The Eldergod 5a Room - Defiance - Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds

The Eldergod 5a Room

This room was originally designed as part of Raziel's first chapter. It would have been located between Eldergod 3a (the room where Raziel fights Sluagh for the first time) and Eldergod 4a (the room where Raziel races to the top as deadly mist rises from below). It was intended to continue the theme of familiarizing the player with Raziel's special abilities by showcasing his wall-climbing, and would have also shown gamers familiar with the two Soul Reaver games that Raziel was now capable of climbing walls in the Spectral Realm.

Apparently the Defiance team felt that it wasn't fun to play through, and also redundant because Raziel uses his wall-climbing skills in the next room. It was removed from the game (with Eldergod 3a being grafted directly on to 4a), but left behind in the data file for the PC version (it is not in the PS2 version at all). Because it was cut from the game relatively early in the development process it is functionally complete, but it has only basic geometry and temporary textures. This gives it an appearance more like a half-finished movie set than something that fits in with the other rooms of the Underworld level. The climbable patches had also not been set up to work in the Spectral Realm, so it is necessary to switch to Material to climb them.

Unlike the other Eldergod rooms, 5a has not "deadly mist", but "abyssal depths" - at least that's what's written on its room map. It seems likely that the mist was a more visually interesting replacement for the depths, and had Eldergod 5a been finished, it would have the mist as well. What this translates into in the room as it is are holes in the floor with absolutely nothing below - although this does not make them any less lethal to Raziel, should he fall.

In contrast with The Artifact 1a Room, Eldergod 5a cannot be accessed with a hacked savegame alone. The 5a room includes link references to the 3a and 4a rooms, but the corresponding references are missing from the 3a and 4a rooms, so the game will crash if such a save is loaded. As a workaround, I have created a basic patch for Defiance's bigfile which removes the link references to the other rooms altogether, making it possible to explore Eldergod 5a as a standalone room (although the game will still crash if you try to leave it via either exit).

In the birds-eye screenshots below, the two adjacent rooms can be seen. These images were created with a prerelease version of the bigfile patch. That version did not allow for the room to actually be explored, as the game took the level of the "deadly mist" from Eldergod 4a and applied it to 5a as well. Since 5a is below the level of most of 4a, Raziel would be killed by invisible mist everywhere except the entrance and exit platforms. The invincibility flag does not protect Raziel from the mist, so those screenshots were created by using Andrew Fradley's Defiance PC Trainer to switch the camera mode to one where it can be flown around independently of the player character.

In the future, when the bigfile format is more thoroughly understood, it may be possible to correctly re-integrate 5a into the Underworld level.

The patch at the end of this article only works on the English retail PC version of Defiance. It will not work on the versions of the game in other languages, and it will also not work with the downloadable version of the game.

Instructions:

Download Andrew Fradley's Defiance PC Trainer so that you can access the debug menu.
Back up your Defiance bigfile. It is probably in C:\Program Files\Legacy of Kain - Defiance and is called bigfile.dat. This patch should not adversely affect the game, but always make backups when you're using hacks like this.
Run the patch executable from the archive at the end of this article. If you skipped step 1, leave the box checked that makes a backup of bigfile.dat, otherwise uncheck it, then tell the patcher to patch the bigfile.
Go to your My Documents (2k, XP) or Documents (Vista) folder, open the Legacy of Kain - Defiance folder, and paste in the save007.dat file from this archive. If you don't already have 6 previous savegames, you will need to rename it to be next in sequence.
Start up the Trainer, then start up Defiance.
Load the savegame (it will show as Chapter 12).
Access the debug menu using F1.
Select the Raziel menu using the D-pad or direction keys. Select the PlaneShift option to switch to Material. As noted above, the walls were not made climbable in Spectral before the room was deleted.
Close the debug menu using F2.

In Spectral wide angle

In Material wide angle

Bird's eye view 1

Bird's eye view 2 (in the upper left is Eldergod 4a)

Bird's eye view 3 (Eldergod 3a is to the left, Eldergod 4a to the right)

Bird's eye view 4 (Eldergod 3a is at the top)

Looking into the room from the entrance

Looking down on the second half of the room

One of the climbable patches

The exit to Eldergod 4a

Raziel in Spectral at the entrance

Raziel near a climbable patch

Raziel climbing

Raziel on the platform to the left

Raziel at the last jump across the abyss

Raziel climbing

Raziel climbing after jumping across from the other patch

Raziel at the exit to Eldergod 4a

Download
File	Size	Version	Release Date	Author
Eldergod 5a Patch and Savegame	49 KiB	1.0	2006-07-22	Ben Lincoln
For the English retail PC version of Defiance only.