"In her long service to her vampire masters, The Priestess had learned a measure of sorcery. In devouring her soul, this power is conferred on you. You may project your spirit, and in so doing take possession of your victim's body."
In the Original Soul Reaver Storyline, Raziel was to have gained the Possess ability from its owner the Priestess in the Undercity and Temple deleted areas. The ability would have enabled him to fire a projectile that would allow him to temporarily take control of an enemy character (except bosses), during the time he was possessing another creature, Raziel would have been protected by a shield. It was likely he would have used it to proceed to the next area he would have visited - Turel's Clan Territory.
After Raziel finds his way into the dark undercity complex of the vampire worshippers and defeats their high priestess, he gets the ability to project his soul energy out (as a projectile), and possess another creature. Once in the host creature's body, Raziel can perform rudimentary operations - he can move around the area, attack other creatures, and do other simple actions, like pushing blocks/objects or hitting switches. While occupying the host creature's body, Raziel's physical body goes into a protected stasis state (with an energy shield around it). Raziel can occupy the host's body indefinitely, but can only stray so far from his own body. If he wanders too far away, his soul energy will start to pull out of the host creature's body. If the player continues to wander away, the tenuous link is broken, and Raziel's soul returns to his body. The creature then recovers and comes back to its senses. The player can also return to Raziel's body at any time.
―PSM issue 19
About ¾ of the way through, Raziel gets the ability to project his soul energy
out (as a projectile), and possess another creature. The possess "projectile" can only be manually aimed - by holding the O-button while in look-around mode, targeting a creature, and releasing the button. (The O-button only does the soul-suck when in non-look-around mode). Once in the host creature's body, Raziel can perform rudimentary operations - he can move around the area, attack other creatures, and do other simple actions, like pushing blocks/objects, or hitting switches. While occupying the host creature's body, Raziel's physical body goes into a protected stasis state (with an energy shield around it). Raziel can occupy the host's body indefinitely, but can only stray so far from his own body. If he wanders too far away, his soul energy will start to pull out of the host creature's body - if the player continues to wander away, the tenuous link is broken, and Raziel's soul returns to his body. The creature recovers and comes back to its senses. The player can also return to Raziel's body any time, by hitting the O button.
Possess is present in the Soul Reaver alpha, but it cannot be gained legitimately and must be activated through Debug menus. Unfortunately the ability itself does not seem to be functional.
Possess seems to be present in Soul Reaver 2, but it is likely this was a hangover from Soul Reaver and was not intended as an ability in Soul Reaver 2.
It is speculated that in a similar fashion to Control Mind and Spirit Wrack, the shield that was to have protected Raziel may have been a version of Repel.
It is possible to transfer the camera behind a vampire by using a Soul Reaver trainer. Sometimes it will trigger an unexepected fight.
