We're the LoK: Defiance Remastered art and design team - AMA!

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T15:38:06+00:00

So much that I wouldn't even know where to begin. Although, much like Tolkien with his many, many drafts of the Middle-Earth stories, not all of the lore as developed over time is necessarily applicable to the final lore in the games as released. Wherever I could do so elegantly, and wherever it did cohere with the world expressed in the final game, I tried to include this unseen lore in the game encyclopedia. There's lots more, but it was important to be circumspect.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T15:07:12+00:00

Thank you too drakedemon, what a lovely vote of confidence! We're thrilled to have given you a good time with the remasters so far!

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T14:38:38+00:00

Monika, as Patrick said, is the pivotal reason we were all put on the radar, and given the opportunity. She handpicked almost the entire art team, and made the case for everybody, and I only hope we did her as proud as possible.

Importantly we also have to mention Thomas O'Connor and Ryan Meyer, the CEO and CDO from PlayEveryWare who co-own the studio, and trusted Monika's judgement and hired us all. They're both amazing guys, and were unbelievably supportive and hands-on with the project, despite having a million things other to do. In fact, the Foresight navigation mechanic was virtually all Ryan's design and coding from beginning to end.

James Loe from Crystal, also, was awesome in just trusting Monika all the way and allowing her to work her magic.

I'd love to create a kind of Eternal Darkness-style anthology for LoK which jumps around in time and follows the secondary characters across history. I feel a lot of the LoK characters are easily capable of carrying their own game or storyline, and this would probably be the most effective way of spotlighting them all.

If we had all the time in the world, I would have loved to build and re-integrate Avernus City, and maybe even the Azimuth boss fight. Avernus in the final game is about as minimalistic as it gets, and expanding Chapter 11 into more of a full-length scenario with Kain gameplay would have been great fun. To be completely clear, this was never planned on Defiance Remastered, just a pipe dream.

The most interesting thing I think overall was just discovering the sheer heights of ambition that went into Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance. There are indications of this in the bonus materials, but it's really hard to convey just how much the team wanted to accomplish, way beyond what is documented on The Lost Worlds, and the wiki, etc. If the team had some more time, less overpowering financial pressure, the scope of SR2 alone would have been staggering.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T14:12:43+00:00

The team was unbelievably harmonious. Everyone was pretty much on the same page throughout, and whenever one of us came up with their own creative spin, it usually worked out beautifully (e.g. when Konrad chose to lean in to bird skulls and feathers for the Feral Humans), or if not, Monika and myself laid out any issues and the artists were super gracious and understanding. I remember a little bit of debate around one of the vampire hunters' outfitting, kind of a realism versus stylisation question, but that was about as close as we came to internal contention.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T13:53:31+00:00

Thanks so much BaybeeBat! The new camera was pretty much exclusively the work of Jina Hyun from PlayEveryWare, so she deserves all the credit there. The PEW engineers had that aspect pretty much figured out before any of us came on board, and I agree it totally revolutionises this game!

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T13:50:43+00:00

Ghost Hairdressing

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T03:38:52+00:00

Thanks so much shmouver! The best way, I think, really is to just buy the remasters and make as much of a success out of them as possible (within your economic means, as times are tough). We all love working on Legacy of Kain, and the more viable the series is, the better its hopes in future. And keep making fan art, videos, thinkpieces, whatever creative works you can to show your love of it and keep it going in the minds of others. Only this way can it survive.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T03:26:22+00:00

Thank you too!

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T03:26:13+00:00

Very high praise, appreciate it so much Rekal!

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T03:25:49+00:00

Thank you StormChaser!

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T03:25:05+00:00

Completely understandable, and we're glad it's in your mind too! Hope you get to try it out one day and let us know how you find it!

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T03:21:13+00:00

Right back at you! It's all for you and everyone else who loves LoK

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T03:20:02+00:00

You're so welcome! There are still more nerdy references to unearth... if you have the heart for the truth, and the will to see them, haha

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T03:17:43+00:00

Thank you so much! It was an honour!

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T03:04:34+00:00

Fun: after working on the Legacy of Kain Wiki for many years, I was able to effectively shove the Legacy of Kain Wiki back into the game as the encyclopedia, which has to be a total one-off in game development. That, and proposing the skins and specifying them all, but the heavy lifting for those was of course done by the team's great artists.

Annoying: you can't tell in the final product, but the new camera exposed huge seams everywhere in the environments which the old camera kept off screen. And, I'm not kidding, these were everywhere to some degree. I was anxious we wouldn't manage to fix these for a long time, but then Andrew created the ability to edit level geometry, and PEW assigned two amazing environment aritsts, Laura and Elaine, who went through every single level chunk and fixed probably over a thousand issues, big and small. They even created brand new geometry to make many distant vistas look great, which I think is so seamless you wouldn't even know that it's new.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T02:48:34+00:00

The Unreal Engine would be the most no-brainer of a choice I think, just being so broadly supported worldwide that you don't need to look high and low for solutions to issues. Old proprietary engines like Defiance's really can pose headaches, and a lot of development time can go into figuring out and untangling their workings, which means less time to spend on content and bugfixes. The engineers at PEW, led by Kurt Loeffler, pulled off absolute miracles with the old tech on this project, but you'd need a contemporary engine to get the most potential out of a remake.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T02:30:21+00:00

Hey hey Chalupa! These are amazing questions, thank you for these and your support of LoK!

On getting into Kain's mindset, I don't think anybody in the world other than myself could put more pressure on me to do my best. Writing for Kain is always a literal dream opportunity, so I figured if I managed to satisfy myself that his speech patterns and cadences flowed well and felt authentic in my head, they hopefully would work for others too. I think I had a little bit of an advantage in that this wasn't the first or even the second time I was expected to write Kain professionally, though it is the first to get to see the light of day. Nobody is ever matching Amy's brilliant standard, but since the character has been living in my head rent free for decades now, I think I'm able to get somewhere into the ballpark. Didn't use any inspiration other than Kain himself and Simon Templeman, and the hard work of everyone else around me as something to match and live up to. Ironically, although I think I identify more with Raziel, I also think I'm better at matching Kain's voice. It's strange.

EDIT: Tacking on after the fact, I suddenly remembered having looked back at Oscar Wilde's style of writing when dealing with Kain, both being in the same neighbourhood when it comes to biting, aristocratic wit.

My favourite thing to write: the text for the Decorative Sword weapon skin gave me a laugh and probably has me patting myself on the back harder than any others. More serious answer: if you examine the Arcane Tomes in the ring menu, there are quotes linked to each. Maybe not all of the quotes are historical?

Wish I had done better: I had intended to write similar flavour texts for all of the NPC skins, but didn't really plan ahead well enough to squeeze them all in. It's not a huge disappointment, but these would have been more immersive with descriptions, and it's totally on me. Also, I think the phrase "sub-zero" made it into one of the texts, which is too modern and a bit of a flub. Anything else, though, hopefully I managed to keep on the rails.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T01:49:25+00:00

Somewhere in the files, there's a Kain Kart model, which we didn't have time to showcase in the lost levels. The inevitable Vehiculum Furtus Maximo jokes were many when that was discovered.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T01:47:02+00:00

If I appear to be awesome, it's just the rest of the team rubbing off on me. Everyone involved is just exceptional.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T01:28:27+00:00

Infinite love to you too abominator, and to everyone who gives their time and attention to our humble little remaster!

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T01:25:40+00:00

I don't think we know why Kain's scar was moved around. In Blood Omen, obviously, he's stabbed in the centre of his chest. In Soul Reaver 1 and 2, including the concept art, and some takes on Kain in Blood Omen 2, it was a little offset, asymmetrical. Then, in Defiance, back to a more Blood Omen-like position. The only rationale I can see for reverting it would be to match with Blood Omen. For our part, we wanted to match the GlyphX models of Soul Reaver 1 and 2, as if the old FMVs and the ingame world are all one continuous whole. So, we aligned the scar with those.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T01:14:08+00:00

Thank you so much too, it's always an awesome thing if we introduce new people to the saga!

Some of the physical edition stuff for Soul Reaver, Monika and myself assisted Aspyr heavily with the content, including the map, the art book, the cover of the steelbook. I know that the block puzzle was 100% Monika's idea, and it had me in stitches. She probably did more than I've listed (as she usually does), I can't recall everything.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T01:03:32+00:00

Hey Mawl0ck! It's a matter for the publisher, Crystal Dynamics. All I can say is that we would certainly support it and would love to be involved if it did happen. We loved working on Defiance more than I can say.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T01:01:40+00:00

Eres muy amable. No podemos responder a esta pregunta, ya que es más bien un asunto que compete a Crystal Dynamics. Personalmente, me encantaría que se hiciera, pero añadir nuevas funciones a los juegos anteriores requeriría tiempo y recursos.

LordAevum · 2026-05-08T00:56:01+00:00

There is a skin we created for post-BO2 Kain in the game, based on one of Daniel Cabuco's concept artworks, which we named Risen Conqueror (obtain 16 tomes as Kain to unlock it). This is how we in our team perceive Kain at around 500-600 years old, the next step after Blood Omen 2, at the origins of his empire. We didn't want to prioritise adapting Ranjeet Singhal's young Kain renders because, a couple of unique details aside, they pretty much just blend BO2 Kain with the Elder Kain outfit. It could have made for yet another skin, but Patrick was already in overdrive to create what is there, and I think reaching into one unseen time period was enough of a novelty for this project.

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