Blood Omen 2 Designer Diary #1

Entry #1 - 3/8/02

BO 2's Nostgoth is a fairly advanced place, as is evidenced by this complex machinery.

In approaching the look for Blood Omen 2, the first thing we did was look at the original Blood Omen and its sequel Soul Reaver. Our design called for two things that would also influence the look. Most of the game took place in the city of Meridian, and we had this new technology that had been introduced to Nosgoth by the Sarafan Lord--glyph magic, whose markings influence the environment quite significantly. So, while the original Blood Omen had a lot of medieval Germanic-type architecture, Soul Reaver had a much more fantastical look. We chose to start from the original's look and then extrapolated what that style would look like in 200 years under the influence of this new technology. What this meant in effect was that we would start with medieval-type shapes and building materials and then overlay this with newer (although still crude) metal structures. We also wanted to really show that things in Nosgoth had changed, but since it was a vampire game, we still wanted it to be dark and weatherworn. For inspiration, we looked at movies like Bram Stoker's Dracula (Dracula's' castle, specifically), the Batman movies, and City of Lost Children. In designing the game, we imagined Kain moving through a dark city, killing humans and drinking their blood. Because we were developing an engine that would use light maps, we really wanted to push this technology with lots of shapes that would make cool shadows that the player could lurk in--sort of like Jack the Ripper in 1880s London. Another thing that influenced the look of our urban environments was a trip to Paris by a few of us in the art department. We took literally hundreds of pictures!

This bit of art depicts the mysterious Hylden City, nestled precariously in a remote part of Nosgoth.

Our next challenge was to make several environments that had very different looks, while maintaining our baseline "look." This led to creating some really messed-up-looking, practically abandoned areas of the city of Meridian, as well as some more upscale-looking areas. At one point, we even ended up debating how much we wanted each area to have its own unique look and palette. Would it all end up looking like it was one place, or would it look like a bunch of mismatched environments? Remember, it was all basically taking place in one city. In the end, we were pretty happy with the variety we got and how well it all meshed together.

Mostly the locations themselves came from the needs of the design team. To create some fairly new locations that fit better with our needs in Blood Omen 2, we elected to move down the map of Nosgoth into some unexplored areas in the southern regions of Nosgoth.