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

[Inccubus]

Lament of Innocence: Lose the whole Dracula/Mathias connection entirely. Have Mathias instead be like Walter; A stepping stone to help strengthen the early Belmont family. To prepare them for when they must face the real Dracula.

Remake a new Legends game with Sonia reinstated. Have a backstory describing Vlad's rise and fall, his betrayal to Mathias (now King Mathias of Hungary), and stealing of the Crimson stone. Vlad loses his wife due to the Turks deceit and this act prompts Vlad to become Dracula. The Japanese backstory of legends would be used rather then the US version. Sonia is Trevor's mother and she trains her son to be the next hero of legend.

CV Resurrection would be made.

Curse of Darkness never happens. There are no devil forge masters nor any time travelers.

SCV4 would be made into a sequel of CV II.

Give CVII's game a further in-depth backstory

I came up with this last year:
CotM would still be a Castlevania gaiden but Nathan Graves would actually be a Belmont descendant thus explaining why he's able to kill Dracula. His hunter whip is similar to the Vampirekiller, but not one and the same.

Only a Belmont by blood decent can slay the Count. No more wannabes.

The Vampirekiller whip is brought back as being a divine weapon of holy power rather then a whip of alchemy. And only a blood descendant of the Belmonts can wield it or it simply won't work.

Give Carmilla a more important Role in the CV universe. As a bloody rival to Dracula.

Death is one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and is not in any way a Shinigami.

PoR happens just like;^^^
This.

Bram stoker's Dracula would be incorporated into the CV universe with some slight (but not major) changes.

The backstory of Bloodlines would be explained as to clear up the confusion of the Morris and Lecarde childrens' involvement at the climactic final struggle between Dracula and Quincy Morris.

The whole idea of why the Belmonts cannot touch the whip would be dropped entirely if it cannot be explained in any coherent or rational way.

Make the 1999 game.

Dawn of Sorrow never happens.

Have a far more gender neutral series with female Belmont leads.

Fully explain the 100 year cycle of Dracula's resurrections so as to avoid any further confusion. And also explain in detail about his premature resurrections.

Dracula himself created Castlevania through his own power.

I totally agree with that bit about Lament and remaking Legends.
(Though I feel the need to remind people that Vlad III Dracula is the man's name so there is no "becoming" Dracula but I'm nitpicking semantics since I get what you mean.)

Here is an idea I came up with for a remake of LoI:
(excerpt from design document)

Vampire Killer: Lament of Innocence (1096 - Demon Castle is Born)

This will be a revision of LoI designed to have it fit better with the original trilogy and Bram Stoker's Dracula. It will be a new origin story for the Belmonts and the Vampire Killer with Mathias completely divorced conceptually from Dracula. Some plot points will be adapted from LoS to help better flesh out the circumstances and motivations of the characters involved in the story. The setting will remain the same but the date will be changed to 1096 so that it falls after the beginning of the first Crusade and jive better with history. Central to the plot will be the relationship between Leon, Mathias and the Church as well as the creation of Vampire Killer, the sub-weapons, the Dark Lord and the Demon Castle itself. Borrowing from LoS, Leon and Mathias will both be members of the Brotherhood of Light which is a secret knighthood founded by the Church. During the course of the game Leon will have a falling out with both Mathias and the Church viewing Sarah's death as a betrayal on both their parts. Speaking of Sarah, she will be reimagined as Leon's wife instead of his bride. They will already have children thus creating more of a bond between Vampire Killer and the Belmont line. This will lead to Leon renouncing the Church and vowing to hunt down all evil whether it be of god or the devil mirroring Dracula's own falling out with the Church centuries to come.

At first only Leon will be playable, with Mathias, Joachim and Pumpkin being unlockable after beating the game once. Leon will use both a sword and the whip of alchemy relying more on the whip as the game progresses. Unlike in previous games, the sub-weapons except for the throwing knife will have to be unlocked by finding them in the hub area of the castle and bringing them back to Rinaldo for him to transmute them into the traditional sub-weapons through alchemy. The necessary relics introduced in SotN will be given to the player by Rinaldo at the beginning of the game who will also explain how they work. Mathias will also use a sword as his main attack but instead of the whip and sub-weapons he will have access to a number of spells instead. His interaction with Rinaldo will be restricted to researching new spells and learning to transmute his sword into stronger forms. He will be the only bonus character to have story elements and he will lead the player to an alternate 'happy ending' depending on decisions made throughout the game.

A new mechanic I may toy with is having randomly generated portions of the castle to actually show that the physical building itself is coming to demonic life.


I feel Castlevania IV should stay what it is, a remake of CV1, if anything I'd say the endings in CV2 should be edited to be less ambiguous and reflect how the series actually played out after it was made. As for the game itself I'd change around the order of a couple of stages, upgrade the sub-weapons, and add a few more gimmicks for the player to do with the whip.


I mentioned this before in another thread...
I want to do a ROM hack of CotM to properly place it in the main timeline instead of being a dimensional gaiden.

1) Dracula will not appear as anything other than a coffin. Specifically the coffin shown at the beginning of the game should be replaced with the one shown in Order of Ecclesia. And the setting will change from Austria to Hungary.

2) Morris Baldwin will be renamed Baldwin Morris and he would be Quincy's grandfather. And Carmilla is replaced with Elizabeth Báthory who takes Baldwin for the same reason Carmilla originally did. Carmilla as a boss will remain unchanged except for any dialogue before the battle will be slightly altered.

3) Hugh Baldwin and Nathan Graves would become Hugh Morris and Nathan Morris respectively. They would now be actual brothers. Hugh is portrayed as resentful of his younger brother for being chosen to inherit Vampire Killer. During the course of the game Nathan tells Hugh about the cost of wielding the Vampire Killer and Hugh reveals that he already knew about it and that he wants to protect Nathan from that burden.

4) Instead of Elizabeth resurrecting Dracula for the umpteenth time, you will interrupt the ceremony and save Baldwin before it can be completed. Elizabeth goes into a rage and uses some of the Dark Lord's power and you fight her as that last boss.

5) The ending is suitably altered and after Elizabeth fades away the castle DOES NOT CRUMBLE. This is Elizabeth's castle in Hungary not Castlevania.
Back outside the castle Baldwin, Hugh, and Nathan appear along with Dracula's remains. Nathan will ask what they should do with Dracula's remains since they are to dangerous to leave behind and Baldwin suggest they take it to an organization he heard about that is searching for a way to destroy the Dark Lord (Ecclesia of course). Hugh tells Nathan he will get stronger to protect him so that he doesn't have to use the Vampire Killer again before he has a son of his own to pass it to (hinting at Quincy being Nathan's son). Nathan suggests they get going so they can all sail back home (hinting they are from the US) and he coughs at the end of his dialogue (hinting the whip is already killing him).

[X]

@SiFi270: There is the tombstone at the end of CV II that leads many fans of the series wanting (or thinking) SCV4 as a sequel. The tombstones shown in CV II and SCV4 are virtually identical. The best ending in CV II shows Dracula's hand rise up out of the grave indicating that he will return. So it's not just the line in the US intro "Once again Simon Belmont...", it is also the tombstone that lends to this comparison. I wouldn't mind at all if SCV4 was redone just slightly in order for it to fit as canon rather then a retelling of CV1. Besides both Slogra and Gaibon were introduced for the first time in SCV4 and we see them again later on in SotN.

[Kaneda]

Super Castlevania IV is a sequel. It was localized to be one for the West and I have no qualms about regarding it as such. It's Japanese counterpart is a remake and I have no problem with stating that either. To use another example, the game Blaster Master is Blaster Master. The Japanese game is Meta Fight. The games are still working from the same base but have their own identities.

As far as I'm concerned, it's better as a sequel. This far down the road it doesn't look like Simon's story will be finished any more than we'll get that 1999 game.

[SiFi270]

I've already explained why I don't think the ending where Dracula's hand pops out is canon, but the one where Simon dies. I don't blame either of you for not reading the entire post, though. It's pretty long-winded.

[Kaneda]

On the contrary, I have read your post. And I've considered that possibility as well. But going per video game tradition, the best ending is almost always the canon one. Which, again, is nothing that hasn't already been said on here.

But still, I think it's a possibility.

[SiFi270]

I'm sorry that was rude of me. I was all "you can't have read the whole thing because otherwise you'd agree with me without question".

On the subject, I'd also like to shift part of the timeline forward a little so that Legends takes place in 1476, Dracula's Curse takes place in 1502, Curse of Darkness takes place in 1505, and then everything from then on happens when the timeline says.

ALTHOUGH. There are other games in the series where the bad ending seems to be canon. Off the top of my head, Castlevania 64's bad ending would explain why Dracula's been alone in his castle for years by the start of Bram Stoker's novel: Reinhardt and Carrie defeated Gilles de Rais and his forces, but never figured out that Malus was the real Dracula. This could also mean that Carrie, having accepted the offer to marry him, ended up becoming one of the brides seen in the book.

[Kaneda]

I'm sorry that was rude of me.

Not at all.

ALTHOUGH. There are other games in the series where the bad ending seems to be canon. Off the top of my head, Castlevania 64's bad ending would explain why Dracula's been alone in his castle for years by the start of Bram Stoker's novel: Reinhardt and Carrie defeated Gilles de Rais and his forces, but never figured out that Malus was the real Dracula. This could also mean that Carrie, having accepted the offer to marry him, ended up becoming one of the brides seen in the book.

I actually really like that idea. It's always rubbed me the wrong way that the novel informs that Dracula has been there for a long time and the games sort of diminish that by his frequent deaths and revivals. The tie-in with Carrie being a bride is a nice touch, too. She'd have to be older, but it otherwise checks off one of my changes.

[SiFi270]

Well of course she'd be older. After all, Malus wanted to marry her then and there, but she convinced him to wait until they'd grown up.

[James Belmont]

Where you have you been all my life? 

Mostly just a lurker.

[SiFi270]

About the "cat and mouse" thing you brought up in an earlier post... in the Bram Stoker novel, Van Helsing says that becoming a vampire gave Dracula a "child brain" (and that certainly fits with his portrayal in the series, where he seemed to be a much better schemer in life than afterwards), and the idea of trying to invade England has only recently occurred to him. Even if he did want to do it sooner, he'd still have to get around the whole "vampire invitation" malarkey, which is the entire reason he hired Jonathan Harker.

As for the sunlight thing... Did sunlight ever explicitly kill him in any game? He disappears as the sun rises in Dracula X and Portrait of Ruin, but by that point he's already been defeated, and the sun's just there to signify that the eternal night, a sign of his influence, is gone.

[Inccubus]

SCV4 was not intended to be a sequel.
What the localizers do in a region outside the one a game was created is never canon unless unless it is retconned by the creators in a later game.
The gravestone is an homage, nothing more.
And the endings of CV2 are only evidence that the creators left the game open for a direct sequel.
Remember that at that point in the series most of the aspects of the overall story we take for granted now didn't exist.

[X]

As for the sunlight thing... Did sunlight ever explicitly kill him in any game? He disappears as the sun rises in Dracula X and Portrait of Ruin, but by that point he's already been defeated, and the sun's just there to signify that the eternal night, a sign of his influence, is gone.

This was also done in SCV4's ending sequence. After you strike the final blow the sun breaks through the window and Dracula burns up into bats. Then after all the bats burn up except for one, the last bat floats to the ground and becomes stone; then disappears. Showing it might be a better visual explanation;

Super Castlevania 4 Ending

[Kaneda]

What the localizers do in a region outside the one a game was created is never canon unless unless it is retconned by the creators in a later game.

No one is debating about it being canon. It's not canon. But Konami of America released Super Castlevania IV as a sequel via localization. Japan intended it as a remake and its reflected as such within their own country. I think it's necessary to recognize both intentions for what they are. Whether sequel or remake, it's not canon and makes any conclusion within the overall story moot.  I'd use the same approach for Dracula X(X). Japan has it as a soft sequel, the West has it as a proxy for Rondo. Either way, it's not canon.

And do we have 100% certainty that it wasn't at some point going to be a sequel and then the designers just decided to take it the remake route? The overall design of the game seems so far removed from the original that I have a hard time believing that it wouldn't have been considered sequel material in blueprint. Vampire Killer and Chronicles both strongly resemble their progenitor with variations and additions to give them their own distinction. Haunted Castle doesn't, but how often do arcade games really resemble their console counterparts? I've never read anything saying that the tombstone is meant as an homage, explicit or otherwise.

[Super Waffle]

http://chichichichipndale.deviantart.com/art/Castlevania-SotN-Beside-Herself-484014433 is now canon.

I have no idea how the games after that would work, but there's that.

[Inccubus]

And do we have 100% certainty that it wasn't at some point going to be a sequel and then the designers just decided to take it the remake route? The overall design of the game seems so far removed from the original that I have a hard time believing that it wouldn't have been considered sequel material in blueprint. Vampire Killer and Chronicles both strongly resemble their progenitor with variations and additions to give them their own distinction. Haunted Castle doesn't, but how often do arcade games really resemble their console counterparts? I've never read anything saying that the tombstone is meant as an homage, explicit or otherwise.

No. We don't know if it began as a new game and was left as a remake, but it wouldn't really matter, would it? What they decided on and released is what it is.
As for the state of SCV4 as a sequel in NA, I see the release in Japan as overriding whatever shinanigans were done by the US offices.
For me the original release version of anything trumps any localization.

BTW, how is Akuma-jou Dracula XX a "soft sequel"?
The manual translation is pretty much the same as the US version and it's the same text from the in-game intro.