Topic: The Future of the Castlevania Series

[DragonSlayr81]

I don't know if I could live without Trevor anymore. Best Belmont is best. but yeah, new storyline, please keep it simple, a few Belmonts, with marked personalities and different relations to Dracula.

I'd love a new reboot that starts with Trevor(kinda a reboot of the CV3 events). I know I keep repeating what I'd like to see, but the whole family/clan aspect, for that particular game(or more, what it brings to the table), it would be perfect to sow the seeds of the relations between Belmont, Dracula(or Draculesti family), Danasty and Belnades. You got it right there, four families embroiled into a struggle. Even apparent that some of those within the familes can turn against their kin(Alucard, for instance), which would add to the drama. Really, also, with Trevor and moving forward, you got a great linear progression(like LoS, in a way) without that "bouncing around the timeline" that the origina canon did so much(and Trevor, as a starting point, is a rather GREAT one at that!).

[Chernabogue]

How about a new timeline with new characters, new story, and almost no references to previous timelines?

Some Belmont facing Dracula for some reason, with a plot that is okay. No need for complicated origins, just an epic adventure journey to a dark castle.

[Dremn]

Unrelated but Konami is playing SotN on their livestream

http://www.twitch.tv/KONAMI

[DragonSlayr81]

How about a new timeline with new characters, new story, and almost no references to previous timelines?

Some Belmont facing Dracula for some reason, with a plot that is okay. No need for complicated origins, just an epic adventure journey to a dark castle.

I can work with that!

The only thing I would think is a worse case scenario, IMO, would be if the series is given to a U.S. studio and they come up with this:

Desert highway, the beating hot sun is finally setting. A car driving a mid the pulsing air pulls over to the side of the road, near what seems to be a dirt mound. A young man wearing sunglasses wearing a white wifebeater gets out, takes a drag on a cigarette and tosses it to the road, stomping it out. He has short blond hair, short enough to see the side and back of his head's tattoos show through it. His arms are full of various tribal tattoos. He pulls off his shirt to reveal more tattoos, his back, a massive cross tattoo is dead center.

We hear a coyote howl as the sun vanishes under the horizon. The man pulls reaches under the driver seat to pull out a shotgun. He flicks on the headlights and pounds the radio, resulting in a phat beat pounding through the speakers.

We see stirring from the mound. With a moan, we see bodies rise from their dirt naps, pulling themselves up to form an army of the undead. They lumber towards the man. He seems aware, but doesn't care, shaking it off with cool reserve.

After fiddling around, he kicks his door close seeing the snarling dead around him. His left arm flinches as his tattoos light up, and from them, unwinds a long chain whip. Gun in his right hand, whip in his left, he cracks his neck and looks into the camera.

BELMONT
"Time to do the Lord's work, BITCHEZ!!"

Unloading his shotgun into the crowd, he leaps into the air into an inhuman height and slams down with his chainwhip, causing a holy shockwave throughout the area. SLOW-MO as others jump to avoid the shockwave and he counters with a flying knee upward to one, and thrusting haymaker to another. Everything speeds up, shaky camera.... Aaaaaaah!

By the end, the creatuers are decimated, and our hero pulls his chainwhip back into his arm.
BELMONT
"It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it!"

Fade to black.

As we return, we see him in a bar, a hot chick noticing him and sitting on the stool next to him.

GIRL
"So, what do you do?"

BELMONT
"You could say, I'm in the family business..."

We see a man in a business suit get out of limo, entering a tall corporate structure. He's dashing, black hair slicked back, elegant yet masculine with the charm of the devil himself.

BELMONT
"You've heard of the corporations sucking this country dry? This one is... literally!"

We see the man in his penthouse bathroom, lavish, waist deep in a hot tub... filled with blood. Around him, on the marble floor, lay a number of beautiful, naked women bleeding out, dead. He sits back, chalice in hand, filled with blood and laughs.

We see scenes of the Belmont fighting his way through the slums. He gets stuck with a syringe of glowing green formula by a drug dealer wearing shades.

BELMONT(dizzy and stumbling around)
"What the fuck did you do to me?!"

Drug dealer pulls off his shades revealing demonic eyes and begins to change, growing feathers and claws.

STOLAS
"Jus gave ya the GOOD SHIT!!"

He stumbles out of the alley and stares out into the people on the street, hallucinating and seeing them as monsters. He runs into the crowd starts beating innocent people down.

We see other scenes where the hero is fighting his way through a prison and eventually coming across a massive Frankenstein-like monster made up of many stitched together convicts. We se other things flash back, but they footages is so fast and shaky, it's hard to determine what's happening. We last see the hero Belmont staring down the man in the suit.

BELMONT
"I'm here to party!"

Fade out, though we still hear the suited man(Dracula) speak.

DRACULA(basically quoting something I heard from a Stephen King story)
"You heard the story of Job? His life was ruined, family killed, farm destroyed. Not many know that after all that, he kneeled in his misery and called out, 'Why me? Out of everybody on this forsaken planet, why... me?'. You know what God said? 'There's just something about you that pisses me off!'."

Flash in the darkness the Castlevania logo! Time to appeal to a NEW demographic bitches!!!

[GuyStarwind]

Bwhahahahaha what did I just read? I could imagine the whole thing and I gotta say you're going places.

[X]

Hahaha! For some reason I was imagining what's-his-name from Evil Dead as the Belmont hero when I read that!

How about a new timeline with new characters, new story, and almost no references to previous timelines?

Some Belmont facing Dracula for some reason, with a plot that is okay. No need for complicated origins, just an epic adventure journey to a dark castle.

This I can work with too. All new Belmont's (especially female Belmont's), all new stories, and hopefully a kick-ass evil version of Vlad Tepes Dracula and not his tragic IGA counterpart.

[son_the_vampire]

Still waiting for the announcement of CotM HD Remix (one can hope right?)

[KaZudra]

I would love to see another 2D LoSvania with Richter.

[DragonSlayr81]

Hahaha! For some reason I was imagining what's-his-name from Evil Dead as the Belmont hero when I read that!

This I can work with too. All new Belmont's (especially female Belmont's), all new stories, and hopefully a kick-ass evil version of Vlad Tepes Dracula and not his tragic IGA counterpart.

Both IGA and MS's Draculas are tragic characters(IGA's is more the tragic asshole, MS's is the tragic anti-hero). I'm done with sympathetic villains. It's true, sometimes they can work, but the problem with people(in general) is when they pay witness to something good, they want it in spades. It's the reason why, with trend and things in general, mankind KILLS IT for themselves. You can't have just one good thing, you want it all the time, ad nauseam. Variety's the spice of life. Not every character should be developed the same way, and just because it works for some doesn't mean it would work for all.

[e105beta]

Both IGA and MS's Draculas are tragic characters(IGA's is more the tragic asshole, MS's is the tragic anti-hero). I'm done with sympathetic villains. It's true, sometimes they can work, but the problem with people(in general) is when they pay witness to something good, they want it in spades. It's the reason why, with trend and things in general, mankind KILLS IT for themselves. You can't have just one good thing, you want it all the time, ad nauseam. Variety's the spice of life. Not every character should be developed the same way, and just because it works for some doesn't mean it would work for all.

The problem is that people are only really comfortable with two types of villains: tragic villains (LoS: Dracula, Mithos Yggdrasil, Kuja) and pure evil megalomaniacs (Zeromus, ExDeath, Kefka, Zeus). The people who like the former criticize the latter of being too shallow, and people who like the latter criticize the former for being not evil enough, etc, but both of them are justifiable. People can either sympathize, or just write them off as "evil".

I want to see the third type of villain, the real villain, the villain who doesn't see what he is doing as evil at all. I'm not talking the whole "Well, it's just two sides of the same war" where they try to paint everyone involved as partially at fault. I want to see a Hitler Dracula. I want to see that Dracula who will commit insane atrocities because he believes it's right, not because he's some indoctrinated zealot, not because he's pure "evil", not because he's insane. A Dracula where you can sit there and go "Well, I can see your perspective, but I can't understand it all. It's wrong." And no "I must destroy the world to save it!" That's not what I'm talking about.

It's like where people see those gifs of Hitler having fun and being a normal person and feel uncomfortable because they think "How could he do that? He's pure evil. He doesn't have real people emotions." I want to see a Dracula like that. A Dracula that commits supremely evil acts, but still has his emotions. A Dracula that wipes out entire cities, but weeps when a Belmont kills his own son. It's kind of like LoS Dracula, but minus the "I used to be a good guy".

Sure, it might lean more towards "tragic backstory", but I think that's just because the nature of character depth. A character with some depth is always going to be more understandable than one without depth, but it's the depth that makes them interesting. It's why Dracula is a more interesting villain than Satan, because Satan is just pure evil. I'm just not a particular fan of characters that are evil for the sake of being more evil. Everyone has motives, and I think going into those motives makes for a far more interesting narrative.

[beingthehero]

A Dracula that commits supremely evil acts, but still has his emotions.

So SotN Dracula, basically.

[e105beta]

So SotN Dracula, basically.

To an extent, yes.

The problem with SotN Dracula is
A. We never seem him really do anything evil.
B. He's a tragic villain, motivated by revenge for his second wife. If he was characterized better, he'd be a lot like LoS Gabriel.
C. Any sort of "character development" that he gets is nullified by the other games in the canon.

[Viskod]

Well we never actually see any Castlevania Dracula do anything at all do we?

[e105beta]

Well we never actually see any Castlevania Dracula do anything at all do we?

Well, in Rondo of Blood you see his armies destroy Aljiba, and in Mirror of Fate you see his armies kill Simon's mother and overrun the Brotherhood. Then in LoS2 you get to see him eat people, but that gives way very quickly to "I want to be good" Dracula.

I like tragic villains, but I like more standard villains too. I just don't like the "I'm an evil final boss with a chip on his shoulder...oooohhhh, scaaarrryyyyy" that Dracula has been. He has no Luca Blight moments where you go, "Man, I need to kill that guy!"

[beingthehero]

He curses Transylvania in Curse of Darkness to be a flat, monotonous land filled with dumb enemies. That's pretty evil.