Water Balloon Vampire Hunters were a class of enemies that were originally planned to appear in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. They were included in early development but cut before the retail release.
The class was relatively strong with a high damage output (80 points) and good endurance (25 points). This put their stamina on a par with lightly armored enemies (such as City guards) but with attack power higher than many other classes - compared to the other vampire hunters they were easily the weakest of the group but with the highest attack power. Their projectiles were however somewhat easier to avoid than other projectile classes, although they could be highly dangerous in confined spaces.[Blood Omen][1][2]
The Balloon Hunters were included in the Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain alpha and were featured in several areas within the Stronghold of William the Just in the new timeline. The Stronghold ultimately underwent some extensive changes between the alpha and beta/retail version and many of these areas were ultimately cut taking out the balloon-wielding class with them. The class did not feature in the beta or retail release.[Blood Omen][1][2]
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Although cut from the final game, assets relating to the class remained in the code of the game and were discovered by the Blood Omnicide team in 2010 as part of their project to recreate Blood Omen in 3D. When the Blood Omen alpha content was made public by the The Lost Worlds in 2018 the Water balloon class was found to have been present in the alpha in a number of locations cut from the retail game.[Blood Omen][1][2]
Notes[]
Few enemy classes are directly named in Blood Omen and even supplementary sources can be vague on the matter. Being a cut class the water balloon hunters have no official naming convention. The enemy guide of Blood Omen recreation Blood Omnicide refers to these characters based on their visual appearance giving the roughly translated title of "female hunters".[2] In game files the sprites relating to the class are referred to as "char0189".[Blood Omen]
The Water balloon hunters are one of the few human classes in Blood Omen to attack using projectiles and the only one to use such a unique kind of projectile - most throw knives or something similar.[Blood Omen] Although using water as a weapon was not explicitly used by other classes, the notion of Moebius's vampire hunters using projectiles would be revisited in later games with the vampire hunter cannoneers of Soul Reaver 2 using Hand cannons, the DefianceVampire hunter pillagers using firebombs and the DefianceVampire hunter sorceresses using a host of magical attacks.[Soul Reaver 2][Defiance]
Alpha and Beta Versions (BO1) at The Lost Worlds (by Ben Lincoln).
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
