This review contains spoilers
I have somewhat of an admiration of what I’d define as ‘good edge’. By this, I mean stories and characters which take on a darker disposition, typically fueled by vengeance against perceived transgression against a specific character or system which they are a part of. Some classic edgy fellows include Shadow the Hedgehog, Jak, Magus, Bass, Riku, etc. I think these are all great examples of how to create an edgy character. All the characters mentioned are, as well, relatively contentious. For every person you find who loves Shadow the Hedgehog, you’re bound to find a vocal detractor.
The late 1990s to mid-2000s was an incredibly transgressive era for video games. The rise of 3D graphics gave way to the chance for developers to create more complex stories and more intense methods of inflicting violence upon pixels. Despite the formation of the ESRB in the wake of successes like Doom and Mortal Kombat, legislative entities still kept a close eye on the medium, with some opportunistic activists and politicians using the medium to devise agendas which hurt the creative integrity of the artform. And while video games are thriving more than they ever have today, with the violent imagery in the medium rarely being noted as troubling outside of some fringe theories, usually created as a means to protect guns of their right to shoot people, there was an era of fear that legitimate works of art would be suppressed by the systems of powers which governed them.
This is all, of course, purely my interpretation of the events as I experienced them when I was a teenager who really enjoyed playing video games. There’s a definite chance I said some things in there which resonated with most of the people on this gaming-centric website. The likelihood of me sharing this story with, say, my mother, would probably result in her feeling like I was being silly. That I shouldn’t be exposed to the scenes of violence present in many games from that era because I was too young and impressionable, and that political meddling to prevent this was fine. At the risk of shitting on my mother who loves me dearly in spite of the fact I still play an absurd amount of video games whilst pushing 30, she, and the many parents who thought like her, were inadvertently causing somewhat of a counterculture to develop. One where glorification of sex and violence would become synonymous with the video game medium.
‘Blood Omen: The Legacy of Kain’ has little to nothing to do with any of this. It released in 1996 during the aftermath of the ESRB’s inception, yet before ‘Grand Theft Auto III’ let us kill innocent people and sleep with prostitutes. The PlayStation and it’s home console contemporaries brought us one of the stranger, more experimental points in the medium, as developers took some time to truly understand how to make 3D design work. Some developers didn’t even try this, however, leading to the creation of more cinematic experiences. While teams weren’t really sure how to design fun characters into 3D environments, they could for sure design pre-rendered cinematics without player agency to build narratives which hadn’t been possible in previous generations. ‘Blood Omen’ is this type of game, utilizing some, at the time, impressive visual effects to craft one of the more unique stories within the medium.
Without butchering it too much, you play as Kain, a nobleman living within the land of Nosgoth, who is murdered by a gang of brigands while on a journey of undisclosed purpose. While in purgatory, Kain is approached by Mortanius, a necromancer who offers Kain the chance of revenge, which Kain gladly accepts. Kain is then resurrected as a vampire, with his only goal being to murder the same men who took his life. You immediately proceed to achieve this goal within the opening minutes, as he gleefully narrates the ecstasy he achieves from brutalizing this band of lowly criminals. However, Mortanius then convinces Kain he did not achieve said goal, and that he would only be able to truly reap his vengeance if he toppled the systems which allowed the criminals to exist in the first place. Kain is immediately convinced, and adapts his goals to this new quest.
I don’t want to delve too deeply into the rest of the story, as it’s pretty complex, and I’d likely do a poor job of hitting on all the important details while spoiling everything. Needless to say, this is odd, isn’t it? The human, Kain, is a nobleman, birthed into wealth and without any known empathy for those less fortunate than he is. From future narrations, we can tell that Kain hates peasantry. He deems them lowly people who lack intelligence and basic hygiene. These are views he continues to hold following his loss of humanity, the only difference being he now sees himself as an abomination as well. Kain, for his entire life, has been contributing to systemic oppression of the unfortunate. He chooses to judge people based on their socioeconomic status and makes no effort to assist them in their suffering. It’s abundantly clear that Kain simply doesn’t even understand his role in contributing to the oppression of these people. It’s why he viewed his killing as a reprehensible act of cold-blooded murder, when it was likely done because his murderers needed his money to feed themselves. Why, then, is Kain the one who is tasked with dismantling such a system? His blind hatred toward those who killed him is merely being leveled at anyone who could have possibly contributed to his death. It is a deeply misguided and emotionally immature way of bringing about legitimate structural change.
Kain is what I would consider to be perfect edge. His narration is filled with a blatant disregard for human life, as he speaks of using his weapons and spells to spill the blood of anyone in his way in some of the most gruesome fashions possible. Just take this excerpt of one of his spells, for example:
"Of all the methods I employ, this is perhaps the cruelest, causing my victim's body to shrink on itself, crushing bones and rupturing organs 'til the pressure inside bursts the sac of fleshy skin, spraying its contents for all to see."
It’s one thing to say this, acknowledging the cruelty and gruesomeness of the act, but it’s another thing entirely to commit these acts. Not even as a necessary means to reach your goals, but a deliberate act you consciously decide to commit. The game can be beaten without this spell. Quite easily, in fact.
Kain’s recklessness with human life is made apparent through many of the gameplay mechanics. One of the more potentially controversial pieces of design is that Kain is always slowly losing his health. While I didn’t personally have an issue with this, as it’s slow enough to not actually be all too noticeable, I can see where it could create undesired stress to a player. Regardless, Kain refills his health by drinking the blood of those around him. This can sometimes be enemy knights or brigands who will attack you, but more often than not, you will be consuming the blood of innocents, as they are far more easy to extract from. The people around Kain are commodities to discard once they fulfill his specific needs. There’s no guilt or shame in using the innocents. They’re as much a resource as hearts in Zelda or mushrooms in Mario. There’s not even a punishment to these killings. There’s no missable ending or quests linked to your actions. There’s no morality system at play to tinker with based on playstyle. You drink blood to fill your health bar so that you can continue killing. Interestingly, you later can be punished for consuming blood, but only the blood of monsters or the undead. Their blood is tainted and can result in loss of health or poisoning. That means, especially in later areas, human lives are a rare and crucial commodity which must be devoured. You’re more likely to avoid combat with mindless beasts than you are with a knight who we presume to have thoughts and feelings, simply because the knight has more use to us.
And so, the biggest question I personally have is, “When did Kain become like this?” Is this disdain toward human life the result of Kain’s vampirism? Or was he always like this? I mean, obviously he wasn’t a murderous sorcerer who fed on human blood before he became a vampire. But was this tepid morality the result of his curse or an extension of beliefs he’s held throughout his life. The only thing we really know about Kain, the human, is that he was the type of person who saw it reasonable to sacrifice his humanity in order to seek revenge on those who murdered him, and I think that’s intentional. ‘Blood Omen’ isn’t just about the revenge fantasy and subsequent power fantasy which plays out on its surface. It’s an exploration of how one develops morality. What kind of world must one live in, and what sort of systems must one be exposed to in order to become who they are. Kain exists in a world which disregards the plight of its most vulnerable, where the most powerful entities freely wreak havoc upon the weak. Kain once played a role in ignoring the issue thanks to his relative quality of living, and in doing so, became victim to the exact same system of inequality. And instead of looking inwardly to seek out an answer as to why his life ended the way it did, he jumps at the opportunity to ignore it, and to become the exact type of power which led to his prior demise. The canonical ending sees Kain sitting upon a throne of bones, drinking blood from a chalice as he admires his strength. Kain views himself as having succeeded in his goal of exacting revenge, but in reality, those systems of oppression didn’t go away. They merely shifted from one party to the other.
‘Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain’ is ‘good edge’. 4/6
The late 1990s to mid-2000s was an incredibly transgressive era for video games. The rise of 3D graphics gave way to the chance for developers to create more complex stories and more intense methods of inflicting violence upon pixels. Despite the formation of the ESRB in the wake of successes like Doom and Mortal Kombat, legislative entities still kept a close eye on the medium, with some opportunistic activists and politicians using the medium to devise agendas which hurt the creative integrity of the artform. And while video games are thriving more than they ever have today, with the violent imagery in the medium rarely being noted as troubling outside of some fringe theories, usually created as a means to protect guns of their right to shoot people, there was an era of fear that legitimate works of art would be suppressed by the systems of powers which governed them.
This is all, of course, purely my interpretation of the events as I experienced them when I was a teenager who really enjoyed playing video games. There’s a definite chance I said some things in there which resonated with most of the people on this gaming-centric website. The likelihood of me sharing this story with, say, my mother, would probably result in her feeling like I was being silly. That I shouldn’t be exposed to the scenes of violence present in many games from that era because I was too young and impressionable, and that political meddling to prevent this was fine. At the risk of shitting on my mother who loves me dearly in spite of the fact I still play an absurd amount of video games whilst pushing 30, she, and the many parents who thought like her, were inadvertently causing somewhat of a counterculture to develop. One where glorification of sex and violence would become synonymous with the video game medium.
‘Blood Omen: The Legacy of Kain’ has little to nothing to do with any of this. It released in 1996 during the aftermath of the ESRB’s inception, yet before ‘Grand Theft Auto III’ let us kill innocent people and sleep with prostitutes. The PlayStation and it’s home console contemporaries brought us one of the stranger, more experimental points in the medium, as developers took some time to truly understand how to make 3D design work. Some developers didn’t even try this, however, leading to the creation of more cinematic experiences. While teams weren’t really sure how to design fun characters into 3D environments, they could for sure design pre-rendered cinematics without player agency to build narratives which hadn’t been possible in previous generations. ‘Blood Omen’ is this type of game, utilizing some, at the time, impressive visual effects to craft one of the more unique stories within the medium.
Without butchering it too much, you play as Kain, a nobleman living within the land of Nosgoth, who is murdered by a gang of brigands while on a journey of undisclosed purpose. While in purgatory, Kain is approached by Mortanius, a necromancer who offers Kain the chance of revenge, which Kain gladly accepts. Kain is then resurrected as a vampire, with his only goal being to murder the same men who took his life. You immediately proceed to achieve this goal within the opening minutes, as he gleefully narrates the ecstasy he achieves from brutalizing this band of lowly criminals. However, Mortanius then convinces Kain he did not achieve said goal, and that he would only be able to truly reap his vengeance if he toppled the systems which allowed the criminals to exist in the first place. Kain is immediately convinced, and adapts his goals to this new quest.
I don’t want to delve too deeply into the rest of the story, as it’s pretty complex, and I’d likely do a poor job of hitting on all the important details while spoiling everything. Needless to say, this is odd, isn’t it? The human, Kain, is a nobleman, birthed into wealth and without any known empathy for those less fortunate than he is. From future narrations, we can tell that Kain hates peasantry. He deems them lowly people who lack intelligence and basic hygiene. These are views he continues to hold following his loss of humanity, the only difference being he now sees himself as an abomination as well. Kain, for his entire life, has been contributing to systemic oppression of the unfortunate. He chooses to judge people based on their socioeconomic status and makes no effort to assist them in their suffering. It’s abundantly clear that Kain simply doesn’t even understand his role in contributing to the oppression of these people. It’s why he viewed his killing as a reprehensible act of cold-blooded murder, when it was likely done because his murderers needed his money to feed themselves. Why, then, is Kain the one who is tasked with dismantling such a system? His blind hatred toward those who killed him is merely being leveled at anyone who could have possibly contributed to his death. It is a deeply misguided and emotionally immature way of bringing about legitimate structural change.
Kain is what I would consider to be perfect edge. His narration is filled with a blatant disregard for human life, as he speaks of using his weapons and spells to spill the blood of anyone in his way in some of the most gruesome fashions possible. Just take this excerpt of one of his spells, for example:
"Of all the methods I employ, this is perhaps the cruelest, causing my victim's body to shrink on itself, crushing bones and rupturing organs 'til the pressure inside bursts the sac of fleshy skin, spraying its contents for all to see."
It’s one thing to say this, acknowledging the cruelty and gruesomeness of the act, but it’s another thing entirely to commit these acts. Not even as a necessary means to reach your goals, but a deliberate act you consciously decide to commit. The game can be beaten without this spell. Quite easily, in fact.
Kain’s recklessness with human life is made apparent through many of the gameplay mechanics. One of the more potentially controversial pieces of design is that Kain is always slowly losing his health. While I didn’t personally have an issue with this, as it’s slow enough to not actually be all too noticeable, I can see where it could create undesired stress to a player. Regardless, Kain refills his health by drinking the blood of those around him. This can sometimes be enemy knights or brigands who will attack you, but more often than not, you will be consuming the blood of innocents, as they are far more easy to extract from. The people around Kain are commodities to discard once they fulfill his specific needs. There’s no guilt or shame in using the innocents. They’re as much a resource as hearts in Zelda or mushrooms in Mario. There’s not even a punishment to these killings. There’s no missable ending or quests linked to your actions. There’s no morality system at play to tinker with based on playstyle. You drink blood to fill your health bar so that you can continue killing. Interestingly, you later can be punished for consuming blood, but only the blood of monsters or the undead. Their blood is tainted and can result in loss of health or poisoning. That means, especially in later areas, human lives are a rare and crucial commodity which must be devoured. You’re more likely to avoid combat with mindless beasts than you are with a knight who we presume to have thoughts and feelings, simply because the knight has more use to us.
And so, the biggest question I personally have is, “When did Kain become like this?” Is this disdain toward human life the result of Kain’s vampirism? Or was he always like this? I mean, obviously he wasn’t a murderous sorcerer who fed on human blood before he became a vampire. But was this tepid morality the result of his curse or an extension of beliefs he’s held throughout his life. The only thing we really know about Kain, the human, is that he was the type of person who saw it reasonable to sacrifice his humanity in order to seek revenge on those who murdered him, and I think that’s intentional. ‘Blood Omen’ isn’t just about the revenge fantasy and subsequent power fantasy which plays out on its surface. It’s an exploration of how one develops morality. What kind of world must one live in, and what sort of systems must one be exposed to in order to become who they are. Kain exists in a world which disregards the plight of its most vulnerable, where the most powerful entities freely wreak havoc upon the weak. Kain once played a role in ignoring the issue thanks to his relative quality of living, and in doing so, became victim to the exact same system of inequality. And instead of looking inwardly to seek out an answer as to why his life ended the way it did, he jumps at the opportunity to ignore it, and to become the exact type of power which led to his prior demise. The canonical ending sees Kain sitting upon a throne of bones, drinking blood from a chalice as he admires his strength. Kain views himself as having succeeded in his goal of exacting revenge, but in reality, those systems of oppression didn’t go away. They merely shifted from one party to the other.
‘Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain’ is ‘good edge’. 4/6