Topic: What would *you* change about the CV Universe?

[Kaneda]

I'm not speaking in terms of continuity, although that can apply, too. How would you re-shape the Castlevania mythos to your ideal vision? Not as in gameplay, but within the fictional elements themselves.

For me:

*Bring Dracula more in line with Stoker's novel. So make him fit the description, have the same powers, and the same weaknesses. Which means no death by sunlight. I hate that it has become so engrained into the character. Well, he's out during daytime in CV64 if its the right time. But I digress.

*Piggy-backing onto the first bullet, have the games add more to the elements of the novel. He has three vampiresses in his castle. Maybe they're characters within CV story that get turned?

*Get rid of Alucard. The name, not the character. It's corny. Just let him be Adrian Fahrenheit. No Tepes. It's a title, not a surname.

*Elaborate on Frakenstein('s monster). He's in so many of the games, usually in a lab setting, but there's never much in the way of fleshing out the character. Also, address the fact that the Monster is being created centuries before Mary Shelley's novel takes place. Maybe having Dracula's books of alchemy somehow end up in the hands of Victor Frankenstein. Don't know.

*Keep Trevor as the first Belmont.

*Quincey Morris kills Dracula once and for all. He's not a Belmont. His name is spelled correctly.

*Incorporate more traditional vampire remedies/killing methods.

*Do away with the 100 year resurrection gimmick.

*Let SCV4 be a sequel like it is in the West. Simon's story needs proper closure after CV2's ending.

*Let Dracula X be a sequel to Rondo as it gives the impression of being so.

*Explore the origins of other vampires and monsters, i.e., Carmilla, Mummies, Medusa, etc.

*Fix the name translations to their intentional references. Fernandez instead of Belnades, Ricardo instead of Lecarde, Orlock instead of Olrox.

*Bring back and explore the Tower of Colbert. Ever since I first read about it in the VK manual, I've been intrigued. Where is it? What's there? Is it the tower where you confront Dracula?

*Incorporate loyal gypsy slaves of Dracula as villains for the Belmonts to confront. 

*Alucard is a vampire, not a dhampir. Dracula gives his unborn child's body as payment for his own immortality. So Alucard is "born" undead. He has a conscience, he loves and wants to do right, but his darker impulses forever haunt him.

That's all I can think of off-hand. I'll probably add more later. Your thoughts?


P.S. Sorry if this thread already exists. I haven't found one. Redirect me, if necessary.

[theANdROId]

Interesting question...I'll have to give it some thought.  You make some good points, though I personally like "Alucard".  Maybe it is a little corny, but not so much that it can't be used.

Didn't someone (in another topic somewhere) say something about the name Alucard not being a Castlevania thing, but from the original story of Dracula?

[crisis]

dracula would be vlad tepes, nobody else

sonia would be reinstated, somewhere

alucard grant & sypha would play a role in curse of darkness

curse of darkness would take place 3 weeks/months after cviii, not 3 years

more insight into the Belmont family, as well as dracula & lisa's relationship

portrait of ruin never happened

or, if it did happen, incorporate more "military-esque" vibe in the story. brauner would be replaced by hitler, since hitler too was an aspiring artist. hitler & the nazis, wanting to gain advantage over the allies, resurrects draculas castle. little known fact is that some of hitler's top officials were into the occult & mysticism

dawn of sorrow never happened

[theplottwist]

-Make Dracula Vlad Tepes, but still having a connection with the Belmonts (I really have no problem with him being Mathias, but I'd choose for him to be Vlad Tepes for it to coincide more with Bram Stoker).

-Make Vlad Tepes REALLY be more active into Lament of Innocence. Like, really more active as in "Vlad and Leon storm Water's castle together, but it ends up to be a trap set by Vlad himself". Have Vlad be playable.

-Reintroduce Sonia as the first human to face Dracula, but make her die, prompting Trevor to return to Wallachia and go after Dracula himself using the Vampire Killer.

-Reintroduce Haunted Castle's canon into the first Castlevania. Gameplay wise, make Simon travel the country before facing Dracula. (A Haunted Castle/Super Castlevania IV mix).

-Have Simon's revelation about the curse not be brought to him by a "mysterious woman ghost". Make him either notice this alone, introduce a new character or a ghost from a previous character.

-Harmony of Dissonance never happened.

-Richter fails against Dracula imediatelly, not after 6 years, prompting Alucard to come imediatelly. Have SotN be about Richter AND Alucard fighting inside the Castle, but having Alucard face Dracula at the end.

-Introduce Drolta Tzuentes clearly on Bloodlines. Have her be the second-to-last boss.

-I'd still keep Portrait of Ruin, but crisis' idea about Hitler is fucking awesome. Keep this Hitler plot.

-Dawn of Sorrow has Soma die, and a new Dark Lord arise. Have Julius and team deliver a third-age ass-kicking session.

-Have Circle of the Moon reintroduced. The Baldwin are a branch of the Belmonts, and their job is to keep Carmilla at bay using a Vampire Killer replica (The Hunter Whip), parallel to the Belmonts against Dracula. Sometimes, both could overlap. Nathan Graves could be the ancestor of the modern Morrises.

[theplottwist]

Interesting question...I'll have to give it some thought.  You make some good points, though I personally like "Alucard".  Maybe it is a little corny, but not so much that it can't be used.

Didn't someone (in another topic somewhere) say something about the name Alucard not being a Castlevania thing, but from the original story of Dracula?

Yeah, "Alucard" comes from "Son of Dracula". If I'm not mistaken, it comes from a novel even before this movie. Konami has no grasps on anything.

Now, thinking about it, Konami has no grasp in almost nothing Castlevania-related! Most of the monsters are public-domain mythology. Dracula himself is not theirs. Many of the characters were based on real world personalities. Castlevania is a bunch of public-domain stuff strung together into an original IP

EDIT: Sorry for the double-post! Forgot to click "Modify", and clicked "Reply" instead.

[GuyStarwind]

Only thing I can think of is have the bad ending in DoS be the canon ending

[JR]

I'd have individual games and their accompanying sequels occupy their own separate timelines, instead of having one great big chronology of, "Drac gets his ass kicked, crawls back to whatever hole he was resurrected from," time and time again. It makes Dracula out to be somewhat of a joke. If it was done this way, you'd lose the long lineage of Belmonts, which would kind of suck, but I digress.

[Munchy]

-Expand the universe to have more supernatural villains/main baddies than just Dracula. LoS was a start, but that basically just switched Belmont out with Dracula, and Dracula out with Satan.

-Locate some games in other parts of the world to switch it up.

-Do something else with Futurevania (Aria of Sorrow on). There's a cult right? Make them an actual threat. And an actual cult with some scary fucked up people. Have the world shit out some other groups of demons now that Dracula's out of the picture. I dunno.

-I have this idea that Dracula's castle was always fucked up, that the land it was built on was somehow cursed and a perpetual breeding ground for some kind of demonic nonsense, making it an ideal place for necromancers or bad dudes to meet even before there was any kind of settlement there. Some games that take place before Dracula or Walter would be nifty.

-I'd like a game that reuses the dash mechanic from HoD, provided the enemies are just as agile or smart enough to give you a bad time regardless.

[Nagumo]

I would have CV1, 2, and 3 be its own self-contained trilogy as originally intended by Akamatsu and the other staff. Ralph/Christopher defeats Dracula for the first time and Simon seals him away forever 107 years later. That would require a few holes to be filled up in the IGA canon, which creates a perfect opportunity to come up with new games that actually fit.

Aside from that, I wouldn't change much about the IGAverse itself. Better gender diversity (which is non-existent, hah!) within the Belmont Clan would be nice.

[SiFi270]

I'd retcon things around so that the adventure mentioned in Circle of the Moon's backstory was actually Order of Ecclesia. Shanoa would have been Nathan's mother, and both Morris and Nathan's father would be among the villagers with ties to the Belmonts.

[Kaneda]

I would have CV1, 2, and 3 be its own self-contained trilogy as originally intended by Akamatsu and the other staff. Ralph/Christopher defeats Dracula for the first time and Simon seals him away forever 107 years later.

I'd never heard about that before. Point of reference?

[Nagumo]

It's a long story.

[Belmontoya]

I would change everything after Rondo of Blood.

SOTN would be released without Castlevania in the title and would be it's own timeline. Like Kid Dracula was. IGA would be in charge of these metriod-like games starring Alucard, the son of Dracula.

In place of SOTN, we would be given Castlevania 5 on the playstation that would be an open world game like Simon's Quest (not like metriod) based on the Super Castlevania 4 engine. The game would be made by the same team behind SCV4. In short, Masahiro Ueno and Kazumi Kitaue would be the dominant driving force behind Castlevania for a time, not IGA.

I think if the series would have been set on that path, everything that followed would have been better than what we got.

[Kaneda]

Yeah, "Alucard" comes from "Son of Dracula". If I'm not mistaken, it comes from a novel even before this movie. Konami has no grasps on anything.

The idea of a vampire using an anagram of their original name for a new identity most likely originated from Carmilla. She does does it several times throughout the story. It's possible that the screenwriter for Son of Dracula was aware of that novel being an influence on Stoker's own work and made use of a few ideas.

[Qwertyvania]

These aren't exactly changes, but things that could be expanded on

The period before Trevor in which the Belmonts had been banished

Maybe some new Belmont that had gone to North America around the time of the pilgrims. There could be a vampire or monster of some sort there, and it could give more of a story connecting the Belmonts and the Morris' (is that Morris in plural? )

More of a story around the vampire killer being given to the Morris', as well as the Belmonts reclaiming the whip.

The Demon Castle War

Maybe something happens in 2094 when the vampire killer becomes 1,000 years old