Topic: I knew it! Castlevania: Lords of Shadow!(SPOILERS HERE, PLZ USE THE SPOILER TAG)

[Ahasverus]

Someone of you guys must to buy UK Edge magazine.
Acording to this french site http://www.gameblog.fr/news_11695_castlevania-lords-of-shadow-japon-vs-occident there is a huge interview with dave Cox, and, BTW, he talks about castlevania Japan.
Please, someone! 

[shelverton.]

In Reply To #1078

I'll see if I can pick it up tomorrow, there's a shop a few blocks away that carries Edge UK. I hope Cox says something new this time. He's been saying the same things over and over again, like blah blah blah this is Castlevania like you've never seen it before and blah blah blah fans of the series have many things to look forward to and blah blah we will reveal more details very soon.

[Nagumo]

In Reply To #1078
Article translation:

On occasion of a long interview with the British Edge producer of the tempting Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is back and talks about the differences of development between Western and Japanese teams. In order to learn more about the methods of work, you must understand that they currently are the exact opposite of each other.

{Quote from Cox)

"Japanese developers carefully design one level after another. They will create a level, then polish until it is exceptional, and only then they move to the next level. In turn the Western developers design the whole game, and then they refine. This is a radically different approach.

Sometimes a Japanse developer will make 6 levels and say "Actually, we do not like it" ... and they begin all over again. You don't do that in the West! But there is a good side to it: you have a quality demo quickly in the development cycle. Western developers have no such levels until the very end of the production."  

Roughly speaking, finish the game permanently at the end of the cycle, whereas in Japan everything seems finished, when in fact there may be only 10% of the entire game completed. Two dramatically opposite approaches that might explain such differences rendering the demo's presented at major international (gaming) conventions.

But habits are changing. Forced to Westernize in their creative process, the Japanese developers could soon use a different approach.  

~End~
 
        

[Xain]

"Japanese developers carefully design one level after another. They will create a level, then polish until it is exceptional, and only then they move to the next level. In turn the Western developers design the whole game, and then they refine. This is a radically different approach.

That’s pretty interesting. Actually that might explain a few things....except for one. What the hell happened to PoR under this philosophy? (On another note, it explains why Dracula's castle in CoD was god awful)

[Reinhart77]

oh, thanks for bringing up that last CoD stage.  i was quite dismayed when I was expecting an carefully laid out and diverse castle as a reward for getting that far, only to find the reuse at its worse there.

[Lumas]

its safe to say tho, if LoS, which still am iffy about before twilight fandom came into play, if it does do terrible konami would just sweep it under the carpet and remove it from any timeline, so far im not looking foward to the game anyways, but been following it to see if they do anything decent, so far, it deviates to far from the series, if anything it might be a different timeline all together tho, but to bastardize designs that have been there for a long time is kind of alienating...i just dont know what to make of it

Guess you missed that whole thing Cox said about it being a "reimagining" and that it will have nothing at all to do with the current timeline. They also stated that they did draw inspiration from Castlevania Simon's Quest as well as Super Castlevania 4, though those two games only inspire it. The game itself will have nothing to do with the current time line from what Dave Cox has stated.

One good thing IGA did was cater to the fans but what Konami obviously wants to do now is not only cater to the fans but to the casual gamer as well so that they may bring more fans to the series. They have stated to they doing their best to try and not alienate the fans, which so far I think they have done a good job because if you look at Simon's armor design from the Simon's quest cover it is very simular to what Gabriel wears so if anything I think they are paying homage to the "Classicvania's" as oposed to the IGAvania's we nowadays are use too.

I doubt the twilight thing will have any effect but I think maybe you should look into it more and wait for more information to be released since they have been keeping somewhat of a tight lid on it. That way you can have a more fair opinion.

[Lumas]

In Reply To #1078

I'll see if I can pick it up tomorrow, there's a shop a few blocks away that carries Edge UK. I hope Cox says something new this time. He's been saying the same things over and over again, like blah blah blah this is Castlevania like you've never seen it before and blah blah blah fans of the series have many things to look forward to and blah blah we will reveal more details very soon.

I agree the past few times they have talked to him its been the same damn thing. I hope there's some new info and some screen shots. He said we will get more info very soon like three months ago so damn it I better hear something new.

[Lumas]

oh, thanks for bringing up that last CoD stage.  i was quite dismayed when I was expecting an carefully laid out and diverse castle as a reward for getting that far, only to find the reuse at its worse there.

There is only one good thing about Dracula's Castle in Curse of Darkness and thats the fact they have a teleport room at the end so you dont have to suffer going through room after IDENTICAL room again.

You know IGA once said that Legends was an embarassment to the series and that the team wasn't as talented as previous teams that worked on the series. Personally I think thats a bold statement from a guy who could not make a decent 3D game.

[Lumas]

Has anyone seen this screenshot before??

http://www.evo-x.de/images/screenshots/microsoft/xbox360/castlevania_lords_of_shadow/20090604/E3_2009_LOS_014.JPG

[Ahasverus]

Yeah, we saw it before in one article somewhere, but ce3rtainly it was not that big! Thanks a lot! 

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

It makes for an awesome desktop background.

[Kale]

Has anyone seen this screenshot before??

http://www.evo-x.de/images/screenshots/microsoft/xbox360/castlevania_lords_of_shadow/20090604/E3_2009_LOS_014.JPG

Definitely Kickass, though I think it's fairly obvious that it's 3d on 2d background.

[Reinhart77]

Hey, to bide the time, I added an illustrated bestiary for what we know so far to the Castlevania Wiki.

http://castlevania.wikia.com/wiki/Lords_of_Shadow_Bestiary

Are there any enemies that have appeared in screenshots or video footage that I am missing?  Are there any better shots of them?

One thing I noticed when adding the image to the Spider's page, was that the color scheme and markings were identical to those from Super Castlevania IV. 

http://castlevania.wikia.com/wiki/Spider

[PFG9000]

So apparently there's a boss fight that's heavily inspired by Shadow of the Colossus.  I thought it was just an obsessive SotC fanboy making a loose association, but even the appearance of this boss seems SotC inspired in some ways.

Here's an article scan with screenshots posted on gamefaqs:


And a link to the gamefaqs thread by some guy named Obsidian Zero, go here for a higher-quality image:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=924364&topic=52290965

[Thomas Belmont]

I just hope that every boss battle is not like that.