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

[crisis]

I think she means games that belong to the pre-established canon that has lasted for 25 years, preferrably 2D games.

LoS is more of an "elseworlds" take on Castlevania, which is non-canon.

[Pfil]

What is ''true Castlevania''?

Anything from 1986-2008.
Or, to put it in other words...

I think she means games that belong to the pre-established canon that has lasted for 25 years, preferrably 2D games.

Especially the music.

[Belmontoya]

Bare in mind that this "canon" you speak of was pieced together by IGA who picked and chose what games were included, conveintly leaving out every game that he had no part of post SOTN.

I hardly consider IGA's idea of the canon to be the true story because it is completely unfair to the hard work that other developers contributed to Castlevania.

I prefer to give every game in the series the credit of being a "real" Castlevania. Even those games that I don't care for.

I don't really care if the stories don't line up. If you want to know the only true story of Dracula, then you must read Bram Stoker's novel.

CV has always been reinventing itself, it's best to embrace that IMO. The one thing that stays consistent is that CV is a game that re-tells the story of Dracula in new and various ways. That's what I always look forward to.

[Maedhros]

Bare in mind that this "canon" you speak of was pieced together by IGA who picked and chose what games were included, conveintly leaving out every game that he had no part of post SOTN.

I hardly consider IGA's idea of the canon to be the true story because it is completely unfair to the hard work that other developers contributed to Castlevania.

I prefer to give every game in the series the credit of being a "real" Castlevania. Even those games that I don't care for.

I don't really care if the stories don't line up. If you want to know the only true story of Dracula, then you must read Bram Stoker's novel.

CV has always been reinventing itself, it's best to embrace that IMO. The one thing that stays consistent is that CV is a game that re-tells the story of Dracula in new and various ways. That's what I always look forward to.

lol

It's not that he doesn't respect the vision of the creators, that's BULLSHIT. The stories of these games simply don't tie with the history he envisions, that's simply it. The games are Castlevania just as much as any other game, but they are self-contained.

[Dracul_Belmont]

With all due respect to IGA, he just remade many times SOTN. Even he said in HoD, he said that he wanted the game to be very similar to SOTN, even Juste had white hair like Alucard, brought M. Yamane to the game's score. Don't get me wrong, the formula of SOTN is good. The Metroidvanias are fun to play, but the story was getting kinda dumb. I am enjoying very much the LOS universe, and this is the way Castlevania games should be made from now on IMO. I just want to know what happened in the 1999 demon castle wars and that's it. LOS developers made a very serious story giving every character a reason to be. Dracula is evil because the circumstances and his own behavior made him take the path to the dark side and the Belmonts are trying to rid the world of their evil ancestor. Looking deep into the story, everything has a reason to exist, and that is freking cool. The gameplay is cool, the visuals are great, and so on.

[Belmontoya]

Maedrhos the contrarian strikes again.

IGA has considered no games since his first entry in CV to be part of the official story without exception. That is the bullshit.

I don't like the idea of saying that all of the other games are "self contained" as if they play some second fiddle to one man's vision who didn't even create Castlevania to begin with.

That is the attitude that I take issue with.

[DarkPrinceAlucard]

Maedrhos the contrarian strikes again.

IGA has considered no games since his first entry in CV to be part of the official story without exception. That is the bullshit.

I don't like the idea of saying that all of the other games are "self contained" as if they play some second fiddle to one man's vision who didn't even create Castlevania to begin with.

That is the attitude that I take issue with.

wait wait wait, hold on, am I missing something?

Because the only games I recall him saying where "self contained" and not part of his vision of a castlevania timeline where Castlevania 64,Castlevania Circle of the Moon, Castlevania Legacy of Darkness, and Dracula X for the SNES.

its seems to me that your just raging at IGA for the hell of it.

The guy was in charge of castlevania at the time and in a attempt to at least try to add some order to it created a timeline.

i don't see how that is so bad that one must feel the need to rage out at the guy.

In comparison to Cox, I would have to say IGA is clearly the more humble of the 2 and is a all around nice guy who did have some respect for the series.

[beingthehero]

Yeah, plus CotM's producer, KO-G, worked on OoE and told IGA that those KCEK titles were always meant to be gaiden stories (per IGA's interview with Nintendo Power in 2008), hence why CotM had zero to do with past titles, didn't feature or reference any games from the past, and took place in Austria. It wasn't in the timeline because the game didn't fit in the timeline, and because it wasn't made to be included in the grand scheme of things. There's no point in complaining about it being labeled a side story when its own producer wanted it to be a side-story. Still, alleging IGA's hubris doesn't add up if the former KCEK guys worked on his titles too (the N64 games' composer did over half of Dawn's soundtrack plus KO-G working on OoE's graphics). Otherwise, saying IGA had a vendetta against the team members of KCEK's gaiden games when they simply became a part of KCET and his own staff seems very goofy.

brought M. Yamane to the game's score.

Soshiro Hokkai did HoD's music. Yamane just did Knight Head and Vampire Killer 2k2.

[darkwzrd4]

I'll say this: cramming so many games made over a 25 year period with multiple teams and producers into one timeline is tough, if not impossible to do if you want a solid story with no plot holes. MS had the right idea. They took castlevania and did their own thing with it and created a storyline completely separate from the existing games. This is possibly one of the best ways to develop a series. You come up with what you want the overall story to be and then you make the games. Once the story is complete, you hand the series to another developer to do what they want the lore and let them create their vision of it. In the end, you end of with several timelines. Each one telling it's own story independent of the other timelines. No plot holes what so ever theoretically speaking.

Just my take on things.

[crisis]

But if there are no plot-holes & every little thing is accounted for, then what left do we have to speculate about? I like how some things are better left unsaid, it brings up excellent theories and discussions like those found in "can Dracula leave his castle" thread, especially concerning his relationship with Lisa, etc.


From an interview he did with Wired Magazine for DXC, 2007:

Wired: I've wanted to ask this for a while: what do you think, in the whole history of Castlevania, was the worst decision anybody ever made about the series?
 ■ Iga: Probably when we put out the timeline. Because since Dracula only appears every 100 years, we made the whole timeline and ran out of places to put in another game. I made the timeline, but I shouldn't have actually released it, because now it's all official. That was a bad decision.

Of course, there's the 300+ years in between Lament & Dracula's Curse. If they wanted, they could always use the OoE approach by making a game during that era and leaving the exact year ambiguous; that way we can have dozens of games in that unknown period, but leaves us to speculate when such games take place.

[uzo]

Climax?
Anyone knows how the music will turn out with those developers? (at least some hints).
And how about the look?

If this is true, anyway, it's sad news, because CV doesn't return to Konami Japan, neither it goes to WayForward, VanillaWare, FromSoftware or any other studio we have speculed so far that would have made a great take on the franchise.

More than that, even. If Cox is going to work with a new studio and that studio is the one porting LoS 1, I guess my hopes must disappear right now.
We'll be having more LoS games, only with another name.
True Castlevania might never come back.

It's really hard to say. The fact of the matter is, we can't write them off musically at any face value, since they could always bring in a freelance game composer to pick it up.

Gameplay and production value wise? As far as I heard, their treatment of the Silent Hill franchise has been a complete abortion. So they do have a track record of shitting on existing franchises. They did do the Rocket Knight reboot too, but I haven't played it. Anyone here can say how that came out?

[Belmontoya]

I never said IGA had a vendetta against anyone. All I said was that he struck every game that was developed without him post SOTN from the storyline. He would have been better off calling all of his titles for example: Castlevania: Symphony of The Night: Harmony of Dissonace. He should have taken the same route as MS and made his own proprietary timeline.

I reject the idea of his storyline being the official canon. I love many of his games, but I don't think he handled the story well at all. It was a jumbled mess.

Hate on me all you want. That's my opinion. 

[Flame]

Just to chime in here...

What makes IGA's vision any more valid than those other devs?

"well he was the current producer" you might say... (was he exec producer of Cv for those years?) which validates his choices to make "his vision".

Now, what makes his vision any more valid than Cox's? Cox is the current producer. If he wanted, and Konami gave him the go ahead, he could go back to the classic canon, implement his vision, and strike out whatever games he feels don't fit in it. Including IGAvanias.

What then?

Not trying to takes sides, here, just wanted to post my 2 cents.

[Lelygax]

I'll say this: cramming so many games made over a 25 year period with multiple teams and producers into one timeline is tough, if not impossible to do if you want a solid story with no plot holes. MS had the right idea. They took castlevania and did their own thing with it and created a storyline completely separate from the existing games. This is possibly one of the best ways to develop a series. You come up with what you want the overall story to be and then you make the games. Once the story is complete, you hand the series to another developer to do what they want the lore and let them create their vision of it. In the end, you end of with several timelines. Each one telling it's own story independent of the other timelines. No plot holes what so ever theoretically speaking.

Just my take on things.

Thats the problem, they want to throw everything away to do a new thing and them throw the essence together by mistake, if you want to do something new, do something really new (dont touch something that already exist) or maintain the essence.

They did do the Rocket Knight reboot too, but I haven't played it. Anyone here can say how that came out?

I've played it a bit, in quality its almost a Sonic 4 Part 1 game, its good but doesnt have a nice intro stage or nice story like the old ones. Also the fact that almost no one noticed that this game have been launched is a proof of how bad their marketing is.

Just to chime in here...

What makes IGA's vision any more valid than those other devs?

"well he was the current producer" you might say... (was he exec producer of Cv for those years?) which validates his choices to make "his vision".

Now, what makes his vision any more valid than Cox's? Cox is the current producer. If he wanted, and Konami gave him the go ahead, he could go back to the classic canon, implement his vision, and strike out whatever games he feels don't fit in it. Including IGAvanias.

What then?

The great difference is that Cox doesnt seem to understand anything from the past titles and would try to make it turns in Lords of Shadows, where you would find various barrels instead of candles in Drac's Castle (Drac really likes to be drunk almost all the time eh?) and chests with that are so hard to open that you need to press a button a bunch of times.

Also he doesnt seem to respect the fanbase and acts like "I made this game and if you really doesnt like it, buy it so I will go away... kidding, I will make a sequel anyway". We've already seem that his vision doesnt include past games and he would like to redo everything in his own way and them throw everything else away.

In short: Cox's problem is his arrogance and vision of the already existing CV universe, that tries to deny already existing things instead of trying to work together.

[crisis]

What makes IGA's vision any more valid than those other devs?

The fact that those devs originally intended for those certain games to be "Gaidens," and IGA even later re-included them in the timeline as "side stories." The timeline that came with the preorder bonus for PoR clearly shows them, but they have no description of the events in relation to the rest of the games, because they're just side stories. I thought this was common knowledge by now?

Only game that isn't included anywhere was Legends, because "iga's sexist" blah blah

What then?

Then Cox will just be hated on even more, putting him on the same hate-train IGA was put on..