The Undercity and The Temple - Soul Reaver - Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds

The Undercity and The Temple

article by Ben Lincoln

Having obtained the Shift-at-Will ability in The Aftermath of The Chronoplast, Raziel would have been equipped to enter the previously inaccessible complex underneath the Citadel. This area and the Temple it led to were the home of The Priestess and her cult of vampire-worshipping humans.

A nearly-complete version of this area is present in at least three prototype versions of the game from January and February 1999. The Temple is located at the north end of the Citadel - an octagonal tower whose exterior is still present in the final game. To access the Undercity, Raziel would have proceeded through a watery passageway, into a reservoir, and from there through a pipe. The first portion of this sequence was replaced by a similar passage that leads to the health powerup in the Citadel in the released version of Soul Reaver.

The Undercity itself featured a large central room connected to three puzzle rooms. Each puzzle room required that Raziel obtain a pushblock, hold a lever down to open a floodgate, and use the pushblock to jam the floodgate mechanism open before leaving. Completing each puzzle would raise the water level in the central room enough to reach the next area. The puzzle logic is incomplete even in the 1999-02-16 prototype, so the exact actions required are currently unknown.

The first room (near the deleted warp gate for this area) appears to have been a simple "hold the lever and use the block" affair, in order to teach the player the goal of the rooms.

The second room clearly requires that the player build a stack of pushblocks from which they can phase through the elevated gate in the middle of the room. That room contains a final pushblock which could then have been used to jam open the floodgate. As discussed in [[SR1/Impossible Geometry]], this second room significantly overlaps with the tunnel which leads to the third room, making the layout of the area somewhat disorienting.

The third room is quite tall, and features some of the most dramatic plane-shifting effects in the game, with the central tower twisting close to 180 degrees. In some prototypes, Raziel is repeatedly electrocuted within this room, by a lightning bolt similar to the one Kain uses. A shaking effect is also present in some versions. The steps necessary to reach the top are unclear, especially given the torch at the bottom of the tower. However, once at the top, it would have been possible to knock a pushblock down to the lower level for use with the floodgate mechanism.

Having raised the water level a third time, the player would then have been able to reach the entrance to the Priestess' temple, which is located directly above the central chamber. This entire sequence of events is depicted in the video available at the bottom of this page.

The Priestess herself is present in the 1999-02-16 build, but the logic for her battle with Raziel does not seem to be implemented, and the layout of the Temple only suggests at what would have occurred. Perhaps the doorways arranged around the center of the room would have opened in turn to release possessed vampires, with Raziel somehow being unable to reach the Priestess on the upper levels until defeating them.

The temple includes two unused doorways near its top. One of these seems to have been intended to lead out to the turret attached to the side of the Temple. This may have been a fast exit for the player after defeating the Priestess.

The 1999-01-23 and 1999-02-04 prototype versions of Soul Reaver have water pipes leading down from each of the puzzle rooms, although they are inaccessible without hacking the game. The other end of these tunnels are not connected, but they may have been planned for use leading to bonus items later in the game, or for more complex versions of the main puzzles in the Undercity.

Temple and Chapel Textures

These textures, graciously provided by series artist Daniel Cabuco, illustrate some of the material that was deleted along with the Temple area (the Chapel is still present, but without as much detail). Note the defaced images of the Sarafan, and the mural depicting the impaled vampires from the introductory FMV of the original Blood Omen. In addition, the last two (which Daniel referred to as "only the Shadow knows...") are an early idea he had to increase the creepiness of the Spectral Realm. That effect was removed before release because the limited texture memory of the original Playstation didn't have enough room.

Two rooms which helped connect the Citadel to the Undercity are also present (but unused) in the data file for the final version of the game - city 10 and city 11. One is a short corridor which connects to the other - a sizeable reservoir of water. The reservoir exhibits some of the visual problems that were apparently one of the main reasons the Undercity was cut from the game. In the PC and PlayStation versions of Soul Reaver, its roof flickers in and out of visibility. Supposedly much of the area had problems with its geometry, and would have required an impractical effort to correct it.

A handful of screenshots of the Undercity were published by a gaming magazine which mistakenly identified them as a "stone tower".

The visual style for the Undercity was based on Giovanni Piranesi's "Carceri" ("Prisons") series of prints, which were produced in the mid-18th century. Although the area was deleted from Soul Reaver, the same concept would later be reborn in the form of the Treasure Vault level of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

Rendered images