For anyone who hasn't yet tried out Nosgoth, the game takes an idea that I know from years of reading fan fiction has been highly anticipate by Soul Reaver fans, and combines it with the moral complexity loved by fans of the original Blood Omen. This is our first canon view of what survival was like for the vampires of Kain's empire, before everything deteriorated so badly that they became irredeemable, mindless zombies. Members of Clan Razielim have survived and are tenuously fighting alonside their cousins. Just as prominently featured are the humans of this time period, who fight for the freedom of their cities, and to avoid being hunted for food. Neither side is portrayed as inherently entitled to supremacy.
The music is atmospheric and motivating. The art direction is beautifully detailed and believable. It's a team deathmatch game, but it's one with infinitely better dialogue and backstory than that featured in Blood Omen 2. In the past two years I have seen great effort expended to include fans in the ongoing development process, and to tie this world in with the previous games. I, myself, will probably never be especially skilled at this kind of game, but I'll play it anyway for every time that a character cheers or curses a familiar name.
We all still want a story-based continuation of Kain and Raziel's odyssey, including members of the team behind Nosgoth. It is hoped that this game will raise enough interest in the series to fund a project of that magnitude. In the meantime, we can enjoy imagining how implications introduced by Nosgoth will factor into the series' future. This may be the future that Kain has gambled everything to preserve.
- 9/7/15
Nosgothic Realm, Redesigned
Nosgothic Realm has finally returned, having been completely redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up. There are a few changes that I'm making to the way I do things with this site, moving forward. Firstly, I plan to retire the mailing list. In return, content will now be added as it is ready, rather than making everyone wait for each lump addition of new content. As a result, content will likely be added without an announcement here, on the home page. And entries to the log of updates will be at irregular intervals. This is intended to make the addition of new content faster and smoother.
Next, from now on I ask that all fan fic submissions include short descriptions, written by the authors. This will allow me to post stories right away, rather than making everyone wait until after I've read them, myself.
Finally, given that the fan wallpapers and fan WinAmp skins were intended for defunct technology, I will no longer be hosting those. Instead, I am hoping that people will donate forms of fan works that have not yet been hosted on this site, such as Legacy of Kain inspired comics, original music, and videos.
Transferring all the fan works has been a massive undertaking. A multi-step process was required to manually move every single fan art and fan fic submission to the new and improved format. As a result, not all of the rough sketches and gray-scale copies of concept art made the move. Nor did some of the deliberately silly or less complete fan fics. I am very sorry for this. Please do feel welcome to submit new art and stories. I have seen some awesome stuff floating around online. Hopefully the new site design will provide a worthier gallery and library for the display of past and future work.
It is entirely possibly that a few bugs are still floating around in the site's code. Questions, comments, and suggestions regarding the site's new design are welcome. I can still be reached via Tenaya@Nosgoth.net. Thank you very much to anyone reading this for bearing with me. Additional content and further tweaks to the site design are on their way.
- 8/17/15
