Topic: It's not a matter of IF but WHEN... GAME OVER?

[cecil-kain]

IGA will not be in charge forever.

Have you ever wondered what will be left of Castlevania by the time he's finished?  I mean, besides a full timeline and a semi-coherent, cluttered canon?  Castlevania is really histotical fiction, and there's a price to be paid for having a new game every year --the "end of the days" for Castlevania and soon.

It's not a matter of IF but WHEN...  IGA will be gone, and Castlevania will either reboot or die.

Where do we, the fans, think Castlevania should go next, when IGA "passes the torch"?

[crisis]

Hopefully more cell phone games like order of shadows 

All jokes aside, a reboot is indeed possible (case in point, Prince of Persia). The series will have to have a steady foundation on the consoles. The next producer will probably make console games. There's really nothing more the handhelds can offer to us that we haven't seen already.

[Omegasigma]

a reboot of the series will happen once hes done, eg transformers does it alot

[shelverton.]

They could remake the existing games thousands of times, turning them into completely new ones if they wanted to. Like, a God of War-style Belmont's Revenge, or a Zeldaesque take on Dracula's Curse. Or the original Castlevania done Metroid Prime-style. (These are not suggestions, just possibilities) And in 10-15 years time someone'll start remaking the more recent games, like Aria of Sorrow and Curse of Darkness (if not sooner). And Symphony of the Night will have been remade at least 10000 times by then.

Also, there could be hundreds of "gaiden" type games, that doesn't focus on Dracula or the Belmonts. We could have some random warrior going up against Medusa/Death/Whoever in the 5th century, or let some of the sidekicks have games of their own, like Grant, Sypha, Isaac, Soleiyu etcetera. And if all else fails; Reboot.

[darkwzrd4]

Not only could they remake older games, but the "successor" could actually remove some games from the official timeline and change everything, which may not be a bad thing.  Maybe, more games with Soma or even origin stories for lessor characters.  For example, the beginnings of the Belnades clan and how its members became powerful.

[CapComMDb]

Lords of Shadow sound like a good indication of where it could go. There's more to vampire-hunting and monster-slaying than Dracula. I mean, Drac comes around only once ever 100 years, so that leaves another 99 for Belmonts to be training and monster hunting at the other haunted castles and misty mountains of Europe.

There are also some interesting plot points in OoE that suggest other possibilities... But you'll have to get through more than about half the game to find those out.

[Kale]

Quite frankly, I'd like a reboot. Keeping the frame of the outline where the basic characters, rewoven into a new story.

[shelverton.]

Also, there are the games that were retconned by IGA. What if the next producer decided to take Castlevania Legends and just go on from there? If you think about it, the alternate timeline already exists. Like it or not. It has Legends and CotM and... the N64 games too? I don't really care about the quality of those games, it's the timeline I'm after.

[The Last Belmont]

IGA will not be in charge forever.

Have you ever wondered what will be left of Castlevania by the time he's finished?

[shelverton.]

In Reply To #9

This thread is more about the timeline, and what will become of the series when there're no more empty slots to fill.

I think that with characters like Aeon and St. Germain that are able to mess with time, they could find a way to make Sonia happen. Or maybe Galamoth could be responsible for it? It's a bit farfetched, but not impossible. That would mean an alternative time-line, with the likes of Sonia and Nathan Graves, and the series could go on 

[fallenangel86]

alright, so let's say there's a reboot. if there's a story to be fleshed out, i'd like to think they can do better than:

man becomes vampire out of a severe case of chronic bitch dependency, then 400 years later as a vampire, starts a war with humanity due to the same exact affliction.

[The Last Belmont]

In Reply To #11

YES!!!!! LOI NEEDS to be remade. Or at least have the ending severly changed. Dracula needs to be a very prideful determined egocentric person who willfully accepts demonic superhuman powers because he looks at himself as above the average man and hates being constrained by the requirements and restrictions of human beings and gives up his humanity to be immortal. IGA should have gone this route in LOI with draculas feelings reaching a peak when humans kill his wife whom he can't convince to do the same and he decides human's are a plague that can't go on anymore and they need to be destroyed if they would destroy and condemn someone who was trying to help there race. Then it would be cool if it ends with the beginning of the war of 1476  and the pope finding Ralph/Trevor.     

[CapComMDb]

I still think the Castlevania's Dracula/Vlad III story needs to be reworked or at least clarified a little. Vlad III was a historical guy, and while I think you can twist things around, I don't know if you can really eliminate big parts of the historical record to perpetuate popular mythology

I also think that Castlevania's story should discuss evil a bit more. Hitler was evil, but he wasn't controlled by Dracula or Satan or any of that nonsense. Neither was Vlad III (as opposed to Castlevania's Dracula). People have that inherent capacity for evil - the Nazis weren't controlled by aliens or demons but by fear, hate and propaganda. Dracula mentions this a few times in his rants, and that's why he keeps rising from the grave.

If you look at Mathias, he turns his back on God because he comes back fighting God's War in the Crusades (or so the Pope told him), and his wife dies from disease. He makes a deal with Death to become a vampire and hides out in the wilderness. Later, he marries Lisa, who must have seen a good side in him (hence why I don't think he was impaling people at that point). It's only after Lisa gets executed that he goes on a rampage and turns completely to the dark side (earlier you might compare him with Darth Vader, who still has the capacity for good left in him).

There's really an opportunity to explore this nature of evil in Castlevania's stories to have some truly tragic characters, rather than simply having 2-Dimensional characters who are drawn to evil or corrupted by the desire for power and are just there to get whip-spanked.

Though the true test I suppose would be to explore this through actual gameplay, even if it's something as simple as giving the player the choice between two weapons or abilities, one which is more powerful but uses the powers of darkness, the other that is weaker against most enemies, but uses the power of light. Give the player decisions that are important to the character so that these are real choices, like if he can't save someone he - and the player - cares about unless he uses the powers of darkness.

It can get a bit heady I suppose for some gamers, but the nature of evil is honestly a type of discourse that's become more prominent post-9/11, and it's the type of stuff you can add to a game to make it more than just 'another action title.' I personally wish we had a lot more games that got beyond that (and that doesn't mean they should stop making stuff like Contra I personally think it makes games better.

[Long John Silver]

Hitler was evil, but he wasn't controlled by Dracula or Satan or any of that nonsense. Neither was Vlad III (as opposed to Castlevania's Dracula).

but nothing in the story proves that drac was ever controlled by anyone. on the contrary, he was the one who controlled everyone and everything evil. and no, aos's chaos wasn't an entity that controlled him. if something it'd be the other way around.

fantheory lol

the whole chaos could have been all those evil/negative emotions from human hearts.

he could've kept that huge mass of evil energy somewhere in his castle to constantly draw the power from it, and in effect become almost invincible to normal means of combat (not counting vampire killer here).

every 100 years when human hearts become dark, that mass of evil energy grows, which allows him to resurrect easier and be at full power.

and then after he died and was purified, if he (as soma) loses his fight against it all that evil power engulfs him, refills his soul with hate and he's basically back to what he was before, other than having a new personality.

/fantheory lol
on topic: well, i suppose the series could end not too far into the future, especially now that they started milking it for all it's worth, what with releasing a bunch of junk like the pachinko slot game etc. so often, one after another.

once the series end, it'll be up to fans to keep it alive via fangames and such.

[cecil-kain]

When a reboot does occur--I think twould be best to progress chronologically instead of skipping all over the timeline.  LoI had some good elements to it --but I would have preferred a more narrative approach to Mathias' fall from grace --so many missed opportunities in that one...

One thing that should be fixed is to show how Mathias came to know Death...