Topic: Dark Souls style Castlevania game or a Horror Castlevania game?

[Claimh Solais]

I think people are putting the classic games too much on a pedestal here. The series was indeed a side-scrolling action-platformer back in the 80s, but back then that hardly was an original idea either. Nobody is calling those games "Pac Land with a Castlevania skin". That's because they were building on a already established game concept, improved it, and added their own original touches. Obviously, they shouldn't just do a straight up clone game of Souls. People just want a game with a similar design philosophy. I see absolutely no reason to object to that idea since I don't think CV is a series that has its identity rooted in a specific gameplay system. It has always been more about the Gothic-horror atmosphere for me.

I get what you mean, but I wasn't only referring to the Classicvanias. Even as far up to 2008 with Order of Ecclesia and (to an extent) in 2013 with Mirror of Fate, Castlevania is still releasing the fast-paced action-platformer games.

On top of that, I never stated it should stay side-scrolling. Some examples I pointed out were 3D platformers like the Mario games or Yooka-Laylee. As well, I even stated that Ys Origin and Ys: The Oath in Felghana are closer to the style of CV than the Souls games are.

Platforming has always been a huge part of CV, outside a select few games. Again, I stated a Souls-style spin-off wouldn't be a bad thing, and I'd be all over that. But the main series should stay true to what it's about. Unless they somehow managed to meld platforming into the Souls formula... that'd be an interesting concept.

But that action adventure parkour element needs to stay -- I think "platforming" specifically hasn't aged too well and would feel clunky in such a combat-centric series, but updating it to a more Assassin's Creed/Infamous style of quick movement and navigation around large open settings with traversals, jumps, slides under obstacles, and diving from cover to cover in combat against a much more powerful foe could work wonders for updating the series to a more modern 3D style of play.

Freedom of movement in the style of Infamous would be great. I'd definitely be all for that.



Combat-wise, I think what would be a great example would be the Batman: Arkham series. The games have a very simplistic, yet fun and fast-paced combat system that I think could mesh well with a platformer if done right. Granted, with five Arkham games, Shadow of Mordor, and even Mad Max using this same combat system, I think it's probably best it's given a rest for a long while.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

A really great example of how the whole parkour thing can be implemented to make navigation feel quick and exciting would be to look at how Vanquish amped up the tempo in combat -- it's mad, almost bullet hell level stuff moving at like nine million miles an hour which makes every fight, even against low level mooks, exhilarating -- and how Infamous 2 and Second Son handled all the environmental navigation: climbing and leaping from foothold to foothold looks and feels breezy but awesome in both games. Then add a touch of Super Castlevania 4 whip swinging to give it an extra Castlevania kick, and I think we'd have something truly golden in the "update the platforming roots" department that would also seriously hammer home how awesomely badass Simon Belmont is.

Because this game would star Simon Belmont.

How could it not?

[EDIT]: While I am all for ramping up the pace of combat, taking it to Vanquish levels is obviously a bit extreme for Castlevania. But a much faster tempo than what Lords offered seems appropriate if we want the next game to avoid feeling clunky and still preserve the action feeling.

[Nagumo]

Platforming has always been a huge part of CV, outside a select few games. Again, I stated a Souls-style spin-off wouldn't be a bad thing, and I'd be all over that. But the main series should stay true to what it's about. Unless they somehow managed to meld platforming into the Souls formula... that'd be an interesting concept.

Platforming combined with Souls would be interesting indeed. About platforming being important to Castlevania, I think it's interesting that you bring up the IGA games and MoF. Because I think both of them implement platforming very poorly, actually. In games like SotN there barely is any punishment for failling at the flatforming. For example, In HoD there is a brief section in the Clocktower, where you have to jump from pendulum to pendulum that swing back and forth above some spikes, that doesn't seem to have much business being in that particular game. The spikes don't inflict much damage on Juste, and his jump is very floatly on top of that, so it's very easy to avoid damage altogether. In MoF the flatforming felt pretty disconnected from the rest game because of the brilliant decision to make a divide between "combat sections" and "platforming sections". Going back to the IGA games, I think the platforming in them is very much an afterthought, but I still think they work particularly well as Castlevania games. So I don't think Castlevania always has to be about platforming.     

[X]

Castlevania has always been about platforming. It was there since the very first game; Vampire Killer, and was part of the challenge of the games themselves. Some of the later games, the ones developed by IGA, don't have real good platforming, but for the most part the rest of the series does.

[piscesdreams]

The classic Castlevania games were all about platforming. The metroidvania games were a lot of jumping left to right up vertical shafts if you really think about it. The classic Castlevania games tend to have more memorable level design and worked to make levels interesting instead of rehashing rooms and mindless jumping that was not true platforming. That's why the 3D games have not really worked is it lacks good platforming which is at the heart of the series. Sure the whip is important, but Castlevania was one of the first proper platformer games to do it well. I love me some From Software games, but without masterfully executed platforming it would not be Castlevania. It'd be Dark Souls with a different skin.

If Konami is going to whore the series out the way they have, just let it die with what shred of dignity it has left before making it into what it obviously had a hand in inspiring.