Topic: Lords of Shadow stories I'm mad weren't explored

[Lumi Kløvstad]

One of the most disappointing fact of Los series is the feeling that  big names(names of famous characters in the series) were thrown in the middle of the game without being really developped.The countess Camilla for example. Since she is a recurrent ally of Dracula in other games, i was expecting a bigger role for her. Also, the way  Gabriel became a vampire (drinking laura's blood) lacked epicness. I would have wanted him to  make a pact with a powerful and ancient vampire, or perform a dark ritual in Scholomance.(i just read Dracula and its mentionned he may have got lessons in Scholomance)

Damn Carmilla got a screwed deal in this series. She was a pretty cool antagonist for her 15 minutes of fame radiating a dark air of regency and command of her environment and even her opponents, and then when she shows up in a much larger deal in LOS2 she's a lovesick puppy who wants the D.

Talk about getting shafted with the bad end of the stick.

And that double euphemism is already better writing than she got in LOS2 to boot. In the first game, the personality of the three Lords gave you a great window into what they might have been like as heroes -- going out of its way to state that the three Lords were effectively dark mirrors of their human selves.

Cornell and Carmilla stole the show in the first game I think because they feel the most like characters. They appear briefly but are very well developed with full personalities and a way of speaking and conducting themselves that communicates more about them than what they actually say -- that's very hard for writers to get right. Cornell seems almost completely resigned to his death by the time you meet him, like he knew it was going to happen eventually and Gabe being the fighter to finally be good enough to reach him tells Cornell it's time for him to let go (but his Warrior's Blood refuses to simply go quietly). Carmilla is haughty and arrogant, but you can tell it's not a false veneer that she's put on; she's exactly as powerful and skilled as she claims she is. Even so, a tiny piece of the person she used to be squeezes through and she tries to resolve the situation without a fight -- admittedly in a villainous way by offering Gabriel vampirism and an eternity of "many pleasures" (Seriously should have taken that sweet deal Gabe).

Zobek though felt like a bit of a cheat given that I was never able to reconcile whose perspective the first game is meant to be from -- Zobek's, Gabriel's, or mine. As a result, while his narration (epic stuff) very easily telegraphs his status as the (decoy) overall villain as the story progresses, his actual face heel turn into the ham-and-cheese-sandwich that is Dark Lord of the Necromancers feels completely out of left field and almost random, like someone just flicked an "evil switch" on the back of his head and he was all "ok I have to be evil now lol".

And then Satan was GENUINELY out of left field as he's not alluded to at all in any way prior to his appearance (definitely qualifying as the Giant Space Flea from Nowhere), but nevertheless is given the same excellent writing and voice acting as Cornell and Carmilla did -- you sense a lot of his past, the broken feelings he possesses, his vindictiveness towards God, and you get a real impression of a truly fallen Angel. Jason Isaacs gives probably one of my top 3 performances as Satan (probably number 2; Al Pacino's just kind of unbeatable) and manages to make the Big Bad both sympathetic but also a force that you must oppose regardless of your feelings.

Like Carmilla, Satan is also ruined by his appearance in Lords 2. He's turned into a perma-scowling chicken legged muscled beefcake of a villain who is ended by very mundane means not long after he appears.

Clearly all that weightlifting he's done in the intervening millennium didn't help him at all.

[theplottwist]

And then Satan was GENUINELY out of left field as he's not alluded to at all in any way prior to his appearance (definitely qualifying as the Giant Space Flea from Nowhere), but nevertheless is given the same excellent writing and voice acting as Cornell and Carmilla did -- you sense a lot of his past, the broken feelings he possesses, his vindictiveness towards God, and you get a real impression of a truly fallen Angel. Jason Isaacs gives probably one of my top 3 performances as Satan (probably number 2; Al Pacino's just kind of unbeatable) and manages to make the Big Bad both sympathetic but also a force that you must oppose regardless of your feelings.

I felt the same, but, to be fair, Satan was foreshadowed before.

When Gabriel reaches Baba Yaga, she goes on to rant about how Gabriel is doing Lucifer's job. After he leaves, Zobek kills her for speaking too much.

But yes, I agree that this is not enough foreshadowing. Satan doesn't feel like the logical conclusion here.

I also think the game is from Gabriel's perspective and that this combo of WHAM episodes were meant for us to feel like Gabriel feels: Utterly confused.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

she goes on to rant about how Gabriel is doing Lucifer's job.

Which is a common expression from the period for "I morally disagree with this thing you are doing", and even if she were being literal, both the player and Gabriel would assume her intended meaning was more disagreement with the ethics of his actions.

After he leaves, Zobek kills her for speaking too much.

She didn't say too much.

Zobek almost says word for word that he killed her because she approached saying too much and he didn't want to risk her chasing Gabriel down and spilling the rest of the beans. She'd said enough to get Gabriel moving on towards the end Zobek wanted, so the murder was simply threat containment for him. She had no further use for him and he didn't fancy her knowledge being a wildcard value in his plans.

She wasn't killed because of what she said, but instead because of what she MIGHT say.

But yes, I agree that this is not enough foreshadowing. Satan doesn't feel like the logical conclusion here.

Especially when you consider that Baba Yaga served her mythological narrative purpose: to make vague statements that come true regardless of the conditions going in. One of her roles in mythology is to spin people into self-fulfilling prophecies. She could just make something up off the top of her head, no truth to it whatsoever, but by treating it as an unflappable prophecy she will get people to try to avert it and therefore behave in a manner she desires -- also causing the fake prophecy to become real in the process.

In essence, her mythological counterpart is a quack fortune teller who excels at the Batman Gambit.

In Lords of Shadow, this role is taken up (somewhat more effectively) by Zobek. Almost everything he says will happen does, even if he had no way of knowing for sure it would when he began the whole plot. He was just that confident a manipulator and Gabriel was that easily duped that he behaved exactly the way Zobek anticipated when presented with the right push.

Which makes what Satan pulls a Double Batman Gambit: he presents Zobek with the right "prize" causing Zobek to behave a certain way, which involves doing exactly the same thing to Gabriel Belmont. Both men end up acting 100% as Satan anticipates. If either Zobek or Gabriel had possessed a single moment of persisting doubt, or if someone like Marie or Pan just had the damn guts to tell Gabriel the whole truth at the outset, the entire plan would have crumbled and Satan would at the very least had to start over with completely new targets, or he may have been entirely thwarted altogether.

Really, the plot of Lords 1 is a whole bunch of people trying to outscheme each other with the exact same plan and Gabriel is the dupe who falls for ALL OF IT. Even Zobek says, quite literally, "And YOU were the perfect. dupe."

Gabriel even winds up a vampire, exactly as Carmilla desired.

And then, according to Mirror of Fate, the Brotherhood of Light were pulling this on Gabriel more or less the whole time. It's unclear when the Mirror precisely told them about Gabriel becoming Dracula, but they definitely knew before they even sent him on the mission seen in Lords of Shadow 1... which meant the MIRROR OF GODDAMN FATE WAS DOING THIS TO GABRIEL TOO.

Seriously, that guy had a lot of shit coming his way from day 1.

[theplottwist]

Here, I didn't remember what she said at the time I responded, but watch this:



She mentions "the king of angels" being her master and having told her Gabriel was coming. This specific line also upsets Zobek:



So this is quite some foreshadowing.

Really, the plot of Lords 1 is a whole bunch of people trying to outscheme each other with the exact same plan and Gabriel is the dupe who falls for ALL OF IT. Even Zobek says, quite literally, "And YOU were the perfect. dupe."

Gabriel even winds up a vampire, exactly as Carmilla desired.

And then, according to Mirror of Fate, the Brotherhood of Light were pulling this on Gabriel more or less the whole time. It's unclear when the Mirror precisely told them about Gabriel becoming Dracula, but they definitely knew before they even sent him on the mission seen in Lords of Shadow 1... which meant the MIRROR OF GODDAMN FATE WAS DOING THIS TO GABRIEL TOO.

Seriously, that guy had a lot of shit coming his way from day 1.

And this makes me so mad.

Gabriel had NO FREE WILL WHATSOEVER EVER. He was quite possibly one of the most easily manipulated characters in videogame history. It feels so mechanical it was hard for me to sympathize with Gabriel, even if I liked the first game more than the two others.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Fate being inescapable is a recurring theme in the LOS saga -- and that to see the future is to lock that future in with no alternatives. It's part of why Alucard tells Simon to give up his shard of the mirror: relying on the mirror and not on himself will never give Simon a happy ending. Gabriel and Trevor had both been bound by the powers of fate, which arranged everything that followed into a path that could only lead to personal tragedy and heartbreak.

Still, you have to bow before the incredible stupidity of the Brotherhood though.



"This magical mirror which foretells the future and has never been wrong says that if we send that Belmont kid on this mission he'll turn into a Vampire Lord and kill us all."

"Lol we should send him on exactly that mission then."

"But first we tell his wife and tell her never to tell him, and kidnap his only son that he doen't even know exists. And raise that son to kill his father after his dad becomes a vampire lord. "

"Maybe we should... you know... NOT send the Belmont kid on that mission? And send someone else who WON'T become a vampire lord and kill us all?"

"lol shut up Tom."

"This plan couldn't possibly fail and end in tragedy for us all amirite"




With guys like that training him, is it any wonder Gabriel wound up so gullible?

[Claimh Solais]

She mentions "the king of angels" being her master and having told her Gabriel was coming.

Yeah, that's the most foreshadowing we got. It's a similar case to what happened with DmC: Devil May Cry's final boss...

(click to show/hide)

How it turns out that, all along, Vergil was plotting against mankind to rule over them once he and Dante usurped rule from Mundus. The only "foreshadowing" we got was Phineas stated to Dante: "You defeat Mundus, and who will take his place?

Thinking on it now, what's up with Western reboots of Japanese franchises and their horrible foreshadowing?

I don't know in all honesty about LoS' story in hindsight. When playing it, I didn't think too much on it because I really enjoyed it. But in the end, now that I've gotten some pretty good hindsight on it (and LoS2 is now almost two years old), it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. To be fair, the other games didn't, but that's A: only when you put them in the grand scheme of things (they made some decent sense as standalone games), and B: they didn't have stories on as massive a scale as LoS, so their problems weren't as obvious.

Overall, though, I'm about as mad about the underuse of Victor as you are. I was REALLY excited for him, and after playing through the game, I about had the same reaction as everyone else. "Wait, wait what. WHY." Seriously, his last thought had to have been, "You've gotta be kidding me." after we found out the person that they were looking for, THE PERSON HE DIED TO FIND, was in the building right in front of him.

[Kingshango]

Just wanted to point out that Satan was name dropped by Cornell, twice.

But since it happens so early on, his appearance at the end just seemed out of nowhere since most players would have forgotten by then. I know I sure as shit did.

[X]

The only real thing I'm mad about LoS is that the creator lied to us about certain aspects of the game before it was released. Getting us all hyped up for nothing is the worst thing you can do to fans of a longtime running franchise. But despite that I still gave the game a chance to prove I was wrong about it.

Nope. I was right. My gut instinct won out again though I didn't pay any real attention to it.

And by making LoS into a AAA title utilizing other games' elements, the true identity of Castlevania was lost in translation somewhere. As other have pointed out, the game is Castlevania in name only.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

by making LoS into a AAA title utilizing other games' elements, the true identity of Castlevania was lost in translation somewhere. As other have pointed out, the game is Castlevania in name only.

Thing is, it's a pretty brilliant riff on Castlevania at most points. It may be seriously flawed, but that didn't undermine that it was widely bought, and, outside of us core fans, it was well enjoyed.

In that same "does it feel like Castlevania" debate that went on for YEARS, someone pointed out that if you took the Original Castlevania, Symphony of the Night, Lament of Innocence, Curse of Darkness, and Lords of Shadow and put them in a showdown of gameplay, you'd have almost no idea they were all in the same series just by how they play -- you'd need the Castlevania branding and story conventions to effectively communicate that, because boy howdy, they don't really play all that similarly.

At their most basic gameplay descriptions, you have

Castlevania is Contra with a Whip
Symphony of the Night is Metroid with a Sword
Lament of Innocence is Devil May Cry with a Whip
Curse of Darkness is Dynasty Warriors with Vampires
Lords of Shadow is God of War with Patrick Stewart

Honestly, the series has jumped play styles a LOT since its inception.

Is Lords of Shadow a Castlevania? Hell yeah it is. There's just enough narrative echoes there to qualify. But it's like Circle of the Moon -- yes, it's Castlevania, but it's also its own self-contained thing; divorced from the primary series into which it doesn't factor, attempting to carry out its own narrative arc (this thread kind of proved it failed though) while not being beholden to anything specific from prior games before.

Lords didn't lose the "true identity" of Castlevania in translation. Castlevania never HAD a "true identity" it could lose. It's been a lot of things over time, and it really has to be able to change and adapt like that because that's the only way franchises survive.

Now, whether Castlevania survives this current incarnation of Konami is the big question. If, when Konami decides to stop letting the inmates run the asylum, they decide to make another Castlevania, it'll happen. It'll also be pretty good most likely, as a company with an apology to make makes a DAMN GOOD APOLOGY.

But it WILL be different. It won't be what we had before. And that's good. That's natural. If you like what we had before, those games still exist. If you like the style of those games that came before, GOOD NEWS! We have Bloodstained coming and a whole bunch of REALLY AWESOME fangames!

But Castlevania's true identity is that it changes with the times. It's not one thing, or even one thing constantly evolving like other series like Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden. Castlevania's life story is one of sudden and violent mutation -- after years going in one direction and steadily refining itself as evolution dictates, suddenly POW! shifts and changes rapidly into this whole new thing that kind of looks like what came before but not really.

These seeds were laid in the beginning with Simon's Quest and Vampire Killer, and they contribute an inescapable and necessary component to the series longevity.

[X]

Lords didn't lose the "true identity" of Castlevania in translation. Castlevania never HAD a "true identity" it could lose.

I'll try to explain why I feel the identity of CV was lost in LoS. It's true that many CV games over the years have many similarities with other games as you had mentioned:

Castlevania is Contra with a Whip
Symphony of the Night is Metroid with a Sword
Lament of Innocence is Devil May Cry with a Whip
Curse of Darkness is Dynasty Warriors with Vampires
Lords of Shadow is God of War with Patrick Stewart

But the thing is that while these are noticeable, IGA had manage to keep all these games feeling like Castlevania. One of the few things he done the series right by. I did not feel anything like that with LoS. At all. And yes I played the first game as much as I could tolerate. There in wholly lies what I feel is the difference. The identity of Castlevania for me is the feeling I get when playing it. LoS just didn't have that CV feeling for me and this is why I personally feel that the identity of Castlevania was lost in translation through LoS.

[Shiroi Koumori]

At their most basic gameplay descriptions, you have
Castlevania is Contra with a Whip
Symphony of the Night is Metroid with a Sword
Lament of Innocence is Devil May Cry with a Whip
Curse of Darkness is Dynasty Warriors with Vampires
Lords of Shadow is God of War with Patrick Stewart

hehehe, Patrick Stewart.
But I agree with X. The mood/the feel is what makes a game Castlevania and not the gameplay.

[e105beta]

Victor Belmont was the biggest waste of potential in all of LoS.

The ending to LoS2 gave me the biggest case of blue balls in the history of the universe.

[Dracula9]

The first appearance of the lord of fallen angels is darkly beautiful and just the right amount of unsettling, only for him to turn into Brock Lesner with ass wings for no explained reason.

Said pseudo-Brock Lesner, the lord of darkness and primary root and source of all evil, then dies from a single stab wound (because Satan is apparently a basic-ass vampire grunt now, everyone) and slumps over unceremoniously. That's it. The source of all evil and the antithesis of God is killed and literally nothing happens to him. No soul dissipation, no flashy death scene, no gut-wrenching screams, nothing.

These two reasons alone showcase the potential wasted by those idiots heading the trilogy. They had the root of all evil personified and written out for them already, and they still managed to fuck him up beyond comprehension. As far as I'm concerned, everything else they botched is just a shitload more fuel for the (hell)fire. If you fuck up having Satan as your antag, then you're doing something very, very wrong.

[AlexCalvo]

Thing is, it's a pretty brilliant riff on Castlevania at most points. It may be seriously flawed, but that didn't undermine that it was widely bought, and, outside of us core fans, it was well enjoyed.

In that same "does it feel like Castlevania" debate that went on for YEARS, someone pointed out that if you took the Original Castlevania, Symphony of the Night, Lament of Innocence, Curse of Darkness, and Lords of Shadow and put them in a showdown of gameplay, you'd have almost no idea they were all in the same series just by how they play -- you'd need the Castlevania branding and story conventions to effectively communicate that, because boy howdy, they don't really play all that similarly.

At their most basic gameplay descriptions, you have

Castlevania is Contra with a Whip
Symphony of the Night is Metroid with a Sword
Lament of Innocence is Devil May Cry with a Whip
Curse of Darkness is Dynasty Warriors with Vampires
Lords of Shadow is God of War with Patrick Stewart

Honestly, the series has jumped play styles a LOT since its inception.

Is Lords of Shadow a Castlevania? Hell yeah it is. There's just enough narrative echoes there to qualify. But it's like Circle of the Moon -- yes, it's Castlevania, but it's also its own self-contained thing; divorced from the primary series into which it doesn't factor, attempting to carry out its own narrative arc (this thread kind of proved it failed though) while not being beholden to anything specific from prior games before.

Lords didn't lose the "true identity" of Castlevania in translation. Castlevania never HAD a "true identity" it could lose. It's been a lot of things over time, and it really has to be able to change and adapt like that because that's the only way franchises survive.

Now, whether Castlevania survives this current incarnation of Konami is the big question. If, when Konami decides to stop letting the inmates run the asylum, they decide to make another Castlevania, it'll happen. It'll also be pretty good most likely, as a company with an apology to make makes a DAMN GOOD APOLOGY.

But it WILL be different. It won't be what we had before. And that's good. That's natural. If you like what we had before, those games still exist. If you like the style of those games that came before, GOOD NEWS! We have Bloodstained coming and a whole bunch of REALLY AWESOME fangames!

But Castlevania's true identity is that it changes with the times. It's not one thing, or even one thing constantly evolving like other series like Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden. Castlevania's life story is one of sudden and violent mutation -- after years going in one direction and steadily refining itself as evolution dictates, suddenly POW! shifts and changes rapidly into this whole new thing that kind of looks like what came before but not really.

These seeds were laid in the beginning with Simon's Quest and Vampire Killer, and they contribute an inescapable and necessary component to the series longevity.

No offense, but this just really seems like an attempt to justify the huge changes that came in LoS, and I would call it a very innacurate view of the series' history and evolution.  There simply was never anything even close to the jump we had to LoS.  Sure change has been a constant throughout the series, but not such drastic change.  Sure we've had other final bosses then Dracula, stories that don't fit into the overall continuity, drastic changes changes in tone, art style, musical style, etc...  But never so many drastic changes at once.

The games you listed as being seemingly non related is really just a false equivalency.  Anyone who played LoI would instantly know that Cod was the same series, the gameplay was a little different, but their was enough the same to make it obvious.  I would say the same thing in terms of Cv1 and SoTN (even though it is a little unfair given how much the series had eveolved in the interim.)  While there was a very different gameplay style we still had the same enemy types, same basic level layout structure, and above all a continuing continuity.  Some people like to say that story doesn't really count in linking games but I call BS on that.  Story is as much a part of a game or series as anything else.

Cotm changed story, but still kep the gameplay mechanics virtually untouched, as well as types of enemies and bosses.

SoTN had a dramatic gameplay change but still continued the same story, name dropping several characters from previous games in the series.  And again kept the same monster mash theme, while applying it to a more gothic romantic atmosphere.

The sorrow games gave us a new setting (futuristic) and a basically Dracula-less experience, but still kept the exact same atmosphere and play style of previous games.

And while games like LoI and CoD radically changed the combat... again, story, setting, atmosphere were all very familiar to series regulars.

And while several games have adjusted the art style, music stye, and the cinematic style of the games, none of these things had been so dramatically changed all at once as they were with LoS.  And it is certainly no coincidence that virtually all of these changes moved into the direction of "what's popular at the moment?"  And while this is fine from a business perspective, it is utterly putrid from and artistic perspective, and even worse from the perspective of respecting the series.

LoS was a fun game, but the truth is that if it didn't have the Castlevania in the title no one would have made much of a connection.  And while this might be true to some extent in some of the previous games, it never came close to the level that we see in LoS.  If you really want to see an example of just how much LoS strayed, compare it to MoF.  MoF it is a dramatic reinterpretation of what Castlevania has always been, shaking things up while still retaining enough to feel like it is part of the series.

[Dracula9]

Mirror of Fate was an abysmal piece of rubbish and should not be cited as an example of how things should have been done.

LoS1 at least was good in its own right. The two aren't really comparable, as LoS1 is still a decent game if you remove the Castlevania affiliation. Consequently, Mirror of Fate is still a bad game if you remove the affiliation.