Topic: Help me win an argument with a random guy on Facebook

[theplottwist]

How do the 64 games take place in a time Rondo said Dracula was inactive when they take place after Rondo?

This is not what I said. I said the contradiction is "Dracula somehow existing in a time Rondo said he didn't", and this refers to Dracula's recovering his memories from 100 years ago, when he shouldn't have "memories" of anything to regain.

And remember Rondo and many of the other games were never given an exact year where they took place until SoTN was made, which was during the production of 64, so the whole "100 years I've been dead" or whatever doesn't really mean anything

I don't know where you're getting your info (please do share, this is strangely specific for you to be making up and I want to know about this), but CV64 was 10% finished by September, END of 1997, and 20% by February 1998, long after SotN had already released (March 1997). Development of SotN started around three years prior to its release, so consider that.

Beyond that, SotN had Toru Hagihara as its director. Toru Hagihara is the man behind Rondo of Blood. So this does say quite a bit about the choice of year for Rondo made in SotN, it wasn't just IGA making up numbers for his timeline. He had the mind of the person responsible for Rondo to guide him. And, yes I know SotN started as a gaiden game -- still holds up when it was completed while CV64 wasn't even at 10%.

Finally, things mean much more after they are complete than while they are in development. The two arguments above are meant only if you want to insist. So the CV64 "100 years thing or whatever" does mean a lot. It's basically the thing that sets up the problem at hand. If SotN -- released long before CV64 was at little over 10% -- said Rondo happens in 1792, then CV64 contradicts that very hard. If it was RELEASED contradicting something that was already out for two years, then it hints at an intention to "contradict it anyway".

That is not getting to Simon's Quest tombstone, the century given in CV3, the "over a hundred years prior to Simon" reference. You don't need to HAVE a timeline in your hand to know how the one we have was assembled and how they arrived at that year for Rondo. But this is besides the point, of course.

EDIT: Nagumo added something after me that I'd like to respond to. There is a discussion about "was it considered canon or not and did this status change or not with LoD". As I said before, this is the muddy part that I concur needs more research, but that source is not the first time IGA says that, and while he did put emphasis on LoD in the source I used, the other time he made this statement in Japanese he included CV64 in the bundle. It does not seem to be an offhand remark to me (although yes, this bit of CV history is not as clear as I'd like it to be).

EDIT 2: And we now know there was a timeline YEARS before SotN, by the Bloodlines team, that already contradicted 64.

[Nagumo]

Also, who was said to be a direct descendant of Sypha?  I remember seeing members of the Belnades clan, but no mention of a direct line from Sypha.

This is correct. The Japanese manual just says she is a descendant of the Belnades family and that they fought alongside the Belmonts at one point (referring to the events of CV3)

In that IGA quote mentioned above, he seems to emphasize LoD and CotM. This may suggest his claim that CV64 was originally intended to be non-canon might not be entirely correct and that he is formulating it like that for ease of communication. It's possible the CV64 games weren't labeled non-canon until the production of LoD. Regardless, obviously more research is needed to come to a definite conclusion.

[AlexCalvo]

This is not what I said. I said the contradiction is "Dracula somehow existing in a time Rondo said he didn't", and this refers to Dracula's recovering his memories from 100 years ago, when he shouldn't have "memories" of anything to regain.

Ok I get you, but I tried to explain before that this is the only contradiction present between the 64 games and the canon that was established before it's release.  I'll get more into that below.

I don't know where you're getting your info (please do share, this is strangely specific for you to be making up and I want to know about this), but CV64 was 10% finished by September, END of 1997, and 20% by February 1998, long after SotN had already released (March 1997). Development of SotN started around three years prior to its release, so consider that.

Well admittedly this is based somewhat off assumption, as I factored in a normal games productions time frame.  I imagined that the first 64 game was at least a ways into preproduction when SoTN was released, and from everything I've seen the two groups behind the games very little to no interaction between them.  Remember the point here is whether it was Iga who retconned the 64 games or that they were never intended to be part of the game series canon.  It is not whether their are contradictions at all or not.  I would argue that even if SoTN were released before they had done anything even at planning stages, that a single line that goes against the most recent prior release does not mean that it was not meant to be a part of the larger series canon when every other indication is that it was...

Beyond that, SotN had Toru Hagihara as its director. Toru Hagihara is the man behind Rondo of Blood. So this does say quite a bit about the choice of year for Rondo made in SotN, it wasn't just IGA making up numbers for his timeline. He had the mind of the person responsible for Rondo to guide him. And, yes I know SotN started as a gaiden game -- still holds up when it was completed while CV64 wasn't even at 10%.

If he had stated the year in Rondo than clearly the makers of Cv64 would have been intentionally ignoring canon to make their own thing.  But this is not the case.  No one is saying Iga is making up numbers, more on that below.

Finally, things mean much more after they are complete than while they are in development. The two arguments above are meant only if you want to insist. So the CV64 "100 years thing or whatever" does mean a lot. It's basically the thing that sets up the problem at hand. If SotN -- released long before CV64 was at little over 10% -- said Rondo happens in 1792, then CV64 contradicts that very hard. If it was RELEASED contradicting something that was already out for two years, then it hints at an intention to "contradict it anyway".

Again, I am aware of the contradiction, I was the one who brought it up.  I'm saying it was the only contradiction, and that it alone does not in any way indicate that the game was not meant to be part of the canon, even after release.  It just means that they messed up.  Again the idea at hand here is whether these games were meant to be non canon gaidens.  CoTM obviously was.  The 64 games I do not believe were.

That is not getting to Simon's Quest tombstone, the century given in CV3, the "over a hundred years prior to Simon" reference. You don't need to HAVE a timeline in your hand to know how the one we have was assembled and how they arrived at that year for Rondo. But this is besides the point, of course.

I'm not saying the year choices were blindly random.  There is of course a reason to them.  But within that reason it would be very easy for the previous one before 64 having been 100 years prior.  It only moves the needle back about 50 years...

[X]

There is one thing I don't understand in some of the CV lore. There cases where a Belnades descendant is said to be specifically a descendant of Sypha Belnades. Wouldn't that mean they are also a descendant of the Belmonts too? They stress they are descendants of Sypha, but unless Sypha had a child before meeting Trevor, they couldn't be. Sure, the could be related as distant, DISTANT cousins (descending from Sypha's brothers or sisters), but NEVER be descendants of Sypha herself.

Yeah, this also confuses me why some people (developers included) would make this mistake. Sypha married Trevor and had children with him. Those children have the surname 'Belmont' (a no-brainer here), unless down the road the descendants changed their last name back to Belnades. But I've not heard or seen evidence of this. I've also not heard or seen evidence of Sypha having kids before Trevor came along. Her CV3 backstory doesn't even hint at any past relationships. So, descendants like Carry, The woman Belnades you fight in CV64/LoD and Yoko from AoS/DoS cannot be descendant from Sypha unless (as mentioned before in the above) that particular Belmont branch changed their surname back to Belnades.

The only descendants of Sypha, are also those of Trevor, meaning all the Belmonts known from Christopher to Julius, as well as the Morris, Lecarde and Renard clans(which likely branched out of the main Belmont lineage throughout history, though still retain some of that Belnades magical prowess).

Maria Renard is the adopted sister to Annette. She's related to the Belmont family by blood. Annette has no biological connection to the Belmonts so there's no inbreeding on her and Richter's part.

[theplottwist]

Yeah, this also confuses me why some people (developers included) would make this mistake. Sypha married Trevor and had children with him. Those children have the surname 'Belmont' (a no-brainer here), unless down the road the descendants changed their last name back to Belnades. But I've not heard or seen evidence of this. I've also not heard or seen evidence of Sypha having kids before Trevor came along. Her CV3 backstory doesn't even hint at any past relationships. So, descendants like Carry, The woman Belnades you fight in CV64/LoD and Yoko from AoS/DoS cannot be descendant from Sypha unless (as mentioned before in the above) that particular Belmont branch changed their surname back to Belnades.

Sypha was not said to be the last Belnades, only to have lost her parents. It's plausible there were more Belnades scattered around... And one dedicated family tree (present in the Lament of Innocence guide) shows that:



The main timeline had a reduced version of this, but it had Yoko "tied to nobody". Meaning it's a line that continued "outside" the Belmont line.

[X]

Oh it's clear that there would be other relatives of Sypha out there. No debating that here, lol. Just that no one would have the name Belnades should they come from Sypha herself since she married Trevor (unless they changed their surname).

[TheouAegis]

but her name's not timmy

The instruction manual's author mistook her for a boy. Hundreds or thousands of gamers mistook her for a boy. Who's to say the priests didn't mistake her for a boy at first either and then when they found out they were like, "I've already erected my crucifix, no point stopping now."

[Super Waffle]

Alucard and Maria did the diddy.

I wrote a fanfic where they did the diddy once. It didn't turn out too great for them.

[zangetsu468]

Alucard and Maria did the diddy.

I wrote a fanfic where they did the diddy once. It didn't turn out too great for them.

He gave her the Alucard sword... Then the sword of Dawn

[Abnormal Freak]

Alucard and Maria did the diddy.

I wrote a fanfic where they did the diddy once. It didn't turn out too great for them.

Is that the one I read when I was like 13 that went into great detail about Maria's pert nipples?

[Super Waffle]

Is that the one I read when I was like 13 that went into great detail about Maria's pert nipples?

No. I just wrote this one within the last few months. You must have me confused with some other dude's pert nipple fanfic.

[PFG9000]

So I'm jumping in a little late here, and also ignoring a lot of the tangents that this discussion took.  Iga DID retcon Circle of the Moon, and the N64 games, and Legends as well.  There was no official, overarching series timeline until around the time of Harmony of Dissonance.  Iga put out the first official timeline then, and it didn't include any of the above games.

[AlexCalvo]

So I'm jumping in a little late here, and also ignoring a lot of the tangents that this discussion took.  Iga DID retcon Circle of the Moon, and the N64 games, and Legends as well.  There was no official, overarching series timeline until around the time of Harmony of Dissonance.  Iga put out the first official timeline then, and it didn't include any of the above games.

The only disagreement from me is About circle of the moon.  That one was clearly never meant to share a universe with any of the previous games.  So even though he excluded it from the timeline it was already excluding itself from the rest of the series.  Almost like a LoS that didn't mix up the formula so much.

[zangetsu468]

So I'll play devil-castle-dracula's advocate for a moment, the guardian of Dracula's sleeping spirit i.e. "Old Dracula" is featured in a total of 3 games which are not specifically stated to be non-canon:
- 64
- LOD
- OOS

All of these games contain endings whereby after the Old Dracula fight, the castle doesn't crumble at the end of the game.
The only difference being in OOS my understanding is this is the main ending, where as in 64/ LOD for Reinhardt and Carrie, it's the bad ending (which doesn't make it non-canon to that particular universe). Please correct me if I'm incorrect, specifically with OOS - I was not sure if it was intended to be a side-story or just not be canon to all existing universes.

Personally, I see a correlation to the above, and the fact that the OOS artwork features a red-haired Belmont. For these reasons and more (the Haunted Castle version of Simon also appearing in Medusa's lair) I place these on an alternate timeline where OOS occurs prior to the 64 titles.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

So I'll play devil-castle-dracula's advocate for a moment, the guardian of Dracula's sleeping spirit i.e. "Old Dracula" is featured in a total of 3 games which are not specifically stated to be non-canon:
- 64
- LOD
- OOS

All of these games contain endings whereby after the Old Dracula fight, the castle doesn't crumble at the end of the game.
The only difference being in OOS my understanding is this is the main ending, where as in 64/ LOD for Reinhardt and Carrie, it's the bad ending (which doesn't make it non-canon to that particular universe). Please correct me if I'm incorrect, specifically with OOS - I was not sure if it was intended to be a side-story or just not be canon to all existing universes.

Personally, I see a correlation to the above, and the fact that the OOS artwork features a red-haired Belmont. For these reasons and more (the Haunted Castle version of Simon also appearing in Medusa's lair) I place these on an alternate timeline where OOS occurs prior to the 64 titles.

OOS was never actually meant to be canon to anything but Lament of Innocence; Leon's Gauntlet is used in the game, the Order's Mansion is at Eternal Night, and Rinaldo Gandolfi is name-dropped.

You can also assume some shared timeline with Dracula's Curse, but it's largely irrelevant. Suffice it to say that knowing how the Belmont v Dracula feud started helps in both timelines, but there's no reason to believe OOS is part of the main timeline.

It's a fun little bit of officially licensed fanfiction, and Konami USA basically referred to it as such around release.