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

[beingthehero]

Huh, not cool. I take back the knowing that I knew to be unknewn.

[Intersection]

Ah, this is confusing. I'll need to play the game again.
Yet Maxim attempted to resurrect Dracula with the intention of supplanting Juste...

[Nagumo]

Yup, it's not true. The wiki suffers a bit from lack of quality checks.

A quick look at the game's script and the manual reveals Maxim felt resentful after Juste inherited the title of Vampire Hunter, which I suppose means he took over the duty of his predecessor. I don't think there was any competing involved, though. Maxim was just jealous.

Also, the two of them and Lydie were childhood friends.

[Lelygax]

Ah, this is confusing. I'll need to play the game again.
Yet Maxim attempted to resurrect Dracula with the intention of supplanting Juste...

That part is right, he wanted to defeat Dracula to receive glory AND to help Juste, so he doesnt would need to fight Dracula and could live a normal life.

[Ahasverus]

Source being? I can write right now that they competed for a burrito.

In fact this seems to be a bad edit as shown here:
When Reinhart77 reverted the article, some fanon come back with it. This "official" backstory wasnt there before this and searching in Google about this doesnt return any relevant results. This doesnt appears in manuals too and IMO doesnt even make sense.

Nagumo deleted this fake info (Revision as of 18:59, October 30, 2012 with the username "Nagumo baby") but the revert undid this clean up.

Just play the game ok? It's there I remember it too.
Edot: Ok, it might have been the "title" vampire killer.

I found the game dialogue and there is this

Maxim: You-you're right..but compared to the training we had...this is nothing.

So it can be infered that they both did trained to become the Vampire Killer and Juste won, we don't know if Maxim wuold have inherited the whip, but are not denied that either.

[Lelygax]

Just play the game ok? It's there I remember it too.
Edot: Ok, it might have been the "title" vampire killer.

Hey, calm down man, its my fav game and I remember almost every dialogue from it I think, Im only sharing what I remember

I found the game dialogue and there is this

Maxim: You-you're right..but compared to the training we had...this is nothing.

So it can be infered that they both did trained to become the Vampire Killer and Juste won, we don't know if Maxim wuold have inherited the whip, but are not denied that either.

This shows that they trained hard without doubt, also we know that Maxim was jealous. But we dont know anything yet about a competition to know if someone won something. They both became Vampire Killers, but Juste hunts with a whip and Maxim hunts with a sword and ninja skills. That is what I understood.

[Ahasverus]

.

I'm not mad I was telling you to play it and tell me what you got you are cool. And yep I was half wrong, as always, IGA stories are more open to interpretation. The competition is effectively a plot point in Circle of the Moon and I was confusing them, 

[Lelygax]

Yes, in Circle of the Moon without doubt this happen.

[Intersection]

Yes, it was Circle of the Moon. Now that's a game I know well -- first CV I'd ever known. I didn't know what it was called at that time; I had its soundtrack ringing in my head for years before I figured out what it was.

Hey, calm down man, its my fav game and I remember almost every dialogue from it I think, Im only sharing what I remember

Favorite? Don't get me wrong, I love HoD, but it doesn't seem to me a game I'd put down as a favorite. Take the music, for example: it's rather known for being... lackluster. Maybe Juste's theme was somewhat catchy, but for the rest? I was turning off the sound to avoid hearing Maxim's...

[Lelygax]

When you like to play old games, music quality starts to become trivial to decide if a game is good or not (doesnt mistake bad quality with bad music please, I mean bad quality as in old chiptunes). I cant say that these musics are the better ones in the series, but they blend well with the atmosphere from the game.

[darkwzrd4]

Yes, based on the conversations between Nathan and Hugh, in CotM there was some sort of competition. Basically, Hugh was always better than Nathan and felt entitled to be the successor. This arrogance and entitlement was a form of dark weakness that his father saw. Nathan had no such dark weakness and because of this, was named the successor and received the Hunter Whip.

As for HoD, Juste and Maxim were friends. When Juste was given the title of vampire killer, Maxim said he "felt as if a wall was erected between them". My guess is that Maxim felt that Juste would receive a lot of attention or something and would forget about him. Sort of like when a friend gets famous, they can forget where they came from and ignore their old friends. Despite this, Maxim knew that if was the fate of the Belmont clan to fight Dracula. So, to help his friend, Maxim thought he would find Dracula's physical remains and destroy them in the hope of preventing Dracula from resurrecting during Juste's lifetime. And, that's where things went bad. Those of us who played the game know the rest of the story. It's true what they say: "the road to Hell is paved with 'good' intentions."

[beingthehero]

Well, Soshiro Hokkai said he was trying to do an experimental sound for the game from the very beginning. Problem is, I don't think it was very wise when he knew that he'd be using the Gameboy Color synth instead of the normal GBA audio channels. It may have been better if he went with a more traditional Castlevania sound.

But in high quality, it's both strange and great.

castlevania:Hod Chapel Of Dissonance (Arranged Version)

Of course, I like HoD's soundtrack the way it is, where it's kind of schizophrenic, kind of depressing. I'm kind of surprised you don't like Maxim's Theme, it's one of my more favorite ones. So damn melancholy. Though the Aqueduct of Dragons' theme was pretty boring, and Clock Tower Casualty is initially pretty catchy but starts to get grating way too fast when the synth starts to shriek like a teenage girl in a horror film.

I think everyone agrees that it just wouldn't be HoD if it didn't have the crazy soundtrack.

[Intersection]

With that I agree: in its own, strange way, the music does a lot for the game's atmosphere. The castle feels bleak, haunted -- in fact, I don't believe I've felt the same way playing any other Castlevania title.
Yet after a while it simply becomes a matter of taste. As a composer myself I like to see music from all angles, and I certainly recognize what it brings to the game. But after many, longer sessions of listening to HoD's sountrack, it seems to sink into a grayed, flat, dulled line -- not something I particularly enjoy with this type of game. And the sound quality certainly didn't help either.

[Pfil]

whether Juste be hot or not

I vote for yes 

[Pfil]

When it comes to music sound quality (not bad music, but bad quality fo soundfonts) I have no problem.
Provided I like the composition, chords, arrangements, melodies... I really don't care for a top quality sound. I even have in my computer literally hundreds of tracks downloaded from YouTube with JDownloader, because I couldn't get them anywhere else, and when I listen to them, with their low kbps rate and all, I enjoy them as much as a FLAC, because the feeling of each song doesn't change.
That said, of course I'd like to have all my music collection in FLAC, but that just doesn't exist and I'd need like 100 terabytes for music instead of just 2.

About Juste and Maxim, I always felt that behind this friend mask there was something else going on, though perhaps only in their minds.
But perhaps it's only MY mind... 

And what's that about a tournament that Simon won?