Topic: Let's talk about "The Dracula problem."

[AlexCalvo]

I almost hate to say it...  But I think most of us can admit it's true.  Dracula is, in a way at least, holding Castlevania back.  I know, I know, it sounds like blasphemy, but hear me out.  Dracula as a character in general, has gone well beyond the cheesy line.  Castlevania came about at least partly due to a coincidental re-surge in popularity of the classic universal studios monsters in the 1980's.  So at that time it was a major selling point for the game. 

But let's be honest.  Not even talking about Castlevania what kind of images are evoked when you hear the name Dracula?  What do you think most people, gamers or not think of when they think of Dracula?  Campy old movies?  Boring Halloween costumes?  The count from Sesame Street?  Maybe I am exaggerating a little but I think you get the idea.  It is hard for most people to take Dracula stories seriously these days.  Maybe it comes from decades of movies that range from way too serious to stupid, vapid kids movies.  *cough Dracula Untold cough Hotel Transylvania cough*

Iga handled this by not taking his stories too seriously, the LoS team handled it by just ignoring it and slipping Dracula in post credits, then going full on melodrama in the sequels, and while both their levels of success are debatable I think we can all agree that the series could do a lot better, storytelling wise.  So what do you think the answer to this is?  I personally wouldn't mind a semi-rebooted series that refers to the final boss as Mathias, Lord Cronqvist, or maybe simply “The Dark Lord” or something like “The Dragon”.  Or maybe I am just crazy?  Or you have a good idea of how to handle Dracula. What do you guys think?

[theplottwist]

I don't get it. Your issue is with Dracula as a character, or with Dracula as how he was portrayed outside Castlevania, or? You think the tropes associated with "Dracula" name itself detracts from the potential for the character inside the series, is that it?

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Back when I was a regular on the Anti-Chapel forums, I championed the idea of "filler episode games" wherein fan favorite Belmonts like Simon hunted down Dracula's worshipers and top lieutenants, but Dracula himself did not directly appear in the game. It made good sense to me that most of a Belmont's life would be spent dealing with threats other than Dracula himself, and it would also preserve the impact of Dracula's resurrection, keeping it an "OH SHIT! HE'S AWAKE!" rather than the "Whoops it's 9:45 PM. GUESS WHO'S BACK FROM THE GRAVE GUYS." his resurrections eventually became while still allowing for a regular release of titles.

Dracula is also wasted as a villain. He doesn't do anything, usually, just kind of sitting around and waiting for the Belmont to come along and kill him. Rondo of Blood and the N64 games are the only games to really have him involved in the story (in the latter case via Malus, but it counts). We never see good examples of why Dracula is this guy to be feared and dreaded. Mirror of Fate, for all its faults, showed that Gabriel-as-Dracul did deploy his armies, and yes, they did destroy a lot of towns and lives. Dracula needed to be used more effectively as a villain -- as a true antagonist, rather than a gameplay objective. He needed to do evil things, show up regularly to taunt the hero, and generally prove himself a threat, which Rondo of Blood and Mirror of Fate excepting he never really did.

That's one of the reasons I loved Evil Maxim, Walter Bernhard, Zead, and Isaac as villains: they did VILLAIN THINGS. They were antagonists, in the true sense of the word; Zead most insidiously of all by going the full "Corrupting Darth Sidious" route.

The sad truth is that, even when he IS present, Dracula is less of an antagonist than his servants. Death has been fairly involved in several stories, Carmilla was the real antagonist of Circle of the Moon, and Gilles de Rais made for a more effective Dracula in CV64 than Dracula himself usually does. Castlevania has a lot of great villains, but Dracula is only extremely rarely one of them.

[AlexCalvo]

I don't get it. Your issue is with Dracula as a character, or with Dracula as how he was portrayed outside Castlevania, or? You think the tropes associated with "Dracula" name itself detracts from the potential for the character inside the series, is that it?

The third one.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

The third one.

I respectfully disagree. I think that when most people hear the Dracula name, it keys them in that he's a big bad vampire, but he's been portrayed so differently over the years (even as a Marvel Comics superhero in the 1970's!) that  he's pretty immune from prejudice on the part of the audience.

The name is a set up for certain expectations and qualities, but most people in my experience are more willing to see how the story handles the character behind the name. As a side note, most people who I know think of the Gary Oldman Dracula when the name is mentioned, or Christopher Lee's portrayal.

[DoctaMario]

RE: Dracula as "more of a villain" I always thought it would be cool if there were more than one Dracula fight kind of like how you fight Vergil 3 different times in DMC3 even though he's the final boss. Each fight could escalate Dracula's powers somewhat and it would make him a little more visible.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

RE: Dracula as "more of a villain" I always thought it would be cool if there were more than one Dracula fight kind of like how you fight Vergil 3 different times in DMC3 even though he's the final boss. Each fight could escalate Dracula's powers somewhat and it would make him a little more visible.

That might have worked once or twice in the series, with Dracula unleashing greater extremes of his power in later fights as it becomes apparent that you won't be flattened so easily.

But, as I've already argued, literally having Dracula do ANYTHING AT ALL is already grounds for him being more menacing than the series generally treated him. The whole "Orcus on His Throne" deal was acceptable in the NES days due to resource constraints, but it ended up becoming an obsolete holdover as game technology and storytelling got more advanced. That's the biggest cockblock that the series faced: was that it was unwilling to let certain conventions from earlier hardware generations die of old age and be replaced. By the time we got games that were willing to take chances, the damage had already been done.

I remember playing DXC the first time and, as Shaft is being creepy towards Anette in the beginning of the game, I was flabbergasted that Dracula showed up, even if it was just a phantom saying "bring her to my bedroom" villain cameo. I was legitimately shocked that Dracula made an appearance of any kind, especially a voiced appearance, prior to me fighting him.

At least Harmony of Dissonance had a good in-story reason for the Dracula Wraith appearing only at the very end -- it quite literally didn't even exist as a Dracula Wraith until that moment. Prior to that, it's Evil Maxim. I don't think any of the other games justified it at all.

Although... based on the Succubus' profuse apologies to Gabeula in Mirror of Fate, I feel like the implication there was that he didn't even feel like getting off his throne should have even been necessary; "My minions are pretty tough. No doubt they've got this one in the bag-- oh. Play this cool Drac. Talk tough. Be tough. You are the man."

[zangetsu468]

I think AoS already remedied this by introducing

(click to show/hide)

Chaos as the final boss

which is the source of Dracula's power and his centennial (as well as other) resurrections.

DoS did less of an inventive job with

(click to show/hide)

Menace

but still found a way to create a threatening final boss void of the Dark Lord himself.

@DoctaMario I would recommend Castlevania 64 and LOD in that case.

For anyone who believes Dracula doesn't seem threatening, although it wasn't my favourite portrayal I thought COD's was pretty threatening in his final form.

Dracula untold was a decent movie imo, I just wish they didn't go down the "hero" route of LOS. If he had been ruthless and some historical anecdotes of him impaling people had been carried out it would have been a better film. Also who was that original Vampire that gave him his powers? The LOS ending was interesting, but it didn't help its case.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

For anyone who believes Dracula doesn't seem threatening, although it wasn't my favourite portrayal I thought COD's was pretty threatening in his final form.

Courtesy of Steve Blum's badass voice acting lending all the villainy Dracula deserved from day one. He's still the definitive Dracula voice, in my mind. And then Robert Carlyle was probably the worst (although he did get one shining moment across two scenes as Dracula in MoF -- he did pretty good there). DXC and Symphony were... tolerable. OoE didn't really get enough spoken dialog from him to warrant a mention, but what WAS there was pretty good.

Nobody can top Walter's glorious baritone though. Holy crap. Evil is a ham and cheese sandwich for sure. Are we sure he and Isaac aren't relations?

[X]

Dracula is for me, a badass villian (at least he was until IGA turned him into a f@#kin' emo, of which he is not and should not have been). Is he holding CV back? No. Dracula is the absolute representative of all that is evil in the CV universe so it makes sense that he would be the final villain in almost every game. But that shouldn't stop game developers from doing CV side-story games that don't have Dracula in them. And it also makes sense from a game/story prospective that in order to destroy the ultimate evil, one needs the ultimate champion, hence, the Belmont family. It's no different then Mario Vs Bowser or Link Vs Ganon.

[piscesdreams]

I don't know that I would say Dracula is holding Castlevania back, as far as the original canon goes.  I won't even consider the LoS canon...but I do feel that he needs a face lift and should go back to what he once was - more of a menacing, undead revenant with great power instead of the woe-is-me emo that he became.  There's certainly nothing wrong with expounding on a character's backstory, but sometimes the mystique is what makes things so great.  I think it worked fairly well for SotN since you played as Alucard who was not entirely human, so it helped make things a bit more relatable all around but after that he became just too damn romanticized.  It even worked pretty well in OoE, as it felt separated enough from the usual.  But for the most part he just didn't feel all that threatening after his backstory was explained in SotN.  Death on the other hand was greatly improved and felt much more sinister.

[AlexCalvo]

I think people are misunderstanding the point I tried to make a little bit.  I fully understand that Dracula is representative of pure evil in the series.  And I am not saying that they should make games with a different final boss.  I am just asking the question of is the cultural baggage of the character turning casual gamers off to the series, and is it limiting the series storytelling potential.  Given the series storyline, I think not using that name so directly so often could help.

I also don't get the emo moniker... terrible tragedy has been the driving force behind most great villains throughout history... fictional and real.  I don't think they uppended the mystique so much with the Mathias storyline, as we still know very little about his hsistory or rise to power, just the spark that started the fire.  Well fires, Elisabetha and Lisa.

[Belmontoya]

I think people are misunderstanding the point I tried to make a little bit.  I fully understand that Dracula is representative of pure evil in the series.  And I am not saying that they should make games with a different final boss.  I am just asking the question of is the cultural baggage of the character turning casual gamers off to the series, and is it limiting the series storytelling potential.  Given the series storyline, I think not using that name so directly so often could help.

I also don't get the emo moniker... terrible tragedy has been the driving force behind most great villains throughout history... fictional and real.  I don't think they uppended the mystique so much with the Mathias storyline, as we still know very little about his hsistory or rise to power, just the spark that started the fire.  Well fires, Elisabetha and Lisa.

I couldn't disagree with you more and I'm actually a little annoyed by what you said.

First off without Dracula, CV likely wouldn't have been a hit. Secondly, he is handled wonderfully up until post SOTN. Wonderfully because they didn't reveal much about him. They kept him mysterious and threatening.

Thirdly, CV ruined Dracula later in the series by ignoring his true, and horrific background. Dracula as Mathias is bullshit. Dracula as Gabriel is bullshit. And the Soma Dracula thing was pretty lame too IMO. They ruined the character and now here you are complaining as if it were Dracula as a character that is bad. They took one of the most terrifying characters in history and made him bad by stripping him of his backstory and replacing it with crap. The fear and uncertainty we're supposed to feel around him was washed away.

CV had a chance to do Dracula justice (something not often done in movies) and they blew it.

Let's talk about the Mathias and Gabriel problem rather than blaming the star character who made the series successful in the first place.

This is ridiculous.

[piscesdreams]

I don't think that cultural baggage has any role here, but I could be wrong.  It's my opinion that the games themselves as a whole have turned off the casual gamer.  But then again, this series was never really for the casual gamer.  But what I mean by that is the games range in playstyles and can be VERY different.  You have classicvanias, metroidvanias, the different playstyles of the 3d games including Lords of Shadow.  There are only bursts of consistency and that may turn a lot of people off because they don't know what to expect from game to game.  You can take Mario to compare against, in that there are tons of games with Mario out there that play very differently, but somehow you always know what to expect when you put in a Mario game.  The casual gamer can easily be turned off by the inconsistency alone with Castlevania.

My point of view with the emo moniker isn't the circumstances that led Dracula to his evil nature, but rather his personality after the fact.  He's too romanticized.  The original games were paid as tribute to the Hammer movies and I have often wondered if the new Dracula was inspired by 1994's Interview with a Vampire.  But I don't even think that his current personality is what keeps casual gamer at bay.  I just don't think this series is really for the casual player and never really has been. 

[AlexCalvo]

I couldn't disagree with you more and I'm actually a little annoyed by what you said.

First off without Dracula, CV likely wouldn't have been a hit. Secondly, he is handled wonderfully up until post SOTN. Wonderfully because they didn't reveal much about him. They kept him mysterious and threatening.

Thirdly, CV ruined Dracula later in the series by ignoring his true, and horrific background. Dracula as Mathias is bullshit. Dracula as Gabriel is bullshit. And the Soma Dracula thing was pretty lame too IMO. They ruined the character and now here you are complaining as if it were Dracula as a character that is bad. They took one of the most terrifying characters in history and made him bad by stripping him of his backstory and replacing it with crap. The fear and uncertainty we're supposed to feel around him was washed away.

CV had a chance to do Dracula justice (something not often done in movies) and they blew it.

Let's talk about the Mathias and Gabriel problem rather than blaming the star character who made the series successful in the first place.

This is ridiculous.

Calm down man.  Don't get mad over fictional characters.

You are also misunderstanding my point pretty considerably.  I know Dracula was the reason the series caught on, I even touched on that in my original post.  Dracula as a villain is about as 2-Dimensional as exists in the western canon.  At least that is what he has become.  Of course that worked up to SoTN because that kind of storytelling worked fine for NES/SNES games.  Nobody wanted more from games as a storytelling medium.  But that certainly changed right around the time of Playstation 1.  And continues to change, as gamers expect more and more from games as a storytelling medium.

Now, I have always been a gameplay first kind of guy, so it doesn't take much away from me if a story is very basic, and the gameplay is great.  But this topic is specifically directed at the series potential in storytelling.  A good story doesn't make a a bad game good, but it certainly makes a good game better.  Now, this problem of Dracula's cultural image has been dealt with in varying ways.  Iga tried to make him into a different character, a "Dracula in name only" kind of situation, and he was far from the first person to do this with the Dracula story.  LoS did the same thing.

But the difference in the two approaches is one seemed to be aware that Dracula as a menacing figure has somewhat diminished in the public eye, so he didn't try to make us think of him all that much, and used more in the sense of "Generic big bad"  he gave him a tragic story, that was essentially ripped right from the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula.  While the other tried to lean into a cultural idea that doesn't really exist that much anymore... Dracula as a dramatic, prolific character.

My question is this.  How should he be handled in future Castlevania stories?  Do you really want the two demensional, evil for evil's sake character of the old, virtually story-less games?  Or is their a way to make him a great, dynamic character, a truly great villain while still holding on to baggage the name Dracula brings with it?  It is not just Castlevania that has tinkered with Dracula's image, it is not even close to the most prolific use of the character.  But in the world today Dracula is seen as a cheesy, cartoonish character.  If you deny that, I don't really see the point in having a conversation, as you are using your opinion of the character and holding it up as the primary image most people have.  So what to do?  If you have an idea please do tell.