Topic: What would *you* change about the CV Universe?

[zangetsu468]

This would not make any sense from Bloodlines' point of view considering the manual states Quincy to be the one to slay him in 1897. I'm glad IGA never took such an unnecessary step or the CV universe would be even more ambiguous then it currently is. Quincy was made a Belmont by blood in CV Bloodlines' back story therefore he can kill Dracula.

So this is a thread about what people would change about CV's universe...
Really have a zero carefactor what the manual says - this would also potentially change - as we're talking in hypotheticals.

While we're on hypotheticals, Stoker's novel mentions Quincey is not married and never mentions children, so:

Scenario A) Quincey's son, a 2 year old, witnesses the final battle between his father and Dracula alongside another 2 year old, at Castle Dracula by themselves... or

Scenario B) Alucard kills Dracula, Quincy survives for long enough to have offspring after the events of Dracula..

Scenario A makes no sense, retcons the description the author gives to Quincey including the fact he is unmarried with no children. The only thing going for it is to say Quincy already has a child, but this is disregarding what the book states. It really makes no sense to the game's backstory also.

Scenario B retcons the ending for another way Dracula was killed. If Quincey didn't die on the spot killing Dracula, this also means he is able to survive and have offspring, eliminates the need for 2 two year olds being unsupervised in the Transylvanian wilderness and gives an explanation as to how Dracula was killed.

Scenario A changes game and book, scenrario B changes book alone. Pick your poison.

[X]

So this is a thread about what people would change about CV's universe...
Really have a zero carefactor what the manual says - this would also potentially change - as we're talking in hypotheticals.

Sorry about that zangetsu468 but it was not directed at you. IGA has made so many blunders that this would have just been another extra pound added to an already rickety, crumbling bridge. As for options (A) or (B) I had thought out an option (C) a while ago. Similar to (A) Quincy has his kid with him when he goes to England but leaves him with family friends; The Lecarde family. During the pursuit of Dracula, the Count's Gypsies are ordered to kidnap both John and Eric as leverage against the vampire hunters and are brought to the castle, where they witness the final showdown. Unlike IGA I did not need to make such a radical change to the story. It is largely the same and it works without outright interfering with what's already been established. So my poison is option (C).

[Inccubus]

In the earlier games what is said in the manual is very important since little to no story is presented in the game itself.
As I've said before, the original Japanese manual should always be taken as the "real" version since the localization teams have often added information in often misguided attempts to flesh out the story a bit.

In the case of Bloodlines they added that bit about John and Eric being present at Dracula's defeat which caused a wierd plot hole where there wasn't one to be begin with.
I can only presume that the localizer felt the need to explain how John and Eric would have known about what happened to Quincy and failed to take their ages into consideration.
Given John's lineage as a Belmont and the involvement of the Lecarde family with the Vampire Killer there's no need for a convoluted explanation for John's knowledge of the events surrounding his father's battle with Dracula. Besides the fact that they would have been told to prepare them for their responsibilities, there were 5 surviving eye witnesses most of which were friends of Quincey.

As for the inclusion of the book, Dracula, as part of Castlevania lore, you can already forget about the actual text of the book being cannon to CV.
If a game in the context of Castlevania were ever made out of the book it would most certainly be different from the original text.
The most obvious changes needed would be to make Quincey a father and perhaps a widower (to make him more virtuous when courting Lucy Westenra) and the inclusion of the Vampire Killer.
Other than that there are no other inconsistencies.
Quincey is the one who strikes the killing blow in the book and he does die from his injuries.

[SiFi270]

I'm guessing he didn't use the Vampire Killer because of the whole "it drains your life if your last name isn't belmont" thing. And no mention of him being a widower isn't the same as him not being one. I'm sure he mentioned that to Lucy when proposing to her, not in a guilt-trippy way, but in a "I have a son who needs a mother" kind of way. We only hear about the proposal secondhand in a letter she writes, and she probably didn't feel it necessary to mention details like that to Mina.

[Inccubus]

I'm guessing he didn't use the Vampire Killer because of the whole "it drains your life if your last name isn't belmont" thing.

That could be one rationalization, but if you're going to adapt "Dracula" to Castlevania then why wouldn't you have him wield it?
After all people complain that at first the series was very specific about the Vampire Killer being needed to kill Dracula and that in the later filler games any schmuck with a sword can do it.

So as long as we're discussing changes in the series, this is one point I would contend.
Only a Belmont with the Vampire Killer or someone wielding Dracula's own power (Alucard) can put him down for the 100 years.
So, in game play, I would make it so in CV3 Sypha and Grant can't damage Dracula when he reaches 1 HP.
Same for Maria in RoB and Charlotte in PoR.
Eric get's a pass since he's using the Alucard Spear. Maybe add some exposition about the spear being forged with Dracula's magic.
I've already explained how CotM should be rewritten and modified to remove Dracula and have it fit in with the timeline.
I don't think you could salvage CV64/LoD without a complete rewrite, a new time frame, and game play changes.

And no mention of him being a widower isn't the same as him not being one. I'm sure he mentioned that to Lucy when proposing to her, not in a guilt-trippy way, but in a "I have a son who needs a mother" kind of way. We only hear about the proposal secondhand in a letter she writes, and she probably didn't feel it necessary to mention details like that to Mina.

That is true enough, but it is definitely a point that should be stated for clarity and better consistency if nothing else.

[SiFi270]

I have a theory of how Grant might be sort of related to the Belmonts but it's based on the assumption that Dracula was Vlad III and Legends was canon, making Alucard Trevor's father.

Grant's believed to be named after the Dinesti clan, who had connections to the Wallachian royal family during Vlad's reign. At one point in real history, Vlad ordered all his next-in-lines to be killed so they wouldn't take the throne from him.

My theory is that Grant's father was one of those next-in-lines, but he escaped and became a pirate, changing his name from Dinesti to Danasty because Castlevania characters aren't good at aliases. Isn't that right, Misters Zead and Arikado?

[theplottwist]

That could be one rationalization, but if you're going to adapt "Dracula" to Castlevania then why wouldn't you have him wield it?
After all people complain that at first the series was very specific about the Vampire Killer being needed to kill Dracula and that in the later filler games any schmuck with a sword can do it.

So as long as we're discussing changes in the series, this is one point I would contend.
Only a Belmont with the Vampire Killer or someone wielding Dracula's own power (Alucard) can put him down for the 100 years.

To be fair, canon Castlevanias are already like this. Only Belmonts and people wielding Dracula's power can defeat him.

Alucard is his son, Hector learned how to manipulate Dracula's darkness from Dracula himself, Eric has the Alucard Spear as you mentioned, Shanoa used Dominus. Sorry if I understood wrong.

I like the gameplay changes you proposed. It'd have the rules more strict and force the story into the gameplay.

[zangetsu468]

@ X if you're going to go with option C, I'd say follow Inccubus' logic of following the original Japanese manual, as in why do they have to be kidnapped at all?

@ Inccubus/SiFi One could use the logic that Quincey had the VK in his possession but he didn't use it because a) it would drain his life and b) Dracula being in his coffin, Quincey pulled out his Bowie knife for a short range kill.
In a strange twist of irony he still apparently dies, but if he did have offspring before/ after this could always be justified with logistics external to Stoker's text.

Ironic, that in POR you can actually kill Dracula without the VK. Technically if the player is skilled enough, this should be the good ending as Jonathan won't die. I've never tried this, or if I did I can't recall. Nonetheless I've thought about starting POR again. 

[X]

Ironic, that in POR you can actually kill Dracula without the VK. Technically if the player is skilled enough, this should be the good ending as Jonathan won't die. I've never tried this, or if I did I can't recall.

I can confirm this. It was either using the VK or the Holy claymore sword. Or a bit of both. And the reason why Jonathan can kill Dracula without the Vampirekiller? Belmont by blood. Only his sir name is different. Also the only way to get a bad ending in the game is if you fail to save Eric's daughters and instead fight them to the death.

[zangetsu468]

I can confirm this. It was either using the VK or the Holy claymore sword. Or a bit of both. And the reason why Jonathan can kill Dracula without the Vampirekiller? Belmont by blood. Only his sir name is different. Also the only way to get a bad ending in the game is if you fail to save Eric's daughters and instead fight them to the death.

But then is the ending exactly the same once you defeat Deathcula with or without the Vk?
I assumed it would be the same and the Belmont fight was optional.

Eh I might try the sisters fight to the death on the next runthrough, it wasn't overly easy on the hardest setting so I may have given it a miss and gone straight to the final battle.

[crisis]

you can kill dracula using nothing but cream pies & paper airplanes.. im not kidding

[theplottwist]

And the reason why Jonathan can kill Dracula without the Vampirekiller? Belmont by blood. Only his sir name is different.

you can kill dracula using nothing but cream pies & paper airplanes.. im not kidding

This so freaking much. I don't get why people try to justify videogame mechanics with story. Jonathan can't "kill Dracula without the Vampire Killer because Belmont blood". He can do it because the developers can't prohibit the player of equipping the short sword and mowing Dracula down with it. besides, Belmont blood by itself doesn't guarantee you can attack Dracula. Belmont blood guarantees ONLY that you can wield the Vampire Killer. And even so, if you're not a Belmont even in surname, your life will be drained.

Besides all this, if I'm not mistaken, there IS a difference on the ending if you beat Dracula without unlocking the true power of the whip.

When you beat the game after unlocking the whip, it assumes you used the whip to beat Dracula, and unlocks the true ending. When you do it without unlocking it, *if I'm not mistaken* the ending comments on it, but the game's extras are not unlocked, signaling that canonically (independent of having beaten Dracula with a cream pie), Jonathan DID use the whip.

Again, I'm not sure. I'll have to replay the game myself to find out.

[SiFi270]

But wasn't Nathan only able too beat Dracula because of his Belmont DNA? I mean, he was basically using a bootleg version of the Vampire Killer.

[X]

Nathan Graves is not a Belmont. And there are no Belmonts in CotM. But, if somebody were to revisit CotM then they can (story-wise) make him a Belmont by blood as he does not have their sir name.

When you beat the game after unlocking the whip, it assumes you used the whip to beat Dracula, and unlocks the true ending. When you do it without unlocking it, *if I'm not mistaken* the ending comments on it, but the game's extras are not unlocked, signaling that canonically (independent of having beaten Dracula with a cream pie), Jonathan DID use the whip.

I have not tried this    I must look into it!

[Kaneda]

I always assumed that Quincey Morris was unaware of being of Belmont blood, even before the game Portrait of Ruin. This would at least be consistent with the literary character, since he doesn't know anything about vampires, Dracula, etc. You could justify their conflict as being the Belmont destiny and they're naturally drawn to one another. It would also explain why he uses a Bowie knife instead of the Vampire Killer.

Going by the translation of the Japanese manual on Mr. P's site, the story doesn't mention anything about John and Eric being present for the final battle. Also, while the novel depicts Quincey as unmarried and trying to court Lucy, there's nothing to say that he wasn't widowed and/or had children in the past. Or John could be an illegitimate son. I'm less inclined to accept the latter since Stoker painted all the characters as being pure and virtuous and Quincey Morris as gentlemanly. A retcon like that being made for the sake of Castlevania would go against Quincey's characterization.

Then again, I'm not Konami.