Man, I miss the Legacy of Kain series. The vampiric action RPG was one of the first games of that ilk I played on the original PlayStation, and watching (and playing) its evolution into the beloved Soul Reaver series was a delight. Denis Dyack originally created the series under silicon Knights – but eventually fell under the directorships of Amy Hennig, who eventually led the Uncharted series. While Hennig is still trying to find a new place in the industry with a new interactive storytelling venture after her Star Wars project at EA was binned, Denis Dyack is trying to resurrect Legacy of Kain through a spiritual successor, called Deadhaus Sonata.
How do I know it’s a spiritual successor to Legacy of Kain? Well, Dyack and co won’t stop reminding everybody. Even the latest video for the game is simply titled: “A Spiritual Successor To Legacy of Kain.”
And that should be enough to get anyone excited. Speaking in the video, Dyack says “We are going back to the roots of Legacy of Kain….” but that’s where it starts to fall apart. In the next breath, Dyack mentions things like Multiplayer, the game being free to play, deep social media integration with Twitch affecting the outcome and…well, those are none of the things I want from a Legacy of Kain game. In effect, what they’re pitching is a free-to-play hybrid of something like WarFrame and with a Diablo-style ARPG with a multiplayer focus, and that’s just not for me.
That’s before we even consider things like Dyack’s last spiritual successor failure. In 2013, Dyack’s eternal Darkness spiritual successor Shadow of the Eternals spectacularly failed to hit its crowdfunding targets – and that was before services like Kickstarter imploded for funding games.
“After a lot of discussion and debate we’ve come to agree with the feedback that now is not the right time for Shadow of The Eternals – it’s not canceled, but it is also not going to be in active development for a while,” Dyack told IGN when he revealed Deadhaus Sonata in 2018.
As much as I want more in games in the Legacy of Kain and Soul Reaver vein, this just isn’t it.
Last Updated: January 10, 2020
Hammersteyn
January 10, 2020 at 11:25
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Kervyn Cloete
January 10, 2020 at 11:31
My gaming nick has always been Reaver, so they had me at Legacy of Kain.
They lost me at everything else.
Seeker
January 10, 2020 at 13:11
The camera doesn’t feel right with me. It seems to be more focused on the character rather than the world and the enemies you are fighting.
Original Heretic
January 10, 2020 at 11:31
It’s F2P, so I’ll try it.
Geoffrey Tim
January 10, 2020 at 12:28
It’s also F2I. Free to ignore.
SpardaTheDevil
November 11, 2020 at 13:57
>The vampiric action RPG
In what universe LoK games were an action RPG?