The future of Castlevania

I know this has been done dozens of times on different forums but with E3 coming I thought I refreshen up good memories. You may all know that Koji has left the Castlevania franchise for good so we won't be seeing more from him. The latest Castlevania entry "Lords of shadow trilogy" was kind of a hit or miss and please don't come here asking for SotN HD HD. Instead tell me where you think Castlvania should head next? Both story-wise and gameplay-wise. 3D like Lords of shadow? Or old school 2D? Or maybe 2.5D like Mirror of fate? Who do you think should make the next Castlevania game? Kojima himself perhaps? Or some of your favorite developers? Tell me what your hopes are for the next entry in Castelvania franchise.

1) Don't make it 3D

2) Don't develop it for any Nintendo platform

I hope they add Co'op

It's not with mercury steam.

3d castlevania already exists spiritually throughout the souls series.

@farrell2k: Yeah I agree, the series has more than ran its course, screwing up the jump to 3D didnt help matters though.

I want the graphics to be 2.5d and in a dark gothic art style. No more of that anime crap. I want the gameplay to play like the old school classic Castlevania games which means linear with challenging platforming.

It seems like you can't have enough of coop lol

I wish for the same thing. They could make the story more interesting though. Simplistic story worked well for the NES-era but they really have to put some real story there this time.

@alim298

If they want to go 2D then I absolutely demand co-op....

Lords of Shadow 1 was a beautiful game that was erratically pieced together, that had paper thin story despite high production values. Of course it had some positive aspects and predated Tomb Raider in its cinematic approach but the execution was hit and miss. Exploration wasn't really satisfying as the levels were quite limited. Back tracking to obtain new powers also felt half-assed as you could go beck to where you previously were using options screen instead of seamlessly integrating exploration within gameplay. A lot of stuff felt tacked on.

But I think Castlevania could work in 3D but it'd have to focus on seamless exploration and better hookability of new powers . If Metroid worked so well in FPP, why couldn't Castlevania in TPP?

Yeah, all that can be said.

IGA needs to be head of the franchise again. It was never truly "Castlevania" under Mercury Stream. Just God of War/Shadow of the Colossus in Castlevania clothing.

Unfortunately, Michiru Yamane isn't making music for the series anymore, and Ayame Kojima isn't doing art... so they will lose a lot of their charm if they don't come back for the next entry with IGA.

They *need* to do a Battle of 1999 game. They've been teasing it for over a decade now. It's time.

Konami failed when they became Hideo Kojima and full on Metal Gear Solid and stopped focusing on great games as Castlevania, Zone of the Enders, Ninja Turtles, Contra, Mystcal Ninja and more.

yeah Mercury pretty much killed this franchise. Even though I do like the Lords of Shadow games.

This argument couldn't be more wrong.

LoS was inspired by LoI. Which is 2 years older than GoW. Hack and slash games tend to have a pretty similar gameplay. it's ridiculous to claim that every hack and slash game is a GoW clone.

Inspired by perhaps, but they ripped almost all the gameplay features from God of War and Shadow of the Colossus.

And a lot of hack and slash games ARE God of War clones... because they tend to take what God of War did well and apply it to their own games in an attempt to garner success.

Lords of Shadow is a pretty game with very little substance.

What future?

Make it similar to the classic ones that was before SOTN.

Castlevania has been dead since Circle of the Moon. All of the Metroidy sequels tried too hard to recapture the magic of Symphony of the Night that it got tiring. For me, I want the series to go entirely digital and give us more stuff like Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth. Side-scrolling Castlevania like Super Castlevania IV and Rondo of Blood is the peak of the series for me.

Konami is absolutely garbage these days so I have 0 faith in them to do anything good with the Castlevania brand.

It would be nice if Castlevania 3 became available on the 3DS Virtual Console. That's the only Castlevania- relating thing I care about.

I need SOTN2 on 3DS .. like NOW!!! .. but seriously Castlevania works so well in 2D and I hope Konami can keep it this way .. The DS Castlevania games are great and I hope we see a similar game on 3DS and/or Vita :)

I cant disagree enough.It felt like castlevania to me just not metroidvania.Mercury did there own thing but kept the spirit alive of castlevania.

I will tell you one precise reason why. The game was originally something else. It started out as a game about Spanish Inquisition in Middle Ages. But the developers ran out of money during the course of its dev cycle and then the Kojima Studios came in a and lend a hand, but required the game to be reworked so that it would fit in the theme of Castlevania. And it really shows why it is such a shallow smorgasboard of everything but nothing's fully developed. Even the characters themselves look SPANISH. And the devs themselves were Spanish as well.

Looks like I'm the only one who loves Lords of Shadow and would again like to see Castlevania in 3D. Not really a fan of 2D sidescrolling games.

Im playing lords of shardows now, but its so damn linear and getting boring already. Looks great but I think they should make it metroidvania again in 3d like metrod prime seeing as nintendo has apparently backed away from that style of gameplay now.

As long as they don't make a game as tedious as Harmony of Dissonance, then I'm totally fine with the way the rest of the GBA and DS games are. Harmony and its tedious backtracking and the god awful music killed the whole experience for me. The music sounded like something out of the Gameboy Color generation...

Do you have a link for this info?If it truly did start as something els it doesint really show it.

^

lol wow.

Like which gameplay features? Which features did GoW had that LoI didn't? The only one I can think of is the xp system. Even the combo system (light direct attacks and heavy horizontal strikes) was taken from LoI. As for shadow of the colossus...Why? Because you could climb on big monsters and smash them in a weakspot? That's hardly a ripoff considering there were only like 3 monsters who played like this in the entire game.

MS adquired the castlevania franchise and began developing it into something vastly different. Then konami sent kojima as an advisor and he told them to change many things, one of them being the main character design. Which was initially a barbarian. Kojima told them that the main character should always be a handsome and clean man, your typical action hero, so that the audience can relate better and like him better. Thus gabriel was born. So no, your info is fake, the characters are not meant to "look spaniard", which is kind of a wild thing to say since western europeans have very similar appareances.

I would love a 2D game based on the battle of 1999. Make the level design like the GBA and DS games.

I actually enjoyed the Lords of Shadow series was nice to have something a little different from Castlevania but I can still see why most didn't like it. As someone who has played and completed all of the Castlevania games so far I find it hard to see how they try and continue the series from here without just butchering it or recycling what has already been done. I now play Castlevania through the Dark Souls games. Pick up a whip, take off your helmet, get some miracles and use some imagination, my favorite run through the Souls games has been as a Belmont-esque character.

Castlevania has an insane identity crisis right now. Ever since SotN boom, the franchise has never attempted to return to the formula that made it so popular in the first place, aside from Mirror of Fate, in certain aspects. I always felt Castlevania has been mediocre since SotN, as they stripped away everything about Castlevania in favor of a gothic skin for Metroid. It baffles me how some people use arguments like "X is a good game, but bad (insert franchise here) game" when it comes to shit like Other M, Resident Evil 4 etc. but never SotN. By all accounts SotN if we're speaking strictly on what Castlevania was about pre-release SotN, it was probably the "worst" Castlevania game released (ignoring Vampire Hunter on the MSX or whatever the hell it was called on that system). So all we've got since SotN was Dracula's Castle and level ups repeated ad nauseum on handhelds, and weird "I just want to be a 3D SotN action games" on Ps2. The 64 twins, while being... flawed in key aspects of their design retained the same basic level structures (to a certain extent) that classic-vania titles had, it was promising. But unfortunately, this formula was never expanded upon, refined or improved because of SotN.

Mercury Steam pushed the game in yet ANOTHER direction, making the game reminiscent of Curse of Darkness in its linear levels, with some minor exploration. Honestly I did sorta enjoy it, but the experience was so average my memory fails to recall the faults and the good parts. Mirror of Fate and Lords of Shadow 2 remain the only Castlevanias I haven't played, so there's not much for me to say. 2.5D is a promising step in terms of what hasn't been done in CV yet.

The answer to the future of Castlevania lies in its recent history. Two 3rd person action games, a 2.5d scroller, and a 2008 Metroidvania. Just what IS a Castlevania game? I don't think anybody really knows. They know only the title, not what to expect inside the game cartridge/disc. The series is dead in the water IMO, it has nothing that defines it, nothing that would catch your eye other than a title and a familiar universe, and sometimes that is not enough. As much as I would love to have a release akin to Megaman 9 or 10 for classic Castlevania, the market for that crowd I feel is way too small. The difficulty niche has been filled (somehow) by the Souls games, and a side scrollin action game that isn't an indie title would probably be laughed at by anyone not already a huge fan of that formula in this day and age. Here's hoping they figure something out though.

In the short term, I would be OK if they continued supporting it like the recent Strider game. So 2D or 2.5D......there is too much stigma associated with 3d versions...not to mention they cost a lot more to develop.

In the long term.....well, I'll let you know when I get around finishing LoS2.....haven't thought about that yet......and yes shame on me, only played the first 60 min of LoS2.....Im finding it hard playing previous gen games these days, got used to next gen graphics lol.....but ill get to it soon.

Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow have taken the series to a SoTN direction. I haven't played the other DS games yet but, they're probably the same as well. Alucard is in these 2 games as well as: Genya Arikado.