Topic: "The Dragon Returns" - Castlevania Lords of Shadow Sequel (HERE BE SPOILER INFO)

[Nagumo]

Personally, I'm all for "Guinea Pig Vania". Having the same people dictate a series for a long period of time rarely is a good thing. Even if the new direction is widely appected and loved such as Symphony of the Night and Co., it tends to reach its peak very early on.

This may be a bit of a shocking confession, but I think in hindsight of what came later, I wouldn't have minded if they had stopped with Metroid-style map based games after Aria of Sorrow. I feel it along with Harmony of Dissonance and Symphony are the ones that executed the concept the best. Portrait and Dawn are not bad games by any stretch, but they just sit there being gimmicky without actually surpassing its predecessors in meaningful aspects. The only game I would have regretted missing out on would have been Order of Ecclesia because it made combat more challenging and satisfying.

Plus, you always have people who don't like the current direction and complain. It would be fun not to see the fanbase divided in camps, but instead have people develop more personalized preferences. That way everybody can be more relaxed about the whole thing since the series would be constantly changing, perhaps settling temporarily on a certain gameplay system or art direction, but also moving on when needed.             

[DragonSlayr81]

I keep hearing about reboots and the only thing that's coming on my mind is the rumor about Batman movies getting another reboot. Just what the f@$k? You've just reboot something and then you are going to reboot it again? This is so wrong..................worst than recycling sprites if you ask me. Why? What will happen if the new reboot doesn't meat their expectations again? They will do a third reboot? So now the series have become a guinea pig?

That's the state of the world we are in. Reboot is modern society's magic reset button. Pretty soon, we're going to get to a state where parents are going to be upset how their kids turn out and say, "Let's reboot them!", having another child and disowning the one that didn't live up to their expectations.  Reminds me of King of the Hill how Hank never lived up to Cotton's dream, so when he had the other kid decades later, he named him "Good Hank"(as original Hank was bad and a failure in his eyes). Hey, it's a slippery slope.

One thing I think makes reboots worse is the whole trilogy thing. If you reboot something and make it a trilogy, you are only fortelling your eventual end, because a trilogy is a close-ended thing. So, what happens when you end it and people want more? It's almost FORCING another reboot. I say, just don't say anything. Don't proclaim you are making a trilogy. Just fuckin' make as much as you want or CAN. If the series falters, it falters, but I'd rather have that open freedom of ideas rather than keeping within a stricted limit as that of a "trilogy".

[crisis]

In my humble opinion, I feel the "Final Fantasy" route where each game is it's own self-contained universe like Mai Waifuu Nagumo described is better left off as "Gaiden" style games. I like continuity, how the Belmont legacy can show repercussions centuries down the line. If the series goes the "Final Fantasy" route, then there would be none of that, no feeling of connection other than characters in name only & perhaps music. Granted that style offers more freedom for the developers to do what they want without worrying about adhering to continuity, but what I feel makes CV special is that there's been an effort to keep everything connected somehow, albeit loosely/indirectly but you know the bloodline(s) still find a way to persist.

I feel the best approach would be how OoE did it, by making games that leave the specific year ambiguous. Leave us guessing when said story takes place, yet it's not tied down & set in stone like all the other games are. And at the same time develop Gaiden games that take place outside the "main universe," like LoS and CV64.

Also, like my man DragonSlayr81 says, I'm also tired of reboot after reboot. The past decade has been nothing but reboots not just with games but with multiple forms of media. I know reboots been going on for over 20 years but recently they've been non-stop & I think it started to really go into overdrive when Batman Begins was released o__o

[Dark Nemesis]

By saying guinea pig and reboot, i mean that if every time you ditch the elements from previous games and do something that has 0-2% from what previous games they were known, then only the name remains. A good example? Alundra with Alundra 2. They are 2 different games, if you take the name out from Alundra 2, you will barely find anything to remind you Alundra. I'm not against reboots, but only if they are done correctly.

[Pfil]

I could go for that. Keep the base idea of events, weed out the 'extra' stories that don't really contribute much and also add NEW stories to enrichen the new continuity. I would say, keep Trevor(1976), Christopher(1576), Simon(1691) and Richter(1792). Quincy Morris could either be cut or kept(keeping Stoker's Dracula as a part of the CV). Stuff that would be cut, naturally, would be LoI(perhaps make CV3's events the TRUE origin and keep Dracula as Vlad III, like my pitch, perhaps work in a little bit of history by including Radu and Mircea). That would also mean no CoD, no Belmont's Revenge, no Simon's Quest, no HoD, no SotN(gasp), no OoE, no PoR(if Quincy is kept, I wouldn't mind keeping Bloodlines, or perhaps merging the two games into one story that spans two generations). Other than that, all else will be left open. Concepts like the hundred-year rule (and if the Morris clan are kept, the whole "Morris clan are inferior and die if they try to use the Vampire Killer") will be written out.

Other than that, keep the basic visual style and classic styled music. Also dip into the wide assortment of classic CV monsters. I want to see Mummies, Frankenstein Monsters, Phantom Bats, Medusa Heads, Bone Pillars/dragons and such. Also, keep it the "hero's series", keep the focus on the Belmonts. Flesh out Dracula's backstory, sure, but keep the focus on what the Belmont family goes through.

That sounds good in theory.

The negative aspect about that (and a huge one) is that we aren't getting new characters, new stages and new soundtracks. It will be the same as DXC over and over. The main reason I never really cared about DXC is exactly that. It doesn't have anything new. It's kind of like buying a Bluray re-release of an old movie that I saw in a VHS as a little girl, to see the same but in better technical quality.

Not to mention (and this is only personally speaking) that if you leave LoI, CoD, PoR, OoE, SotN, Simon's Quest, Belmont's Revenge and Bloodlines out of it you are leaving almost all of the best out (to my taste, this is only me speaking, I know most people feels differently).

That's the state of the world we are in. Reboot is modern society's magic reset button. Pretty soon, we're going to get to a state where parents are going to be upset how their kids turn out and say, "Let's reboot them!", having another child and disowning the one that didn't live up to their expectations.  Reminds me of King of the Hill how Hank never lived up to Cotton's dream, so when he had the other kid decades later, he named him "Good Hank"(as original Hank was bad and a failure in his eyes). Hey, it's a slippery slope.

One thing I think makes reboots worse is the whole trilogy thing. If you reboot something and make it a trilogy, you are only fortelling your eventual end, because a trilogy is a close-ended thing. So, what happens when you end it and people want more? It's almost FORCING another reboot. I say, just don't say anything. Don't proclaim you are making a trilogy. Just fuckin' make as much as you want or CAN. If the series falters, it falters, but I'd rather have that open freedom of ideas rather than keeping within a stricted limit as that of a "trilogy".

Excellent comparation that one about parents and kids. And that was a great episode!
I think I would have died of sadness to this point if my only hope hadn't been thinking "Endure it the best you can, MS is leaving when the 3rd game is done".
Which brings me to the exact opposite...

In my humble opinion, I feel the "Final Fantasy" route where each game is it's own self-contained universe like Mai Waifuu Nagumo described is better left off as "Gaiden" style games. I like continuity, how the Belmont legacy can show repercussions centuries down the line. If the series goes the "Final Fantasy" route, then there would be none of that, no feeling of connection other than characters in name only & perhaps music. Granted that style offers more freedom for the developers to do what they want without worrying about adhering to continuity, but what I feel makes CV special is that there's been an effort to keep everything connected somehow, albeit loosely/indirectly but you know the bloodline(s) still find a way to persist.

I feel the best approach would be how OoE did it, by making games that leave the specific year ambiguous. Leave us guessing when said story takes place, yet it's not tied down & set in stone like all the other games are. And at the same time develop Gaiden games that take place outside the "main universe," like LoS and CV64.

I remember having the feeling of "eternity". I don't know other way to put it. I wasn't even a teenager when SotN came into my life and shaped everything about me. From that day, it was game after game, more of that kind of game I loved so much. Almost every year a new one. Every time I was playing a new game I had the peace in my mind the in a year, or year and a half, a new one was coming. I want that feeling back, among other things.
If they keep changing developers we would be getting always something different, and we will never feel the security that our beloved franchise will never stop coming out / will never change its core / etc..

By saying guinea pig and reboot, i mean that if every time you ditch the elements from previous games and do something that has 0-2% from what previous games they were known, then only the name remains. A good example? Alundra with Alundra 2. They are 2 different games, if you take the name out from Alundra 2, you will barely find anything to remind you Alundra. I'm not against reboots, but only if they are done correctly.

That's exactly what's been happening these last years.
If they don't return now to the old Castlevania, they will never do, unless eventually 1 or 2 times like with Megaman 9 and 10, which is sad.

[Nagumo]

By saying guinea pig and reboot, i mean that if every time you ditch the elements from previous games and do something that has 0-2% from what previous games they were known, then only the name remains. A good example? Alundra with Alundra 2. They are 2 different games, if you take the name out from Alundra 2, you will barely find anything to remind you Alundra. I'm not against reboots, but only if they are done correctly.

Well, I definitely don't want that to happen. I was more thinking along the lines of Castlevania becoming a meta franchise with several sub-series and one-shots running concurrently. Perfect example: Megami Tensei. It has more spin-offs that you can count on one hand but you can definitely tell they're all related. At the same time they can be quite diverse as well. For example, they could have a sub-series with only classic-style games, but also a sub-series that does something original, and  a metroid based series if there's still demand for it, an RPG series (my personal desire), you name it.

[Dark Nemesis]

Well, I definitely don't want that to happen. I was more thinking along the lines of Castlevania becoming a meta franchise with several sub-series and one-shots running concurrently. Perfect example: Megami Tensei. It has more spin-offs that you can count on one hand but you can definitely tell they're all related. At the same time they can be quite diverse as well. For example, they could have a sub-series with only classic-style games, but also a sub-series that does something original, and  a metroid based series if there's still demand for it, an RPG series (my personal desire), you name it.

What i want is some really good platforming/exploration, like LoD and the style of music the series are known for.

[Pfil]

Exactly.

[Ahasverus]

Well, I definitely don't want that to happen. I was more thinking along the lines of Castlevania becoming a meta franchise with several sub-series and one-shots running concurrently. Perfect example: Megami Tensei. It has more spin-offs that you can count on one hand but you can definitely tell they're all related. At the same time they can be quite diverse as well. For example, they could have a sub-series with only classic-style games, but also a sub-series that does something original, and  a metroid based series if there's still demand for it, an RPG series (my personal desire), you name it.

I love you. The Shin Megami Tensei parallel is great and I'd love for it to be the case.

[DragonSlayr81]

I love you. The Shin Megami Tensei parallel is great and I'd love for it to be the case.

It would be the only way to appease EVERYBODY, yet I just can't see Konami doing it. Shin Megami Tensei series, as a whole, introduced this early on. I think CV is too far along in it's years for people to accept this as a new standard. Also, I doubt Konami would want to spend that much effort in strengthening the series. They are probably going for the straightforward reboot to reboot. Much less baggage, and the fans won't be guessing, "So, does this take place after this? Why does THIS one say it happened this way when the other one says it happened THAT way?!". Not to sound harsh, but I just don't think have enough patience(or brain power) to piece together a meta-mutliverse. It's all about the fast thrills. Kill the current continuity(in this case, LoS), and start anew. No "But how does this fit in with LoS?" questions. Get all that out of the way in the announcement.

[Dracul_Belmont]

Maybe Konami will promote europeans to continue making CV games, I mean, I really like past CV gamesv (SotN, CotM, HoD, AoS, etc) but, the story got really silly. Japanese developers has made the story like that and tried to make each castlevania game another SotN. It's time to let go of the past and embrace the new direction CV games may take. If they are good, of course.

[Ahasverus]

Maybe Konami will promote europeans to continue making CV games, I mean, I really like past CV gamesv (SotN, CotM, HoD, AoS, etc) but, the story got really silly. Japanese developers has made the story like that and tried to make each castlevania game another SotN. It's time to let go of the past and embrace the new direction CV games may take. If they are good, of course.

It's less a problem of japanase developers and more of a problem of who was in charge those years, Silent Hill for example is a brillaint story and was made by japanese, and many many other examples, leaving "all behind" is a little rude and disrespectful but I'd love for the series to get the best aspects of each era and mix them continously, as many ther have said, the last thing we need is to be stuck in a single style again!

[Pfil]

Maybe Konami will promote europeans to continue making CV games, I mean, I really like past CV gamesv (SotN, CotM, HoD, AoS, etc) but, the story got really silly. Japanese developers has made the story like that and tried to make each castlevania game another SotN. It's time to let go of the past and embrace the new direction CV games may take. If they are good, of course.

Yeah, I will forget about what I love the most in the world (past CV games) and embrace the new direction (which I currently hate).
Good for you if you like the current direction, I just want the return of what Castlevania was in the period 1986-2008.
I won't engage in another discussion, however, about Japanese vs. Western developers.
Japanese have proven to be masters of everything they do sometimes, but along came the west with things like Bioshock Infinite or The Last Of Us, so, though I prefer japanese, in the end it's all a matter of who develops the game, and not if they are from here or there.
All I hope is the next studio does things really differently than what MS did, and more like Castlevania, especially when it comes to music.

[Nagumo]

It would be the only way to appease EVERYBODY, yet I just can't see Konami doing it.

I know. You're probably right. Not sure why I'm setting myself up for massive disappointment. (´；ω；`)

Shin Megami Tensei series, as a whole, introduced this early on. I think CV is too far along in it's years for people to accept this as a new standard.

It's a bit unfortunate that "Akumajo Dracula X" never stuck--as the "X" was supposed to be indictive of Symphony's spin-off status--, because then they would have neatly divided the series in three chunks. The fact that they recently used the Lords of Shadow label might suggest they want introduce the concept of subheadings. But who knows?       

Also, I doubt Konami would want to spend that much effort in strengthening the series. They are probably going for the straightforward reboot to reboot. Much less baggage, and the fans won't be guessing, "So, does this take place after this? Why does THIS one say it happened this way when the other one says it happened THAT way?!". Not to sound harsh, but I just don't think have enough patience(or brain power) to piece together a meta-mutliverse. It's all about the fast thrills. Kill the current continuity(in this case, LoS), and start anew. No "But how does this fit in with LoS?" questions. Get all that out of the way in the announcement.

Well, not sure how reliable it is, but recently someone here posted a conversation with somebody from MercurySteam, and supposedly it was decided that they want to get rid of a permanent storyline. It's of course just a rumor, but assuming it's legit, I could definitely see Castlevania going the same route as Shin Megami Tensei. 

[Thomas Belmont]

It's a bit unfortunate that "Akumajo Dracula X" never stuck--as the "X" was supposed to be indictive of Symphony's spin-off status--,   

I never understood this. Rondo of Blood, Akumajou Dracula X:Chi no Rondo, is clearly a direct sequel to prior games. Why the X in its name?