Topic: A Detailed Analysis of Legion, The Stuff of Nightmares

[Ridureyu]

The following is a long-winded examination of Legion as it appears in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and why I consider it one of the most terrifying and disturbing things to appear in a "horror" video game.

In the realm of horror, video games as a medium contain both advantages and disadvantages over others - they are far more immersive, as the playeris no mere spectator, but "is" the protagonist. However, this can also break immersion, whether through shoddy graphics or the simple fact that the player is pressing buttons on an implement that looks like Batman could throw at someone.  Thus, it's especially odd to say that possibly the single "scariest" thing in a video game, at least for me personally, came from a two-dimensional one with 16-bit graphics.*

*Yes, I understand that CastlevaniaL Symphony of the Night was more advanced than that, but the majority of the physical graphics, i.e. the characters and backgrounds, were 16-bit. Special effects don't count.  For crying out loud, half of the cast was reused from Rondo of Blood!

In fact, when it comes to games, it's hard to get a fear reaction out of me.  Eternal Darkness was effective in replicating H. P. Lovecraft's fear of the unknown and of man's insignificant role in the universe (perhaps better than any other adaptation I've seen!), Silent Hill 2 wove some masterful psychological terror in-between the twisted corpses, and certainly Resident Evil 4, despite basically being an action movie, had a few genuinely unsettling moments.  But aside from those and a few others, most games just don't "scare" me the way they probably should.  Certainly not Castlevania, a series which honestly is pretty silly most of the time.  And then there's Legion.   I will attempt to explain the effectiveness of this particular boss battle by looking at its presentation, the fight (when fought "properly," i.e. not steamrolling it with the skull shield or soul steal).  Also, I thoroughly believe that the rename "Granfalloon" robs the boss of some of its intimidation factor (Sorry, Mr. Vonnegut), and it was unfortunate that it got saddled with the rename.  I will make a reference to its original name and the connotations thereof, which is not part of the experience if you only play SOTN's english version.  Quite sad, really.

Let's begin with Legion's "home," the Catacombs.  A surprisingly creepy part of Dracula's Castle, this section is obviously a system of Roman-era Christian catacombs - the underground cemetaries where early followers of Christ hid to avoid persecution.  The background consists of graves, tombs, and scattered signs of worship - an impromptu chapel here and there, a grave marked with the Cross - a few things like that.  Further in, the decor seems to resemble a fully-organized house of worship, oddly rich and beautiful for a refugee hiding place.    And now, this most ancient of holy sites has been defiled, filled with the hordes of Hell.  The "Red Skeleton Room" is a great example of this, as likely those were the bones of martyrs.  You also meet Amduscias (The "Hellfire Beast,"), a prominent goetic demon here.  Even the music is od d- a fast-paced jazzy tune that still somehow feels unnerving, perhaps because of its odd, echoing acoustics.  And thus, with your mind already set a little on edge, you enter the Boss Room, one of the best and most detailed in the entire game.

It's important to understand howSymphony of the Night uses its own game engine and limitations to add to the atmosphere of this room.  Alucard enters through a door at the very top, and can only see a limited amount of the room at a time.   Your first impression is of brick and beautiful stained glass - a church, much like the prettier sections of the Royal Chapel.  It's gorgeous, with the level of detail that helped make this game famous.  Then as you drop, and see morte of the room, that image turns upside-down.  The sanctuary is filled with skulls.  So filled, in fact, that it is impossible to tell how deep the floor is.  Human remains are so densly packed inside that Alucard can freely stand, walk, and even jump on them without disturbing them or collapsing inside.  And right after you, the player, have taken this in and begun to ask, "What did this?", the answer comes.  The entire room shakes, and a surreal, grotesque abomination rises from the pit of bones.

Legion.

Legion, for those of you who read your Bible (And I know there are a few), was the collective name of a gigantic squad of demons who were possessing a man in the Gospel accounts.  Think of the phonebook game, only horrible-r.  "Legion" thus isn't a proper name in the Bible, but as an answer to "Tell me your Name," it's just another way of saying, "Look, there are a lot of us here. It'd take too long to list our names, so just call us the Boy Scouts of America."

In Castlevania-ese, Legion is a specific creature - "Out of many, One."  At first glance, it appears to be an amalgamation of literally hundreds of naked, featureless bodies, lost souls trapped somewhere between "zombie" and "mannequin."  That they are the damned goes without saying - their screams coupled with the twitchy, "forced" way that they move implies that this is all against their will, making Legion a minor embodiment of Hell.  Its main form of attack is to drip bodies like water from a faucet, sending them stiffly coming after Alucard in droves.  When struck, a body will burn first to bones and then ashes in a brief animation surprisingly graphic even for Castlevania.  Something about their "deaths" just seems far worse than anything that happens to regular zombies.  As you strike the main cluster of corpses, they all scream - again, it sounds human, which is just unnerving.  The music does nothing to calm the situation, as "Death Ballad" is full of dissonant shrieks - something that utterly fits this battle.

As you continue to fight this overwhelmingly horrible thing, you will eventually chop away at the bodies to noticeable effect - entire sections drop off in a torrent of bodies, limbs, ashes, and tortured screams, revealing the demon that lies beneath. Your first glimps of Legion's true self will be a tentacle - phallic, but not overtly so. Instead, just enough that, like the title creature in Alien, it is disturbing on a fundamental level.  When it splits apart into a fleshy flower to attack, there is something oddly obscene about the whole thing.  Further damage will eventually destroy all the bodies clinging to Legion, revealing its true self as a kind of hardened, tentacled parasite.

It's this thing's alien nature that adds another level to its horrible nature - first you are confronted with a frightening perversion of the human form (something familiar), and then confronted by a completely nonanthropomorphic parasite (the unfamiliar).  Legion attacks mostly with lasers, which is not the scariest thing it could do, but by this time the damage is done.  When  you finally kill it, it falls into the pit of bones, eventually buried so far that all you can see are some of its flames as it burns itself to ashes.  And then, the nightmare is over.

And that's why Legion is one of the few Castlevania monsters to stick with me and my personal imagination, and to actually seem genuinely "scary."

So, what about other versions?  As with most Castlevania monsters, Legion is a recurring enemy, popping up in different forms game after game.  How are these other versions?

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance opted not to simply repeat Symphony of the Night's battle, instead giving two different versions of the demon Legion "Saint" and Legion "Corpse."

Legion Saint is certainly a new idea, but it doesn't really seem to live up to the original.  Gone are the individual bodies, instead replaced  by little mini-Legions spawned from the main body.  Its main distinctive feature are its angel wings, which seem to clash oddly.  Its new coloration also gives the creature an antiseptic appearance, fairly at odds with the basic idea of the creature.  When its shell is destroyed, the inner nucleus certainly looks different, more like a single-celled organizm.  The tentacles are now made of individual links, likely due to technology, but this does not help make Legion a terrifying enemy.

Legion Corpse takes a different route, instead made of a single, solid, leathery, bony surface. It drops maggots and ichor, its hide is filled with abandoned weapons, and it opens up in a fairly obscene display to reveal its weakpoint - a skeletal mockery of the crucifixion.  it's certainly weird, but again not as much as the original.  more effective than the Saint, and aided quite a bit by its room.

Legion Corpse's lair tells a story.  steps leading to a door - the gateway is blown open, a pulsating alien sky behind. All along the steps are the bodies of warriors who died trying to stop the thing that came through.  It's one of the best individual rooms in the game, and I would actually have preferred if this had been the pre-boss chamber, saving the reveal until the next room.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow presented us with yet another form of Legion, this one meant to be creepy in an entirely different way.

Now Legion's bodies are vaguely in the shape of a human fetus, something that actually pushes it a little too far, and makes it almost funny.  Its final form is also mostly mechanical, with yet another fetus at the core - an interesting idea, but it falls a little flat.  The leadup to the battle is fantastic, though.  Legion's entire area is devoid of music, the sound no wmade up of moans and screams - the sounds of Legion's bodies.  Shapeless corpses rise from their graves and shamble toward the creature, joining it and strengthening it.  This is surprisingly nightmarish, and helps make up for its otherwise-overdone theme.

Curse of Darkness's 3D graphics actually hinder Legion, making it seem like a smooth ball with body-patterns, not a collection of corpses. The individual bodies jerk and bend like creatures out of Silent Hill which unfortunately makes them less scary.  The bodies were originally disturbing because they were screaming, tortured, damned souls, more than "creepy zombies."  Likewise, Nuculais, the being at Legion's center, is kind of a joke.

The next two games just copied Symphony of the Night's Legion.  In Portrait of Ruin, its new acid attack is more disgusting than the owld lasers, and it foes fit into the Nation of Fools' topsy-turvy confusing layout.  Harmony of Despair is there for pure nostalgia, although it should be noted that entering the boss room near the bottom ruins the old reveal of those piles of bones.


And that's my analysis of Legion, which in my personal opinion is the single most disturbing Castlevania monster.

[darkwzrd4]

The SotN version was by far the best.  I remember fighting it and not being able to sleep that night because every time I closed my eyes, I would hear the screaming.  Keep in mind that I was 16 at the time.  For a game like that to give a 16 year old guy nightmares is really saying something.  Then again, it was mostly the fact the there was the screaming.  Whoever came up with the idea for this battle was brilliant.

[X]

Love the explanation you gave here Ridureyu  Very informative on many levels! I remember watching my brother playing SotN and encountering the Legion. To be honest it didn't scare me, but it was never-the-less an impressive display for a good ol' 2D boss battle. And yeah, the latter Legions that came after it were kind of a flop, but were also probably intended to be a nod towards SotN.

-X

[Ridureyu]

Portrait of Ruin's isn't bad, but pretty much BE$CAUSE it's recycled. I do prefer the vomit-acid over lasers, though - perhaps using both works, too.  The only problem is that we had seen it before, and Portrait of Ruin's boss music just wasn't up to snuff in that battle.


But yeah, I first fought "Granfaloon" back in 2000, and that fight still gets a reaction out of me.

[JR]

Nice read. I remember being kind of surprised that such a morbid thing like Legion existed in a Castlevania game (though this was before I had played through Chronicles, with the undead fetuses and all). I was pleasantly surprised that it gives such an uneasy feeling the first time seeing it. I don't know what's more creepy: the fact that it's a bunch of undead bodies as one living mass, or the fact that the bodies are completely featureless. One of my favorite bosses of any Castlevania game ever.

With this and the Nintendo Power thread you made recently, I kinda hope I see you do more of these.

[Chernabogue]

Nice explanations!

[DragonSlayr81]

I remember the first time I ventured off into Legion's domain, just seeing the mess load of skulls, I kinda knew it wasn't a good sign. I remember my sister was in the room, and as Legion rose from the skulls, my mouth dropped open and she said, "Ewww. That's sick!!". I can't ever thinking of a time in video game history that I've shared with anybody else(be them family members or friends) that had such a similar impact, let alone, send a shrill shiver down both of our spines at the same time.

[Ridureyu]

There are many kinds of horror and many ways to scare people in fiction. We could spend a massive conversation on just "What is horror?" But two very general and broad categories are: Things that are scary because they're subtle and realistic, and things that are scary because they're overwhelmingly wrong.  Legion falls into the latter category.  I know I'm never going to run into it in a dark alley, but that doesn't mute its effect at all.

[Vampire Killer]

Arr, when first I gazed upon Legoin in SotN, twas an awesome and horrible sight to see, sez I.

[Kale]

Indeed... Legion when he first appeared was quite a sight. Then getting hit by a laser beam was also surprising...

[Puwexil]

I definitely prefer Blaustein's take on the concept to the original biblical reference. Both are absolutely fine in the end, but as the definition for the term Granfalloon goes ("a group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless."), I find it a better fit for the parasitic nature of the creature, and perversely humorous as well.

This is more a boon for Symphony in general, but the over-the-top pyrotechnics whenever a boss is vanquished were always an utter joy. Granfalloon's are some of the most memorable to me.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

If you guys want to see a Live-action equivalent to Legion, see the movie "Slither".

[Vampire Killer]

^^

I'll take that as a warning not to see it

[Odile Kuronuma]

Nice explanations! Legion is my favorite CV boss, especially the SOTN version. It's prolly THE most disturbing boss in CV.I just love the design, the sound effects, everything .

Another boss that i find disturbing is Beelzebub . Maybe not as much as Legion, but since you can't see the whole body (unless you do a super jump),  you're left wondering what kind of monster you're fighting. Plus you have to deal with those annoying flies, and the sound effects were done in a way that you would hear them flying and swarming .
I think those two bosses are easily the most creative bosses in CV.If only they made them a little tougher, it would have been perfect.

[Dominus]

Beelzebub is The most disturbing and disgusting of CV, I literally couldnt sleep That night as i kept hearing the flies sounds, it was awful

But Legion is one of my favorite bosses along Graham 2nd form and Carmilla/Laura. Personally i prefer The AoS version, it looks almost pure, and in The end when you see That something so evil that doesnt let souls going to heaven (cause i personally thing that this legion is formed of the pure souls solidified, and thats why it looks so white and pure) it is only a fetus, a baby. Its a similar to Yami from Okami but worst