Topic: The Future of the Castlevania Series

[Viskod]

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!"

Well in the old series you just had all kinds of undead and stuff terrorizing the populace anyway in general. Because in Simons Quest that stuff was still going on, and Dracula was dead. And in Mirror of Fate he does that because he's outraged that the Brotherhood sent his own son to try and kill him.

But Castlevania Dracula himself, never really as ever done anything other than just be waiting in his throne room for someone to assault him. The most I can think of is his little conversation with whatsherface in the original Rondo of Blood who he's keeping captive and his alternate forms in Castlevania 64/Legacy of Darkness

[e105beta]

Well in the old series you just had all kinds of undead and stuff terrorizing the populace anyway in general. Because in Simons Quest that stuff was still going on, and Dracula was dead. And in Mirror of Fate he does that because he's outraged that the Brotherhood sent his own son to try and kill him.

But Castlevania Dracula himself, never really as ever done anything other than just be waiting in his throne room for someone to assault him. The most I can think of is his little conversation with whatsherface in the original Rondo of Blood who he's keeping captive and his alternate forms in Castlevania 64/Legacy of Darkness

I feel like I should want to kill Dracula because he's, you know, evil, and not just because it's the Belmonts' job, which is how it felt after awhile. Very routine.

At least in Ocarina of Time, Ganondorf actually fucked shit up. You never WATCHED him do anything, but you got to see all the lives he ruined and the lands he destroyed. It had more impact.

[crisis]

what was dracula doing during those 15 years between cva & belmonts revenge?

[Viskod]

I always imagined it as the Belmonts arriving at the castle like the day of his resurrection. Like some kind of Belmont Sense goes off and they just know.

Like Dracula just gets resurrected, takes a walk around the throne room to stretch his legs, asks for a nice goblet of blood as one would want for their first morning coffee and before he can even get it, he gets reports from flying medusa heads that there's already a Belmont in the castle.

Then he just gets pissed off, throws everyone out of the throne room and just sits on his throne and pouts for an hour until this years model storms the throne room and starts giving some grand speech about god, love, and justice, that  he hears every damn time thinking that maybe this year, maybe this year, they won't jump over my fireballs and whip my face.

But they do, and he gets sent back to the void, and the very next thing he sees is his next ressurection....and someone tells him there's a Belmont in the castle.

[GuyStarwind]

I always imagined it as the Belmonts arriving at the castle like the day of his resurrection. Like some kind of Belmont Sense goes off and they just know.

Like Dracula just gets resurrected, takes a walk around the throne room to stretch his legs, asks for a nice goblet of blood as one would want for their first morning coffee and before he can even get it, he gets reports from flying medusa heads that there's already a Belmont in the castle.

Then he just gets pissed off, throws everyone out of the throne room and just sits on his throne and pouts for an hour until this years model storms the throne room and starts giving some grand speech about god, love, and justice, that  he hears every damn time thinking that maybe this year, maybe this year, they won't jump over my fireballs and whip my face.

But they do, and he gets sent back to the void, and the very next thing he sees is his next ressurection....and someone tells him there's a Belmont in the castle.

A Day in Dracula's Life

[Viskod]

Lol yes.

"What is this animal bullshit!?"

And here I thought I'd heard every version of Dance of Illusions, and I hadn't even heard the best one.

[DragonSlayr81]

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!"

Luca Blight... THAT is exactly what we need the next Dracula to be like. You knew why he was the way he was, and you can say it's tragic in a sense, but never once to do sympathize for him after all the atrocities he's commited. He's almost like a sociopathic serial killer, you know there's a reason why they are the way they are, but what they've become is beyond redemption. They've basically become evil incarnate, the darkest side of mankind. Living, breathing monsters. 

[e105beta]

Luca Blight... THAT is exactly what we need the next Dracula to be like. You knew why he was the way he was, and you can say it's tragic in a sense, but never once to do sympathize for him after all the atrocities he's commited. He's almost like a sociopathic serial killer, you know there's a reason why they are the way they are, but what they've become is beyond redemption. They've basically become evil incarnate, the darkest side of mankind. Living, breathing monsters.

Exactly. I agree completely.

Luca Blight was one of the best gaming villains ever, IMO. Sure, he's a bit on the "pure evil" side, which I usually find shallow, but they gave him enough of a backstory that you can understand it to an extent. Then he spreads so much sorrow and misery, makes you hate him, and then when it's time to fight him, it practically takes an army to put him down.

[Eärendil]

The problem with the Gabriel Dracula is that even when Gabriel is his most vile, it's always played off as a result of the inherent evil of mankind. Otherwise, Gabriel just sits in his castle and acts as if wants to just be left the fuck alone. He's just a brooding, "I feel sorry for myself" kind of Dracula. He feeds on humans, yes. But it's usually the ones in his own lands of Transylvania, ones that act to conspire with or against him, or the ones that actively march to take on his power (the holy church, members of the brotherhood, etc.). Sure, he tortured those individuals and acted horrible atrocities against them. You see evidence of that in the LOS2 castle. But it's almost as if he just didn't care and let the evil creatures he ruled over do as they pleased with the helpless humans that he or his minions came into contact with. Not because he was actively pursuing them out. I never got a real sense that the Gabriel Dracula was hell bent on dominating all of mankind or marching his armies of darkness across the rest of Europe and the world like some true evil dark lord. That is the big difference to me versus the classic Castlevania Vlad/Stoker Dracula antagonist. Obviously, the creators of the classic Castlevania Dracula took liberties and stretched the historical Vlad and Stoker Dracula as well. I don't think the historical Vlad Tepes had a desire to rule all of Europe or dominate mankind. He's even considered by some a hero in Romanian lore. Sure, he did very evil things, such as impaling his enemies and rival armies, torturing them; all the same, not all that more extreme than many other medieval rulers who used scare tactics to get their message across to rivals. However, mix in Bram's horror monster, vampire lore, with a touch of dark lord, and the Castlevania Dracula is essentially the Sauron of the Castlevania universe. Perhaps he has his reasons. But the fear factor against him is that you are the only thing standing in his way from him having complete domination over the Earth. You're not miraculously expecting him to remember that he was good at some point. Or that he has any compassion in him for anyone except perhaps his closest companions or relatives. And even that is really a stretch.

Edit: When I am referring to the more classic Castlevania Dracula, I am referring to the horror flicks / Bram Stoker / Vlad Tepes based one. I know that IGA / Metroidvania and the later Castlevanias before LOS changed that origin to Mathias Cronqvist. Though, uhm, I'd argue Mathias is a "wussified" Dracula too.

[Hickter Beermont]

Exactly. I agree completely.

Luca Blight was one of the best gaming villains ever, IMO. He spreads so much sorrow and misery, makes you hate him, and then when it's time to fight him, it practically takes an army to put him down.

I liked the human side to LoS2's Dracula but to get a new Dracula who you are lead to really despise would be fantastic, we always see him lounging around on his throne because he's obviously got enough creatures to do his bidding and that in itself can get a bit boring. There are many directions you could take him as a character, maybe a more lazy and sickening Dracula would be good, there's been lots of characters like that and a good example would be Theodin from LoTR when he's possessed. I think they could really take it to new levels of creepy, having him constantly starving in agony craving blood and destruction, similar to the mad king from GoT but with a bit of Stoker charm. You could also have him as a power mad egomaniac dominating the land he pops up in and forcing the men to fight at risk of their families, homes, crops etc and have it really scale across the continent of Europe, having a Belmont FAMILY would be good too as apposed to just one young lad on his quest for victory, a whole platoon of Belmonts, from grandad to granddaughter.

[DragonSlayr81]

Exactly. I agree completely.

Luca Blight was one of the best gaming villains ever, IMO. Sure, he's a bit on the "pure evil" side, which I usually find shallow, but they gave him enough of a backstory that you can understand it to an extent. Then he spreads so much sorrow and misery, makes you hate him, and then when it's time to fight him, it practically takes an army to put him down.

There's nothing wrong with the pure evil if you know there's a reason why they are pure evil. Luca Blight's evil, like I said, is similar to what you'd see in some sociapathic serial killers, even the monsters of history(Stalin, Hussein,...). People who become monsters, to the point that their regard for life, compassion and empathy is gone. Their basic human understanding has grown cold, emotionless. That's pretty damn realistic. One would also say, that makes it more SCARY. There ARE tyrants out there in our history's past that commited so much horrible acts because they believed it to be right, and in process, many innocent people have been snuffed out because of them.

But yeah, I remember when people were all over Sephiroth as "Teh BESTEST game villain EVA!", I though he couldn't hold a candle to Luca Blight. I mean, yeah, the whole final confrontation with Blight, to those who never played(nor plan on playing) Suikoden 2, look up the video on YouTube. I remember feeling the situations was tense as hell when I played that that part. Probably one of my all-time memorable parts of any video game. So damn epic.

[X]

Luca Blight... THAT is exactly what we need the next Dracula to be like. You knew why he was the way he was, and you can say it's tragic in a sense, but never once to do sympathize for him after all the atrocities he's commited. He's almost like a sociopathic serial killer, you know there's a reason why they are the way they are, but what they've become is beyond redemption. They've basically become evil incarnate, the darkest side of mankind. Living, breathing monsters.

Ironically enough you've just described our real-life Vlad Tepes. He wasn't apologetic for any of the horrid things he'd done. Far from it, he actually took pleasure in such activities. Even when his own wife threw herself out of the tower window he didn't mourn her loss as a normal person did. In order to cut down on poverty in Romania he had all the poor people killed. His life began with tragedy during his childhood, but later-on is someone who was in essence a sociopathic madman who felt completely normal. This is what we need Dracula to go back to. The very man that Bram Stoker drew inspiration from. Heck it's even noted that the real-life Vlad is far more fearful then his Vampire counterpart.

[zangetsu468]

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

Aside from luring Leon's betrothed into Eternal night so some Vampire could have his way with her, which he believed would cause his best friend to side with him against God... I thought that was messed up.

Or kidnapping 4 women, Kinapping and possessing Soleyui Belmont.

Cursing Simon and Wallachia..

[Viskod]

That wasn't "Dracula" that was Matthias, and we never saw that either.

You're ignoring that I mentioned the scenes during Rondo where he actually has a conversation with whats her face, and the scenes of his alternate forms in the N64 games, and we never actually see him kidnap the other girls, we don't even know for sure if he did it personally.

Same goes for Solieyu Belmont. We never saw him do that, and we don't know for certain that he did it personally.

So like I said, its a very rare to non-existent thing, to, during the course of a Castlevania game, see Dracula actually do anything.

[DragonSlayr81]

Ironically enough you've just described our real-life Vlad Tepes. He wasn't apologetic for any of the horrid things he'd done. Far from it, he actually took pleasure in such activities. Even when his own wife threw herself out of the tower window he didn't mourn her loss as a normal person did. In order to cut down on poverty in Romania he had all the poor people killed. His life began with tragedy during his childhood, but later-on is someone who was in essence a sociopathic madman who felt completely normal. This is what we need Dracula to go back to. The very man that Bram Stoker drew inspiration from. Heck it's even noted that the real-life Vlad is far more fearful then his Vampire counterpart.

One of the reasons I WANT a Dracula more aligned with his historical counterpart. Real Vlad III did some horrible, horrific and vile things to people, but you also know he most likely believed all these were justified. Sometimes history's more interesting that fiction, even scarier. Out of all the depictions of Dracula, real Vlad III is the most horrific of them all. Imagine taking that horrific, real aspect and applying it to a vampire Dracula. IMO, that would be the ultimate fictional depiction of Dracula(who knows, some might've already done that, as I don't pretend to know ALL the fiction based on Dracula out there, and there's quite a LOT of it from books to comics and such).