Raina Audron

Exclusive Interview for Nosgoth.fr !!!!

With the recent release of Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered on March 3rd, I had the chance to sit down with Raina Audron, a well-known figure in the LoK community, who kindly agreed to answer a few of my questions.

This marks an exclusive first for “Le Royaume de Nosgoth”, and we sincerely thank her for taking the time to share her insights!

Hi Raina,

First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions for Nosgoth.fr.

The French-speaking community has been closely following your work, and with the upcoming release of Defiance Remastered, this felt like the perfect moment to have this conversation.

1°/ To begin, could you briefly introduce yourself? Could you tell us about your background and your initial connection to Legacy of Kain?

Hey all, Raina here. You may know me already from being active in the community over the years. I first joined the Nosgothic Realm forums as theAncientVampire, then was active on Eidos/SE forums later under my usual nickname. I was fascinated by videogames ever since I was young and gamed on early Atari consoles, then PC (486DX was my setup). When I got my PlayStation in 1998, it came with Tomb Raider 3 and that made me fell in love with the action-adventure genre. Spyro, Crash, Solid Snake and Lara, these characters served as my first proper introduction to the world of 3D games. As we had no internet at the time, game magazines were the only source of news alongside TV (loved watching Cybernet), so when I read about Soul Reaver in the Official PlayStation magazine, the Czech version, and played the demo alongside the most epic trailer ever which was the Sanctus Christus video, I was hooked! I replayed that no.43 demo disc so many times and I still have it. The gothic atmosphere and the fun mechanics such as gliding and fighting alongside Raziel´s unique looks were certainly what kept me interested in getting the full game. I guess you can say it was love at a first sight in a game form!

2°/ You originally came from the Legacy of Kain fan community and played an active role in keeping it alive for many years. How does one go from passionate fan to directing an official remaster? At what point did that transition start to feel real to you?

I believe if you want things done, you must do them yourself. This was my motto throughout the years. My biggest inspiration to do fan projects and modding came from the websites such as the Lost Worlds, Nosgothic Realm and Dark Chronicle. These three sites are the cornerstone of the current LOK fandom – they are true LOK pioneers and we wouldn't be here without their dedication.

After Defiance came out in 2003, there was still no mention of any new LOK game for several years. In 2007, I felt there was a space to document my own findings and decided to make my own video channel. It started slowly, with just a few low-res videos, such as me demonstrating the flying move you can pull off to explore areas high above normal reach. I also made the Crash Bandicoot death compilation. Believe it or not, it was one of the most watched videos on my channel for a long while there!

Later, I expanded my writing skills and wrote articles for my TAD blogspot page. During this time, I helped with several fan games such as LOK: Revival (2D game), recorded the soundtracks from the games directly which was not available anywhere else, published Soul Reaver beta comparisons and more recently, wrote the Soul Reaver art book. In 2020, I decided to work on the texture replacement projects such as Tomb Raider 2 HD and my very first Soul Reaver HD fan remaster mod. This was before the current remasters were even announced, so I gained a lot of experience by working with textures and finding the source images for the project. It was this skillset and a deep knowledge of the source material which has proven to be useful, and thus I was hired to work on first the Tomb Raider remasters and Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered. It was a life changing experience for which I had to leave my day job so I can become a full-time developer instead, something which my 12y old self would have never believed back in 1999.

3°/ The Soul Reaver remasters were very well by both critics and players. What key lessons did you and your team take away from that reception? Did it influence your approach to Defiance Remastered?

I was pleased to see the remasters were received well! It is an old game still at heart and we did not change its core mechanics, the lighting or the levels themselves at all. However, I wish we had more time to refine and some extra features which we had in plan but had no time to implement. There were also some lingering issues caused by high framerate and unfortunate last-minute bugs - that black box in the Air Forge still haunts me…

These games use a proprietary, custom built in-house Gex engine so you cannot just Google the solutions to these issues you can encounter during development. A lot of it is trial and error. In Defiance Remastered, we went above and beyond to improve some of its glaring issues – such as repetitive battles (the Reaver charge no longer instantly depletes which allows its use for longer periods of time), over usage of the Dark Forge theme (now it only plays in 2 main locations), the lack of music in cutscenes (all cutscenes now have music and there are extra music tracks added during gameplay), etc. We also replaced the old static menu with a dynamic new ring one and it serves as a hub of accessing the encyclopaedia, maps, skin selector and much more!

4°/ When working on a remaster of such a beloved and narratively rich title as Soul Reaver or Defiance, what is the core philosophy guiding the project? Is the priority strict fidelity, or is there room for creative reinterpretation?

Our philosophy is to restore things where sensible, not to reinvent. While we may have taken some liberties in improving the visual style such as using the detailed FMV models for Kain and Raziel as our goalpost, the game remains faithful to the original graphics. We made improvements where it made sense such as Turel has new facial details and mandibles resembling his original Soul Reaver design and Ariel is clothing akin to her Blood Omen/Soul Reaver1/2 self to preserve visual continuity and coherence between the games. Enemies have more detailed armour and parts which were just drawn on or flat before now protrude which adds depth to their designs.

5°/ Defiance Remastered appears to go beyond a simple visual upgrade. How did you approach technical and visual enhancements while preserving the original identity and tone of the game?

While with SR1&2 we had to be a lot more conservative due to the limitations of our tools at the time, with Defiance Remastered we could introduce a lot higher fidelity improvements and upgrades to the core game. We overhauled the lighting in the levels and relied on the original concept art as guidance to avoid the levels looking too drab – the Pillars area, for example, certainly suffers from this. The concept art for it was a lot more colourful, with hazy purples and pinks in the air, bestowing the area a more mystical feel and look. The final game has this colour palette assigned to the Cemetery instead, so we palette swapped them around to better match the original, intended look. However, if you do not like these changes, you can turn them off separately from the HD graphics in the menu. Another thing which was highlighted frequently was the strong multiplying effect seen in the spectral realm. We added an option to tone this effect down or even completely turn it off if preferred.

6°/ The camera adjustments in Defiance are particularly noticeable. How did those changes impact your reflection on gameplay flow and player experience?

I was never a fan of the static camera changes in Defiance; it provided a more cinematic feel to the game at the cost of platforming accuracy. The jumps in certain sections were a lot harder to judge and sometimes the camera was just not cooperating at all. Adding an option to select a new, behind the character mode was the very first thing we decided to add. However, this did not come without its own set of issues we had to resolve.

The new camera exposed the less pretty side of what happens when you look where you were not supposed to. The old levels were never meant to be viewed from such angles and while we could have left them untouched for the sake of authenticity, the new camera mode exposed the stretching and missing geometry everywhere leading to an unpolished look. Patching the level seams up and fixing up the broken vistas were a high priority for us, so I am pleased with the result.

7°/ One of the most fascinating aspects of the remasters has been the restoration of previously cut content, including the so-called “Lost Levels.” How were you able to recover those materials? Did it feel like a form of digital archaeology?

Certainly! I am grateful to Crystal Dynamics which had given me access to wade through a vast amount of recently digitized content. We are talking old tech such as floppy disks, VHS tapes, zip discs, etc. Categorizing it all and backing the contents was a huge undertaking. Working on the remasters for me has been rewarding not just in terms of creating new art and honouring the series´ legacy, but also in the terms of preserving much of the previously unknown artwork, early scripts, unreleased music and other material which no one has seen for the last 20 years.

8°/ Some restored elements in Defiance, such as Ground Zero or the Clan Sanctuary, were largely unknown to the public. What did it mean to you personally to bring those forgotten fragments back to life?

It was certainly a huge surprise to see just how much cut content ended up on the cutting room floor. Previously, we only had a handful of screenshots available from these areas, so to be able to explore them for the first time, is an indescribable feeling. The most intriguing ones are the collapsed Pillars, Sanctuary, early Stronghold and the Water Forge. In contrast with SR1&2, they are no longer just empty hallways – each location has a brief introduction and some even have inhabitants to encounter!

9°/ The cancelled sequel, often referred to as The Dark Prophecy, remains a subject of great fascination within the community. From a creative perspective, how do you approach that unfinished chapter when revisiting the series through remasters?

We looked at Dark Prophecy from primarily a preservation angle. We managed to find an old milestone build from the CD archive along with documentation. While we could not port over its cutscenes, we were successful in bringing over the new enemy type, the Necromancer, who replaced the cenobite class. We had to add a couple of blocks to aid the player in reaching those high ledges as Kain was originally sporting a double jump in this game ala Devil May Cry, however, it sadly proved to be incompatible with our base game. Overall, it is an extremely fascinating snapshot into the game development and I am overjoyed that LOK fans can experience it with us.

10°/ Without speaking about specific plans or announcements, on a purely creative level — what would you personally love to see happen with the Legacy of Kain franchise in the future?

Unfortunately, I cannot talk about the future projects, but I would of course love to see more LOK games made if possible!

11°/ Finally, what’s next for you? And what place does Legacy of Kain hold in your professional journey today?

I am excited to start working on a new project for sure! However, I am not sure what shape or form will that become yet. LOK as such had a huge impact on my life and nurtured my interest in learning a foreign language, it made me develop and improve audio-visual art skills, it inspired me to write blogs and edit videos, just to name a few. The passion for making new things and contributing to our fandom is always burning within and for me, it is important to keep that flame going, no matter what.

Thank you again for your time and generosity.

On a more personal note, I discovered the series with Blood Omen back in 1996.

Thirty years later, the passion remains intact — and that is largely thanks to the work you and your team are doing today.

At Nosgoth.fr, we have always aimed to highlight the creators behind this remarkable saga, and we are honored to share your perspective with our community.

Thank you again.

Analand Wulfstan

For Nosgoth.fr

The first French-speaking website dedicated to Legacy of Kain (since 1999)

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