We're defending bad writing now? I've seen it all.
What I wanna ask you is that if you consider mechs on pre medieval times, time machines and mechanical scorpions when no modern electricity-manipulation devices existed (much less AI programming, genetic engineering and time experiments), plot-coupon hunting, oversure of "The World is Brown", excessive out-of-context original-content referencing and predictable plot-twists, a "good writting".
Mind you that I'm not implying anything. This is a legitimate question.
Also mind you that I am aware that the old Castlevanias had elements like I mentioned. But they were
a lot more "cynical", as a way of speaking, about them, which made things quite interesting, IMO.
No, we don't have to /think/ for ourselves, we have to fill all the gaps and plot holes the "writers" didn't give a fuck about in an effort to make a slightly coherent story. Slightly.
But I agree with you about the mistery, I always love me some mistery, as Chaos in the old series for example, or the breinhartds in the new one, things that are important but are not explained just add to their myth. We need more of those!
Yes we DO have to think for ourselves for a good story to work. If an author never leaves something to your mind, then there is no use to imagination. Be they plot holes or gaps, or not. The "filling in" MUST exist.
In the case of old Castlevanias, I agree 100% that the "space left for us to think" is only there due to a trainwreck of a development, BUT this is extremelly healthy to the series, and today it is done most likely intentionally for this exact purpose. Players like to hypothesize, to get curious, to explore. When you leave nothing to their minds, what is there to see? Nothing but a bland and forgettable story.
The mistery is important, like you said, VERY important, but so is the *lack* of explanation with no contradiction. No explanation is better than the wrong explanation, and the classic games did it very well, in many points (read well:
many points, not
all points).
The story of Castlevania is not about the ending/conclusion since CVIII. It is about the
way to get there. The most memorable characters (Shanoa, Trevor, Alucard) did not become memorable because "final boss". They became memorable because of the story told between "X character enters castle" and "X character kicks Dracula's ass", and the spaces left for us to wonder.