Topic: Are the Castlevania storylines important to you?

[cecil-kain]

Topic.  and...

Aria of Sorrow had the best storyline in my opinion.  Although Lords of Shadow comes very, very close --I suppose the DLC could still change my mind...

[Ahasverus]

Oh yes. The thing is, I kinda had my own interpretation of the old saga, storylines were simple but you could extrapolate them to make them awesome, I mean, I always thought how awesome the whole "fate vs free will" thing in the Belmont clan was, they were //forced// by blood to hunt Dracula but even if they chose not to fight him Dracula would still give them a personal reason to do that (I remember the dialogue line in DXC: "Tell me, good warrior, are you truly here by choice?"). Curse of Darkness in my opinion had an awesome storyline (until Trevor's miserable desmise of course) I cared for the characters, I cared for Isaac and I felt sorry for Julia when she abandoned him, I didn't trust Zead but I didn't have a reason why, I understood Saint Germain's role even with he being surrounded by mystery, I think CoD is the high point in narrative delivery and coherence in the old saga. So in few words, you could make your own awesome story with the basic premise of the old saga and it wouldn't hurt it, it was great.

Now, the //new// one is somewhat more complicated, I really liked the story (not its delivery though, only few powerful moments-But the few ones were splendid, Gabriel's "Death" at Laura's hands and forgiveness, the Abbad's death, the moment he realized the thruth about the LoS, Yaga's madness, Pan's death -epic-, Necromancer's speech and the final chapter ) but what I liked the most was the vastness of its universe, for example, Malphas and Baba's relationship, the broken brotherhood of Light (it seems that Cardinal LaVolpe was not a good leader and knights disobeyed him.. killing themselves in the proccess) the intricate mythos of the creatures... all those little touches makes the lore feel vast and not encapsulated.
The thing is, it just started, it could go to heaven or become a trainwreck, I reserve my judgment for now.

But yeah, CV could have a deep meaningful nature story I'm all for it

[Chernabogue]

Castlevania is made for deep, gothic and romantic stories. With a such lore, it was made for that!

[X]

I voted the second option. It was like this for the series when we only had so many games to play during the early 90's.

-X

[Oralox]

Hmm...dats a good question..we may eight be able to locay another emission from dah radah woom...

To me lords of shadow has got to have the best storyline.
The second being Symphony of the night or any of the later IGA castletroid games.

[JR]

As long as they're done well, then yes, I think they can be important.

IGA's stuff was a mix of good and bad for me, and Lords of Shadow was executed relatively well, but I'm not sure what I think of its direction just yet.

I think I preferred the simple but enjoyable storylines of the older games, like Simon's Quest and CVIII. Then again, the "older" games would include Bloodlines, and I've really grown to dislike how they shoehorned Bram Stoker's novel into the series canon. That, and the "world tour" aspect of the game is cheesy from a storyline perspective. But dammit, now I'm rambling...I just like the older ones better.

[Nagumo]

I care about having good storylines but not the way how LoS did it because essentialy the plot was as simple as Lament, Curse etc but with all this unneccesary stuff thrown to make it "epic". Zobek's narrations, Agartha etc. It's also not a good idea to describe Gabriel's character development to us instead of actually showing it. They make him come off as a complex main character when he really isn't.          

edit: I don't really want to only nag about LoS so I'm also going to say something positive! One thing I did like about the story were the pretty detailed enemy descriptions. Little stuff like that really enriches the world the game was set it and made it seem bigger. That's one way to make the storyline more engaging. 

[Thomas Belmont]

Topic.  and...

Aria of Sorrow had the best storyline in my opinion. 

I don't know you and I totally want to punch you in the face. Anyway, yeah, the story line is important to me. That's why I can't stand Iga. He destroyed it.

[darkwzrd4]

Oh yes. The thing is, I kinda had my own interpretation of the old saga, storylines were simple but you could extrapolate them to make them awesome, I mean, I always thought how awesome the whole "fate vs free will" thing in the Belmont clan was, they were //forced// by blood to hunt Dracula but even if they chose not to fight him Dracula would still give them a personal reason to do that (I remember the dialogue line in DXC: "Tell me, good warrior, are you truly here by choice?"). Curse of Darkness in my opinion had an awesome storyline (until Trevor's miserable desmise of course) I cared for the characters, I cared for Isaac and I felt sorry for Julia when she abandoned him, I didn't trust Zead but I didn't have a reason why, I understood Saint Germain's role even with he being surrounded by mystery, I think CoD is the high point in narrative delivery and coherence in the old saga. So in few words, you could make your own awesome story with the basic premise of the old saga and it wouldn't hurt it, it was great.

Now, the //new// one is somewhat more complicated, I really liked the story (not its delivery though, only few powerful moments-But the few ones were splendid, Gabriel's "Death" at Laura's hands and forgiveness, the Abbad's death, the moment he realized the thruth about the LoS, Yaga's madness, Pan's death -epic-, Necromancer's speech and the final chapter ) but what I liked the most was the vastness of its universe, for example, Malphas and Baba's relationship, the broken brotherhood of Light (it seems that Cardinal LaVolpe was not a good leader and knights disobeyed him.. killing themselves in the proccess) the intricate mythos of the creatures... all those little touches makes the lore feel vast and not encapsulated.
The thing is, it just started, it could go to heaven or become a trainwreck, I reserve my judgment for now.

But yeah, CV could have a deep meaningful nature story I'm all for it

I agree with everything you said.  I just hope that this new CV universe started by LoS continues to be good.  All videogames in this day and age need to have deep and meaningful stories.  And, if they are a part of a series, the overall story of the series needs to be completely coherent.

[kadosho]

Voted on the 2nd option! Although storylines are engaging, just some level to level focus is fun too.
I honestly miss CV when it was a simple (yet challenging) platformer. Sure its fine in RPG or action game.
But just bringing back the old school method would be fun, from time to time.

[cecil-kain]

I don't know you and I totally want to punch you in the face. Anyway, yeah, the story line is important to me. That's why I can't stand Iga. He destroyed it.

Cram it.  No seriously.  Aria's strongest point is the introduction of the Tactical Soul System.   More than innovative gameplay, souls tied the storyline together in ways that Castlevania had never seen before.  Without Tactical Souls binding the story, everything else would fall apart.  And from a narrative standpoint, the game plays out as a mystery.  Why was Soma summoned to the Castle?  How does he escape?  Why does he have these strange powers?  What's Arkiado all about?  And all of these mysteries are laid out at the beginning of the game!  Right from the start you know this Castlevania is offering something different --something special.  And from a mythos standpoint, Aria gave us the Belmont Clan's return, the Demon Castle War, and Dracula's final salvation.  When I first finished the game, I asked myself "How can only one game accomplish so much?"  And who didn't get a joygasmic little shiver fighting Julius as "Dracula"?  Considering the system limitations, I think the only thing missing from Aria's story was Dawn's epic Julius mode.

[VeteranVk]

This seriously was a tough one between option 1 and 2. I've been all for an engaging story since Bloodlines and it trying to fit with Bram Stoker's book, but since Lament of Innocence, and its "alternate" introduction to Dracula's origin, I'm finding story is no longer as integral as it once was (I could just be getting older too ). Basically, the story for the series was more gripping and important to me as long as Dracula's roots remained with him being Vlad the III as silly as it may sound. However I did like what LoI brought to the gaming audience as far as the Dracula/Belmont feud to a personal level and charge that future Belmonts were forced to endure. In my mind, While not all things were agreeable to me with LoS, the story it presented so far fits my personal preference more, but again I still want to finish seeing how it plays out and/or my judgment could be also clouded by the fact that I am a Hideo Kojima fanboy. I would love to see LoS welcome alot of what we had previously as far as story or timeline, but I'm also ok with it remaining self-contained, so I chose option 2.

[Harrycombs]

I voted the second option.

Aria of Sorrow probably has the best story, but I also really liked SotN's story. It actually tried to explain why Dracula was evil, and the Succubus scene really got that through quite well.

[justin312]

Personally, I preferred the days when the story was very basic and simple, but the story concept was engaging and allowed for you to fill in your own backstory.  You're a lone warrior who's cursed to face and destroy Dracula and his monsters, that was it.  The details behind it-- origin of Dracula, backstory of the Belmonts, personality of the characters-- was up to the player's imagination.  Even Symphony and Castlevania 64, while adding more dialogue and fleshing out its characters, didn't go too heavy on story and background details and were mostly self contained, so those also worked well.

I started getting sour on Castlevania stories when they began messing with the overall story concept.  They created an origin for Dracula and his feud with the Belmonts.  They created a backstory around the whip, and then later added a bunch of rules as to when the whip could be used by Belmonts.  The significantly altered the events that immediately followed Castlevania III, in the process minimizing Trevor's role in Dracula's defeat that century.  They told the final fate of Dracula, which included an epic final battle (that we didn't get to play or see, but was just mentioned in a text dialogue cut scene) and then Dracula being reincarnated as a smartass Japanese teenager.  All these are details that I don't want to see in a Castlevania plot.

I'd prefer a Belmont that doesn't say much, and a Dracula that doesn't have an origin story forced upon you that contradicts your own conceptions of that character.

[Munchy]

I'd say somewhere between options 2 and 3.