Topic: What the fuck was Alvarez (and perhaps his art crew) thinking?

[Dracula9]

Apologies in advance if this has been gone over before (probably has) but as time goes on it pisses me off more and more.

Satan's redesign.

Why.

Why the hell would you think it was a fantastic idea to take a rather beautiful (darkly so, but still beautiful IMO) design which echoes of Renaissance design and Dore's art style for the Comedy, and turn it into a generic and just plain horrible-looking pro-wrestler design with pointless armor, a mouth way too big for the head it's on, and butt wings?

I mean fuck, LoS1 Satan looked the part and then some. No armor, no accessories, nothing to abstract. Just a naked guy wreathed in shadow, with a physique reminiscent of Michelangelo's David, covered in black veins to perhaps symbolize his corruption; those hauntingly creepy eyes against skin so pale his musculature and facial definition become hard to make out at times, emphasizing in a sense his lack of humanity. He looked like a Deceiver or Corrupter, with a dark beauty which falls away only when it's too late.



Just look at that handsome devil (snicker).

Then there's this ugly piece of shit.

Super macho, mouth way too big, butt wings, and armor that makes no sense at all given his fighting style (or rather Alucard's). They turned eerie and haunting eyes into totally non-threatening crystal blue ones, and buffed him up for no explained reason. Did he spend a thousand years bench-pressing for his rematch with Apollo Cre - I mean, Gabriel? Were thousands of years of corruption and control over countless dark arts suddenly worthless? Did the Mr. Olympia body somehow amp all those powers up to eleven?

And don't even get me started on the fucking ending of Lords 2.

(click to show/hide)

SO YOU FUCKING KILLED SATAN, THE SINGLE ROOT OF ALL EVIL IN MANKIND AND ULTIMATE ENEMY OF GOD HIMSELF, AND HE JUST FUCKING SLUMPS OVER AND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING APPEARS TO CHANGE? WE GET NO EPILOGUE EXPLAINING HOW OVERNIGHT ALL THE BAD IN THE WORLD VANISHED AND HUMANITY PROSPERED FOREVERMORE, OR HOW THINGS LIKE REVELATION AND JUDGMENT DAY WOULD EVEN WORK NOW. AND WHERE THE HELL WOULD SATAN'S SOUL GO ANYWAY HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT SHIT WORK FUCK YOU ALVAREZ AND COX LEARN HOW TO WRITE

I could complain more about this shit, but I'll just let one of the better redesigns (muuuch better, mmmm) of Lords 2 sum it up for me.



Sorries again if needlessly resurrecting an old topic.

[Chernabogue]

And don't forget ALvarez changed the ending so no fight against this magnificent Dragon form:

(Source: The Art of CV: LoS)

[Dracula9]

SEE THAT I WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE WITH

BECAUSE THAT THING AT LEAST WOULD HAVE HAD AN ACTUAL SUPER-DRAMATIC DEATH SEQUENCE

BUT NO

HE JUST FALLS OVER

*flips table*

I swear, this one thing bothers me more than most of the shit in all three games combined.

[VladCT]

Maybe he somehow managed to smoke his own pride? :V

[Dracula9]

...I suddenly am compelled to make a comic of that.

[Flame]

I wasnt really bothered by the NANOMACHINES, SON- redesign, I thought it was alright.

I mean, Satan got his ass kicked by Gabriel, so he's obviously been lifting for the inevitable rematch.

what bothers me more, is how WASTED the design was. you never fight super Satan. You fight Alucard and then Satan gets shanked like a bitch.

[Dracula9]

Maybe that's it, maybe Satan got injected with SINNOMACHINES, SON.

[JR]

Eh, to be totally honest, I marked out when I saw Satan in LoS2, but that's because he had a Danzig-esque look to him. Those things he has on his legs look overdone and silly, but I liked the rest of his design.

The thing that annoyed me was how they gave him that design, and you didn't get to fight him as such. Just the whole final battle in itself was a letdown.

[Dracula9]

That's part of it, too. All that buffing-up and all he does is possess your kid. He doesn't have a super tough final form either, so there's no point in the redesign. It serves no purpose and just looks like a bad Darksiders knockoff.

I still much prefer the first game's Satan. He wasn't way over-the-top like Nanosatan, and he fit the character. To me, Nanosatan tried too hard to be something that wasn't gonna make it in anyway, and was ultimately so over-the-top in design that I don't really even see the character in it anymore. He looks like a scrapped Darksiders character, not Satan.

[zaxiou]

Looking at that dragon design and how pathetically they offed Satan it feels obvious sequel bait. They were hoping for LOS2 to get recognition enough to bring him back through random acolyte nonsense. Father and son unite to fight Santa's final coming in the future. Though it would be kind of cool to get a LOS3 where you're playing as the new Belmont in the future with Gabriel & Alucard to help you out against Mega Dragon Satan in a whole new castle built by his acolytes for his resurrection. By another studio since Mercury steam probably won't be able to pull that off.

[Dracula9]

Satan's confirmed by Box of Cox to be dead, no chance of that anyway.

[zaxiou]

For now, but by the power of vidya logic they can bring him back.

[Anglachel]

Why not? He explained Alucard so well.

[TatteredSeraph]

It was one of the things which I found to be teh biggest let down.  The figth was anticlimactic, too easy, and not interesting enough, unlike the first fight, which was superb.  This one felt like a button-smasher, everything they claimed this game couldn't be, unlike the fight in 1, which was intelligent and tactical, especially after the prelude to it in the Silver Warrior Pan fight, which remains my favourite boss batle of the trilogy.  I'd have loved to have Satan take multiple forms, with the possession stage being the final part or penultimate, where it leaves Gabe in a real predicament, it's a heart-wrenching gambit.  You think that Satan's been defeated, after an epic clashing of light and shadow / void and chaos magic hearkening back to the first confrontation.  The possession could come either before or after the epic 7 headed dragon form, in which Gabriel also has to take to the skies in draconic form.
 The setting was also a bit lame. I hated the design of the Leviathan, and the look as they're fighting in space just came across as a bit daft.  Much more epic would have been to set it before Dracula's throne. show it as a battle for the title of Prince of Darkness, and then maybe for some of the fight, have it be transported to the gates of Hell, and in front of Lucifer's throne, with the lines of reality almost blurred. 
  I also hate Satan's redesign in general.  He looked crap, especially compared to just how perfect he looked in 1.  His weird eye colour change also didn't make much sense.  Beefcake Satan just..... just lacked a lot, and he lost that sinister thing you'd expect of him, looking fair and beautiful, but with that undercurrent of corruption that snakes it's way in, showing his true nature.

  As for Carmilla, while I mostly quite liked her redesign as a facade of her 'humanity', in comparison to her dark, Lord of the Vampires, appearance, which I loved, I found the huge tits a bit of a distraction in a bad way.  They were too in your face, even though they do sort of work considering what Carmilla is - a seductress.  However, not everyone appreciates an eyefull of tits.

  I think Alucard's redesign was one of my favourites in the series.  He looked fantastic, especially after they made him look pale and bloodless, as opposed to almost looking like a drow elf.   I love this version of Al as much as I love his SotN-onwards incarnation.

[Dracula9]

Yeah, supertits was a bit distracting, but she was more pretty in face I thought.

*shrugs*

Still hot though.