Topic: Koji Igarashi Leaves Konami, Founding New Studio, Metroidvania GDC

[beingthehero]

Thanks, Koutei. Those links seem to have all the slides from the presentation as well.

[Charlotte-nyo:3]

From Japanese media. Japanese language. The contents are the same as other existing appearance pages.

http://www.famitsu.com/news/201403/22050353.html
http://www.4gamer.net/games/999/G999903/20140322009/
http://dengekionline.com/elem/000/000/826/826253/
http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20140323_640849.html

Classic "A" is justice vampire. IGA changed it. SoN's "A" is vampire half.

The Famitsu one, and perhaps even all of them, look like more in depth summaries than the english language articles describing the talk.

[Shiroi Koumori]

The Famitsu one, and perhaps even all of them, look like more in depth summaries than the english language articles describing the talk.

Yes. I read the Famitsu one and it is a blow by blow account of the event. The Dengeki has the most complete slides though.
The english reports were the summarized editions and if you are after the meat of the session, the english reports would suffice.

I just have to share some quotes from the famitsu article.
"It wasn't Metroidvania" but "Zeldavania"!
"First let's talk about Alu... oh, let's just call him A."
"There was a programmer within the team who knew how to defeat his created boss theoretically but couldn't execute it during play."

[theANdROId]

From Japanese media. Japanese language. The contents are the same as other existing appearance pages.

http://www.famitsu.com/news/201403/22050353.html
http://www.4gamer.net/games/999/G999903/20140322009/
http://dengekionline.com/elem/000/000/826/826253/
http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20140323_640849.html

Classic "A" is justice vampire. IGA changed it. SoN's "A" is vampire half.

...wait...what are we looking at here...am I understanding...this is new stuff?!?! 

[beingthehero]

I guess that interview with IGA that IGN said would come by the end of the week never materialized. : /

[Charlotte-nyo:3]

I guess they were too busy doing their tri-daily updates about pointless things in Titanfall.

[DarkPrinceAlucard]

Man I hope whatever project he decides to do that he gets Michiru and Ayami back.

Just having the "team" back together for his future project would alone bring in many metroidvania fans even if its not a castlevania'like game.

[beingthehero]

So one thing that struck me odd is that in the presentation IGA said that since SotN was originally to be just a gaiden game that they ignored the past titles. But in the Chronicles interview in 2001, he said he deliberately wrote the story so that the disparate Castlevania games would be connected to each other since they all seemed to be all over the place. And SotN did just that, as it tied CVIII and Rondo together. HoD did the same thing later by tying Simon's Quest in with the latter-day Castlevania games, and PoR did the same with Bloodlines. So it seemed pretty odd for him to say that they were kind of laid back about the whole thing.

Also I like the slide that says 'keep one character from start to finish' and SotN's prologue had you playing as Richter. I wonder why he said that they had issues with using a whip-wielder in SotN, since HoD and PoR had similarly-large sprites.

[Nagumo]

Gaiden can mean both "spin-off" and "alternate universe story", Hero-kun. It can mean a lot of things actually. SotN was supposed to be a spin-off that tied all past games together.

[Charlotte-nyo:3]

I took it less as him saying he "ignored" past games and more as him saying they went rather experimental on the story and weren't afraid to step on any past continuity toes since they could just write the game out of the canon later if they wanted (if there was fan displeasure or the like).

Now that you mention it though, beingthehero, IGA may have consciously been following a similar storyline formula that SotN uses for Rondo when it comes to HoD and PoR. Even AoS and DoS sort of refer to the past events of another "game," ignoring the fact that that game doesn't exist but was probably meant to eventually. OoE is the one that kind of breaks the mold. Of course it's also possible that he felt with the timeline as packed as it was, he needed to justify closeness of the newer game to the last game in the canon.

Also, while playing as Richter in the intro may seem like a contradiction, I think he was probably thinking of disallowing playing as multiple characters more in the context of something like 50% of the game as one character, then losing that character and playing the next 50% with another one since it would cut the progression. Richter's bit in the intro doesn't even make up 1% of the game, so it is a technical contradiction but not necessarily one in spirit. The RPG elements of SotN wouldn't really work well with something like a 50-50 pr 60-40 split between characters but they work fine with a short intro stage that doesn't feature them.

Now the whip thing does seem more problematic given what he was saying.

[Nagumo]

I took it less as him saying he "ignored" past games and more as him saying they went rather experimental on the story and weren't afraid to step on any past continuity toes since they could just write the game out of the canon later if they wanted (if there was fan displeasure or the like).

That could be true. I remember IGA told me in the correspondence that he created the timeline as a reference during SotN's development and that it was later leaked. However, I think what he also meant by the "ignored" part is that they ignored certain details established in the earlier games if that was convenient. For example, like Koutei mentioned, Alucard's backstory from CV3 is incompatible with his backstory from SotN.     

[Dark Nemesis]

I don't know if it has been posted, but here is an interview, giving some light why Iga left Konami and what are his next plans.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5523676/koji-igarashi-interview-castlevania-konami-and-going-independent

[Reinhart77]

Knowing me, I'll buy Iga's first Metroidvania out of respect and curiosity, give it a spin, but then never finish it, probably because it's not actually Castlevania.  Did that with Nanobreaker once things started getting hard.  Also do that with just about any non-CV action adventure games, like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta.  It'll have to inflame a passion in order to get me to finish it.

[Shiroi Koumori]

I will also buy his next game. I just hope it won't be as hard as Nanobreaker.

[PyramidHead]

Oh! That's some great news! I'm curious what IGA can do without Konami, without being restricted by the setting of C.