[ Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds ]

Impossible Geometry

article by Ben Lincoln

 

One of Soul Reaver's groundbreaking features was its use of streaming terrain information to provide a seamless gaming experience with no "loading" screens. In the late 1990s, this generally meant breaking the game world down into individual rooms and tunnels, in order for enough pieces to fit simultaneously into the tiny amount of RAM in a PlayStation console.

Even the development workstations used by the Soul Reaver's designers couldn't display the entire game world at once, and yet those designers were meticulous enough it's possible to assemble all of them into a whole that's mostly cohesive using Soul Reaver to Blender Conversion Toolchain.

There are a few notable exceptions, and these are generally indicated by connecting arrows on the annotated versions of the maps in World Map Evolution. The most significant problems generally occur where an area is connected to three or more others.

Additionally, the final version of the game features one area with impossible geometry which may have been intentionally included in order to disorient the player, and/or serve as an obscure Easter egg. The passageways in the Chronoplast where Raziel sees visions of the past and future are arranged in the shape of a Mobius loop (infinity symbol) when viewed from above.

 
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