Legacy of Kain is a series comprising five dark fantasy action-adventure video games released between 1996 and 2003, primarily developed by Crystal Dynamics and formerly published by Eidos Interactive. The first title, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, was created by Silicon Knights in association with Crystal Dynamics, but after a legal battle, Crystal Dynamics retained the rights to the game's intellectual property and continued its story with four sequels. To date, five games all initially developed for video game consoles and later ported to Microsoft Windows. Focusing on the eponymous character of Kain, a vampire antihero.
The series takes place in the fictional land of Nosgoth—a gothic fantasy setting—and revolves around Kain's quest to defy his fate and restore balance to the world. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver introduced another antihero protagonist, Raziel. Although technically a pentalogy, the series is effectively made up of two duologies telling the separate stories of Kain (Blood Omen) and Raziel (Soul Reaver), with both culminating in Legacy of Kain: Defiance. Chiefly marketed under the genre of dark fantasy or Gothic fiction, their developers have described the games' collective core tenets as their mature, original storyline, complex characters, strong writing and voice acting, and fresh approach to vampire mythology. Themes of destiny, free will, tragedy, morality, propaganda, manipulation, redemption and the hero's journey recur in the storyline, which was inspired by ancient literature, horror fiction, Shakespeare's plays and gnosticism. Each entry incorporates elements of action and puzzle-solving in its gameplay. The Legacy of Kain games has enjoyed critical success, particularly receiving praise for high-quality voice acting, narrative, and visuals, and, as a whole, had sold over 3.5 million copies by 2007. The Legacy of Kain intellectual property was owned by Square Enix Europe after 2009 and mentioned under Square Enix Collective. In 2022, Square Enix sold the rights of the series to the Embracer Group, who have expressed interest in developing sequels, remakes and remasters of Legacy of Kain.
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