Topic: Castlevania Season 3

[Foffy]

IIRC, according to the leak Cox wasn't that big of a problem actually. The actual huge one was the other guy, Alvarez or something like that.

Cox came to this forum and lied to us about some of the decisions that went into the first Lords of Shadow game. Unless my memory is spotty, he posted here justifying the masks and how that was part of concept art that we've never seen; if he didn't do this here, then he did it in interviews that I'm layering here. Though Cox's lies were more apparent about saying that an HD version of Mirror of Fate existed and then said he didn't, and things like that.

I don't think Dave Cox disliked the source material. Enric Alvarez was the one who pushed for Dracula to be depicted the way he was in Lords of Shadow 2 and the bad ideas like the rats and stealth from the Quake looking goons with the guns.

[SecretWeapon]

Cox came to this forum and lied to us about some of the decisions that went into the first Lords of Shadow game. Unless my memory is spotty, he posted here justifying the masks and how that was part of concept art that we've never seen; if he didn't do this here, then he did it in interviews that I'm layering here. Though Cox's lies were more apparent about saying that an HD version of Mirror of Fate existed and then said he didn't, and things like that.

I don't think Dave Cox disliked the source material. Enric Alvarez was the one who pushed for Dracula to be depicted the way he was in Lords of Shadow 2 and the bad ideas like the rats and stealth from the Quake looking goons with the guns.

Well truth to be said, I was thinking about Los2 when i wrote that. Cox might have been suuuuuuuper wrong about everything Castlevania but at least LoS1 plot and lore (and gp for that matter) is good enough. LoS2 is the true clusterfuck

[crisis]

Guys, sex is a part of life. You’re here because your mom & dad fucked each other. Stop acting like “eww, there’s sexual stuff in Castlevania.” NONE of it is graphic pornography, so if you’re not 10 years old, get the fuck over it. Seriously.

I remember when Dave Cox made an account, I think his name was “Coxee” or something like that.

[TatteredSeraph]

I didn’t find the sex scenes too graphic, and that’s saying something as someone who has zero interest in watching that kind of thing in films.  It’s also not as though the games haven’t involved topless female demons before.... oh hang on, Ayami Kojima’s succubus art for the succubus in SotN has versions of the picture with her boobs fully out.  They even tastefully hid things they couldn’t show in shadows. What was so novel here was the fact that one scene involved gay sex as part of a threesome, even if consent there was rather dubious at best, and in the other, it was consensual, and had the woman in charge, which honestly, I found refreshing for a change.  It didn’t play to the normal vampire film tropes of women being victimised.  It has strong women in this show.  So even if some things might be a bit questionable, it did do some things right.  Also, just look at Sypha’s reaction when Trevor claimed the beer was better than sex.  She’s strong and has her own agency, and she’s the kind of female character we need more of on screen.

[Lashen]

Guys, sex is a part of life. You’re here because your mom & dad fucked each other. Stop acting like “eww, there’s sexual stuff in Castlevania.” NONE of it is graphic pornography, so if you’re not 10 years old, get the fuck over it. Seriously.

Taking a shit is also part of life but that doesn't mean I want the Alucard dumping ass subplot.
10 year olds are the ones into shock value and gritty bullshit, mate.

Edit: Also, are you suggesting it'd be fine if I watched my parents fuck?

[TatteredSeraph]

I mostly didn’t want it there because it didn’t feel right or necessary for Alucard, especially as considering his nature as a dhampir, it didn’t feel right that he’d be so submissive in his response, even in as vulnerable a state of mind as he’s in.  I think it would have been more in character for him to snap and be the one who’s predatory towards someone.  That said, they were aiming to break him and his trust in humans, and assault is a sure fire way to do that.  Again though, I think they could have approached the betrayal in a different direction, without resorting to sexual violence.  They could have easily, for example, broken his trust by having him explore the ruins of his mother’s house, trying to find closure for Lisa’s death, and have the villagers that he’d known growing up in Lupu turn on him, as a possibility.  It wasn’t the graphicness of how the sexual assault was handled however that was the issue.  It was the fact that going for the angle of sexual assault didn’t feel right in this case, as well as the fact that it was assault in the first place.  As hey, consent is a big thing.

However on the flip side, it was absolutely right that they explored the way that losing his mother and then killing his father has broken Alucard so utterly, especially with him then immediately becoming self isolated.  Of course it’s going to affect one’s behaviour.  Push then to do out of character and/or irrational things.  It’s easy to see how someone who’s left that broken might respond to attention of that manner at the first chance presented, through craving contact from another person, be it non sexual or sexual.  Also, Alucard is a lot younger than he is in most of the games.  He’s had a very a-typical environment growing up, with him in some ways growing up faster than the rest of him, regardless of whether you read his throwaway line to Sypha about growing up fast literally as him ageing faster than a human.

Again, it was cool that they explored characters connected to the other vampire generals who were non-speaking.  Chō was the coolest of them imo.  Again, these characters don't exist in a vacuum.  Of course someone would come looking to see what happened.  Thus Sumi and Taka arriving.  Their backstory was cool and interesting.  Their characters however, weren’t.  Herein I think lies some of the issue.

  Puzzle pieces that quite rightly should exist were put together in ways they shouldn’t.  You can see why they are there, even why they went to Dracula’s castle.  But personally I think they shouldn’t have been such major characters.  They should have shown up maybe in one or two episodes at most and been more background, or at the very least, not the ones to break Alucard in the way he was broken with a major betrayal of trust.

With Hector, my biggest complaints lie in him just being too meek.  Yes, this is a gentler Hector than in the games, but at the same time he’s just coming across as too soft, too much of a puppy dog without much spine.

All that said, I honestly really do hope this gets renewed for season four.  I want to see where this goes more.  I love seeing the world breathing and being explored, and seeing more of the characters existing.  It’s something I love seeing in fanfic, and character heavy stuff is something I love in gaming as well, be it in a computer game or in a pen and paper RPG.  You can see the love and attention this series is being given by the animator team, you can see the passion for the source material that they have just through following them on Twitter.  It’s joyous to see.  It’s joyous to see that they are bringing in new love for the series.  Something it’s badly needed in the last decade.

[crisis]

Taking a shit is also part of life but that doesn't mean I want the Alucard dumping ass subplot.
10 year olds are the ones into shock value and gritty bullshit, mate.

Edit: Also, are you suggesting it'd be fine if I watched my parents fuck?

LOL no... but now that you brought that up... hehe (j/k of course)

I just feel the sexual aspects didn’t bother me as much as other people here did (I’m not easily offended). This is an adult cartoon so expect some adult stuff going on. Like I said previously, If it was extremely graphic then yeah I would feel some type of way about it

[Lashen]

I don't know, the adult content and general atmosphere of this show in particular comes off as attention seeking/angsty to me. I'm really bummed about it.
There's plenty of that in things like Blade or Bloodrayne, but I more-or-less expect it there. I liked Castlevania too much as it was to enjoy the shift in tone. Even if this Alucard is technically a different Alucard, I'm not thrilled.

[SecretWeapon]

Guys, sex is a part of life. You’re here because your mom & dad fucked each other. Stop acting like “eww, there’s sexual stuff in Castlevania.” NONE of it is graphic pornography, so if you’re not 10 years old, get the fuck over it. Seriously.

I remember when Dave Cox made an account, I think his name was “Coxee” or something like that.

nonono sex is sin and we shouldn't watch it. the guy spilling his guts is totally fine tho

[Lashen]

nonono sex is sin and we shouldn't watch it. the guy spilling his guts is totally fine tho

Find me one complaint using sin for justification.

[X]

nonono sex is sin and we shouldn't watch it. the guy spilling his guts is totally fine tho

lol.

'Sin' isn't a forbidden action, nor does it refer to one. It's a 'name'. Specifically the name of the ancient Middle-eastern moon god/goddess worshipped by people such as the Hittites, just one country amongst many others at the time. And sex itself isn't forbidden as we are sexual beings. The church authority just wanted another boogeyman to hold against the people for their own acquisition of power and control 

[Lashen]

I hate to play devil's advocate here but, I mean, a lot of those mandates stem from trying to protect idiot peasants from destroying society, and not just some lust for power.
These were largely uneducated villagers who would fuck livestock if you let them. The whole "don't eat pig meat" thing was another rule to protect people from themselves.

I could spend all day taking shots at religion, but let's not pretend its worse than politics, or bad people in general. Power corrupts.
The whole "this is dumb because religion tells people not to do it" argument is in the same ballpark of intelligence as the people you think you're insulting.

This is my last attempt at explaining something fairly simple:
Sex is very subjective. Depending on its content or relation to its environment (e.g. Alucard having an orgy out of nowhere) it can either be enjoyable or gross, but seldom neutral.
Most people and entertainment providers understand this. When they do push for it, they're often confident about their audience. That, or they like shock value.
I don't want to sigh and go make a sandwich until Alucard finishes his threesome, or when Hector is done being a bitch. These scenes do nothing for me. If this were really as simple as "sex is a part of life" then all I can really do is point whoever back to my previous comment about having an Alucard taking a shit subplot.
Not only was the Alucard scene abrupt, but it might be the stupidest precursor to shutting himself off to humanity I've ever seen. It's difficult not to laugh at. I find Alucard's loneliness more embarrassing than it is deep or thought provoking. Again, Warren Ellis writes tumblr fanfic quality. It's somewhere between softcore fetish porn and a tantrum thrown by some kid who got sent to Sunday school a few too many times.

Trevor: "You know, I heard some people fuck barn animals."
Castlevania Season 3, everybody.

Is this really enjoyable? Is this really how you envisioned a Castlevania show?

[Flame]

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the aversion to pork in middle eastern religions tends to stem from just the way pre-science cultures dealt with things like disease. Sanitation was not really a scientific thing in those times, beyond the obvious "water cleans dirt off". pigs tend to have more parasites and diseases that they can transmit through undercooked meat than lamb or cow, etc. in particular, things like Trichinosis. So the cultures adapted to those things, which eventually became cultural and eventually religious, dogma.

there's a reason that you can eat undercooked beef or lamb, but never pork or chicken.

On the subject of Dave Cox, I'll remind people that it was him and MS initial pitch to make their game a SC4 remake. things only took a weird turn when konami started messing with whether or not it was going to be a Castlevania game, eventually resulting in it being a reboot, since they had already started working on it as a new IP before Kojima got involved and secured the Castlevania license.

From there, well, Cox is still a company man. despite what misgivings we here might have had, he isnt really too in control of that. So all his job was, was to be the face of the game and to promote it.

there was some weird shit early on, for sure. Especially that masks business. But at the end of the day, LoS1 was perfectly serviceable as a Castlevania game, even if we take in the absurd twist at the end, which seems like an idea they lifted wholesale from the Coppola movie, and thought "hey what if we applied this to castlevania" while at the same time borrowing from LoI, which itself was already a riff on the same thing.

[crisis]

I seen the image Dave Cox was referring to where he said it looks like Dracula is wearing a mask. It’s from an old cover of a strategy guide for CV1 released only in Japan. It doesn’t really look like a “mask,” but it does show Dracula “removing” his face to reveal his demonic form. So that’s what he was most likely talking about.

Besides that, he blocked Nagumo on Twitter because she called him out when he lied & said Trevor & Alucard would be different characters,  So screw him 

[Lashen]

Besides that, he blocked Nagumo on Twitter because she called him out when he lied & said Trevor & Alucard would be different characters,  So screw him 

That's just bizarre.