Ken McCulloch

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Ken McCulloch was Silicon Knights' director of content. He acted as a lead artist, lead designer and storywriter on Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, and was responsible for writing initial versions of the game's script and creating Nosgoth's mythologies.

Career

McCulloch worked with Silicon Knights as early as 1992, even prior to its official incorporation, and has been credited on almost all of the games the company had led in development. For the studio's second title, 1993's Fantasy Empires, he wrote the manual, acted as a supporting artist, and voiced the Dungeon Master character. He fulfilled similar roles on Dark Legions, working on art and animation, character voiceover and writing.

For Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, McCulloch acted as a lead artist and a lead designer, and was credited with creating the game's original cinematic and in-game dialogue scripts, and co-credited with Denis Dyack for storyline and mythology work. During the project, McCulloch fought the "marketing censor" which urged him "towards [choosing] more accessible and less flavorful names" for characters; he conceived the names for the characters Hash'ak'gik and Mortanius, which made it into the final game, though revisions were made to several others in the course of development. Dyack publicly applauded McCulloch's scriptwriting as "a great job".

As a result of the legal acrimony between Silicon Knights and Crystal Dynamics, McCulloch and Silicon Knights did not work on any further Legacy of Kain titles. McCulloch has since been credited as "Art Direction & Content Supervisor" for Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, for which he shared a nomination with Dyack for the 3rd annual Game Developers Choice Awards Writing accolate, and as a background artist on Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. He also performed extensive work on Too Human, acting as one of the game's six directors.

In late June 2013, serious allegations were leveled at McCulloch regarding child pornography and as a result of the investigation, his affiliation with employer Precursor Games was terminated and his profile removed from company websites.

Notes

• Presumably, McCullock's Tavern - a pub Kain can visit in Avernus in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain - is named after the writer as an easter egg.

Credits

• Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (lead artist, lead designer, Blood Omen Story Line & Mythology, Original Cinematic Script, Original In-Game Script)

See also

• Ken McCulloch at LinkedIn.
• Ken McCulloch at MobyGames.
• Ken McCulloch on Story at YouTube (by SKcommunity).