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| Sensenic 1277th Post
 
Red Carpet Executive Member
  
    
    
    
|  "Castlevania: Curse of Darkness announced" , posted Mon 24 Jan 18:36:
Uh-oh
Go figure what's Iga up to this time...
Lessee, it's translating time. I'm not much of a reliable source, mind you:
Through the French VG press we get the news that CoD has been officially announced, PS2 exclusive. It'll follow the same basics than LoI, but with improved technical stuff.
The main character will respond to the name of Hector and he won't be a Belmont, although it seems some member of Da Family will appear in it.
The game takes place in 1479, 3 years after C3 (Ralph's/Trevor's adventure for the NES, well, you know. Uh.... -_-) and the plot will be based on "some vengeance" (Go figure...)
Iga will be the producer (oh surprise) and he announced (now comes the big thing) that some creatures called "Innocent Devils" will follow the main character and help him, reaching where he can't and such (a la familiars in SOTN), AND that Hector will be able to train them for the combat, and their other abilities, a la Pokémon (-gloups- That's what the magazine says, I'll just hope they didn't choose a good comparison. Not another Gotta Catch'em All, please...)
What else... There'll be a "targetting/accuracy/dunno-how-to-translate-it-better system" and experience'll be back too. A whole bunch of brand new weapons and maybe Alucard reappearing (They did like him, didn't they).
Finally, no date has been announced yet, not even a generic one.
And thassall.
EDIT PS: Sounds like a 3D Aria of Sorrow to me, even with another GCTA thingie, devils this time. But the plot... now that it seemed Iga's team had started to work towards some coherence and whatnot (even if they took the easy way some times)...
Nikochan dono.
Nihon mo ingenmame wo tsukurimasu Jan
[this message was edited by Sensenic on Mon 24 Jan 18:40] |
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| DarkZero 1056th Post
Red Carpet Premium Member
| "Re(3):Castlevania: Curse of Darkness announce" , posted Mon 24 Jan 20:19
"Amidst all of this, Hector -- a Devil Forgemaster who had once refined his skills under Dracula -- has fled in pursuit of a peaceful life as a human. He never imagined that his old friend Isaac, the other Devil Forgemaster, would suddenly appear and implicate his wife in a deadly conspiracy. As vengeance for his beloved wife, Hector pursues Isaac back to his former home, now completely morphed by Dracula's dark magic."
I haven't gotten to read through the entire article in the scans yet, but so far we've got:
1) Former villain seeking to wreak bloody vengeance upon a former friend
2) Metroid/SotN-style Dracula's Castle
3) Alucard
4) One of the better Castlevania time periods (I'd say CVIII and Dracula X/SotN were the two best)
5) Demon familiars
6) It looks like Dracula MIGHT be remain dead
Sounds fantastic. I never bothered to play Lament of Innocence because I always had too many games to play to spend the time and money on one that the gaming community received with a collective shrug, even though I generally follow the series (see: Devil May Cry 2). Hopefully this game will actually give us greatness on par with Circle of the Moon or Aria of Sorrow.
The only thing I'm worried about is the demon familiars. "Pet monster"-style gameplay can be executed very well (Shin Megami Tensei, Pokemon) or very poorly (every other game that's used them!) and adding AI assistance to 3D battles almost always sucks. The only AI assistant I think I didn't hate was Snake in MGS2, but that was in a pretty tightly scripted fight.
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| IkariDC 264th Post
Copper Customer
| "Re(1):summoning" , posted Tue 25 Jan 05:54
Two Castlevania games announced!! WTF??? I'm really really happy now, I can't believe this!
Ok, I know Lament had a bunch of flaws, but I enjoyed it. I don't know how to feel about the Innocent Devils system, but if the game is all about them, it can't be bothersome pokemon stuff, right? I mean RIGHT?
Man, that piece of artwork is really great! I really like the look of the character, but it doesn't match with the 3D model! They say they're improving the model until it looks like Kojima's design. Can't wait to see that.
I'm really excited about the music comments. Bring in those guitars and vocals! SH4 & Nano teams working on it on a improved engine? Many many stages outside the castle? Everything sounds great to me!
Go Yamane, Kojima and IGA, Go!
What's with that Tadanobu Asano look of Iga's?
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| Sano 1406th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
 
| "Re(1):Re:innocent devils?" , posted Thu 27 Jan 03:15:
How I'd make a Castlevania game. - This post will consist of my dumb Ass opinions.
A) Enough with the Metroid Castle already. Remember Simon's Quest, Castlevania 3 and Super Castlevania where we ventured outside of the Castle? They can keep the Castle exploring, that's fine. Just let us explore Transylvania a bit along with it's towns. Underground caverns can be Metroid Style too if they want. That's all.
B) Never make a Castlevania game without Boss versions of a big bat (I loved how in that GBA Game they killed the big bat early, that was priceless!), Medusa, The Mummy(ies) or Frankesntein or Dracula as Bosses. I won't say the Grim Reaper since he's in every game. That's what Castlevania should always be, a REAL Van Hellsing Movie story. They can add any other monsters they want, they have to keep the core. And never ever ever ever ever make a game where Dracula is not the Final Boss. I won't name games...
C) Dracula should be hard! If I beat him on the second or first try the game sucks! I know Konami can do this, play Contra. Dracula used to kick my Ass left and right for weeks. Not anymore. The last hard Dracula I've encountered was in Circle of the Moon.
D) Get rid of the all men are fruity artist and bring back the kick Ass Anime Artist from Dracula X! Ok, this last one's not happening ever... I tried.
So as usual I hope at least some of my requests are in the new Castlevania Game. I'll settle for a longer game and a Devil May Cry style camera.
[this message was edited by Sano on Thu 27 Jan 03:29] |
| IkariDC 267th Post
Copper Customer
| "Re(2):Re:innocent devils?" , posted Thu 27 Jan 06:35
Iggy: They only say in the interview that they are doing the game using an improved version of NanoBreaker's engine (which was an improved version of LoI's engine) & SH's engine, and that the NanoBreaker & SH are working on it as well. I don't know if that's great or not, since I haven't played Nano neither any of the SH games. I'm not feeling like playing the SH series just to find it out, but I feel curious about Nano. Is it a decent game? It didn't get great scores.
About LoI: That game is the beggining of the legend of the Belmont clan and Dracula. The master of the castle where you're fighting is not Dracula, so it isn't ruled by Chaos as in the other Castlevania games we've played before. It's just a "common" castle full of mosters, ruled by a vampire. I just think that it makes sense that pretty much every room in every area looks almost the same. What I mean is that being a common castle, it makes sense that each area is architecturaly coherent. I'm not trying to justify the lazyness behind the level contructions of the game, though.
quote:
How I'd make a Castlevania game. - This post will consist of my dumb Ass opinions.
A) Enough with the Metroid Castle already. Remember Simon's Quest, Castlevania 3 and Super Castlevania where we ventured outside of the Castle? They can keep the Castle exploring, that's fine. Just let us explore Transylvania a bit along with it's towns. Underground caverns can be Metroid Style too if they want. That's all.
B) Never make a Castlevania game without Boss versions of a big bat (I loved how in that GBA Game they killed the big bat early, that was priceless!), Medusa, The Mummy(ies) or Frankesntein or Dracula as Bosses. I won't say the Grim Reaper since he's in every game. That's what Castlevania should always be, a REAL Van Hellsing Movie story. They can add any other monsters they want, they have to keep the core. And never ever ever ever ever make a game where Dracula is not the Final Boss. I won't name games...
C) Dracula should be hard! If I beat him on the second or first try the game sucks! I know Konami can do this, play Contra. Dracula used to kick my Ass left and right for weeks. Not anymore. The last hard Dracula I've encountered was in Circle of the Moon.
D) Get rid of the all men are fruity artist and bring back the kick Ass Anime Artist from Dracula X! Ok, this last one's not happening ever... I tried.
So as usual I hope at least some of my requests are in the new Castlevania Game. I'll settle for a longer game and a Devil May Cry style camera.
Well, it seems that this game is going to have more levels outside the castle, and LoI being a 3D game, it just doesn't feel as Super Metroid oriented as the 2D games, so...
Yeah, Dracula should be really hard, but fighting him with pitfalls around it's just insane. I won't name games... And C'mon Circle of the Moon Dracula with the Pegasus card was a joke. You were like invincible with all those never ending amount of powers you get from the cards...
Ayami Kojima is one of the most talented artists I've ever seen in the gaming industry. Knowing that she didn't took art lessons and that she started doing illustrations as a par-time job just raises my respect to her to no limits. I don't care if the heroes she portraits look androgynous, I just find her pictures extremely beautiful. Ok, sometimes their faces look alike, but I can forgive that, and much more, plus it's a common flaw in most manga/anime artists.
I loved the anime style of Rondo of Blood but... My only request for the Castlevania games is, stop using the ingame sprites to make the endings! It's so boring and lazy... Simply put Ayami in charge of some art for the endings, that would rock very very hard, and put her doing some more for an opening too!
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| HAYATO
249th Post
Frequent Customer
| "Re(3):Re:innocent devils?" , posted Fri 28 Jan 07:25:
quote:
Ayami Kojima is one of the most talented artists I've ever seen in the gaming industry. Knowing that she didn't took art lessons and that she started doing illustrations as a par-time job just raises my respect to her to no limits. I don't care if the heroes she portraits look androgynous, I just find her pictures extremely beautiful. Ok, sometimes their faces look alike, but I can forgive that, and much more, plus it's a common flaw in most manga/anime artists.
I love Ayami Kojima's work as well, but although she's improved along the years, I find her designs a bit repetitive. It's not only a problem with the faces, I think it's something much bigger....I just don't know how to explain it, but when I saw her recent work in this new Castlevania the first thing that crossed my mind was "WTF, another Alucard pic? But he was supposed not to appear in this game...So this must be the new main character". It's as if no matter how she tried to make different characters, all eventually end looking pretty similar, not only to each other, but also to the first famous character she designed (i.e. Alucard). The same goes for HR Giger : everything he draws resembles to Alien. No matter how many pics you see, all of them will remind you of Alien, but at the same time, they look pretty similar to each other...Could this be a kind of artistic illness?
By the way, is there any Kojima Artbook out there? I'd like to get it, if there's any available one. I once heard that her works remain uncompiled, but it was many years ago...
Edit: crappy typos under the moonlight
[this message was edited by HAYATO on Fri 28 Jan 07:33] |
| IkariDC 269th Post
Copper Customer
| "Re(4):Re:innocent devils?" , posted Sat 29 Jan 00:52
C'mon Hayato, this one looks different from Alucard! I can understand comparisons between Alucard and Juste Belmont, but not this one. The first thing I thought when I saw the pic was, "Wow, a character that doesn't resemble Alucard in anything but the hair color". She has to start giving Castlevania characters another hair color, don't you think? This one not being a Belmont, would have been a nice opportunity to change the color...
I believe she doesn't have any artbook (appart from the AoS mini-artbook you could get by preordering the game), it's really a pity! It's time that they release an artbook with all her work, but I wouldn't complain if they release a Castlevania artbook with her art and the covers from all the Castlevania games. Now that I think of it, it would be really nice if that ever happens!
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"Re(4):summoning" , posted Wed 26 Jan 22:19:
