Topic: Operation Akumajo

[Flame]

People tends to forget that LoS wasn't a Castlevania at the start

Yes it was.

[Sindra]

Uh oh. The eternal debate. "Cox said Lords of Shadow was meant to be Castlevania from the start!" or "Konami pulled that out of their ass and retroactively made LoS a Castlevania game!"

I personally believe the latter. I believe they're full of crap.

[Munchy]

The main evidence that it was a Castlevania seems to be all the castle shit in the promo art and webpage combined with how Simon-ish Gabriel looked in the first teaser trailer.

I think some of the content in game went pretty off-road for Castlevania, which might lead people to believe otherwise, so who knows.

[narkolepsi]

People tend to forget the FULL quote:

"The only way evil can triump is for good men to do nothing, unless we are talking about corporate producers and suits, which crush good men's hopes despite effort!"

...Well. Damn.

Okay, so who's right here? I've read everything from "Cox wanted to make an accessible Castlevania from the beginning and Kojima opened doors for him" to "the Castlevania name was excluded from the trailer so it was made just days before E3" to "MS was making a new IP for Konami and it was going poorly so they had Kojima help them and all was roses" to "IF IT HAS THE NAME IT'S PART OF THE FRANCHISE, IF YOU LIKE IGA'S GAMES YOU'RE A NARROW-MINDED FOOL; PROBLEM, GAMER?" I've heard equal amounts of good factoids and senseless hyperbole from both sides. I still honestly can't figure out how that thing even started out, as a CV or a new IP. And apparently nobody else can either.

This is my opinion: feel free to agree, disagree, or hunt me down: I personally think it's CV in name alone, about as CV as I am when I wear my shirt with the CV title screen on it. It's a hodgepodge of hack 'n' slash games that have been done to death already, which isn't really much better than a metroidvania in terms of rehashing a tired formula, and a desperate attempt to reconnect with old fans. "Ooh! A Swiss Army cross! How'd this get here? Aww hell, Gandolfi made it. Carmilla, Cornell, Brauner! These guys juuuuuuust happen to have the names of canon characters! What now? Aww hell, this game isn't canon, it's a reboot, so it doesn't matter!"

Which is also a load of rubbish. The "non-canon" thing means nothing from a commercial perspective. The very fact that such a derivative game exists, and the fact that a sequel is in development, is enough to gauge the series' direction from here, and that is toward the mainstream. The series is being stripped of its essence. Your senses must be far keener than mine, for I don't see a semblance to CV at all beyond the name.

One thing I did appreciate about LoS was the inclusion of Pan, an old god, as a benevolent and loving entity. As a pagan I really appreciated the nod to nature and the beauty and magical atmospheres of the landscapes. There is deep religious symbolism in the storyline. The problem is that people are acting as if religious allusions in CV didn't exist before LoS. Order of Ecclesia was chock full of it. I played OoE at a time I was going through a ton of personal problems with religion and it actually helped me heal from a few of them. Where was the outcry when Rondo of Blood and SotN used crucifixes in the Item Crashes? (I don't know if there was any at the time; I will readily admit this.) Some of the classicvanias were censored for crosses and nudity as per Nintendo's censorship policy, but that's about as big of an "outcry" the game's ever gotten and that was commonplace then. What about the Vampire Cross used as the series logo in more recent years? The bloody Virgin Mary in Portrait of Ruin (which scared the living shit out of me when I first saw it)? Did it really take changing the villain from Dracula to Satan for people to go on about the "heavy religion?" All sorts of theologies and mythologies are wells of inspiration from which Castlevania has drawn.

Also, Trebor777, I agree with you on many instances; however, I too will point out that Nintendo at least cares about its Zelda fans to treat them with orchestras and a pretty BA piece of artwork.

[C Belmont]

Dave Cox interview in Aug 2008

"It's a new brand, IP from Konami. We've had a lot of criticism recently for just rehashing old sequels or bringing out games which are already known brands so we felt we wanted to do something new and original"

LOL
I guess their own personal opinion is about all anyone can confidently say on the matter.

[Kale]

It was a castlevania from the start, then it becamea  new IP, then it became another CV.

[Kingshango]

Honestly, no one outside of Konami/Mercurysteam knows what went down during development of LOS so everything is just pure speculation.

This whole entire situation could have been avoided if they had just shown this from the start instead of the Lords of Shadow teaser:


Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Concept Footage feat. Simon Belmont

and stuck with it's original premise as a remake of Castlevania 1.

[thernz]

I could see that they would deliberately lie to keep things a secret I guess.

[Kingshango]

Some people don't take kindly to being lied too weather it's to keep a secret or not, they could have just said absolutly nothing and everyone would have been cool with it. It's better to be told nothing than be told that "This game will be a new IP because Konami is tired of milking old series" then one year later saying "It was a Castlevania game all along guys, we have no proof but take our word for it."

[narkolepsi]

I don't trust Cox as far as I could throw him. The best thing he could bring to Konami is a restraining order. He's fishier than the Kalidus Channel.

What perplexes me is the supposed need to keep the "Castlevania" title a secret because of worries about upstaging Judgment. Yup, now I'm bringing the J-word into this...but it's always confused me. Judgment was met with reactions that were confused at best upon its announcement. Konami knew all too well what a departure it would be. Why did they put their money on Judgment as the big attraction, which flopped miserably in the press, in favor of the more mainstream LoS? Surely it would be more satisfying to reveal a high fantasy adventure rather than an anime-style fighting game. The whole thing just reeks of fish.

[DragonSlayr81]

In this case, it's kinda like the whole "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" type deal. Many different sources say different things, and really, what you, personally, believe is solely based on whom you choose to believe, as both sides are credible, yet both also have done some shady things to make you question their validity. At the end, it might just be easier to do the Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Moe or some other childhood rhyme to choose which one you follow.

[Flame]

Well, remember that Konami also limited IGA to not using any belmonts as the protagonists for his Sympnony of the Night, in order not to upstage Castlevania 64, which was what they were pushing as their big release. IGA's game was for all intents and purposes, just a side game.

And we see what happened there. Symphony went on to be the biggest hit ever, and 64 was upstaged and outclassed anyway.

these companies work in mysterious derpy ways. Such as Capcom canceling the Legends 3 project. I guess they thought Judgement would be better received because A. its still of the main universe, B. includes a whole slew of characters, and C. has IGA on it. And D, it was their in house production.

LoS on the other hand, was

A. A bold new reboot, with amazing graphics, for a better system, and was made by an outside team with possibly a bigger budget.

They might have felt that the LoS character design and style would upstage the Deathnote reject art. They might also have possibly not wanted the in house team's products to be upstaged by the obviously better one.

[DoctaMario]

Rayman Origins, Toki Remix, Elysian Tail, Monster Tale, Skullgirls, Magical drop V, A boy & his blob, Hard Corp Uprising, Batman the Brave & the Bold: the videgame, Bloodrayne Betrayal & Dust an elysian Tail are a few more modern 2D games. Also the ESRB recently rated a Alien video game for DS that is a side scrolling shooter developed by Wayforward.

But who am I kidding 2D video games are just to old a concept to be marketable
...Konami is just too damn lazy to put the appropriate amount of effort into a great 2D game that's all!!!

I haven't heard of any of those or the ones Charlotte mentioned (although, now that I think of it, I DO remember hearing a little about Muramasa) but I don't really keep up on games as much as I used to these days. Still, I'd bet most if not all of those games are at least 2.5D, right?

Your average CoD-playing gamer doesn't want to see 2d games on his ultraPS360SuperSystem. I'd be surprised if any of the above mentioned games were popular outside of hardcore gamers who can recognize their quality (assuming it's there.)

[Claimh Solais]

Nintendo's the way they are because they're not conforming to the new-age of gaming. I believe that HD compatibility was not included with the Wii simply for how much it would cost when purchased in stores. Nintendo, in my opinion, is the best first-party company of the three. Sony makes great systems, but they're kinda pricey. They also have about 1 or 2 first-party games that are worth playing. Microsoft makes great systems at a reasonable price, but their first-party games... blow ass. Nintendo's got very worthwhile consoles (seriously, why did so many people think the Wii controllers were annoying to use?), and their first-party games are simply great (though the weird Zelda games that star Toon Link are friggin out of control).

And in an ontopic note, my GameFAQs thread got two people to join in about six days. Dunno if that's good or bad, considering the timeframe.

[C Belmont]

I'd bet most if not all of those games are at least 2.5D, right?

quite the opposte actually
the closest thing to a 2.5D game on that list is Hard Corp Uprising which combines 2D Sprites with 3D backgrounds