We seem to have good reason to believe that Soul Reaver 1 & 2 are getting remasters now.
As shared by Wario64 on Twitter, there was a toy exhibit in the San Diego Comic-Con that had the words Soul Reavers 1 & 2 Remastered written in for one of the figures. And yes, these were figures of Kain, the tragic vampire lord, and Raziel, his former subordinate, also cursed by his own fate and existence.
We won’t get into the story of these characters here, but as non-fans can imagine, the Soul Reaver/Legacy of Kain franchise has fascinated fans for its ornate storyline, and complicated characters. Kain’s and Raziel’s creators freely admitted their inspiration from Greek tragedy, particularly Oedipus, and this really reflects on the games themselves.
Today this franchise is in the hands of Crystal Dynamics, and as a result, they are owned by Embracer Group. Embracer did license these Kain and Raziel toys on display at the convention. But it looks like the revelation of these games wasn’t exactly in the cards.
If we were to warrant a guess, it is possible that Embracer and Crystal Dynamics had plans to announce these releases before San Diego Comic-Con. And, for whatever reason, they delayed the announcement for these titles. It’s possible that it should have been shown in the one of many video game presentations last June, but they just failed to land on a show that had time for them.
Indeed, so far it looks like neither Crystal Dynamics nor Embracer want to admit that these could be real remasters that are on the way. It may simply be the case that they can’t talk about it until the proper start of the marketing period.
But they would be hard pressed to convince the public that this name was just for toys or some merchandise spinoff. It makes zero sense to be selling Soul Reaver toys, and attaching the word Remastered to those toys.
We are sure there are a lot of gamers still angry at Embracer for their part in the wave of video game industry layoffs over the past two years. But we’re also sure a lot of fans will still be excited to learn that these classic games are getting remasters on the way. We think Embracer may as well just admit that the games are on the way, and just tell the public to wait for when they’re ready to share more information.
Embracer should be mindful that they don’t want to make any new PR nightmares for themselves anymore. We don’t really need to see a vertical slice if that’s not ready yet. They need only say “yes, we’re working on it,” and that will be a good first step towards winning gamers back.
