Topic: Why didn't Sonia get referenced in the Saturn version of SotN?

[Nagumo]

Both Legends and the Saturn port were developed by KCE Nagoya. You would think they could have easily slipped in a reference to Sonia, like having Alucard remember alongside Trevor. But since they didn't, that raises the question: why not? I wonder if they at least considered doing it but decided not to in the end.

[X]

The dates for production on both titles are very close. Legends seem to have been released only three months ahead of the Saturn port of SotN. They could have referenced Sonia but I'm wondering if maybe IGA didn't want that.

[AlexCalvo]

They knew Legends was Canon wrecking ball cluster fu*k even back then. ?

[Belmontoya]

Making the port doesn't give them the authority to add content into the game like that. It would be stepping all over the developers toes and completely unethical.

The content that was added to the Saturn port like the extra area and playable maria must have been planned by Iga and team.

Anything involving Sonia would have still been Iga's call not KCE Nagoya. Slipping something in SOTN without his consent would have been a huge no no.

[Nagumo]

The dates for production on both titles are very close. Legends seem to have been released only three months ahead of the Saturn port of SotN. They could have referenced Sonia but I'm wondering if maybe IGA didn't want that.

Actually, Legends was released in November 1997 in Japan, 6 months before the Saturn port. But that aside, it's very much possible IGA put a stop to it. On the other hand, he didn't really have any authority to make such a decision at the time, and I don't believe the makers of the Saturn version had to go to him for approval (the NES port of Metal Gear was also made without the involvement of Kojima for example). The Sega Saturn was notorious for being difficult to program for, and one staff members  actually admitted in the hidden developer commentary files that was why the port ended up being delayed. Supposedly a lot more bonus content was planned. So maybe it was because of time constraints.

[Belmontoya]

At that point iga was the acting director. Why would you think he didn't have authority to decide which characters were included in the game? He was in charge of story and characters are the story.

The team tasked with making a port of the game wouldn't be allowed to make such big decisions involving things like the story that including Sonia would have been.

I can almost guarantee you that it was Iga's decision at that point.

I'm sure you do a lot of digging on this stuff. But the notion of them shoehorning a character in like that without needing the consent of the director of the game seems unlikely.

[Nagumo]

I won't rule out the possibility. I tried finding a little bit more info on IGA's  connection (if any) to the Saturn port, but I couldn't find anything. If anyone happens to know more about that, I would love to hear it.

[whipsmemory]

Wasnt' there some interview where he stated that he had absolutely nothing to do with the Saturn port anyway? I doubt having Maria playable had anything to do with him, same as the port not having any Sonia reference, which would have been cool anyway.

[LuxKiller65]

i can almost guarantee we have no idea what iga said or didn't say

[Super Waffle]

So many mysteries hidden under that cowboy hat.

[Nagumo]

I always thought it was how odd how poorly Alucard's appearances in CV3 and SotN fit with his appearance in Legends, despite Legends containing some specific references to these two games. That's why I considered the possibly of the developers intending to retroactively reference her in the Sega Saturn port of SotN. However, the other day I thought: "It's almost like the developer of Legends never actually played CV3 or SotN". What if that was actually the case? It may not appear this way because of some of the specific references, but there's actually a good explanation for how this could have happened.

Nineteen ninety-seven was the year IGA created the timeline for use as a reference tool. It's not known how this document actually looked like, but it's possible that aside from just dates, it could have contained brief summaries for each game's story, like this for example. IGA has been on record saying that he didn't intend to release his timeline at first, but that it later ended up getting leaked anyway. I suspect the developers came up with their idea for Legends' story based on that leaked timeline.

In fact, I suspect they might not even have known Alucard actually appeared in CV3 at all. It's possible the blurb for CV3 in the timeline document just said something like: "Dracula is killed by Trevor Belmont", without specifying the names of the other characters. And later on it maybe said something like: "Alucard, Dracula's son, awakes from a 300-year slumber, blah blah blah."  Then the developers read the document and said: "Hey, let's make an origin story to the series and explain why Alucard went into slumber!", without realizing that A) CV3 was already supposed to be the first fight between Dracula and the Belmonts, and B) that SotN's intro already established that Alucard went to sleep after having defeated his father with Trevor.

The above would explain why there's such poor continuity between Legends and CV3/SotN (especially everything involving Alucard), despite the former clearly being intended as a prequel to the latter two.       

[X]

We also have to take in the account that CV3 was originally a continuation of the gameboy titles, and that Trevor was originally 'Ralph C. (Christopher) Belmont. And since Christopher was only a century before Simon, CV3 originally happened in the 1500's rather then the 1400's.

^^^
If the above is in error feel free to correct me 

Then we also have Konami's original timeline that was in use before IGA did his and CV3's date seemed to put it in 1492 rather then IGA's which states 1476. There seems to be a lot of mismanagement history with CV3.

[AlexCalvo]

We also have to take in the account that CV3 was originally a continuation of the gameboy titles, and that Trevor was originally 'Ralph C. (Christopher) Belmont. And since Christopher was only a century before Simon, CV3 originally happened in the 1500's rather then the 1400's.

^^^
If the above is in error feel free to correct me 

Then we also have Konami's original timeline that was in use before IGA did his and CV3's date seemed to put it in 1492 rather then IGA's which states 1476. There seems to be a lot of mismanagement history with CV3.

This is still somewhat disputed. It seems both the Gameboy games and Cv3 were both independently intended to tell the story of the Christopher Belmont referenced in the original games manual, but when Adventure beat Dracula's Curse to the punch, this was at least softly changed for Cv3. Dracula's initial death was locked into 1476 in Simon's Quest when you see his gravestone. So there is more to that date than just historical Dracula's death. This is likely why that is the era they went with. It certainly never seems the games had a continuity with each other with their Belmonts as the same character.