Man for All Seasons, and each game was scripted in the manner of a stage play, with monologues, asides and cutscenes interspersing gameplay. During Blood Omens production, Silicon Knights hired classically trained actors to deliver voice talent, a precedent which Crystal Dynamics continued in successive games. Simon Templeman and Michael Bell voice protagonists Kain and Raziel respectively. Supporting cast members include Paul Lukather as Vorador, Anna Gunn as Ariel, Richard Doyle as Moebius, and René Auberjonois as Janos Audron. Tony Jay played Mortanius in Blood Omen, and returned as The Elder God in subsequent games; in Defiance, Mortanius was recast as Alastair Duncan. Gordon Hunt and Kris Zimmerman provided voice direction from Soul Reaver and onward. The developers coordinated the actors by ensuring they were involved as collaborators, recording their dialogue together rather than in isolation, and thus established techniques which would later carry over to Naughty Dog's Uncharted series. Story The health of the land of Nosgoth is inextricably tied to nine edifices known as the Pillars of Nosgoth. The Pillars are preserved by an oligarchy of sorcerers known as the Circle of Nine, each of whom serves as the guardian of an individual Pillar. When a guardian dies, a new one is born to take their place. In the prologue of Blood Omen, Ariel, the guardian of balance, is killed, and the resulting chain of events leads to the spiritual corruption of the Pillars and their guardians. Thirty years later, Kain, a young nobleman, is murdered by brigands, and resurrected as a vampire by a necromancer, Mortanius. Directed by Mortanius and the specter of Ariel, he tracks down and kills the guardians in hopes of attaining revenge and a cure to his vampirism, but slowly begins to embrace his new powers. While hunting Moebius, the guardian of time, he defies the advice of Vorador (a senior vampire), and travels back in time. Using the Soul Reaver, he prevents a tyrant king from coming to power, but the temporal paradox which this causes results in a new timeline where Nosgoth's humans have hunted the vampires to extinction. Kain discovers that Mortanius — the guardian of death —orchestrated his murder to purge the Circle and kills all but one of the remaining guardians. Kain realizes that he himself is the final corrupt guardian, born as Ariel's successor, and is left to decide between sacrificing himself to restore the world (but