Five-Tier Magic Meter - Blood Omen - Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds

Five-Tier Magic Meter

The prerelease build of Blood Omen from 12 July, 1996 features a noticeably different version of the magic energy meter in the player's status panel.

In the final version of the game, the amount of magic energy is represented using a single vertical set of runes. In this earlier version of the game, if the player manages to find all of the energy upgrades, the meter will fill up five times, with each level being represented by a different colour for the runes. The lowest tier is coloured purple, the second blue, the third green, the fourth orange, and the fifth red. This colouring scheme was retained in the final version of the game for the energy-refilling spheres which can be found throughout the game world. Long-time Silicon Knights fans will also recognize the colour scheme from the spells in Eternal Darkness, and the item rarity scale in Too Human - full-spectrum UI elements appear to be a favoured motif of director Denis Dyack.

This early version of the status panel is also missing the sun dial which would be added by September of 1996.

Five-Tier Magic Meter

Five - Tier Magic Meter

A (silent) video is also available at the end of this article which shows the full progression of the meter (at maximum level) when loading a saved game.

Video
File	Size	Author
Five-Tier Magic Meter (1996-07-12 Build)	30 MiB	TLW/SK/CD
A video of the early five-tier magic meter at its maximum level, when a game is loaded. There is no sound in this video.

Video
File	Size	Author
"BMG Xmas" 1996 Crystal Dynamics Trailer	60 MiB	Crystal Dynamics
This video, provided by Hallfiry, was discovered on a BMG promotional CD-ROM from Christmas 1996. It includes footage from Blood Omen featuring the five-tier magic meter and an unknown deleted area. The formal name of the trailer is currently unknown. The original file is named CD.MOV, and the BMG CD-ROM's label is bmgxmas.

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