Topic: Maria's progression in the SOTN castle was weird

[The Puritan]

So I was reflecting on SOTN's game progression and realized something off. After you get the Jewel of Open from the Master Librarian, you're supposed to go back to the Alchemy Lab and open the blue door. You then talk to Maria, who runs off and leaves you free to enter the Royal Chapel. You fight your way through that, kill the Hippogriff... and find her applauding you from the right side of the room.

Now obviously she didn't double back and follow you after you talked to her in the Lab. The only other way she could've come into the boss room was to enter the Chapel through the Castle Keep. But are we to believe she traversed the Lab, the Marble Gallery, the Outer Wall, the Clock Tower, and the Castle Keep in the same time it took Alucard to go through the Chapel?

And what about after that? The next time you speak to her is in the room beyond the Chapel's spike corridor, where you get the Silver Ring. Fine. But after THAT,  you next speak to her in the Gallery's ceremonial room. What was she doing there and how'd she even get in without both rings?

Someone's got a little too much time on his hands, but it might be interesting to trace a theoretical path for Maria through the SOTN castle and maybe make sense of it, especially in relation to (whatever is generally accepted as) Alucard's path.

[Super Waffle]

She's doing like a Sephiroth thing where the Maria as we know her has actually been hibernating with her animal pals in the castle's basement ever since it collapsed at the end of RoB. The Maria in SotN are her multiple astral projections running around.

[VladCT]

Remind me, did Maria have any OoB clip tricks?

[theplottwist]

The problem with tracing paths is that the in-universe castle isn't a flat 2D structure. Maria could be doing a path that doesn't even exist to the player, just like Richter can sit far in the background and vanish from the room through a route unavailable to you. The castle has depth, it's us that are trapped into a 2D progression.

Of course this is a cop-out to your proposed idea (trace hypothetical path while constrained to the Alucard progression), but still.

[Inccubus]

The problem with tracing paths is that the in-universe castle isn't a flat 2D structure. Maria could be doing a path that doesn't even exist to the player, just like Richter can sit far in the background and vanish from the room through a route unavailable to you. The castle has depth, it's us that are trapped into a 2D progression.

Of course this is a cop-out to your proposed idea (trace hypothetical path while constrained to the Alucard progression), but still.

I was going to say essentially the same thing, though my sarcastic mood probably would have made me come off as rude.