josh didnt point this out, (Edit ...considering what he says about Dumah, i am not even sure he knows its even a thing) but that is actually teaching you lore "Dead" Vampires can become "Reapers" (they mean Wraiths) if left dead for too long Then when you ressurect them by removing the cause of death (in this case a spear) they retain their Wraith abillities and can drain your health once they make contact with you So no Josh ....you were not low on health at that point because you were in the physical realm, the Vampire was also draining you ....quite a lot (Edit: this is also what Dumah is doing, it has nothing to do with his constrict ability, he can just do it as soon as he hits you)
2:55:00 The French version of the game is actually phenomenaly well Voice casted. Raziel's voice is done by the same guy who was dubbing Kevin Costner in French : Bernard Lanneau, who also made voices for the French version of Princes of Egypts, the Iron Giant and Big Hero 6. Kain's voice is done by Benoît Allemane, who made the voice of Balloo in Tale Spin, Goliath in the Gargoyles and the french voice for Morgan Freeman another of his longest "role" was Charlie the Hen in the Looney Tunes. He also did the Elder God's voice in SR. Allemane is someone who did theatres play when he was young, Shakespear mostly and Moliere, so the man is perfect when it comes to Theatrics wich made him perfect for a character such as Kain. Here's the dialogues between kain and raziel in French if anyone is curious. th-cam.com/video/7jX7Q2cE72U/w-d-xo.html
I was on the fence about getting the remaster. Soul Reaver 1+2 and Defiance are like, core memories and standards in video game storytelling for me, but I was afraid it was just a cashgrab. But seeing another fan gush about this kind of clinched it for me. I do hope they remaster Defiance too. edit: those outtakes were on Soul Reaver 2, unlockable iirc. edit2: you never finished SR2, Josh? Hoooboy, talk about endings.
For anyone trying to say that this remaster was "low effort"...just try to play Defiance on PC with a controller these days. Even the simplest things take some hard work to do right. Proper Controller support is one of them. Hell, Defiance still doesn't register my L1/LB or R1/RB when I try to configure controls.
I think a lot of people misconstrue just how CLOSE they adhered to the original release in this remaster as 'low effort'. With games going back this far, it's JUST as much work to keep the game to its baseline. There's a lot of effort and energy required to both recreate the game as a remaster requires, without being tempted to 'change' too much and risk taking away from what it was.
@@Blisterdude123 I think SR1 looks great (except for the intro cutscene's vertical cropping and missing assets), but 2 seems far more undercooked. For some reason many of the textures in SR2 look blurrier than in the original, and the new character models have less expressive facial animation than the original version too (particularly noticeable with Mobius and Sarafan Raziel). I'm okay with things being very close to the originals. In fact even if everything looked _identical_ to the originals, just with higher resolution and frame rate, I'd be fine with that too. Because like ColdRoland said, just having fully compatible versions of these games be available everywhere is hugely important all on its own. But a few things here are definitely downgraded, which isn't good. I'm surprised more people aren't noticing it, actually. I'm hoping that's just because the game is in its honeymoon phase or whatever, and that this stuff will eventually be addressed.
@@yewtewbstew547 Thats actually a reason for soul reaver 2 not lookign as good and being more blurry. So the director of the remaster was talking about it (shes a former fan they hired because of her texture modding and website work). So in soul reaver 2 they did something with the textures to save space on the disk. Which means that all the textures get warped and stretched over the terrain and geometry. So she said they did the best they could because of the source limitations but it couldnt be remastered as well as soul reaver 1 without remaking the game from the ground up. This wasnt true for actual models however which is why the characters and objects look amazing but things like the floor, cliffs, water surfaces etc just look a little crisper than the original without much change.
You can actually go to the human city before rehab. Just go in the spirit realm, then jump up the left wall while in the spirit realm. It's nice to get the gate early.
It would be great to see anyone who is actually passionate about this IP to pick it up and do something great with it. I don't think that remakes would cut it, you won't be able to cut the VA for these games and the story writing. Unless they can get Amy Hennig back. They should build upon this with something new, or give us the next game following Kain after Defiance.
Would anybody else get totally freaked out by this game? Back in the PSX era I couldn't bring myself to finish it, even though I'd play Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
1:51:19 - Bingo. My partner is greatly looking forward to me playing through the game and her watching the story unfold. I'm one of the "big" backers of the Kickstarter and projects that have been coming out and she's infected by my everlasting passion for the series. She's starting to see why, and also how the game actually affected my life so dramatically in my youth. I would quite literally not be the person I am today without Kain and Raziel. They were defining characters for me at a very crucial time in my life. Thankfully the game has subtitles in her native language too, so I don't have to work so hard translating much of the story which is monumentally difficult! It is an absolute delight to be replaying them again without requiring emulation, and seeing so many fresh eyes finally witness what is by far the greatest video game story ever told. It just does not have an equal in my opinion. Edit: also hearing you've not completed Soul Reaver 2 is very close to a mortal sin. You must fix this.
i still own the ps1 version of soul reaver 1 im so happy to see the realm of nosgoth rise from the ashes like the undead raziel is i hope to see more game in the world of nosgoth coming after this remake
I'm fully with Josh on remasters. I myself am 32, but I didn't get to play a ton of classic games because my parents didn't like gaming. No Chrono Trigger, no Final Fantasy 6, 7, 8 or 9, nothing. Most I was allowed was Pokemon because a friend talked them into it and it was "kid friendly". Not to mention the absolute ton of games that didn't get released in one region or another. I'm European, I wouldn't have been able to play a whole bunch of JRPGs even if I was allowed. These remasters release internationally and fully compatible, which is GREAT for people like me, as well as anyone younger who's interested in older games. If a remaster goes to the lengths of preserving the original as well, like here, that's absolutely amazing and I wish it was the norm.
That's the potential problem with remasters. If the experience or content is compromised, people will never get to see the game the way it was intended. In most cases I would advice playing both the original and remaster if possible.
@@lorecow88 That was a big problem with the Halo Master Chief Collection for years. Literal years too, they only really fixed it all by like 2022 or so. Originally those ports of Halo CE and 2 on classic graphics mode were significant visual downgrades from the Xbox originals. No bump mapping, tons of visual effects missing or broken, missing lighting and shadows in cutscenes. I think what exacerbates this problem a lot is that remasters always inevitably attract a new audience. Which is good, obviously that's part of the reason why they're important. But if someone didn't play the original, they won't notice these problems. Which is really why 343 got away with not fixing that stuff I just mentioned for nearly 7 years. If it wasn't for a handful of particularly anal TH-camrs banging the war drum, it probably never would have been fixed.
1:01:36 This change is really needed indeed.when I first played this part, I spent a long time at least roaming around everywhere trying to figure out where to go before shifting to the spectral realm
i completed the story in 2 hours, 4 minutes and 12 mini seconds. The fastest way to "fast travel" is when you beat Melchiah, save and quit. Then reload. You spawn back at the underworld, then use the gate to warp to the Lake of the Dead to go to fight Kain. Save and quit, reload and go after Zephon, then save and quit, reload and got to Raab. And again, save and quit, reload and go to Dumah. Its scummy sure, but saves ALOT of back tracking.
The original Super Mario Brothers has an amazing tutorial in the first few screens. We take it for granted now, but you learn about enemies, jumping, coin blocks, power ups... all initially.
I've been waiting 25 years to play Soul Reaver again. I'm so happy this game came out. I turned back into a 5 year old again. One of if not the best games I've ever played
Hah, I'd discussed 'maybe dont hurt the humans' but never thought it made a difference. By the time I found the human citadel I took the 'designed to repel vampires' as a challenge, and they were already hostile when I got there :P
my friend used to talk about this game all the time but i never played it . i was busy playing dino crisis and resident evil and metal gear solid . oh the good old days when everything was right ( feels old man)
after 20 years i still love it the way it is,every voice acting and cutscene is legendary,the only problem i have with the remaster was that kain is not as good looking as he was in original and the second is that i wished they could chenge the gameplay just a bit so that it become more rewarding to fight but all in all they did a really really good job,big shoutout to them
If there ever was a question of whether people are hungry for more soul reaver. I direct you to the kickstarter for a soul reaver prequel graphic novel which saw these numbers. $1,464,076 pledged of $25,000 goal. I think we have our answer gentlemen...
3:05:04 Yes originaly, you would fought Turel to get the Psychic projectile ability, but due to time constraints they had to cut Turel's territory and Turel himsezlf from the game and they placed a Turelim vampire who had the ability someplace in the game for the player to gain the ability, since it is part of the puzzles solving and combat mechanics later on. SPOILER Soul reaver 1 was not meant to be part of a series or have a sequel, it was planned that you'd kill ALL your brothers, then you would have a final fight against Kain in his Mountain Retreat. But since they had to cut so much out of it, and the game did actually pretty well, Crystal Dynamics decided to make a sequel, so they used some of the cut content to expand the story and lore in the next games. Thats why you find and fight vampire Turel in SR Defiance, and also why your poursuit of Kain for vengeance, turn into a Tiem traveling game of cat & mouse and where you uncover the truth about the Machinations of Nosgoth and its secrets with Kain been at the same time Partner AND Antagonist.
Hate to say it, but the outtakes aren't as lost as you may believe. They were the outtakes and in studio footage that was included as bonus contend on the original release of Soul Reaver 2 (accessible through a code that was revealed at the end of the game). It's still cool they just made sure it was available right out of the gate, though.
@agrippa2012 blood and tattered remains of Raziel's wings have been removed when Kain rips the bones off of his wings. They're now just clean white sticks. The original cutscene is on TH-cam, you can check it out and compare, it's such a bizarre change in a game that's bloody and brutal all around...
Amazing experience. I think there's merit to having respectable youtubers who make consistent and good media as "advisors" in a sense. Nowadays we trust them FAR more than game journalists or reviewers of big shot companies. TH-camrs should become, in a way, the checks and balances the gaming industry needs to be held to. They will tell you what's good, what's bad and the nitty gritty in an honest and transparent way. They are the people who connect to the audiences, it makes sense to liaise with them to see what will work and will not.
20 year World of Warcraft veteran here. Play a Nightelf. Purple skin, glowing eyes, pointy ears, skinny, similar style... LoK: Soul Reaver is literally THE best game I ever played.
I absolutely love this game and have been playing it consistently since 1999. I found both a major graphical bug and a completely game crashing bug....but it's still a great remaster of my favorite series of all time. That's also not lost media. All of those videos were included in Soul Reaver 2 bonus content. Some of the art is new, and the lost levels are new to players byt have been seen.
Its a shame they didnt add more stuff, there was some cool stuff in the documentary they could have included like old casting interviews and scripts etc
I'm really enjoying playing the remaster on PS5, having played the originals back on the original PlayStation. I have had a couple of problems, though. One bizarre incident, which took place in the Spectral Realm, next to one of the rising and falling platforms in the water at the bottom of the lighthouse section, saw me fall through the floor. I fell into limbo for a while then found myself back in the game world as a floating soul! I could not control myself, I just floated there, bobbing up and down. Knowing that I would reappear in the Elder God room, I tried saving, but upon trying to load that save, it was corrupted and made the game crash. Luckily, I had another save I could go back to. The only other problem I have is that I think it gets way too dark during the night in the new / re-implemented day / night cycle. I think they need to drastically brighten it, and / or give players the option to turn that feature off.
17:00 - Original Halo had a great "First / Tutorial" Level... Honestly, the BEST tutorial levels are the ones that are so well made that you forget it IS a tutorial level... Soul Reaver, Halo 1, Mass Effect 1, Resident Evil 4 all had really good design when it came to teaching you how to play the game without making the tutorial feel like a "chore"....
There's only one real problem with them re-animating the intro cutscene from top to bottom, and that's the model clipping. You can see it quite easily when Dumah and Zephon were dragging Raziel to the cliff. Also, Zephon's cape remains rigid when he bends down to help pick up Raziel to toss him.
I believe a lot of the outtake footage was from Soul Reaver 2. I remember watching a bunch of them so not all of it is lost media. But they deffos have included stuff in there that we've never seen before.
Josh, I can't wait til you find out why they cut the other reaver upgrades from the game. You will find out in soul reaver 2. Fun fact, they were going to cut the fire reaver to but kept it in, ultimately because they liked the idea of a projectile that lights the vampires on fire.
1:10:25 on my first playattempt, THIS was the part i got stuck on, in hindsight its not that difficult of a puzzle but i remember beeing very upset that i couldn't find a way to rotate the block horizontaly.
recently played through blood omen 2 on the playstation plus thing. I forgot how awful it is to not have the camera attached to the right stick. that is a massive game changer.
Im one hour in and it doesn't seem like Josh is gonna mention it, but they added a Photo mode to the game, and I've been checking every little detail and difference in the characters and enemy models comparing the new and the old ones. Its genuinely amazing the work they put into all of it, i feel like a kid playing it again. Also, it does seem like they used AI upscaling for at least some of the environment textures. The floor in Kain's throne room at the pillars is the most noticeable thing about it, but everything else looks decent enough so it doesn't really matter
Its all hand done but the director and her team. She was a former texture modder and massive community member. She said however there are some things in sr1 and all the environmental textures in sr2 were coded in such a way to save overall space on discs so they would take a small texture and warp and stretch it to make the rocks and cliffs etc. So it was almost impossible for the m to improve those assets. Which is why sr1 looks a lot better than sr2 in that regard. In soul reaver 2 its mainly just the object models, shadows, lighting and sfx that have been improved. The environments look almost identical to before
Thanks for explaining, but that still doesn't explain how the symbols on some more elaborate walls and floors look kinda wonky. Im not saying it's straight up machine generated, but the floor tiles on Kain's throne room looks just weird and warped? As i said, everything else looks fine, and that's just a couple random details that seemed wrong or maybe an oversight, so its not a big deal. Just something that stood out to me
Surprised you haven’t finished Soul Reaver 2. I have played through it at least 10 times over the years and am actually looking forward to playing the remastered version.
I linked josh's previous soul reaver video to the director for the remaster. =D I didn't know she was the director yet, of course. Probably totally irrelevant, they'd have gotten Josh anyway. But I still like to think that I did a tiny tiny bit to help with that one graphical glitch that was already fixed anyway. XD It's been a phenomenal time replaying it... and I look forward to future replays being easier to do. Don't need to faff about cleaning old PS1 discs. A chatter mentioned playing from a demo, good news, you played content that was never in the game. The demo had content that was later changed.
I'm gonna just attribute all the "Lost Levels" things to Ben Lincoln from The Lost Worlds. He figured that shit out decades ago. There were playable versions of Turel's Realm and stuff like that, with just some effort. That site is at least part of the lifeblood of the LoK community. And he has a cool tatoo as well. :P
It's apparently a TH-cam copyright issue. Some others have got around it by setting the music volume to zero for the opening but this was prob imported from Twitch so not much can be done beyond mute the claimed part. Might not even be the actual copyright holders cos TH-cam allows any random to make automated claims (some trash panda prob uploaded the opening at some point and set it to claim and just sat back as cash came in. Happens with lots of Final Fantasy music, even some music covers try to claim other vids )
Def agree with the talk of game length at the start. Too many games do the whole “biggest world ever and millions of hours long” thing as a selling point and most don’t justify it. Id much prefer most games to be PS1/PS2 average length with only a few rare RPGs each year that justify a longer playtime
best intro cut scene monologue in gaming... and the audio cuts out on the video... not going to lie that was a bit of a let down as it was 75% of the reason I wanted to watch this. You are correct though, the boat spear is the coolest spear, I remember trying to take it through the entire game.
![[UNCUT] เก็บ "สจ.โต้ง" เอี่ยวมาเฟีย รู้ตัวคนบงการ ก่อนสั่งลั่นไก I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์ I 13 ธ.ค.67](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/o-J_p62D40w/mqdefault.jpg)
Just hearing Tony Jay's voice gives me chills. What an absolute legend. RIP.
22:59 sound is back
My hero!
You can tell how important this is for Josh, he's in full Substitute Teacher mode all the way through. Glad he left most of the secrets for anyone who wants to play the game for themselves as well.
That opening FMV blew me away. I was scratching my head how they got their hands on quarter century old CG assets, hearing that they remade the opening from scratch is infinitely more impressive.
They didnt remake it from scratch, the company just so happened to keep everything archived including scripts, storyboards, audition tapes and older versions of the game. So they just re-rendered the already made intro to the new resolution. As an aside you should look up the recent documentary on soul reaver. Its funny listening to the audition tapes of who applied to this franchise. I believe the guy who plays spongebob was there and the doctor from star trek voyager and some others.
@@charg1nmalaz0r51 Noclip did a fantastic doc on this.
I had a few minutes of silence around the 20 mark, anyone else as well?
Same for me
same
Same 😢
Didn't he have problems with this scene being copyright the 1st time? I wonder if that's the problem
Minutes 19:58-22:59
These were the first games that showed me as a kid that video games could have amazing stories.
40:50 Kain doesn't want you to know this, but those torches next to the door are free. You can just take them.
Josh Strife Kains
Kain Strife Raziels
@@KingLich451Joshacy strof Kaiyes
nothing beats classical shakespearean story of betrayal and time travelling vampires trying to stop giant squid
These games are why when people ask "who are some of your favourite actors" Tony Jay, Michael Bell and Simon Templeman are in there.
And the WRITING in this game.
Chef's kiss, blew my mind when I played them as a schoolboy
Noclip just released a 1 hour documentary on Soul Reaver too, with some more behind the screen stuff (like David Hayters audition). Really good stuff.
He auditioned for this game?? What character was he aiming for?
@SeymourAsses1 Raziel, there is a audio snippet in the noclip documentary. It pretty much sounds like snake from mgs 1 doing raziels intro speech😅
I have been waiting for this for nearly two decades
I was 9 when I first played and I just wasn't good enough back then to beat it and when it finally popped up on steam I thought finally, I can finish it but that version was broken to hell and back. I am so happy they swooped up this title and brought it back. It's been a good year for games for me, I'm so happy 🥹
Josh's passion for this game is infectious. This one is first monitor entertainment.
If it's passion for the games you'd like to see more, I highly recommend watching Mapocalocops play through the whole franchise. There are honest and unironic "I'm almost crying because the writing is so peak" moments in there. And that was his first experience with Legacy of Kain, too. So the appreciation wasn't simply driven by nostalgia.
@@hekatebleble4800 I love Mapo!
this is unbelievably cool, the effort time and passion to build this is groundbreaking
the sounds of this game will forever stay in my soul
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Unregistered
HyperCam 2
Unregistered and red don't rhyme.
@@azuredragonofnether5433 They aren't meant to.
@@azuredragonofnether5433as long as HyperCam 2 rhymes, it's ok to enjoy the poem
Legacy of Kain is one of the other fictional setting, with 40k, that had me OBSESSED to an Unhealthy degree.
the HOURS, nay, DAYS, i would spent on Nosghotic Realms boards, discussing Lore implications and ramifications of each and EVERY character and their arcs, and the environement of Nosgoth and how the world worked with HUNDRENDS of other fans.
Rare are the games that gave me such overwhelming envy to immerse myself completly in it.
Yeah i remember that. I have a question for you. If Raziel is the only one who has free will. How did kain break the chain of Raziel going into the blade. Because in order to do so he would have to use his own free will to change events.
@@charg1nmalaz0r51 He used the Reaver's power, just like he inadvertently did when he killed prince William in Blood Omen 1 and rewrote history in the process.
When 2 Soul Reavers are in close proximity to each other, the fabric of reality becomes warped and fate's grasp begins to weaken.
There were 2 Soul Reavers in that room at that point - the blade with Raziel's soul, and Raziel himself.
About halfway through SR2, Kain used the same trick to guide Raziel into sparing him. So Kain's entire plan hinged on multiple pieces falling in sequence, like dominoes. First he had to not be dead at that point, then he had to be present for Raziel's absorption event. The timeline is vulnerable only when 2 Soul Reavers meet, meaning Kain had limited opportunities to try to change it.
Also - the oldschool vibe of the stream is absolutely brilliant! :)
Those outtakes were on the soul reaver 2 ps2 disc, back in the day. I watched all of them when i was a kid, video game making aint what it used to be
1:07:40 ....surprised Josh didnt point this out, (Edit ...considering what he says about Dumah, i am not even sure he knows its even a thing)
but that is actually teaching you lore
"Dead" Vampires can become "Reapers" (they mean Wraiths) if left dead for too long
Then when you ressurect them by removing the cause of death (in this case a spear) they retain their Wraith abillities and can drain your health once they make contact with you
So no Josh ....you were not low on health at that point because you were in the physical realm, the Vampire was also draining you ....quite a lot
(Edit: this is also what Dumah is doing, it has nothing to do with his constrict ability, he can just do it as soon as he hits you)
"The fate of this hairstyle was pre-ordained in an instant" best line, watched the whole thing.
2:55:00 The French version of the game is actually phenomenaly well Voice casted.
Raziel's voice is done by the same guy who was dubbing Kevin Costner in French : Bernard Lanneau, who also made voices for the French version of Princes of Egypts, the Iron Giant and Big Hero 6.
Kain's voice is done by Benoît Allemane, who made the voice of Balloo in Tale Spin, Goliath in the Gargoyles and the french voice for Morgan Freeman another of his longest "role" was Charlie the Hen in the Looney Tunes.
He also did the Elder God's voice in SR.
Allemane is someone who did theatres play when he was young, Shakespear mostly and Moliere, so the man is perfect when it comes to Theatrics wich made him perfect for a character such as Kain.
Here's the dialogues between kain and raziel in French if anyone is curious. th-cam.com/video/7jX7Q2cE72U/w-d-xo.html
So amazing to see more Josh playing his favorite game :)
5 and a half hours of second monitor content released on my birthday. amazing :D
lmao a fellow second monitor listener
I'm so glad this vod was remastered. I remember the old standard definition vod and wished it was updated to be in hd.
I was on the fence about getting the remaster. Soul Reaver 1+2 and Defiance are like, core memories and standards in video game storytelling for me, but I was afraid it was just a cashgrab. But seeing another fan gush about this kind of clinched it for me. I do hope they remaster Defiance too. edit: those outtakes were on Soul Reaver 2, unlockable iirc. edit2: you never finished SR2, Josh? Hoooboy, talk about endings.
For anyone trying to say that this remaster was "low effort"...just try to play Defiance on PC with a controller these days.
Even the simplest things take some hard work to do right.
Proper Controller support is one of them.
Hell, Defiance still doesn't register my L1/LB or R1/RB when I try to configure controls.
I think a lot of people misconstrue just how CLOSE they adhered to the original release in this remaster as 'low effort'. With games going back this far, it's JUST as much work to keep the game to its baseline. There's a lot of effort and energy required to both recreate the game as a remaster requires, without being tempted to 'change' too much and risk taking away from what it was.
@@Blisterdude123 I think SR1 looks great (except for the intro cutscene's vertical cropping and missing assets), but 2 seems far more undercooked. For some reason many of the textures in SR2 look blurrier than in the original, and the new character models have less expressive facial animation than the original version too (particularly noticeable with Mobius and Sarafan Raziel).
I'm okay with things being very close to the originals. In fact even if everything looked _identical_ to the originals, just with higher resolution and frame rate, I'd be fine with that too. Because like ColdRoland said, just having fully compatible versions of these games be available everywhere is hugely important all on its own. But a few things here are definitely downgraded, which isn't good. I'm surprised more people aren't noticing it, actually. I'm hoping that's just because the game is in its honeymoon phase or whatever, and that this stuff will eventually be addressed.
@@yewtewbstew547 Thats actually a reason for soul reaver 2 not lookign as good and being more blurry. So the director of the remaster was talking about it (shes a former fan they hired because of her texture modding and website work). So in soul reaver 2 they did something with the textures to save space on the disk. Which means that all the textures get warped and stretched over the terrain and geometry. So she said they did the best they could because of the source limitations but it couldnt be remastered as well as soul reaver 1 without remaking the game from the ground up. This wasnt true for actual models however which is why the characters and objects look amazing but things like the floor, cliffs, water surfaces etc just look a little crisper than the original without much change.
You can actually go to the human city before rehab. Just go in the spirit realm, then jump up the left wall while in the spirit realm. It's nice to get the gate early.
From a more civilised time, when writers were not afraid of polysyllabic words.
Might be worth adding a note onto the VOD about this being a sponsored stream, just so that it is clear.
The magic is whateves in use, but the exploration and finding those weird out of the way rooms is what's really rewarding.
Best VA in any game absolutely love the soul reaver series so glad it got a remaster
It would be great to see anyone who is actually passionate about this IP to pick it up and do something great with it.
I don't think that remakes would cut it, you won't be able to cut the VA for these games and the story writing. Unless they can get Amy Hennig back.
They should build upon this with something new, or give us the next game following Kain after Defiance.
Would anybody else get totally freaked out by this game? Back in the PSX era I couldn't bring myself to finish it, even though I'd play Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
'Revenge is motivation enough, at least its honest'
1:51:19 - Bingo. My partner is greatly looking forward to me playing through the game and her watching the story unfold. I'm one of the "big" backers of the Kickstarter and projects that have been coming out and she's infected by my everlasting passion for the series. She's starting to see why, and also how the game actually affected my life so dramatically in my youth. I would quite literally not be the person I am today without Kain and Raziel. They were defining characters for me at a very crucial time in my life. Thankfully the game has subtitles in her native language too, so I don't have to work so hard translating much of the story which is monumentally difficult!
It is an absolute delight to be replaying them again without requiring emulation, and seeing so many fresh eyes finally witness what is by far the greatest video game story ever told. It just does not have an equal in my opinion.
Edit: also hearing you've not completed Soul Reaver 2 is very close to a mortal sin. You must fix this.
I loved the soul reaver series and even being blind in one eye I am thinking about buying this to give support to the team.
what has being blind in one eye got to do with anything?
@@charg1nmalaz0r51 Put a patch over your bad eye and try living your life.
I never finished this game as a kid because, I was so lost in what to do. Love this play through as I'm finally able to see the full game, thank you.
i still own the ps1 version of soul reaver 1 im so happy to see the realm of nosgoth rise from the ashes like the undead raziel is i hope to see more game in the world of nosgoth coming after this remake
Dear lord, the core memory nostalgia when Josh was explaining playing the game with a printed out gamefaqs guide next to him. I'm still recovering.
The outtakes are not lost media, those where available in the Defiance game as well as on TH-cam for years.
I'm fully with Josh on remasters. I myself am 32, but I didn't get to play a ton of classic games because my parents didn't like gaming. No Chrono Trigger, no Final Fantasy 6, 7, 8 or 9, nothing. Most I was allowed was Pokemon because a friend talked them into it and it was "kid friendly". Not to mention the absolute ton of games that didn't get released in one region or another. I'm European, I wouldn't have been able to play a whole bunch of JRPGs even if I was allowed.
These remasters release internationally and fully compatible, which is GREAT for people like me, as well as anyone younger who's interested in older games. If a remaster goes to the lengths of preserving the original as well, like here, that's absolutely amazing and I wish it was the norm.
That's the potential problem with remasters. If the experience or content is compromised, people will never get to see the game the way it was intended. In most cases I would advice playing both the original and remaster if possible.
@@lorecow88 That was a big problem with the Halo Master Chief Collection for years. Literal years too, they only really fixed it all by like 2022 or so. Originally those ports of Halo CE and 2 on classic graphics mode were significant visual downgrades from the Xbox originals. No bump mapping, tons of visual effects missing or broken, missing lighting and shadows in cutscenes.
I think what exacerbates this problem a lot is that remasters always inevitably attract a new audience. Which is good, obviously that's part of the reason why they're important. But if someone didn't play the original, they won't notice these problems. Which is really why 343 got away with not fixing that stuff I just mentioned for nearly 7 years. If it wasn't for a handful of particularly anal TH-camrs banging the war drum, it probably never would have been fixed.
The playthrough I've been waiting to watch since the initial announcement! 🎉
1:01:36 This change is really needed indeed.when I first played this part, I spent a long time at least roaming around everywhere trying to figure out where to go before shifting to the spectral realm
Lol that cheeky smile in thumbnail :D The man is happy as one can be :)
i completed the story in 2 hours, 4 minutes and 12 mini seconds. The fastest way to "fast travel" is when you beat Melchiah, save and quit. Then reload. You spawn back at the underworld, then use the gate to warp to the Lake of the Dead to go to fight Kain. Save and quit, reload and go after Zephon, then save and quit, reload and got to Raab. And again, save and quit, reload and go to Dumah. Its scummy sure, but saves ALOT of back tracking.
I'm planning to get this after Christmas. Such good games! Amazing voice acting, fun gameplay, good soundtrack... They had it all!
The original Super Mario Brothers has an amazing tutorial in the first few screens.
We take it for granted now, but you learn about enemies, jumping, coin blocks, power ups... all initially.
I've been waiting 25 years to play Soul Reaver again. I'm so happy this game came out. I turned back into a 5 year old again. One of if not the best games I've ever played
My campaign has been going for 11 hours and I'm still not done but this my dude just knows it by heart
Hah, I'd discussed 'maybe dont hurt the humans' but never thought it made a difference. By the time I found the human citadel I took the 'designed to repel vampires' as a challenge, and they were already hostile when I got there :P
my friend used to talk about this game all the time but i never played it . i was busy playing dino crisis and resident evil and metal gear solid . oh the good old days when everything was right ( feels old man)
after 20 years i still love it the way it is,every voice acting and cutscene is legendary,the only problem i have with the remaster was that kain is not as good looking as he was in original and the second is that i wished they could chenge the gameplay just a bit so that it become more rewarding to fight but all in all they did a really really good job,big shoutout to them
I'm a big fan of the oldschool-windows aesthetic that you have started going for ever since PoE2. I wouldn't be opposed to seeing that more often!
chills bro chills we have no voice actors that are this good these days
Tony Jay had such an iconic voice
Sucks we will never get him back for a final game
You had me at cut content restored. Legacy of Kain was my teenage years obsession.
The devs must have loved watching Josh play this
Those outtakes were on SR2. once you beat the game it would give you a cheat code to press on the controller to input on the title screen.
If there ever was a question of whether people are hungry for more soul reaver. I direct you to the kickstarter for a soul reaver prequel graphic novel which saw these numbers. $1,464,076
pledged of $25,000 goal. I think we have our answer gentlemen...
I wish to experience the excitement that Josh had for this game
I credit Soul Reaver for expanding my vocabulary so much as a child. I was 8 when I first played the demo disk.
I remember Ratchet & Clank did this at 17:35 and it was flawless, without any menus aswell. I think R&Q had the best tutorial than any game I played.
3:05:04 Yes originaly, you would fought Turel to get the Psychic projectile ability, but due to time constraints they had to cut Turel's territory and Turel himsezlf from the game and they placed a Turelim vampire who had the ability someplace in the game for the player to gain the ability, since it is part of the puzzles solving and combat mechanics later on.
SPOILER
Soul reaver 1 was not meant to be part of a series or have a sequel, it was planned that you'd kill ALL your brothers, then you would have a final fight against Kain in his Mountain Retreat.
But since they had to cut so much out of it, and the game did actually pretty well, Crystal Dynamics decided to make a sequel, so they used some of the cut content to expand the story and lore in the next games.
Thats why you find and fight vampire Turel in SR Defiance, and also why your poursuit of Kain for vengeance, turn into a Tiem traveling game of cat & mouse and where you uncover the truth about the Machinations of Nosgoth and its secrets with Kain been at the same time Partner AND Antagonist.
Hate to say it, but the outtakes aren't as lost as you may believe. They were the outtakes and in studio footage that was included as bonus contend on the original release of Soul Reaver 2 (accessible through a code that was revealed at the end of the game). It's still cool they just made sure it was available right out of the gate, though.
Am I the only one pissed at the opening cinematic being censored? It's like going back to try and "fix" a classic painting...
what has been censored? i didn't catch it
@agrippa2012 blood and tattered remains of Raziel's wings have been removed when Kain rips the bones off of his wings. They're now just clean white sticks. The original cutscene is on TH-cam, you can check it out and compare, it's such a bizarre change in a game that's bloody and brutal all around...
Amazing experience. I think there's merit to having respectable youtubers who make consistent and good media as "advisors" in a sense. Nowadays we trust them FAR more than game journalists or reviewers of big shot companies. TH-camrs should become, in a way, the checks and balances the gaming industry needs to be held to. They will tell you what's good, what's bad and the nitty gritty in an honest and transparent way.
They are the people who connect to the audiences, it makes sense to liaise with them to see what will work and will not.
If only i was better at video games. Time to live vicariously through Josh yet again.
20 year World of Warcraft veteran here. Play a Nightelf. Purple skin, glowing eyes, pointy ears, skinny, similar style... LoK: Soul Reaver is literally THE best game I ever played.
I absolutely love this game and have been playing it consistently since 1999. I found both a major graphical bug and a completely game crashing bug....but it's still a great remaster of my favorite series of all time.
That's also not lost media. All of those videos were included in Soul Reaver 2 bonus content.
Some of the art is new, and the lost levels are new to players byt have been seen.
Its a shame they didnt add more stuff, there was some cool stuff in the documentary they could have included like old casting interviews and scripts etc
I'm really enjoying playing the remaster on PS5, having played the originals back on the original PlayStation. I have had a couple of problems, though.
One bizarre incident, which took place in the Spectral Realm, next to one of the rising and falling platforms in the water at the bottom of the lighthouse section, saw me fall through the floor. I fell into limbo for a while then found myself back in the game world as a floating soul! I could not control myself, I just floated there, bobbing up and down. Knowing that I would reappear in the Elder God room, I tried saving, but upon trying to load that save, it was corrupted and made the game crash. Luckily, I had another save I could go back to.
The only other problem I have is that I think it gets way too dark during the night in the new / re-implemented day / night cycle. I think they need to drastically brighten it, and / or give players the option to turn that feature off.
17:00 - Original Halo had a great "First / Tutorial" Level... Honestly, the BEST tutorial levels are the ones that are so well made that you forget it IS a tutorial level... Soul Reaver, Halo 1, Mass Effect 1, Resident Evil 4 all had really good design when it came to teaching you how to play the game without making the tutorial feel like a "chore"....
There's only one real problem with them re-animating the intro cutscene from top to bottom, and that's the model clipping. You can see it quite easily when Dumah and Zephon were dragging Raziel to the cliff. Also, Zephon's cape remains rigid when he bends down to help pick up Raziel to toss him.
To be fair, all of the featured outtakes were included in the US release of Soul Reaver 2.
Still a phenomenal remaster and package, though.
I believe a lot of the outtake footage was from Soul Reaver 2. I remember watching a bunch of them so not all of it is lost media. But they deffos have included stuff in there that we've never seen before.
"🎶 My name is Razi-el, his name is Kain...
We are togetheeer...
ONCE AGAIN! 🎶" ;)
Josh, you could have gone to the naprators' retreat long long before rehab. There's a dimension gate right before the climb.
Farcry Blood Dragon had one of the best tutorials
I love this game
I love the Legacy. I'll always remember watching my cousins play it and then getting my turn to play.
Josh, I can't wait til you find out why they cut the other reaver upgrades from the game. You will find out in soul reaver 2. Fun fact, they were going to cut the fire reaver to but kept it in, ultimately because they liked the idea of a projectile that lights the vampires on fire.
1:10:25 on my first playattempt, THIS was the part i got stuck on, in hindsight its not that difficult of a puzzle but i remember beeing very upset that i couldn't find a way to rotate the block horizontaly.
5:39 you absolutely get the sound glyph....
25:37 I watched for it because I knew he couldn't resist the line read.
Back in the day, this was as Epic as any God of War
You dont need to palce a block to flip one up into a hole in the wall, put it against the wall and he will flip it right in
With such a glowing review upfront I Had to pause the video so I could play it first
recently played through blood omen 2 on the playstation plus thing. I forgot how awful it is to not have the camera attached to the right stick. that is a massive game changer.
This remaster is a marvel and a true treasure of vid3ogame media preservation. Bravo, indeed! ❤ Thank you Mr.Hayes. 😊
Im one hour in and it doesn't seem like Josh is gonna mention it, but they added a Photo mode to the game, and I've been checking every little detail and difference in the characters and enemy models comparing the new and the old ones.
Its genuinely amazing the work they put into all of it, i feel like a kid playing it again.
Also, it does seem like they used AI upscaling for at least some of the environment textures. The floor in Kain's throne room at the pillars is the most noticeable thing about it, but everything else looks decent enough so it doesn't really matter
Its all hand done but the director and her team. She was a former texture modder and massive community member. She said however there are some things in sr1 and all the environmental textures in sr2 were coded in such a way to save overall space on discs so they would take a small texture and warp and stretch it to make the rocks and cliffs etc. So it was almost impossible for the m to improve those assets. Which is why sr1 looks a lot better than sr2 in that regard. In soul reaver 2 its mainly just the object models, shadows, lighting and sfx that have been improved. The environments look almost identical to before
Thanks for explaining, but that still doesn't explain how the symbols on some more elaborate walls and floors look kinda wonky. Im not saying it's straight up machine generated, but the floor tiles on Kain's throne room looks just weird and warped?
As i said, everything else looks fine, and that's just a couple random details that seemed wrong or maybe an oversight, so its not a big deal. Just something that stood out to me
The only thing I want to know is why Josh refers to Nupraptor as New Raptor.
Become my Soul Beaver, my angle of debt...
Surprised you haven’t finished Soul Reaver 2. I have played through it at least 10 times over the years and am actually looking forward to playing the remastered version.
I played the Dreamcast version, which iirc had a bit of a facelift over the psx version, great game.
I linked josh's previous soul reaver video to the director for the remaster. =D
I didn't know she was the director yet, of course.
Probably totally irrelevant, they'd have gotten Josh anyway. But I still like to think that I did a tiny tiny bit to help with that one graphical glitch that was already fixed anyway. XD
It's been a phenomenal time replaying it... and I look forward to future replays being easier to do. Don't need to faff about cleaning old PS1 discs.
A chatter mentioned playing from a demo, good news, you played content that was never in the game. The demo had content that was later changed.
I'm gonna just attribute all the "Lost Levels" things to Ben Lincoln from The Lost Worlds.
He figured that shit out decades ago.
There were playable versions of Turel's Realm and stuff like that, with just some effort.
That site is at least part of the lifeblood of the LoK community.
And he has a cool tatoo as well. :P
Just so you know, audio has been muted around the 20 minute mark. I don't think the dev's are behind that.
It's apparently a TH-cam copyright issue. Some others have got around it by setting the music volume to zero for the opening but this was prob imported from Twitch so not much can be done beyond mute the claimed part.
Might not even be the actual copyright holders cos TH-cam allows any random to make automated claims (some trash panda prob uploaded the opening at some point and set it to claim and just sat back as cash came in. Happens with lots of Final Fantasy music, even some music covers try to claim other vids )
This game along with blood omen brings back awsome time i my childhood
Zephon low key sounds like an old granny who's smoked too many cigarettes 😂
Def agree with the talk of game length at the start. Too many games do the whole “biggest world ever and millions of hours long” thing as a selling point and most don’t justify it.
Id much prefer most games to be PS1/PS2 average length with only a few rare RPGs each year that justify a longer playtime
best intro cut scene monologue in gaming... and the audio cuts out on the video... not going to lie that was a bit of a let down as it was 75% of the reason I wanted to watch this. You are correct though, the boat spear is the coolest spear, I remember trying to take it through the entire game.
OG game could never get threw this one as a kid lol