Possession - Soul Reaver - Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds

Possession

article by Ben Lincoln, images by Divine Shadow and Andrew Fradley

Defeating The Priestess and consuming her soul was intended to give Raziel the ability to possess other creatures in the game, much like Blood Omen's Control Mind spell. Possession is described in detail in issue 19 of PSM (March 1999):

After Raziel finds his way into the dark undercity complex of the vampire worshippers and defeats their high priestess, he gets the ability to project his soul energy out (as a projectile), and possess another creature. Once in the host creature's body, Raziel can perform rudimentary operations - he can move around the area, attack other creatures, and do other simple actions, like pushing blocks/objects or hitting switches. While occupying the host creature's body, Raziel's physical body goes into a protected stasis state (with an energy shield around it). Raziel can occupy the host's body indefinately, but can only stray so far from his own body. If he wanders to far away, his soul energy will start to pull out of the creature's body. If the player continues to wander away, the tenuous link is broken, and Raziel's soul returns to his body. The creature then recovers and comes back to its senses. The player can also return to Raziel's body at any time.

The control system is described in an old ability list (submitted by forum member Rabban) which seems to be a more complete version of the text published in PSM:

About 3/4 of the way through, Raziel gets the ability to project his soul energy out (as a projectile), and possess another creature. The possess "projectile" can only be manually aimed - by holding the O-button while in look-around mode, targeting a creature, and releasing the button. (The O-button only does the soul-suck when in non-look-around mode)... The player can also return to Raziel's body any time, by hitting the O button.

Prototype versions of Soul Reaver from early 1999 contain partially-functional versions of the Possession ability. The animation for targeting and triggering it can be accessed using a technique similar to the Absolute PlayStation description, as discovered by Raina Audron and Kevin Chatmajo: press and hold Circle to begin the "soul suck" action, then press L1 and R1 while continuing to hold Circle. This will switch to a first-person projectile targeting mode which is separate from the Force Projectile action.^[1] Unfortunately, the projectile's impact does not actually trigger Possession in any known version of the game. However, it is possible to access basic Possession features by manually editing the game state to match the result of unused logic in the same versions of the game. Sample ePSXe save states are provided at the end of this article. In this state, the player can rotate a possessed vampire in place, and cause them to move forward in whichever direction they are facing. It is not possible to cause the vampire to attack, or to activate puzzle elements. It is also not possible to control bosses or humans in this way, although the camera can be attached to them instead of Raziel.

At least one puzzle in early versions of Soul Reaver clearly required Possession to complete: raising the water level in the reservoir over Turel's chamber could only be accomplished by possessing the vampire on the far ledge and using them to trigger the lever which unlocks the rest of the mechanism.

The Soul Reaver game engine as released still contains at least parts of the Possession ability. Ex-Soul Reaver 2-hacker Warpsavant reported that in the Playstation version of the game, he had encountered a glitch and Raziel was replaced by a Rahabim vampire which was fully controllable and capable of swimming.

Former Kain series hacker Divine Shadow saw a similar result in Soul Reaver for the PC while experimenting with the Z-position control from the Hack Soul Reaver for the PC article; Raziel was replaced by a Zephonim vampire which had been in the room where the experiment was taking place. He was not able to control the vampire (which he named "Norman"), but he did obtain a number of screenshots of it acting out Raziel's "idle" animation. It is possible that the ability to control other creatures was never fully implemented in the PC release, as the feature became unnecessary when the final chapters of the game were removed.

Finally, Andrew Fradley's Soul Reaver Trainer - among other things - ties the Possession ability into The Debug Menu. It is still not yet possible to control the monsters, but he was able to trigger an effect where another Dumahim began attacking the one he'd possessed.

Andrew Fradley's possessed Dumahim

Dumahim vs Dumahim

Divine Shadow's possessed Zephonim vampire

Download
File	Size	Version	Release Date	Author
Soul Reaver (1999-02-16 prototype) ePSXe Possession Save States Set 1	6 MiB	1.0	2020-05-12	Ben Lincoln

Footnotes

This can be confirmed by disabling the Force Projectile ability in the debug menu - the Possession action can still be triggered, even though the corresponding Force Projectile targeting no longer occurs when using Triangle instead of Circle. Similarly, if Force Projectile is enabled, but Possession is not, it is no longer possible to switch to a targeting mode from "soul suck" mode.