i really think you're misusing/confusing watson/doyle here, because that's NOT what this even remotely looks like
you say you're trying to argue doyle, but you keep saying things like "but MY idea would be more appropriate to the STORY" and "they could have easily had it be THIS thing because it makes more thematic sense to the STORY"
where is this doylist argument you're saying you're representing, because all i'm seeing is watsonian rhetoric
*inhales*
So, Soma is going to this big, epic, final confrontation (and in scale, it is that).
I want to know how that development meeting with Iga went. How they arrived at the design decisions they made, because they are generic especially in light of the Graham fight in Aria. Soma walks in, Dmitrii has a Reactor Overload, suffers a Warp Core Breach (OF THE SOUL!!) and explodes into this giant... corpse. It's a very pretty corpse, but a corpse it remains.
The circumstances behind mean a lot as you've mentioned, but the imagery at hand could have been in almost any video game that shared half a genre. In that sense, as visually presented, it's not a good boss for Castlevania. Consider the real world character writing decisions made in Graham's second form in Aria, where writing and design intersect perfectly. Graham's Dark Lord form perfectly suited him: a perversion of everything he outwardly claimed to be, with a white color scheme soiled by blood and entrails, and images of beautifully mutilated angels. Everything lurking in the heart of the supposed holy man laid bare. It's an example of art backing up what the writers have already established about the character. Clearly there was communication between the writers and the artist, or maybe the artist just did a great job of reading the script and adjusting their design accordingly -- I doubt we'll ever know which happened.
I have a tough time seeing Menace's artwork serving as a capstone to Soma's story. Dmitrii's face does appear as a weak point on Menace (and that's something we can recreationally analyze and overanalyze for months if not years if we wanted) so it makes kind of sense as a logical end for HIM and everything he's become (good writing and design intersection, that): nothing but an assortment of various monstrous traits and people he's surrounded himself with. But as Dawn represents the endpoint of
Soma'sjourney and, in a way, the repetition of the cycle of resurrection, it feels like Menace could have been so much more than it was as an unremarkable design for a unremarkable boss at the end of what would later turn out to be a unremarkable game.
I guess what I'm asking is why didn't Iga's team unify the two things? Why not have a final boss that represents Dominance gone amok, and also been a more uniquely designed dark mirror for Soma?
They'd done a pretty good job up until then building up Dmitrii as a foil and a mirror for Soma, from their color choices (which are flipped versions of each other), their hairstyles (which are rather similar) to Dmitrii's personality taking up the other extreme of Soma (Soma being a balanced personality, Dario being rude and passionate, and Dmitrii being polite and calm), to Dmitrii's power (he's LITERALLY a dark mirror for other people). Why not have Menace more uniquely and memorably embody everything Soma feared becoming with a design that echoed Dracula, or even Chaos from the previous game? Dmitrii wanted to become the next Dracula, so Menace taking a similar form to that could have been justified that way.
In the end, a pile of monster bodies just seems uninspired considering what they were going for. It's what an eight year old would have come up with, and we've had to argue around that decision ever since.
There are so many alternate designs that could have been used that would have had more impact. My original comment was just about a Dracula ghost, but that hardly does the moment complete justice now that I've had time to think about what it could have looked like that had meaning for Dmitrii and Soma together (in my head I'm seeing lots of mirror and duality motifs but I'll spare you the list).
I suppose the end reason they didn't go with that was because they'd already gone with that in Harmony and didn't want to try it a second time.
We can talk for ages about Dmitrii and Menace in canonical terms, but I'm pretty sure that the ultimate reason that led to all of it was that Iga didn't want to look like he was repeating himself. Maybe it was a late production decision and that's why the design was so generic. I dunno.
But it neither inspires awe, wonder, or a sense of the Castlevania cycle finally ending.
Of course, a game which DID do that... was
Aria of Sorrow.
And that's Doylist point number 2: Aria was pretty clearly meant to be the end of everything. The It Moment at the end of all things. Dawn is essentially
"Contractual Obligation: The Game (Castlevania Edition)".
Which actually explains a hell of a lot, just having realized that.
Just wanted to respond that I'm against that more because of theme reasons than because of mechanical ones.
Soma fighting a shadow of Dracula is perfectly reasonable depending on what pieces of lore we use. For example: If Celia were trying to "reincarnate the castle" to break the eclipse seal, Dracula fighting Soma is a really easy leap from there: The castle remembers Trevor, therefore it remembers Dracula. A mere MEMORY of Dracula is enough to make him real, and Soma's own soul remembers what it's like to be Dracula. Any plot device would work to make that memory real, to be honest, and that's just one of a million ways I can think it would be plausible.
Problem is: Theme. Soma already dealt with his destiny as "Dracula". I don't think there is a good reason to make him fight Dracula as a "final boss" when he has already done that in Aria (as Dracula's evil intention). The way Dawn's plotline is setup doesn't allow for much "Dracula" in my head.
And having written my above comment, I have come to agree with ALL OF THIS.