All this news is incredible, but I do want say this; I want the sells to be equivalent to the heavy hitters like God of war, bayonetta, and all devil may cry.
Do any of you think that Castlevania has what it takes to reach those sale numbers?
I say this because with all this information it seems that konami is really taking an intrest and investment into cv right now. I just want this to happen way more often and most of all for this venture to succeed. I think I said something like this before on other topics, but the sales really need to increase or at least complement the effort given into these games.
And this is exactly why it's unwise for Castlevania to pattern itself after the popularity of Bayonetta, God of War, Devil May Cry, Uncharted, Shadow of the Colossus, etc. As it is, by and large, it's going to be called a copy-cat or inferior clone. At best, people say, "well, I like that I have another game to play similar to God of War."
* But then, that makes it almost exactly the same as something like Dante's Inferno. It's not going to equal or top in sales the series it's emulating if it focuses so much on emulation. Castlevania deserves better and can be better. But it takes guts and imagination to go on a road less traveled. I don't expect LoS to reinvent itself. As it is, it hasn't even taken as many risks as the N64 era to capture Castlevania dynamically and distinctively in 3D. Honestly, LoS has only moved the bar a sliver from where it was with LoI and CoD, and that'd be more apparent if it was running on PS2 instead of PS3, IMO. It's not aiming to knock it out of the park like the N64 titles tried; LoS has been looking to hit in-the-park home runs at best.
I hope for the best, as I really cherish this franchise, and it's cool to see new stuff with promise, but I'm not holding my breath. CoD and LoS were big buzz-kills.
*On the other hand, Castlevania fans say, "well, at least the Castlevania name is on it and it has some shout-outs to a series I historically loved."
...I don't like how they play both sides. It should be: let's make a Castlevania game so incredible it makes the contemporary competition want to copy US!
I expect this game to have mutiple locales, just like LoS did. However if the castle is like the artwork, which is similar to the castle in LoS, I'll be disappointed. I loved the SCALE of the castle, but the way it was laid out, with huge sections all connected by those big chains, it just reminded me too much of Drac's castle in the Van Helsing movie. They were way too similar.
Yeah, there's something about it that not "quite" full-on Castlevania. It's not awful, but it does seem like elements of
Van Helsing and
Underworld have skewed MS' view of CV...to say nothing of
Lord of the Rings. Something's slightly off...