@efesell: Blood Omen does a lot more with the plot and character than most modern games and stands out from any game at the time. Sure the Circle of Nine and history of Nosgoth are big elements of the story but the most compelling is to do with the former human Kain coming to grips with the monster he is becoming and it is communicated to you in a way only a game could.
Kain's vampirism and twisted morals aren't just empty gimmicks, restricted only to the game manual and cutscenes. They are the very engine of the whole game, and the single most crucial and defining element of the experience. The decision to massacre a whole village for blood is yours to make and influences how you feel about Kain.
This is reason why it remains so compelling in spite of its datedness. It was not simply designed as a "vampire game;" the choice of casting its lead as a bloodsucker was settled upon because it seemed the best way of achieving its overall aim, to thrust the player into the role of a convincing anti-hero whose every act toward the greater good is tarnished by self-interest and violent murder. And for all this, Blood Omen never forgets that it is foremost a video game, not an interactive film or art piece. It might not be the best game ever made, but it stands as a model of how they should be designed.
Soul Reaver starts off strong, there's no better opening line than "Kain is deified." But Soul Reaver is an unfinished story. It has neither a climax nor a conclusion, it just stops. It could've been "Paradise Lost" of video games, Soul Reaver's original ending makes a point about free will and autonomy in video games nearly a decade before BioShock achieved critical accolades and mainstream recognition for doing just that. But this never happened and the game was cut short and given a different cliffhanger ending to lead to a sequel that had nothing to offer but a mess of retcons and nonsense plot.
The Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen is exactly the kind of game that they go on to describe after the Beastcast play down the idea of liking "bad games".
Blood Omen isn't bad, it has a lot of quirks that early disc games had such as loading times but this was really only noticeable when loading the item screen.
Aside from that it is a very competent top down "Zelda" game with vampire powers that actually inform the character and their situation, something that most games can't even dream to achieve.
Blood Omen also tells a straightforward but effective story that is well executed. Told mostly in succinct monologues that beautifully capture the essence of the scene better than any 10 minute cinematic could.
This was before the series was requisitioned by Eidos and given to Crystal Dynamics to pump out a sequel. Amy Hennig was masterful in being able to write something that wasn't "Blood Omen 2: Nosgoth Boogaloo" even though Eidos probably just asked them to make a 3D platformer like Tomb Raider. But the sudden rush to release by Eidos and cliff hanger ending of Soul Reaver left the series to take a dark turn down the messed up convoluted plot it is now known for. Blood Omen's story has little if nothing to do with this and shouldn't be held up as a culprit to it at all.
Beta tapes are still used today, I worked at a famous music television channel and they had a library full of these. Every week I would get new Betas sent to my desk for new music videos. It's probably weird to some but tapes never died.
Yea I know a few self-shooting camera directors who still shoot DigiBeta for TV and do the ol' batch capture shuffle on Avid, it's still great quality for HD broadcast and fantastic for archival but sadly most news crews I've seen use P2 cameras now.
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