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

[DarkPrinceAlucard]

Hey, I noticed something interesting. I think you can see which of those characters shown on the cards are allies or enemies. All the cards that have the allies seem to have butterflies and flowers on the side while all the enemies have torns and bats. That would mean that the Lady of the Forest and the Sword Master would be enemies.     

i never noticed that till you said something.
good find
that would make since

[CastleDan]

April 9th... SO WE WON'T BE SEEING A DAMN THING

David Cox: Shown to the press at a private event yes

[Reinhart77]

i'm sure it won't take too long for the trailers to get posted on a zillion press sites after they get shown them on the 7th. 

[Nagumo]

Hey guys, any idea where this event will be held? If it where Successor is living (that is California by the way) he might sneak in since he has a press pass and all.   

Please not in Spain.    

[Kingshango]

 A 100 hearts goes to whoever get's footage of this game, even if it's on a crappy IPhone camera.

Bonus Hearts if they get a sample of the music.

[DingusBelmondo]

shit... I never saw those. Black knight is incredibly badass. As is the forest titan. And I like pan's design a lot. But Black knight could easily be a LoS and i would be happy. Hopefully something even cooler though.

[Harrycombs]

Do you even know what you are talking about? I mean, come on, I said that as of now, XIII is more obviously part of the Final Fantasy series then Lords of Shadow is part of Castlevania and that it is hilariously ignorant and biased to say that with a straight face. Whenever Lords of Shadow is true to Castlevania is inrelevant. Apperenly having a guy with a whip (who wears SIMON QUEST ARMOR) who goes to a castle is good enough for Castlevania then a bunch of orphans (most of them) who try to save the world with all odds against them, fighting, spell casting, using summons, and collecting treasure (not to mention a healty dose of the usual references) is good enough for Final Fantasy.

Sense?        

I guess I should end this horrid argument as quickly as possible, especially since it lowered itself to toddler level. I could list way more references that XIII makes to FF then LoS does to CV. I guess since you guys like to list every single tiny reference seperately instead of just listing them under general categories I can do that as well. Out the top of my head:

Bahamut, Odin, Alexander, Ifrit, Ramuh, Ragnarok, Shiva, Airships, Wight, Dreadnought, Jobs, Healer, Warrior, Cid, Gladius, random battles, treasure chests, Cure, Aero, Fire, Thunder, Quake, Chocobos, stats, inventory, Palamecia, Hunting Marks, Overworld, Potions, etc, etc, etc.

Oh what I have become.

You failed to grasp my point. References don't make Castlevania a Castlevania game, and references don't make Final Fantasy a Final Fantasy game. At a fundamental level, 13 is different from the classic titles. Like I said, Lost Odyssey is far more like a Final Fantasy game than FF13 could ever dream of being, despite being completely empty of references to Final Fantasy (except Sed/Cid). That was my point. Its not that its missing a certain element, its missing most of them. An RPG was turned into a straightforward action game that completely failed to capture that sense of adventure that fans loved the earlier Final Fantasy titles for. FF13 might have many references, but it doesn't have the fundamentals.

Lords of Shadow is a platformer, with a Belmont, going into a Castle defeating monsters in Eastern Europe most likely culminating with him killing Dracula. Its all of the fundamentals necessary for Castlevania, it doesn't matter if the classic enemies don't appear.

[Munchy]

Love that artwork. Castlevania games are well overdue for a good forest stage.

Lady of the Forest especially looks awesome. Makes me more reassured about the horror aspect of the game.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Wow, I'm late to the little singing flamewar, here.

First off, there should be NO NEED TO BE CALLING ANYONE NAMES.  If it happens in this thread again, I will bring down the hammer upon those responsible.
If you cannot manage to stay civil with your vocabulary, you will be removed from this forum, I care not if that's the way you talk, I will not allow it.

Now, having said that, I agree that references do not make the game.  If we're straying from CV and into FF territory (which is a daaaaangerous road to walk), then I am more in agreement with Harrycombs than Nagumo, only because I've got FFXIII in my PS3 right now and it's saaaaaaaaadly not an FF game, despite having all the little naming references everywhere...
...however, this easily destroys the discussion back down to its roots: 

What IS a certain series, be is CV or FF? 

That becomes a matter of much debate.  I 'currently' see the resemblance of a Castlevania game in Lords of Shadow.  Since I want candles broken with items in them, and classic movie-style monsters, right now LoS seems more like a Dante's Inferno downloadable stage (Forest) with a hero that happens to use a Belmont-ish weapon (so we're not 'quite' there yet... but we cannot go too far that way before people start to cry out 'rehash' or 'the game has no original ideas', etc.  A double-edged sword, it is).  Having said that, I think that it still captures the essence of CV more than FFXIII captured the essence of what FF is (the description of that being far larger than it deserves mentioning, in this response).

[Ahasverus]

Black Night= Dulahan

[DarkPrinceAlucard]

Black Night= Dulahan

i'll admite that the similarities are to alike to be a coincidence.
but wouldn't actually calling the Black night Dullahan be a good idea if it is infact Dullahan?
it would further get the "original" castlevania fan in his corner so why call him black knight?

[Kingshango]

Yeah The Black Knight is basically Dullahan, I guess changing it's name to Black Knight was because Konami wanted to hide that LOS was a Castlevania game at the time and calling him Dullahan would raise suspicion. I wouldn't be surprised that The Black Knight is now called Dullahan in the game (as well as Sword Master is Death.)

[DarkPrinceAlucard]

Yeah The Black Knight is basically Dullahan, I guess changing it's name to Black Knight was because Konami wanted to hide that LOS was a Castlevania game at the time.

but wasn't the black knight revealed AFTER they officially announced LOS was a Castevana game?

[Ahasverus]

Nope, these photos were taken shortly after the Lords of Shadow announcement, October 2008 if I'm not wrong, we didin't know this was a castlevania then (Howeverm ironically, everyone was saying: "Hey this looks too much like a castlevania! it's a hamelessy rip-off!) 

[DingusBelmondo]

It looks like black knight has a head. Like a really tiny one. As if his armor was huge like a mech or somethign. I could be wrong.