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Next Castlevania won't be done by Mercury Steam

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Barryman said:
My favorite moments in SotN were the little bits where horror and storytelling came to the fore (and the fantastic soundtrack, natch).

The Sucubus fight and the confessional booth were both standout moments to me. My dream game is a 2D metroidvania with all new HD sprites, Ubi-Art style, and with a heavier narrative/atmospheric emphasis. Oh, and a crazy acid jazz soundtrack.
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I like you Jr., you're headed places.
 
They'll just hand it to someone worse who will do it for cheaper than Mercury Steam. Konami is not kind to their non-MGS IPs. Take a look at what happened to Silent Hill.
 
I'm playing rogue legacy right now and all it's doing is making me want to play a new metroidvania.

I did like LoS and I'm sorta looking forward to the sequel but it's totally not what I want out of CV, it's pretty much a separate series in my mind. I wouldn't complain about something more along the lines of a properly done next-gen Lament of Innocence, with an explorable castle and soundtrack instantly recognizable as Castlevania. And maybe without the stiff-ass combat and boring level design.

But since OOE was amazing I'm cool with a handheld 2D game. Or more 'classic' CV releases along the lines of Dracula X Chronicles and Adventure Rebirth. Hell, even Harmony of Despair kicked ass in its own weird little way.
 
Barryman said:
The Sucubus fight and the confessional booth were both standout moments to me. My dream game is a 2D metroidvania with all new HD sprites, Ubi-Art style, and with a heavier narrative/atmospheric emphasis.
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The last time I agreed with a post so much is... god, I don't remember! I'd love to see more of a horror emphasis on the series. It's never necessarily lacked it, but the moments you pointed out were great and even unsettling with the way the music sounded.

Mupod said:
I'm playing rogue legacy right now and all it's doing is making me want to play a new metroidvania.
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Curse you, I just talked myself out of buying Rogue Legacy.
 
Relaxed Muscle said:
Good thanks for this.

Is like complaining about all those Megaman Zero portable releases...
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You do realize that "all those Megaman Zero portable releases" are part of the reason the Mega Man series is dead now, right? Capcom oversaturated the franchise with repetitive, samey portable games without any major releases to revitalize the franchise, and as a result people got bored and stopped buying them.

That's the exact same thing IGA was doing with Castlevania before Konami took the series away from him.
 
Good. Mercury Steam Castlevania is shit.

I imagine the series will move to iOS/Android like contra. Worse, I know.
 
ironchair said:
While I agree with what you're saying here about the series's future, saying that the LoS era has made the franchise "lukewarm" couldn't be further from the truth: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Lords-of-Shadow-Is-the-Best-Selling-Castlevania-Title-354378.shtml
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You misunderstand, Lords of Shadow actually brought Castlevania to the forefront again; before that it was pretty much a niche title confined to handhelds. It's lukewarm because people outside the usual fanbase took notice of the series, maybe for the first time since Symphony of the Night. Before LoS, Castlevania was cold, and lukewarm is an improvement.
 
so much shitting on castlevania ITT.

I would love a new IGAvania. I played and beat all of them, and I thought they were all varying degrees of decent to fantastic.

I would love a new classic CV in the vein of CV1, CV3, CV4 or Dracula X; I loved the WiiWare game too, and would be all about it if they made a new one in this style.

I personally really enjoyed Lords of Shadow, framerate issues and all. It was a beautiful game, a fresh take on the series, and just a load of fun to play.

Basically, Konami would have to try pretty hard to make a castlevania game I would hate.
 
let them do what they want with the new castlevania, make some shite 3d action game, hell give it to ninja theory, they're good at ruining everything.

but why can't they just make a psn/xbox live side scrolling 2d castlevania in the vein of castlevania 1 and 3? it would sell gangbusters, the fans would stop whining about the shit 3d ones, and everyone would be happy.

i mean capcom did it with megaman, why can't konami do it with castlevania? what is so hard about this?
 
PlanetSmasher said:
You do realize that "all those Megaman Zero portable releases" are part of the reason the Mega Man series is dead now, right? Capcom oversaturated the franchise with repetitive, samey portable games without any major releases to revitalize the franchise, and as a result people got bored and stopped buying them.

That's the exact same thing IGA was doing with Castlevania before Konami took the series away from him.
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Megaman died because it didn't have a proper transition to consoles since...well PSX. But still had the potential to be a niche saga, and still has it just Capcom dosn't care anymore.

But you know...LoS failed to do that and his horrendous poisonous vision of the saga spread to the portables with MoF, which is the worst portable Castlevania in years and now it has killed that niche pedigree that Castlevania had (selling way worst that Igavanias).

OoE already started changing the formula in bigger ways and Iga deserved another chance in the portable space, instead we got a reboot that failed to make the IP worthwhile in the console sapce and in the same time killed it's place in the portable space.

So I'd rather keep getting midly successful portable games than Kojima and Cox killing definetly the IP because they tried to make it something it never was....
 
PlanetSmasher said:
Vanillaware makes beautiful games, but the gameplay is usually super-repetitive.

If they managed to have Vanillaware do the art design and Igarashi do the game design, that MIGHT be an interesting combination, since it would nullify one of IGA's main weaknesses (visuals and laziness)
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I agree that Vanilla ware needs and editor or someone, but not IGA. IGA is just tapped out of ideas.
 
Next up: Contra!

Lest we forget this interview from June 2012: Moving on: Cox and Mercury Steam aim for Contra reboot

Since being teased at E3 2011 we’ve heard nothing of Contra, but Cox says that he and the team at Mercury Steam are ready to pick up the franchise’s torch after they’ve put down the one they currently carry.

“Like I said, I know there’s going to be pressure on us to do another Castlevania game, but I don’t want to rise to that pressure. I want to do something else. I love Contra. I’d love to do Contra. At Mercury Steam we’ve got an original idea that I think is really awesome. We’d love to bring that idea to market and I’m hoping that the success of Lords of Shadow 2 will allow us to do that.”

I'm fine with it, personally. I thought LoS1 was a fantastic new take on the Belmont lore and even out-did God of War 3 in terms of combat and scope. LoS2 was my E3 2013 Game of Show in terms of hands-on demos that I got to check out.
 
I don't disagree with IGA being slightly tapped out, but are there seriously no other creative voices from the old Castlevania design team left? I find that seriously hard to believe.
 
Sad for me, because I thought LoS was utterly amazing and I am sure that LoS2 will be even greater. I am sad to see MS lose the franchise, but the LoS series will go down for me as some of the best Castlevania's ever made.

LoS2 will be day one, and I will support MS in anything else they do.
 
I've stated my opinions on the Lords of Shadows games before, so no need for me to repeat them here. The thing is though, Mercury Steam took Castlevania in a bold new direction that pleased some and disappointed others. There's no reason for people to complain about the possibility of a new IGAnia, because it's been a while sinse we've seen the last one. You all just got THREE of these wildly different games in the series, so it's not like they aren't experimenting or anything. Why can't everyone have the kind of Castlevania they desire?
 
Why are people so damn narrow-minded? I haven't played LoS yet and while I don't dig the combat, Mercury Steam must've done something good enough to warrant a sequel. The fact they won't be handling Castlevania now worries me because it can end in Hijinx or High Voltage hands (SH HD Collection, ZoE HD Collection pre-patch). Or some other mediocre dev house.

An ideal scenario would be where Konami lets MS do whatever the fuck they want with 3D Castlevania, but bring Iga back to handheld CVs. No one in their right mind can say that MoF was better than anything Iga has put out. The gameplay from LoS translated horribly on the 3DS.
 
entrement said:
Technically it's PC Engine CD asset recycling :P
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Not if you count how Slogra and Gaibon's sprites originally hailed from SCV4...

Gotta hand it to the CV team. Even Capcom and SNK didn't get as much mileage out of 16-bit era sprites quite like they did!
 
RobFox64tm said:
I've stated my opinions on the Lords of Shadows games before, so no need for me to repeat them here. The thing is though, Mercury Steam took Castlevania in a bold new direction that pleased some and disappointed others. There's no reason for people to complain about the possibility of a new IGAnia, because it's been a while sinse we've seen the last one. You all just got THREE of these wildly different games in the series, so it's not like they aren't experimenting or anything. Why can't everyone have the kind of Castlevania they desire?
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What's bold about making a GoW clone?
 
Relaxed Muscle said:
Megaman died because it didn't have a proper transition to consoles since...well PSX. But still had the potential to be a niche saga, and still has it just Capcom dosn't care anymore.

But you know...LoS failed to do that and his horrendous poisonous vision of the saga spread to the portables with MoF, which is the worst portable Castlevania in years and now it has killed that niche pedigree that Castlevania had (selling way worst that Igavanias).

OoE already started changing the formula in bigger ways and Iga deserved another chance in the portable space, instead we got a reboot that failed to make the IP worthwhile in the console sapce and in the same time killed it's place in the portable space.

So I'd rather keep getting midly successful portable games than Kojima and Cox killing definetly the IP because they tried to make it something it never was....
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Except LoS was the highest-selling game in the entire series, and brought the franchise to an entirely new audience that wouldn't have played it at all if it was yet another handheld game. So they're not KILLING anything. Mirror of Fate sold badly because it got terrible reviews, and because third party 3DS software sells like shit.

You have to face reality - IGA was killing the series by making lazy portable rehashes over and over again. They took the series away from him because they knew that it couldn't support yet another DS game nobody was going to buy.
 
You'd think they would stick with them since the first game was so successful. I hope it's something more CV-ish next time.
 
Rm88~ said:
You'd think they would stick with them since the first game was so successful. I hope it's something more CV-ish next time.
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Like I said before, it was MercurySteam's choice to pull out of the series after 2. They only wanted to make three Castlevania games, they were never onboard for the long haul.
 
WayForward or bust. It's starting to drive me crazy that their best work is relegated to downloads because publishers will only spring for them to do cheap movie and tv show licenses. As far as I'm concerned Konami should have given them a free hand with their old school franchises after Contra 4, which is one of the most perfect homages I've played. I would take a similar Castlevania experience from them over another Mercury Steam game about 1000 times over.

And for the love of God give them Contra again before Mercury Steam gets their hands on it, otherwise it'll probably devolve into just another shooter with the barest references to the series. Mercury Steam seems convinced Castlevania takes place in Middle Earth, I really don't want to see their generic take on what Contra should be.
 
Even if mercury steam is out of the picture I doubt konami will be changing the way castlevania is now. If anything a new dev will continue on this sort of castlevania and mercury will probably reboot another konami IP like contra.
 
PlanetSmasher said:
Except LoS was the highest-selling game in the entire series, and brought the franchise to an entirely new audience that wouldn't have played it at all if it was yet another handheld game. So they're not KILLING anything. Mirror of Fate sold badly because it got terrible reviews, and because third party 3DS software sells like shit.

You have to face reality - IGA was killing the series by making lazy portable rehashes over and over again. They took the series away from him because they knew that it couldn't support yet another DS game nobody was going to buy.
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LoS was the highest selling in the franchise, also had the bigger marketing of the franchise by far. Konami wanted a new big IP, LoS failed to do that, like Dante's Inferno did (which had similar sales). MoF sold like shit mainly because portable CV fans never wanted that game.

You can keep those AAA production values with those sales, so yeah they killed it and LoS 2 is the last of it unless they manage to sell 4x what LoS did (it won't...)
 
GrotesqueBeauty said:
And for the love of God give them Contra again before Mercury Steam gets their hands on it, otherwise it'll probably devolve into just another shooter with the barest references to the series. Mercury Steam seems convinced Castlevania takes place in Middle Earth, I really don't want to see their generic take on what Contra should be.
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Yeah, this. They've been smart with who they've outsourced Contra to as of late (Wayforward, M2 & Arc System Works) though, thankfully.
 
Relaxed Muscle said:
LoS was the highest selling in the franchise, also had the bigger marketing of the franchise by far. Konami wanted a new big IP, LoS failed to do that, like Dante's Inferno did (which had similar sales).

You can keep those AAA production values with those sales, so yeah they killed it and LoS 2 is the last of it unless they manage to sell 4x what LoS did (it won't...)
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LoS2 is the last of it because Mercury Steam wants to move on to work on a different series. That's why it's the last of it, not because the game bombed or underpeformed, but because the developer had a strict plan to make a trilogy and move on after they told the story they wanted to tell. MS and Konami have both said that both LoS and LoS2 cost a lot less to develop than people might think, and LoS made a significant amount of money for Konami.

The fact we're getting LoS2 at all shows that the first game was successful. You're trying to draw up this insane narrative that Lords of Shadow somehow failed, yet the new game is bigger and more ambitious than the original one, and with SIGNIFICANTLY better graphics.

How does that logic make any sense at all to you?
 
Overboost said:
Next up: Contra!

Lest we forget this interview from June 2012: Moving on: Cox and Mercury Steam aim for Contra reboot

Since being teased at E3 2011 we’ve heard nothing of Contra, but Cox says that he and the team at Mercury Steam are ready to pick up the franchise’s torch after they’ve put down the one they currently carry.

“Like I said, I know there’s going to be pressure on us to do another Castlevania game, but I don’t want to rise to that pressure. I want to do something else. I love Contra. I’d love to do Contra. At Mercury Steam we’ve got an original idea that I think is really awesome. We’d love to bring that idea to market and I’m hoping that the success of Lords of Shadow 2 will allow us to do that.”

I'm fine with it, personally. I thought LoS1 was a fantastic new take on the Belmont lore and even out-did God of War 3 in terms of combat and scope. LoS2 was my E3 2013 Game of Show in terms of hands-on demos that I got to check out.
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Totally agree, Not to mention a great Story in Contra will be pretty amazing.

Veronica said:
Sad for me, because I thought LoS was utterly amazing and I am sure that LoS2 will be even greater. I am sad to see MS lose the franchise, but the LoS series will go down for me as some of the best Castlevania's ever made.

LoS2 will be day one, and I will support MS in anything else they do.
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Technically speaking they didn't lose the CV brand, they just don't want to make more of it, which is pretty different, they feel like they did what they had in mind, and shouldn't keep on making games that end up not being worth it.

And yup, I will totally support them in the future as well.
 
Marcel said:
Being a pretty but transparent God of War clone helped out a lot. When you carefully aim for the LCD, it usually pays off.
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Yes. In this case it paid off better than being a Metroid clone.

However, instead, spewing out about 10 additional God of War clones, it's just sticking with the two (or three, if you count the 3DS entry) so that the series doesn't stagnate. To me, the behavior of the former would be more in line with aiming for the LCD: that is, the same shrinking fan-base who are content to buy the same game over and over again. As an example, see: CoD.
 
PlanetSmasher said:
LoS2 is the last of it because Mercury Steam wants to move on to work on a different series. That's why it's the last of it, not because the game bombed or underpeformed, but because the developer had a strict plan to make a trilogy and move on after they told the story they wanted to tell. MS and Konami have both said that both LoS and LoS2 cost a lot less to develop than people might think, and LoS made a significant amount of money for Konami.

The fact we're getting LoS2 at all shows that the first game was successful. You're trying to draw up this insane narrative that Lords of Shadow somehow failed, yet the new game is bigger and more ambitious than the original one, and with SIGNIFICANTLY better graphics.

How does that logic make any sense at all to you?
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You know what other Konami IP failed to meet expectations and yet got another sequel, this gen?

Silent Hill.

Now is dead. Makes more sense now?
 
ViewtifulJC said:
Ninja Theory, your time has come
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5708456539_81bf258ec0.jpg


Relaxed Muscle said:
You know what other Konami IP failed to meet expectations and yet got another sequel, this gen?
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You know that other Konami IP that sold 2 million of its lastest console release?
Castlevania.
 
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