Topic: My Return and another LoS topic.

[Valtiel]

Am I the only one who thinks both IGA's and LoS's Dracula origin story are equally dumb? I liked it better when Dracula was just his own guy and didn't have like fifteen fucking pseudonyms and stories about where he might have come from. Dracula reincarnating as a Spanish exchange student is stupid and LoS's story arc is ripped straight out of fucking Star Wars and God of War simultaneously, especially with the whole

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"WAAAH U MAYD MEE KILL MY WYF! I'M NOT KRATOS I SWEAR"

angle.

Why not have future games elaborate on the history of the Castle itself? It's really important and yet it gets the shaft much of the time in favor of more of the goddamn same GWARAR REVENGE stories.

Well, Gabriel's story is, before anything else, a reinterpretation of Vlad Tepes' myth. A champion of Christianity that sacrifices much to protect his people and his faith, is betrayed by a fellow representative of the same faith and ends up being a monster for the desperation of having lost his wife because of his dedication to God.

If you see SW and GoW in that you can't blame the developers. We shouldn't throw away the entire Dracula myth when considering Dracula games because someone made games or movies with similar stories.

[Valtiel]

But on par with the crap Tetsuya Nomura does, which isn't a compliment. The whole "evil side"/"good side"/"multiple sides" thing reminded me of the horrid Heartless/Nobody crap in Kingdom Hearts(which I absolutely can't stand).

Delivered like this? You're probably right. I see some potential tho - I wouldn't want CV go theology-deep in their stories, but the entire idea of what is "evil" in a Christian-inspired mythology is a huge bucket to fish in.

LoS' plot focused little on the relationship between the good and bad side of the Lords (which probably spared us some Nomura nonsense) but did a good job in hinting that ascending to absolute goodness was ultimately a selfish act. There's no light without shadow - instead of staying mortal the Lords chose to unleash evil on the land to achieve "bliss". You can easily imagine Gabriel breaking up from his beliefs when faced with that. He's basically stuck on Earth to fight the good fight while everyone he sided with either chose a selfish, nichilistic perfect existance or actually is siding with the evil he's supposed to fight. He's got his wife taken from him and he can't join her and can't get his "reward" for all he did. He'll get pissed soon. He'll get bad, and this nicely leads to Dracula.

A lot of people observed Gabe was too easily manipulated to become the "mastermind evil" Dracula is supposed to be. Maybe his next step will be becoming that. He'll be bitter now, and not trust many, and he's got the potential to absolutely become that kind of character. It's nothing nearly comparable to being shown that Vader was a pussy once. If anything, Gabriel was one hell of a warrior. He will have centuries to "get smart".

Of course, this can completely fall flat on its face if the next games don't capitalize on that.

[Valtiel]

i guess you can say that los has more scope and daring ideas, but it just brings out the flaws more when they're so underdeveloped. and when you have a slew of ideas that are underdeveloped, i feel that really hurts the story more than just a very minimal story that's bad. it's more like less and crap, or more and crap.

It's an absolutely respectable opinion, and I couldn't or wouldn't want to change it.

I personally feel LoS' story had 3 main advantages over what we usually get:

1) delivery. Seriously, the entire history of CV is made of two characters facing off on a still screen exchanging lines of text before facing off. In LoS we had stuff like Carmilla's death, the entirety of chapter IV, Laura, ch 11... it comes to life before your eyes. Yes, epic for the sake of epic isn't anything we should absolutely strive for, but to me it was completely welcome to see my favourite series get some of the best action set pieces in the industry, and dialogue delivered by top notch actors.

2) it did gothic good after so many questionable games. I still think OoE nailed the right atmosphere in a way that is closer to CV's heart, but still I absolutely loved the aesthetics of the game. The crypts, the butcher, basically every chapter after IV... that's how CV should look like in 3d.

3) and as I said before, it sparked some life in the series. Prolly because it's a reboot, and that was inevitable, but I like sitting here and thinking "where will the story go next?".
Would I have preferred to do so in the MAIN canon of the series? In a continuity with the old mythos? Hell yes. But IGA happened, AoS happened and I can finally be excited for something new instead of being stuck complaining about "main" games that some other people legitimately appreciate, and simply annoying them to no end. Between you and me, I'm probably the one who is more sour. You didn't like LoS, but that's one game and all hints point at the fact that the "main" storyline will keep moving in IGA's hands - so you're likely to get more of what you like. I've been stuck with disliking much of the last CV games for years now, and now my favourite title in years is a sidestep game that doesn't feature a lot of the characteristics that make me love CV.

[Black Cat]

Delivered like this? You're probably right. I see some potential tho - I wouldn't want CV go theology-deep in their stories, but the entire idea of what is "evil" in a Christian-inspired mythology is a huge bucket to fish in.

LoS' plot focused little on the relationship between the good and bad side of the Lords (which probably spared us some Nomura nonsense) but did a good job in hinting that ascending to absolute goodness was ultimately a selfish act. There's no light without shadow - instead of staying mortal the Lords chose to unleash evil on the land to achieve "bliss". You can easily imagine Gabriel breaking up from his beliefs when faced with that. He's basically stuck on Earth to fight the good fight while everyone he sided with either chose a selfish, nichilistic perfect existance or actually is siding with the evil he's supposed to fight. He's got his wife taken from him and he can't join her and can't get his "reward" for all he did. He'll get pissed soon. He'll get bad, and this nicely leads to Dracula.

Actually the bestiary says the Founders were deceived (Cornell's words and the Satan reveal support this). They had no idea that they would leave behind the LOS in their place. Though you could make a case for them being guilty of greed; they coveted more power after the tide of war had turned in their favor.

But on par with the crap Tetsuya Nomura does, which isn't a compliment. The whole "evil side"/"good side"/"multiple sides" thing reminded me of the horrid Heartless/Nobody crap in Kingdom Hearts(which I absolutely can't stand).

Kingdom Hearts is incredibly heavy handed with the light/dark stuff. This game doesn't have enough cutscenes to even come close to competing in that area.

[Ahasverus]

1) delivery. Seriously, the entire history of CV is made of two characters facing off on a still screen exchanging lines of text before facing off. In LoS we had stuff like Carmilla's death, the entirety of chapter IV, Laura, ch 11... it comes to life before your eyes. Yes, epic for the sake of epic isn't anything we should absolutely strive for, but to me it was completely welcome to see my favourite series get some of the best action set pieces in the industry, and dialogue delivered by top notch actors.

This.

[X]

Am I the only one who thinks both IGA's and LoS's Dracula origin story are equally dumb?

you're not the only one. I'm not too thrilled with them either. Well, mainly concerning IGA's Dracula origins anyway since it buggered up what was already established. LoS' Dracula origins is a slightly different take, but it's still too far back in the past for Dracula to emerge and the fact that IGA's character names are being recycled like his sprites, really don't help matters at all. LoS would've been much better if all the characters were new and not IGA recycled.

-X

[Joachim]

1) delivery. Seriously, the entire history of CV is made of two characters facing off on a still screen exchanging lines of text before facing off. In LoS we had stuff like Carmilla's death, the entirety of chapter IV, Laura, ch 11... it comes to life before your eyes. Yes, epic for the sake of epic isn't anything we should absolutely strive for, but to me it was completely welcome to see my favourite series get some of the best action set pieces in the industry, and dialogue delivered by top notch actors.

I mean, kind of. It was nice to have big name voice actors, but none of them really lived up to their names; the writing was terrible, and they were sleeping through their performances. Carlyle, especially. If i had to say, I'd rather the presentation of something like Curse or Darkness than the overly epic for the sake of being epic (similarly, you can substitute "epic" for other words like Raw or Brutal) stylings of Lords.

[thernz]

Gotta love the anime fight between Hector and Isaac at Cordoba.
...Well, not to say that the fight choreography in LoS's cutscenes were any less ridiculous.

[DragonSlayr81]

Kingdom Hearts is incredibly heavy handed with the light/dark stuff. This game doesn't have enough cutscenes to even come close to competing in that area.

Hopefully it never will, and that's not wishing ill on any future installments. They shouldn't beat that type of thing into your head like Nomura did. Though, with Nomura, considering he's not the best writer at Square, it seems like his ideas are a guise to TRY to make the game's lore more deeper than it actually is. Because, trying to make something seem more "convoluted" gives people the impression that it's "deep", or so he thinks. I think that's one of the reasons he tries to toss in all this symbolism. Funny, he also has a hard-on for Latin, which might've been cool hearing in the lyrics of One Winged Angel and Liberi Fatali, but sure as hell isn't something I want to see in every corner, like in Versus(all the towns and locations are in Latin).

[JR]

1) delivery. Seriously, the entire history of CV is made of two characters facing off on a still screen exchanging lines of text before facing off. In LoS we had stuff like Carmilla's death, the entirety of chapter IV, Laura, ch 11... it comes to life before your eyes. Yes, epic for the sake of epic isn't anything we should absolutely strive for, but to me it was completely welcome to see my favourite series get some of the best action set pieces in the industry, and dialogue delivered by top notch actors.

I totally agree. Although some might've thought the plot wasn't any better than IGA's stuff, I thought it was executed much, much better. It was a fairly simple story, but it seemed much more competently done this time around.

[Valtiel]

... the writing was terrible...

Now now, let's be honest here. If LoS' writing is terrible, 95% of the videogame stories are terrible. I guess we could say that, but even in that case, the vast majority of games are much worse than LoS.

LoS' writing isn't the second coming, delivery is often too heavy handed, but if you played some action games recently, DMC4, Bayonetta and GoW3 make LoS look Oscar-worthy.

I'm extremely critic on the story of LoS (because it could have been 10 times more awesome), but it's not "terrible". It's "passable".

[thernz]

Well, yeah, most videogame stories are terrible. Just because the vast majority of games have terrible stories doesn't make LoS any better. pfft, relativity.

[Valtiel]

Well, yeah, most videogame stories are terrible. Just because the vast majority of games have terrible stories doesn't make LoS any better. pfft, relativity.

The problem isn't relativity, it's hyperbole. It's either perfect or crap. It rocks or it sucks. There's no middle ground. Yes, AoS' story is a 2, but LoS is a 6, and since neither is a 10, they both suck.

It's what makes it extremely hard to discuss things on the Internet. It's a bunch of guys saying XXX is the game of the forever until a dude comes to say it's utter crap.

Point being, the vast majority of games have worse stories than LoS delivered in a worse way. This doesn't make LoS a masterpiece, but also doesn't allow you to dismiss it like it was SotN. They're not on the same level. It doesn't need to be perfect to be worth something.

[thernz]

I think it's more like out of all the game stories I know, most of them just range from bad to mediocre. So I am just there staring at the pile of stories sadly. Notice that the pile is just chillaxing. It isn't really a sweat knowing you're in the pile. They're passable and they know it. This is when LoS comes up to me, this tiny little guy, and he rips his shirt off and flexes all he's got. And I see him trying and trying, and I'm like, "Bro, you are no different!" So I fling him into the pile, but LoS keeps jumps out and keeps following me, thrusting and flexing in front of me wherever I go, shouting, "Let me show you my worth! Just open up your heart, dude!" And he shows me all these tricks, but they are just badly done or he does them halfway then gives up because he wants to try something else. It is all very tiring. Then one day, LoS comes up to me and tells me he's way cooler now and shows me this tattoo stating that he is now a satanist. "Isn't this totally rad?" he says. Awkward silence before I mutter, "N-no, you're bad. S-stop trying to be so epic, it's making you TWICE AS BAD." LoS screams that the cake is a lie and jumps into a river.

But we value LoS differently so *snort*

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Wow, the way you put it is so egocentric.

Story isn't bad, game is pretty good.  If they make a sequel, great.