Topic: Things not explained but you'd like to know in Castlevania

[Ridureyu]

I completely agree.  And, adding to that (though I already said this), I think that fighting Death on the face of the clock tower like you do in Dracula X is much better than fighting him on some out-of-0place pirate ship that apparently floats in...an ocean...in the castle.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Yeah I'm not sure what a ghost ship is doing in the foggy lake the Castle's on.  And in CV3, that lake seems to open up in to some kind of sea or something (and it seems to somewhat do that in Ecclesia as well).

[Ridureyu]

Well, the big complaint I have about Rondo's level design is that apparently, in the alternate paths, Richter just sort of wanders miles out of his way before returning to the castle.  Things like the raft stage and the ghost ship are weirdly out of place, and leave you wondering how and when he got back to the castle, and why he ran away like that.

[X]

And in CV3, that lake seems to open up in to some kind of sea or something (and it seems to somewhat do that in Ecclesia as well).

It's got to be the black sea since it's the only sea the touches the shores of Romania.

-X

[Ridureyu]

Something I want explained:

Flea Men reproduce by WakWak tree (they emerge fully clothed, no less!)

Each Wakwak tree produces a new fleaman roughly every 3-5 seconds.

Flea Men have existed at least as far back as Lament of Innocence, and likely are a natural species.


So, why doesn't the world look like this?

[X]

Oh crap! That's like stage 4 from Contra: Hardcorps with all those stoneaxe-wielding monkeymen jumping you.

-X

[Puwexil]

Well, the big complaint I have about Rondo's level design is that apparently, in the alternate paths, Richter just sort of wanders miles out of his way before returning to the castle.  Things like the raft stage and the ghost ship are weirdly out of place, and leave you wondering how and when he got back to the castle, and why he ran away like that.

Stage 1's primary path leaves Richter at the gate of the castle. He proceeds through it, enters the building, and doesn't leave again for the rest of the game (ghost ship excepted, which is probably just docked at the castle and hey, let's go kill Death). However, if you take the alternate path, it leaves him at the beginning of the aqueduct, leading into stage 2'. You can see the castle far off in the distance, overlooking its usual lakeside cliff, appearing smaller than it does during the Wyvern fight in front of the castle gate.

The short of it is that by taking a wrong turn in Aljiba/Jova, Richter's path of progress is resigned to trekking the countryside until the point of reaching the castle. In effect, two paths he could've taken exist, both of which eventually meet at the ghost ship. Yes, there is a stage 5', but it can hardly be said to factor into the overall narrative of the game by its very nature as a cobbled-up patchwork of assets that one of the developers made just for the fun of it. That, and the game forcing you to enter the ghost ship during the initial playthrough, even if you take the alternate exit in stage 4'.

Of course, during the course of a playthrough you can cross over from the primary path to the alternate one and back. A concession made in the name of gameplay variety doesn't break the illusion of Rondo's world making a whole lot of sense, though. There are just two versions of it, hence dubbing the other set of stages "alternate" in the first place. Either one works.

[thernz]

If you take Dracula X Stage 7's first background in account, Richter has somehow been walking away from the castle for the entire previous duration of the game too. Except he just totally makes it to Dracula's in this one stage! Plus, in the alternate route, he ends up exploring the underground Atlantis which somehow leads into the clock tower which seems to be set in a rocky cliff-side rather than the castle.


so yeah

[Sindra]

Plus, in the alternate route, he ends up exploring the underground Atlantis which somehow leads into the clock tower which seems to be set in a rocky cliff-side rather than the castle.

Well, there's always the possibility of portals or other temporal shifts that take you from one place to another that shouldn't by all accounts be next to the area you just left. It wouldn't be a huge stretch, considering the series has done warp rooms and shifts in space and so on. The concept of warps didn't show up until SotN due to the need to backtrack, however the same could be applied roughly to earlier games also. Walter had the ability to warp space with the Ebony Stone by making the area around the castle always night-time. The pure unfiltered chaos energies have been known to shift space around as well (like Aria of Sorrow), so it's not unusual if the areas surrounding the castle had effects like this happening also.

[DragonSlayr81]

Something I want explained:

Flea Men reproduce by WakWak tree (they emerge fully clothed, no less!)

Each Wakwak tree produces a new fleaman roughly every 3-5 seconds.

Flea Men have existed at least as far back as Lament of Innocence, and likely are a natural species.


So, why doesn't the world look like this?

My theory about the Flea Men and Wak Wak Trees are this:

Flea Men existed as it's own species. A type of bloodthirsty psuedo-vampiric species(part flea, part man).

A mad scientist created Wak Wak Trees as a genetical experiment to create "clone Flea Men in massive numbers".

Wak Wak Trees don't as often as you say. They only start spawning Flea Men when a potential enemy is near. When the enemy is killed(or the tree is killed) and there is no lingering threat, it sits like a normal tree.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

FleaMan is a rather new name, too.

There seem to be four species of jumping nasty short monster:
1. Hunchbacks (CV1, CV3, X68000)
2. SabreTooth Rabbits (Akumajo Densetsu, Super Castlevania IV)
3. FleaMen (DraculaX, SotN, AoS, DoS, PoR)
4. Creepers (Belmonts' Revenge)

Hunchbacks are more like tiny zombie-looking Igors, with bald heads and hair on their upper neck (sort of like what the CryptKeeper looks like, only short and, well, hunchbacked)
SabreTooth Rabbits appear as counterparts to Hunchbacks in Akumajo Densetsu, and in Super Castlevania IV and do the exact same part.
Fleamen (or Rippers, for the dagger-throwing versions) seem to be mutants, and can appear in large numbers.  I suppose harpies can harvest them off of a WakWak tree and divebomb 'em in the proper zones, but I agree with DragonSlayr81 in that the tree probably only starts to spawn them when it senses some kind of moving object nearby (could be a Belmont, could be a Harpy).
Creepers come out of holes on the wall.  I think it's possible that they can come out of the earth like in "The Gate", or they're root-tree versions of Fleamen.

[X]

What's with all this flea man business in CV? I'd rather have Igor back.

-X

[Ridureyu]

I always assumed fleamen were hunchbacks, but they changed the name to stop offending so many people.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Hunchbacks are cooler, though.  They don't wear that gaudy green outfit with blue pants.  Yech!

[Ridureyu]

And they have beards.

BTW, you know the NECA toys?  Ever notice how the Flea Man figure is basically the CV1 manual art done in Flea Man green/brown colors?