Raziel (Legacy of Kain)

The vampire Raziel, who appears in the opening of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, was modeled and textured by artists at GlyphX.[10][11]

Raziel is introduced in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver as a vampire sired by the spiritually-corrupted despot Kain, the first of Kain's six lieutenants, and his second-in-command. He surpasses Kain, who - ostensibly motivated by jealously - condemns Raziel to death.[12] Raziel is resurrected by The Elder God, and traverses Nosgoth (the fictional setting of the series), embarking on a quest for vengeance.[13] He confronts Kain, who attacks him with his legendary blade, the Soul Reaver;[14] the Reaver mysteriously shatters when it strikes Raziel. The spirit formerly captive within the sword binds itself to Raziel, becoming his symbiotic weapon—the wraith-blade.[15] Raziel discovers that, when they were human, he and the other lieutenants were the leaders of the ancient vampire-hunting Sarafan brotherhood; Kain found their corpses and raised them, unwitting, as vampires, in a calculated act of blasphemous irony.[16] Raziel kills Kain's remaining lieutenants and tracks him down again, but is cheated of revenge when Kain activates a time machine and slips into Nosgoth's past.[17]

In Soul Reaver 2, while in pursuit of Kain, Raziel explores the past, learning more of his own history as a former member of the Sarafan, and discovering Kain's ultimate goal—to restore balance to Nosgoth.[18][19] Kain had Raziel executed in Soul Reaver in order to create a temporal paradox. By exploiting Raziel's unique free will, Kain can defy the course of history and alter time.[20][21][22] In hopes of learning more about his destiny, Raziel time travels back to the era of the Sarafan, where the ancient vampire Janos Audron gifts him the Reaver—a younger version of the Soul Reaver blade, before it housed a ravenous spirit. However, they are ambushed by the Sarafan leaders, including Raziel's former self, who slays Janos.[23] Raziel renounces his heritage by using the Reaver to kill his former comrades and his younger self, thus providing the corpses for Kain to turn into vampires in the future.[24] The Reaver then turns against Raziel, and he realizes that the entity destined to become trapped within the blade has always been him; the sword shattered against him in Soul Reaver because it could not consume its own soul.[25] Kain saves Raziel from being absorbed by the Reaver, but this causes a temporal paradox which changes Nosgoth's history for the worse, and only postpones Raziel's fate.[26]

In Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Raziel discovers that it was prophesied in the distant past that two champions would battle to decide the fate of Nosgoth.[27] Raziel seeks to revive Janos, but learns that he must kill Kain to do so.[28] Coaxed into believing that they are the champions, Raziel and Kain fight, with Raziel the victor.[29] He resurrects Janos, who enables him to enhance the wraith-blade with spiritual powers, but to little avail; Raziel is trapped by The Elder God.[30][31] While in captivity, he reaches the epiphany that he is both champions (Kain was neither); his free will allows him to determine Nosgoth's ultimate future.[32] He reflects that the Elder is the cause of all the conflict and strife throughout history, and when Kain re-emerges, alive, with the Reaver, Raziel reconciles with him and willingly surrenders to the sword.[33][34] Before his soul is consumed, he disperses the wraith-blade into Kain, simultaneously curing Kain's corruption, dooming himself to thousands of years of torment in the Reaver, and releasing his future self from that same imprisonment.[35] Kain uses the newly created Soul Reaver to battle The Elder God, and concludes that Raziel's sacrifice has offered him hope.[36]

Several action figures and figurines of Raziel have been created by Blue Box Interactive[37] and the NECA[38] in partnership with Eidos. He was also featured in Top Cow's promotional comics for Soul Reaver and Defiance,[39] and appears alongside Kain as a playable character in downloadable content (DLC) for 2010's Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.[40][41] Additionally, his likeness is used by a bot in Astro's Playroom.[42]

Alongside Kain, Raziel was selected by IGN's readers as one of ten heroes most wanted to appear in the 2008 fighting game Soulcalibur IV,[54] and was ranked ninth on EGM's list of top ten badass undead that same year.[55] In 2009, he was inducted into Diehard GameFAN's list of top ten video game vampires (dubbed "Not A Vampire #2"),[56] and was included as one of GameSpot's 64 All Time Greatest Game Heroes,[57] while Thunderbolt ranked him as ninth on their list of the top videogame antiheroes.[58] In a Dreamcast retrospective, Topher Cantler of Destructoid described Raziel as "a truly likeable character as well as a badass".[59] In 2012, Houston Press listed the character's demise in Legacy of Kain: Defiance among the top five most heartbreaking video game deaths,[60] while IGN also listed Raziel and Kain among gaming's most notorious anti-heroes and "complex characters with a great backstory, and truly awesome anti-heroes, be they fighting against each other to enslave or save the world, or teaming up against greater threats".[61] That same year, GamesRadar ranked him as the 56th "most memorable, influential, and badass" protagonist in games, adding that "as pissed-off vampire antiheroes go, few wear the title as proudly as Raziel".[62] The Washington Post's Gene Park regretted in 2021 that "while Metal Gear needs no introduction, it’s been 18 years since Raziel snarled his vows of revenge with a Shakespearean lilt".[63]

Darksiders' creative director Joe Madureira, former Capcom artist and game designer Akiman, and Clash of the Titans concept artist Tsvetomir Georgiev have also created fan art interpretations of the character,[64][65][66] while Ben Starr, voice actor for Final Fantasy XVI protagonist Clive Rosfield, singled Raziel out as the other video game character he would most like to play.[67]

Faragher noted parallels between Raziel and Michael Moorcock's characters Elric of Melniboné and the Eternal Champion. He observed that "in Moorcock's stories heroes are singled out against their will to fight in epic conflicts. They are pitted unwittingly into battles between the forces of Chaos and Law with the object of restoring the balance between the two – and thus harmony to the multiverse. Moorcock's most enduring creation was the noble albino sorcerer Elric who wielded a sword called Stormbringer that ate souls. Not a million miles from the hero of this game."[52] In Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon, Marcelo Alejandro Aranda instead links Raziel's journey of discovery to that of Final Fantasy Tactics' protagonist Ramza Beoulve: "as happens to Ramza in FFT, Raziel's encounter with the past changes his perspective on his circumstances in the present, something that Hennig intended because she believes 'that time travel is ultimately a journey of epiphanies, where the protagonist realizes the role that he already played in history'".[69] For Kill Screen, Sam Zucchi likened Raziel's character arc to the journey of a Kabbalist: "with the wraith Raziel, the game neatly inverts the traditional gnostic division between imperfect flesh and perfect spirit by rendering the spectral realm as one of horror [...] To rephrase this in a more pointed fashion, Raziel pursues his creator by navigating Kain’s emanations." He highlighted that "Raziel’s very name—a name meaning “Secrets of God” in Hebrew—invoke[s] the Kabbalah, where God sustains the world via a series of emanations or manifestations and the aspirant must travel up this system in order to attain understanding. [...] That Raziel must confront the lowest of Kain’s children first and ascend up the hierarchy cements the parallel between his quest for revenge and the Kabbalist’s quest for enlightenment."[70]

Writing for Game Developer, Ben Serviss praised the effectiveness of Raziel's characterization in spite of his grotesque appearance: "you essentially play a zombie vampire who runs around killing monsters and eating their souls for energy. Yet by humanizing the events that lead up to player character Raziel’s destruction and rebirth, the focus is on the characters and not the spectacle, creating meaning where most games are content to throw set pieces and playthings at the player in an attempt to cover up the absence of meaning ... [the game] sets Raziel up as a tragic figure that you feel for". Serviss empathized with the character: "Raziel has been destroyed, but has somehow been reborn. The reveal of his missing jaw and blue glowing eyes hints at an unholy quality, but you don’t remark on the monster he’s become. Instead, as he throws the scarf over his shoulder to hide his deformity, you feel for what he’s gone through and lost." He felt "that Raziel is a noble creature put upon by Kain, and not a horrid monster in his own right."[71] However, Edge's Edwin Evans-Thirlwell conversely felt that Raziel lacked nuanced motivations: "Kain's ability set lacks the mystique and sophistication of Raziel's. He is, however, a more involved character, where Raziel is driven simply by revenge."[72]

The Chinese Room's Dan Pinchbeck, contributing to GamesIndustry.biz, wrote that "you could also tell that all of Soul Reaver's writers really, really loved their characters - particularly Raziel and his brothers. Or they did a damn good job of making it seem as if they did. Even though they're comic book and larger than life, they feel distinct and you engage with them on a narrative level."[73] NME's Dom Peppiatt praised Raziel as an immersive player avatar: "you – Raziel – felt hunted and vulnerable at every turn [...] desperate, immortal and frail all at once." Peppiatt felt that "Raziel – at once a sympathetic character and hateful for his self-righteousness – is the perfect counterpoint to Kain, a hero playing the role of a tyrant king."[74]