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?
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.
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.
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^^^
It's a long story (http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,6611.0.html).
Morris' (is that Morris in plural? :P)
- Stop calling him Vlad Tepes. Tepes was an insult coined by his enemies after he died. His name was Vlad Dracula. He even signed it Wladislaus Dragwlya. Anglicized, that's Vladislaus Dracula.
- Let him use his classic powers from the novel some more. Also, no more death by sunlight.
- Part of the plot of the novel involved the band of heroes searching for various coffins Dracula had hidden throughout England and destroying them. How the hell has this not been incorporated into a Castlevania game?
- Don't keep Dracula confined to one room. In keeping with the original novel, it'd be fun to play a game of cat-and-mouse with him.
- Don't be afraid to play with other Gothic characters. Give Frankenstein's Monster more to do, more characterization. Maybe toss in Melmoth the Wanderer, or the three witches from Macbeth.
- Whoever is in charge of designing the visuals needs to watch every Gothic Horror film that Mario Bava ever made. Follow it up with Corman's Poe cycle and the underrated Vincent Price historical horror, Witchfinder General.
- Speaking of Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins would be a great character to include in some capacity.
Lament of Innocence: Lose the whole Dracula/Mathias connection entirely. Have Mathias instead be like Walter; A stepping stone to help strengthen the early Belmont family. To prepare them for when they must face the real Dracula.
Remake a new Legends game with Sonia reinstated. Have a backstory describing Vlad's rise and fall, his betrayal to Mathias (now King Mathias of Hungary), and stealing of the Crimson stone. Vlad loses his wife due to the Turks deceit and this act prompts Vlad to become Dracula. The Japanese backstory of legends would be used rather then the US version. Sonia is Trevor's mother and she trains her son to be the next hero of legend.
CV Resurrection would be made.
Curse of Darkness never happens. There are no devil forge masters nor any time travelers.
SCV4 would be made into a sequel of CV II.
Give CVII's game a further in-depth backstory
I came up with this last year:
CotM would still be a Castlevania gaiden but Nathan Graves would actually be a Belmont descendant thus explaining why he's able to kill Dracula. His hunter whip is similar to the Vampirekiller, but not one and the same.
Only a Belmont by blood decent can slay the Count. No more wannabes.
The Vampirekiller whip is brought back as being a divine weapon of holy power rather then a whip of alchemy. And only a blood descendant of the Belmonts can wield it or it simply won't work.
Give Carmilla a more important Role in the CV universe. As a bloody rival to Dracula.
Death is one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and is not in any way a Shinigami.
PoR happens just like;^^^
This.
Bram stoker's Dracula would be incorporated into the CV universe with some slight (but not major) changes.
The backstory of Bloodlines would be explained as to clear up the confusion of the Morris and Lecarde childrens' involvement at the climactic final struggle between Dracula and Quincy Morris.
The whole idea of why the Belmonts cannot touch the whip would be dropped entirely if it cannot be explained in any coherent or rational way.
Make the 1999 game.
Dawn of Sorrow never happens.
Have a far more gender neutral series with female Belmont leads.
Fully explain the 100 year cycle of Dracula's resurrections so as to avoid any further confusion. And also explain in detail about his premature resurrections.
Dracula himself created Castlevania through his own power.
I'm sorry that was rude of me.
ALTHOUGH. There are other games in the series where the bad ending seems to be canon. Off the top of my head, Castlevania 64's bad ending would explain why Dracula's been alone in his castle for years by the start of Bram Stoker's novel: Reinhardt and Carrie defeated Gilles de Rais and his forces, but never figured out that Malus was the real Dracula. This could also mean that Carrie, having accepted the offer to marry him, ended up becoming one of the brides seen in the book.
Where you have you been all my life? 8)Mostly just a lurker.
As for the sunlight thing... Did sunlight ever explicitly kill him in any game? He disappears as the sun rises in Dracula X and Portrait of Ruin, but by that point he's already been defeated, and the sun's just there to signify that the eternal night, a sign of his influence, is gone.
What the localizers do in a region outside the one a game was created is never canon unless unless it is retconned by the creators in a later game.
And do we have 100% certainty that it wasn't at some point going to be a sequel and then the designers just decided to take it the remake route? The overall design of the game seems so far removed from the original that I have a hard time believing that it wouldn't have been considered sequel material in blueprint. Vampire Killer and Chronicles both strongly resemble their progenitor with variations and additions to give them their own distinction. Haunted Castle doesn't, but how often do arcade games really resemble their console counterparts? I've never read anything saying that the tombstone is meant as an homage, explicit or otherwise.
As for the state of SCV4 as a sequel in NA, I see the release in Japan as overriding whatever shinanigans were done by the US offices.
For me the original release version of anything trumps any localization.
The worst localized manual I've ever seen is for Castlevania: The Adventure. There's just too much to quote. (http://www.vgmuseum.com/mrp/manual-gb.htm)
You have to keep in mind that SCIV status of "remake" was made up to rationalise its position in canon after the fact. Before IGA there was no canon, everybody did whatever they wanted. My personal theory is that the story of the NES games, which formed a small cohesive canon by themselves, was basically finished, with no more holes to fill. CV3 told the origin story and CV2 was the definite conclusion. Therefore, they basically rebooted the storyline with SCIV. Simon and Dracula are back, only the setting is different. That's my personal view of the game.
I lol'd at 'madman'... Mudman? :P
It's a long story (http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,6611.0.html).
Eh, this is probably a very unpopular opinion around these parts, but I wouldn't mind Bloodlines/PoR's ties with the Stoker novel to be severed. It's hard for me to imagine both of these occupying the same continuity, just because the CV franchise seems just so much more heavily steeped in fantasy...it makes the novel rather mundane in comparison.I dislike the idea of removing Stoker's novel tbh. If you do this you may as well retcon Bloodlines, and I like Bloodlines along with its timeline placement. I do however, prefer Iga's idea that Alucard kills Dracula rather than Quincy. I think a manga or prologue would have been nice and sufficed to reaffirm the connection between novel<->game.
On that note, I could take or leave CV Drac being Vlad Tepes, too. I don't hate the idea, but it doesn't really add much to the series for me, either. Maybe I'm weird?
It's hard for me to imagine both of these occupying the same continuity, just because the CV franchise seems just so much more heavily steeped in fantasy...it makes the novel rather mundane in comparison.
Incubus, you should read this thread.
I suppose the best visualization would be like this:
CV3 --> CV1 --> CV2 [The End]
Or
CVA --> CV:BR --> CV1 -->CV2 [The End]
IGA later retconned this by making Trevor and Christopher two seperate people (see the source in the thread).
I do however, prefer Iga's idea that Alucard kills Dracula rather than Quincy.
This would not make any sense from Bloodlines' point of view considering the manual states Quincy to be the one to slay him in 1897. I'm glad IGA never took such an unnecessary step or the CV universe would be even more ambiguous then it currently is. Quincy was made a Belmont by blood in CV Bloodlines' back story therefore he can kill Dracula.
So this is a thread about what people would change about CV's universe...
Really have a zero carefactor what the manual says - this would also potentially change - as we're talking in hypotheticals.
I'm guessing he didn't use the Vampire Killer because of the whole "it drains your life if your last name isn't belmont" thing.
And no mention of him being a widower isn't the same as him not being one. I'm sure he mentioned that to Lucy when proposing to her, not in a guilt-trippy way, but in a "I have a son who needs a mother" kind of way. We only hear about the proposal secondhand in a letter she writes, and she probably didn't feel it necessary to mention details like that to Mina.
That could be one rationalization, but if you're going to adapt "Dracula" to Castlevania then why wouldn't you have him wield it?
After all people complain that at first the series was very specific about the Vampire Killer being needed to kill Dracula and that in the later filler games any schmuck with a sword can do it.
So as long as we're discussing changes in the series, this is one point I would contend.
Only a Belmont with the Vampire Killer or someone wielding Dracula's own power (Alucard) can put him down for the 100 years.
Ironic, that in POR you can actually kill Dracula without the VK. Technically if the player is skilled enough, this should be the good ending as Jonathan won't die. I've never tried this, or if I did I can't recall.
I can confirm this. It was either using the VK or the Holy claymore sword. Or a bit of both. And the reason why Jonathan can kill Dracula without the Vampirekiller? Belmont by blood. Only his sir name is different. Also the only way to get a bad ending in the game is if you fail to save Eric's daughters and instead fight them to the death.
And the reason why Jonathan can kill Dracula without the Vampirekiller? Belmont by blood. Only his sir name is different.
you can kill dracula using nothing but cream pies & paper airplanes.. im not kidding
When you beat the game after unlocking the whip, it assumes you used the whip to beat Dracula, and unlocks the true ending. When you do it without unlocking it, *if I'm not mistaken* the ending comments on it, but the game's extras are not unlocked, signaling that canonically (independent of having beaten Dracula with a cream pie), Jonathan DID use the whip.
When you beat the game after unlocking the whip, it assumes you used the whip to beat Dracula, and unlocks the true ending. When you do it without unlocking it, *if I'm not mistaken* the ending comments on it, but the game's extras are not unlocked, signaling that canonically (independent of having beaten Dracula with a cream pie), Jonathan DID use the whip.
I always assumed that Quincey Morris was unaware of being of Belmont blood, even before the game Portrait of Ruin. This would at least be consistent with the literary character, since he doesn't know anything about vampires, Dracula, etc. You could justify their conflict as being the Belmont destiny and they're naturally drawn to one another. It would also explain why he uses a Bowie knife instead of the Vampire Killer.I take issue with this as it's quite obvious Richter was the 'Whip's memory" and hence the last Belmont to wield the VK. It's part of the canon that the VK was passed to the Morris family, so by that logic the whip was passed after Richter. By the time it was passed to Quincey, he would have to at least know about the VK and something about the Belmonts/ his ancestry. How much he knows is another story. However, If Johnny Morris and Eric Lecarde know, then I would assume Quincey passed that knowledge on in some form (be it through journal entries like the Novel or to his partner; Johnny's mother).
Going by the translation of the Japanese manual on Mr. P's site, the story doesn't mention anything about John and Eric being present for the final battle. Also, while the novel depicts Quincey as unmarried and trying to court Lucy, there's nothing to say that he wasn't widowed and/or had children in the past. Or John could be an illegitimate son. I'm less inclined to accept the latter since Stoker painted all the characters as being pure and virtuous and Quincey Morris as gentlemanly. A retcon like that being made for the sake of Castlevania would go against Quincey's characterization.
I think he knew about his destiny, mainly because he's more willing to accept the existence of vampires than Arthur or Dr. Seward, and also because of the anecdote he shares about him having to put one of his horses down after a bat drains its blood.
This so freaking much. I don't get why people try to justify videogame mechanics with story. Jonathan can't "kill Dracula without the Vampire Killer because Belmont blood". He can do it because the developers can't prohibit the player of equipping the short sword and mowing Dracula down with it. besides, Belmont blood by itself doesn't guarantee you can attack Dracula. Belmont blood guarantees ONLY that you can wield the Vampire Killer. And even so, if you're not a Belmont even in surname, your life will be drained.
While it's true that game play doesn't necessarily have a 1:1 ratio to the story, the fact of the matter is that the developers could have prohibited the player in any way they chose. They probably didn't because they likely thought that it would be less fun for the player.
Personally, I prefer that the game play reflect the story as closely as possible. It eliminates exactly this kind of discussion.
All the scenarios that are not part of the story should be relegated to replays or non-story modes.
While I agree that story modes should reflect plot events, I do not see the point of a game that allows you to collect so many items then strip you of the ability to do things like use those items on bosses. This is too restrictive for the nature of game. However, the likes of Zelda OOT and Castlevania OOE got it right for the final boss fight (not counting glitches) i.e. the player has to use a weapon to deliver the final blow in order to destroy the final boss. This works better than restricting the player imo.
Seems like a bit of a nit pick to be honest. SotN isn't a pure action game so having to go into your inventory sometimes is going to happen.
Think of it this way, your intelligence is rewarded if you figure out the correct weapons to use ahead of time by giving you an uninterrupted battle.
I wouldn't call the use of silver on werebeasts archaic, it's simply the lore associated with them.Each to his own. The oldschool CV's never had this but compensated for it in other ways i.e. the cross has the best range, axe hits enemies and objects you could never hit otherwise, and holy water raped enemies on the ground.
Not having it makes them much less of a threat. And I for one would prefer that a werewolf be an actual threat instead of a random enemy that is only a werewolf as a set piece.
Correction, the Belmont's hunt the night. The Vampire Killer does what it does because of the soul bonded to it.The Belmont hunts the night, which they're most famous for doing in the confines of 'Demon Castle Dracula'. Dracula was Mathias, he became evil and embraced a demonic nature. Mathias professes wanting revenge against God, this is demonic in the sense that it is taking the stance of being anti-God/ anti-Christ.
I see it like this, the alchemical process that bonded Sara's soul to the whip used her hatred of Walter and then Mathias as a source of power.
So any being perceived as being associated with Mathias/vampires will be vulnerable to the whip.Demon is a very broad term. Demons>>>>>Vampires, sub category
That's why it's affective against Death, which LoI is keen to point out is divine and thus not a demon.
In fact, most of the enemies you fight in any given Castlevania game are not demonic at all.
And besides that, the whip is specifically designed to slay vampires, not demons.
There are ways around this, allowing certain sets of weapons, items or glyphs for example to be saved and shuffled through without accessing inventory. Of course you have to access it sometimes, and it's part of what I liked about Sotn, but more as a one off game. Generally I think Castlevania is better at being faster paced with its gameplay.
Each to his own. The oldschool CV's never had this but compensated for it in other ways i.e. the cross has the best range, axe hits enemies and objects you could never hit otherwise, and holy water raped enemies on the ground.
The Belmont hunts the night, which they're most famous for doing in the confines of 'Demon Castle Dracula'. Dracula was Mathias, he became evil and embraced a demonic nature. Mathias professes wanting revenge against God, this is demonic in the sense that it is taking the stance of being anti-God/ anti-Christ.
Dracula also has the ability to transform into a Demon, lest we forget.
Sara's hatred is never mentioned, that's not part of her character.
"I can feel it. My heartbeat is weakening and my blood is growing cold... I can feel myself changing into something inhuman... If my soul can save others, then I won't die in vain. I do not want anyone else to suffer my fate."
It's because she was a pure untarnished soul that becomes the VK's power, nothing to do with hatred, in fact she wanted to help Leon which is why she offered her "tainted soul" to Leon. She knew she'd lose her humanity to vampirism.
Demon is a very broad term. Demons>>>>>Vampires, sub category
If the entities aren't demonic, they're associated with the night and that's enough.
The VK is specially made to hunt the night, that is all.
I think you could make an argument that most of the enemies you fight in Castlevania ARE demonic. IRL witch hunting lore blames demonic/Satan-derived powers for animal-human hybrids, possessed inanimate objects, and simply normal people turned evil and violent. If a witch/wizard/necromancer were to cast a spell or control skeletons or do anything like that, it was generally taken to be the work of a devil and not the witch alone. Pretty much all of the magic sciences involved invoking a demonic being and making THEM do the work.
Having selectable sets of inventory is convenient, but I still don't see it as that big a deal if you have to switch up weapons from time to time in an action-RPG when the situation calls for it.
I would disagree about fast paced game play as a fan of the original games.
Before SotN, Castlevania games were always designed as slower paced platformers that punished rushing forward and not thinking about what you're doing... especially near pits.
Wanting revenge against God does not make you demonic.It makes you anti-Christ in the physical sense, and in LOI's context - willing to embrace the one's evil/ demonic nature. i.e. Kidnapping your best friend's fiance, knowing she'll be turned into a vampire and using the Crimson Stone to become lord of the vampires. Yes ....not demonic at all.
Besides, as far as we know from the games' stories Mathias does not gain demonic powers until he becomes the Dark Lord in CV3.Transforming into the Lord of the Vampires and turning into a bat is not demonic..
LoI only specifies that he has become a vampire and this isn't Buffy the Vampire Slayer where vampires are a type of demon.Then the series should be called Vampire Castle Dracula... No but you're right, Medusa, The Forgotten One, all the enemies the castle is crawling with, I'm sure they're all good people/ animals/ hybrids.
I watched the ending while I was writing my previous post and I'm watching the cut scenes involving Sara as I write this one.Though it's never stated in this moment. It could be that the whip itself imbued with Sara's soul is reacting with rage toward the night.
Leon specifically says that he can sense the whip's rage at the end of the game.
Since the whip contains Sara's soul then, by transitive property, it's Sara's rage Leon is feeling.
The source of the whip's power is most definitely pure, but rage isn't born of kindness.I never said she wasn't human, I said this is not how her character was portrayed, nor how the manual describes her. She is described as pure.
Assuming Sara has no hatred or anger in her character reduces her to a flat one-dimensional character.
And, of course the best bit of evidence that the source of the Vampire Killer's power is Sarah's hatred is the very incantation Rinaldo uses to bond Sara's soul to the whip:Even if true, this is what Rinaldo is saying, it doesn't resonate with what Sara says about wanting to help and have others avoid her fate. It could be that it simply harnessed any hatred she had inside her. I'd be interested to see what the Japanese text says.
Rinaldo: "All becomes one in infinity. The tainted soul joins his. Undesired and cursed soul, his blood accepts your HATRED for the power to slay."
Later Leon says, "Yes, I can tell. The power of hatred and destruction the whip has against vampires."Again, this is highlighting one emotion against the night. The power came from Sara's soul joining with the Whip of Alchemy. granted that the whip requires a tainted soul for its completion, but it didn't necessarily require Sara's soul. It required the tainted soul of someone who trusts the wielder of the Whip of Alchemy. One then has to wonder if the tainted soul's character has anything to do with this at all. It seems more like the Whip of Alchemy harnessing the soul and emphasising the one emotion for its completion rather than saying X is filled with hate because of Y - that's one dimensional.
Transforming into the Lord of the Vampires and turning into a bat is not demonic..
Then the series should be called Vampire Castle Dracula...
Japan is under 1% Christian
It makes you anti-Christ in the physical sense, and in LOI's context - willing to embrace the one's evil/ demonic nature. i.e. Kidnapping your best friend's fiance, knowing she'll be turned into a vampire and using the Crimson Stone to become lord of the vampires. Yes ....not demonic at all.
Transforming into the Lord of the Vampires and turning into a bat is not demonic..
Then the series should be called Vampire Castle Dracula... No but you're right, Medusa, The Forgotten One, all the enemies the castle is crawling with, I'm sure they're all good people/ animals/ hybrids.
I'm not even going to comment about buffy and the fact you watch it.
You might want to define what you consider demonic then, because it doesn't seem like it's much if anything.
Though it's never stated in this moment. It could be that the whip itself imbued with Sara's soul is reacting with rage toward the night.
I never said she wasn't human, I said this is not how her character was portrayed, nor how the manual describes her. She is described as pure.
Even if true, this is what Rinaldo is saying, it doesn't resonate with what Sara says about wanting to help and have others avoid her fate. It could be that it simply harnessed any hatred she had inside her. I'd be interested to see what the Japanese text says.
Again, this is highlighting one emotion against the night. The power came from Sara's soul joining with the Whip of Alchemy. granted that the whip requires a tainted soul for its completion, but it didn't necessarily require Sara's soul. It required the tainted soul of someone who trusts the wielder of the Whip of Alchemy. One then has to wonder if the tainted soul's character has anything to do with this at all. It seems more like the Whip of Alchemy harnessing the soul and emphasising the one emotion for its completion rather than saying X is filled with hate because of Y - that's one dimensional.
I believe that demon is a catch-all term for those who serve Dracula as well as the Count himself. You could use monster, too, and that might be more accurate. But then ghosts aren't really monsters, either. Demon works because everyone under Dracula's command is demonic in origin. He's using his powers to create his own army.
That's my take.
Japan is under 1% Christian, so I doubt Akuma is referring to "Demon"/"Devil" in a Biblical sense. I always thought it meant all-purpose evil/malevolent non-human/non-living beings.
Japan is under 1% Christian, so I doubt Akuma is referring to "Demon"/"Devil" in a Biblical sense. I always thought it meant all-purpose evil/malevolent non-human/non-living beings.
That's exactly what it means. The term pretty much must have originated from before Christianity was introduced in Japan because otherwise they would have used an European loanword for "devil". I'm pretty sure it's not exclusively used to say devil nowadays either, and I can even provide a Castlevania related example. In one of the novels, the blood of a vampire is refered to as "akuma no chi", which you could translate as "devil's blood". Basically, in all the cases where akuma doesn't specifally refers to a devil, it's often still translated like that anyway because no other English equivalent exists.
Whoops I gave this thread a two-star rating while struggling with my phone's touchscreen sorry guys.
Let me digress a moment to check on the description of this guy in the original release.
暴君アマラリックを射殺した神の射手
Bōkun amararikku o shasatsu shi ta kami no shashu
Google Translate: Archers of God who shot and killed tyrant [Amalaric]Oh, and Medusa was a goddess that was cursed by one of the Olympian gods and subsequently killed.
Who knows, since they don't really ever tell you anything about what Dracula's soul is up to when he goes (presumably) back to hell after each defeat he may just have run into Medusa and 'recruited' her.
Really? The story I'm familiar with is that Medusa was one of the many temple servants to Aphrodite; Goddess of love and beauty. Medusa was apparently a very, very beautiful woman; beautiful enough to almost rival the goddess she serves and the God Poseidon was smitten with her. She resisted all his attempts to court her and then finally, getting all fed up he raped her in Aphrodite's temple. This desecration of her temple angered the goddess (or she was extremely jealous which is also a bad thing when it comes to Aphrodite) and she cursed Medusa with a hideous form; part snake, part human. Very much the polar apposite to her former beauty. It's essentially a classic Greek tragedy where the innocent victim is held accountable and where the criminal gets away with rape :P
In fact, Dracula's soul goes to the Makai, the demon world, and gets corrupted even more. Here is the source:
http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php?topic=7375.30 (http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php?topic=7375.30)
There's the thing; you said it yourself the creatures in the castle are MOSTLY of darkness.Funnily enough in AOS when Soma talks about his 'dark powers' he states that dark doesn't necessarily mean 'evil'.
Being "of darkness" doesn't equate to being demonic any more than being of light.
So they aren't even fallen angels in the original.Point taken about the demonic.
Dracula gained dominion of an angelic creature.
So there you go even if only one creature in the place is specifically not a demon, then the idea that all the creatures are demonic has to get thrown out.
As for Dracula's tier, he is the Dark Lord which is the top of the evil food chain.^this more relates to my point above.^
So, no, I'm not saying any of the creatures are of a higher tier.
The games say that many of the creatures are summoned to the castle.
AoS kind of confuses things a little when it comes to the created monsters because, for example, a magically animated corpse shouldn't have a soul at all, nor should the golems.I know vaguely of Shinto
However, you have to take into account that part of Japanese culture is the idea of animism.
If you know anything about the Shinto religion then you'll be aware that in Shinto everything has a "soul". Buddhism also to some degree.
Even inanimate objects have a spirit.All matter has an essence/energy, 'soul' sounds better though.
That's where you get the legends of very old objects coming to life; the Tsukumogami.
The most popular example of which are the paper lantern ghost (Chōchin-obake) and the umbrella ghost (Kasa-obake).
So you could think of the souls in AoS more like essences than actual souls.
So to answer your question, no, I wouldn't consider a Zombie Soldier a demon in any sense.Cool, me neither. I actually think these were thrown in to illustrate that a force of army/military soldiers were involved in 1999, more than anything.
Oh, and Medusa was a goddess that was cursed by one of the Olympian gods and subsequently killed.Interesting story about Medusa, and yes, one would assume she was summoned. Although some of the time she manifests as a floating head. Also in the context of CV, take LOI, she seems to enjoy inflicting pain upon humans.
(TRIVIA - Medusa was the only one of the three gorgon sisters that wasn't immortal. Also, besides Euryale & Stheno, Echidna, the 3 Graeae and Ladon are all Medusa's siblings.)
So I have to assume that her spirit was summoned to the castle.
Who knows, since they don't really ever tell you anything about what Dracula's soul is up to when he goes (presumably) back to hell after each defeat he may just have run into Medusa and 'recruited' her.I bet he's off making deals with these monsters and recruiting them in a sense. If he promises that upon his return they will live gain if they give him their soul/ energy/ essence etc, this is a chance they would more than likely take. Can't say for certain though.
This is what I never understood though, Dracula (as Mathias or Vlad) was once a religious man, but he obviously doesn't worship God (his denouncement later being illustrated during the events->ending of LOI) Yet, SOTN has a holy chapel (technically 2) and in the inverted Castle, the Amalaric snipers openly follow the player trying to inflict harm. Is it because Alucard is unholy, because of his cursed blood?
I've heard the idea that the presence of the chapel in Castlevania proper is intended as an affront to God.
Then again maybe it's just there because most real castles have them.
Actually, that is a much later version of the story and some parts of it are only present in one telling but none of the other much older ones.Ancient mythos are far too variable to really pin down. It's one of the rare instances when I slightly justify incorrect popular usage. For instance, why should we call a certain Allfather Odin when an earlier spelling translates to Oithin? Or whether it's Jormungandr or The Serpent of Midgard? Whether it's Hercules or Herakles, Cerberus or Cerebos or Kerebos, or why the fuck Disney's Hercules made Hera not a total bitch, Zeus not a total horndog, and thought it would be a PHENOMENAL IDEA to hook Herc up with one of the fucking Sisters of Fate...only she's actually human now. Like I said, pretty hard to find a solid consistency. Going by the earliest telling only gets you so far, since they find an older one every few years.
Medusa is the daughter of the gods Phorkys and Keto. (That makes her a goddess.) And apparently, in most tellings of the tale she is a priestess of Athena, not Aphrodite. The reason Athena got pissed at her is that, depending on the telling, she either breaks her vow of celibacy and marries Poseidon or she gets raped by him. Either way it happens in Athena's temple.
I stand corrected. We don't know much about what he does while he's dead in hell.
All matter has an essence/energy, 'soul' sounds better though.
No, a soul implies a consciousness, emotive state, or sentience of being and/or intellect. It does not and should not equate to physiological essence. I don't have the same essence as a chair because a chair has no intellect, emotion, or sentience (as far as I know, Hector might disagree). Granted, you then delve into a spiritually-involved argument (note that I didn't say 'religiously') which defeats the purpose of it. Don't be getting all philosophical when there's not much need for it.
AoS kind of confuses things a little when it comes to the created monsters because, for example, a magically animated corpse shouldn't have a soul at all, nor should the golems.
However, you have to take into account that part of Japanese culture is the idea of animism.
If you know anything about the Shinto religion then you'll be aware that in Shinto everything has a "soul". Buddhism also to some degree.
Even inanimate objects have a spirit.
That's where you get the legends of very old objects coming to life; the Tsukumogami.
The most popular example of which are the paper lantern ghost (Chōchin-obake) and the umbrella ghost (Kasa-obake).
So you could think of the souls in AoS more like essences than actual souls.
That would have been a good point if they hadn't used them in PoR where they openly attack two humans.Well if Dracula has dominion over them it shouldn't make any difference I suppose. Although POR like every other 2dvania at the time was ripping sprites from previous games, so it was probably just that.
I've heard the idea that the presence of the chapel in Castlevania proper is intended as an affront to God.Well the chapel itself is perverted with enemies, floating swords, and the like. I always just thought it was one of the creepier parts of the Castle and seemed out of place.
Then again maybe it's just there because most real castles have them.
AoS kind of confuses things a little when it comes to the created monsters because, for example, a magically animated corpse shouldn't have a soul at all, nor should the golems.
However, you have to take into account that part of Japanese culture is the idea of animism.
If you know anything about the Shinto religion then you'll be aware that in Shinto everything has a "soul". Buddhism also to some degree.
Even inanimate objects have a spirit.
That's where you get the legends of very old objects coming to life; the Tsukumogami.
The most popular example of which are the paper lantern ghost (Chōchin-obake) and the umbrella ghost (Kasa-obake).
So you could think of the souls in AoS more like essences than actual souls.
@ Dracula9 How about not telling people how to post, that'd be just great.
I know vaguely of ShintoDouble whoops. And on that note, Western culture didn't invent the concept of the soul as it's most widely known today. That concept came over with the Puritans and refined itself over the centuries. And Western culture isn't the only one to use the idea. This of course assumes by Western you mean not-Japan, which is alright until the directions tangle each other up after so long. Go West enough and you'll reach Japan, making Japan a Western culture of whatever the fuck's east of it.
I understand the concept of an essence or energy, rather than the stereotypical western definition of a 'soul'.
This thread has gotten off-topic, so please take this to the off-topic board if you want to continue to discuss this further. Also, I don't think there's any reason to get worked up about this. Treat each other kindly, or if you can't, don't talk about it.