Topic: I know the feeling.

[Eric Roman]

This recently came my way and it echoes some sentiments I have about what’s happening next with that videogame series I used to play a lot:

[Abnormal Freak]

🌈 NETFLIX🌈

[Gunlord]

>No music

I mean say what you will about the dialogue in that scene but Divine Bloodlines kicking in is a highlight of one of the episodes.

[GuyStarwind]

So... I'm not missing much?

[nokundhi]

"Castlevania?"

[X]

Once you see the patterns you can't un-see them.

[The Puritan]

A canonblind friend of mine looked up the OG Annette after watching Nocturne and said, "I feel cheated." And that's coming from an otherwise GURL POWUR kind of person.

[FlyingMudBlock]

This is why i miss Lords of Shadow so much...
I rather have more Gabriel Belmont than the alternative we got stuck with.
I know... we all miss IGA and the old games but look at the point castlevania is stuck right now.
We should have supported MercurySteam a bit more and be less harsh to them, now they are happily working with metroid while we got stuck with 2 cancelled gatcha games and the nasty Netflix series.

Honestly, i really miss Enric Álvarez at this point even with his rumored "flaws".
He was the better alternative than this horror...

[VladOfWallachia]

Nocturne strays significantly/completely from the source material, but I also don't think the original post is a very nuanced take.

I see plenty of Castlevania in Nocturne, but in a setting the series has never explored before, making the whole thing feel completely foreign to many of you. I think its no coincidence that they picked the French Revolution as the setting, as that time and place closely mirrors the current world we live in. I read that income inequality is worse today in the USA than it was during the French Revolution when the heads of the oligarchs started to roll. Is it really such blasphemy to use Castlevania characters and themes in a new and much more relevant and relatable setting?

I myself am doing something similar with the Treasury level and the Dragon boss in my own game. The lessons learned from the wealth hoarding dragon can be seen as far back as ancient literature, and we are living in a time where this particular legend feels more relatable than ever. Nocturne strays far from the source material, but its also fun to see these characters in a setting that mirrors our own reality.

Complaining about the black characters and slavery scenes is nonsense. Castlevania has always, from the very beginning, been a tribute series to the classic monster films and pulls from horror mythology of all kind. Bela Lugosi was listed, in a mock name, during the credits of the first Castlevania. What about his film White Zombie? Does Annette and her backstory not immediately remind you of that film, which took place in the same general area? The "Zombie" in White Zombie refers to the traditional meaning of zombie from black culture, and not what it is most commonly used for now, to refer to George Romero style zombies. Annette and her backstory do not feel out of place for Castlevania in that regard.

I know you guys love Castlevania to death, but I think there also has to be some understanding here that you can't simply take a purely focused action game, with minimal story elements, and faithfully transform that into a season long TV show. I personally would not force the writer to strictly adhere to paper thin lore, and instead let them express themselves with the themes of Castlevania in a way they see is best fit for the format.

[Foffy]

I saw enough in the show, but we've had four seasons to accept things would be different. After season two of the last show, it's been clear they're doing their own thing.

Skin crawling dialogue aside, I actually like it more than the Lords of Shadow trilogy, even if both mess up Dracula and the symbolism he represents as the recurring villain. We've had more traditional Castlevania enemies than nearly three whole games, and that's crazy to say.

[zangetsu468]

Nocturne = The Moonlight = You can’t fight it…
The devil flies by (night) and may care/ cry.

[Abnormal Freak]

My problem with what I've seen of Nocturne (admittedly only two episodes) is that it doesn't even resemble Castlevania. There's fleshing out the story and then there's deviating so far from the source material that it's unrecognizable. For how awful S4 of the original series was, it still at least had some familiar baddies from the bestiary, one of the most prominent features of the games, and those enemies are rooted in mythology. So far I've only seen bog standard "night creatures" that don't stand out.

Warren Ellis isn't the greatest writer but he occasionally had an interesting idea, even if it was him doing his own thing inside a Castlevania shell. This new series seems to lack focus.

I'll finish it eventually, but right now it's leaving an awful taste in my mouth. Julia Belmont had potential as a cool character and they killed her off minutes into the show, and Richter just...sucks. Doesn't help that I think his voice actor is terrible, and the hair/face design isn't any good either. I get they were basing it off his SNES design, but that art was badass, this looks like it came from someone's DeviantArt page. Trevor was a likable and cool looking character, even if he never really behaved or spoke like I think a Belmont from the games would.

[Darkmoon]

Oh no, my show about vampire hunters fighting vampires has vampire hunters fighting vampires and I don't like it.

*rolls eyes*

[VladOfWallachia]

Last  thing I'll say about this, long before NetflixVania existed, I always felt like the kind of story Castlevania tells can only be told well through the actual video games. My favorite game in the series has always been 4, and that game has almost zero traditional storytelling content. You get an optional text scroll at the beginning, and a short cutscene at the end, and nothing else.

However, the experience of playing through the game feels as vivid and convincing as any story told through text or film. The care and attention paid to constructing the dense gothic horror atmosphere, paired with the tight and responsive mechanics, makes me feel like I'm actually there myself. The story of myself slowly fighting through legions monsters against the backdrop of the Transylvanian countryside and Castle Dracula captivates me as much as any Dracula movie or the Stoker novel, but this type of experience is also obviously bound to what Castlevania is - an interactive action video game, and I do not believe the experience described above can be translated accurately to another medium.

I think, for better or worse, we need to let the writers take the same elements that inform Castlevania's story and atmosphere and turn it into something that best fits the format they are working in. This also means we will get things I don't like, such as season 3+4 of NetflixVania, but I also don't think we should force the writers to stay locked up in boundaries set for a story told in a completely different medium, that requires very different things to succeed than a season long television show. The new season strays really far, but I also see the show taking those core elements, which is influence from classic horror cinema and horror mythology from all over the world, and telling an action focused story about vampire hunters. As a general fan of horror, this is what horror is, always has been, and always will be. Taking these well known myths and legends and telling a story with them in your own way.

[Darkmoon]

If we're going to complain about continuity then we have to note that Konami fucked things up with the whole history of the series, and matching it to Bram Stoker's book, and that doesn't even address how their depiction of Dracula, especially before his own birth, fucks up the actual timeline as well. So...

Maybe we should stop giving a shit about continuity and just enjoy shit for what it is.

When I got mad at Lord of Shadows it wasn't because of the change to continuity. It was because those games sucked.