BGG’s Amanda Dyar was recently lucky enough to travel to Madrid, Spain to visit the home of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 developer MercurySteam to try out an early build of the game and see what surprises the team has in store for fans with the new release. Playing as Dracula for the first time in the acclaimed series from publisher Konami comes with plenty of new abilities to track down and master, and MercurySteam is ensuring horror fans will have an authentic experience here. As the King of Vampires, players will be allowed to transform into mist, glamour and control the thoughts and movements of enemies, and of course, replenish your strength and health by devouring the blood of stunned or fallen foes. Though a large portion of the game will take place outside, in the city surrounding Castlevania, players will venture inside the castle walls to explore expansive labyrinths, solve some tricky puzzles and battle the most dangerous enemies of all in true Castlevania design. Early gameplay impressions also showed us that the game's core hack and slash mechanics remain but have been retooled for Dracula's new arsenal of weapons and powers to make a more fluid combat experience than the original title, or easily said, this game kicks ass!
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is just as impressive from a presentation standpoint as well. We instantly noticed the game boasts impressive new HD graphical designs that relies on classic gothic architectures and dark environments for an authentic horror experience. The game's soundtrack adds to the experience by bringing to life the emotions felt by the characters throughout the game's campaign with a slightly more modern sound. The game will also include plenty of epic boss encounters of titanic proportions that will require players to strategically cut down these massive foes to a manageable size. All of the action in the game can be controlled with free camera controls, but the development team has done such a great job with the camera design, you will rarely reach for the right stick during battles or platforming around stages. We're clearly excited about the upcoming release of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, and you can learn more about the upcoming release by reading our new interview with Producer Dave Cox of Konami and MercurySteam’s Head of Studio Enric Alvarez below. Enjoy!
Amanda Dyar: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 will actually be the third release in the series after the 2010 hit and the recently released Mirror of Fate on Nintendo 3DS. Can you tell us how the storylines of these three games will go together and what we can expect out of Gabriel Belmont this time around?
Amanda: Lords of Shadow 2 takes place some time after the events of the original game with Gabriel looking a bit worse for wear. What will the setting be for the new game?
Dave: The setting is an imagined modern city which doesn't exist in real life. It is a city that has been designed with the Castlevania history behind it. The game takes place during one night, and you see the city in darkness pretty much. We used the motifs of Castlevania such as the gothic, gargoyles, stained glass windows with a Baroque type design. We wanted a city with the unique fittings of the Castlevania universe. We didn't want players controlling Dracula in a city that felt like New York since that is not the intention at all and would take you out of it. You wouldn't feel like you are in a Castlevania game, and you need to feel that. The city itself is something that is very special. The castle is separate from the city and is the castle environment you expect from a Castlevania game. Both play a significant role in the story.
Amanda: Lords of Shadow 2 wouldn't be a true Castlevania game without some truly epic combat sequences during its campaign. What types of surprises do you guys have in store for us when it comes to combat and how will the new camera angles work into this?
Enric: The camera has an intelligent AI and is always aiming at the right direction. You can take control of the camera at any moment, but the camera does a nice job of always guiding you and showing you all of the relevant stuff. It is very complicated in a game of this type to get the camera right, because we want you to fight against multiple enemies. We want you to see everything that is important to combat, and this can be difficult, because only the player knows who is the enemy that he or she wants to attack. The camera has to guess, and you will be surprised that the camera will 99 percent of the time do exactly what you would do by hand. If you want to do it, you can do it. I am sure there will be people comfortable without touching the right analog stick to move the camera, and there will be others who like more control and will do it. If you are doing and stop, then the camera adapts automatically. There is seamless integration between the manual and the automatic camera. We are very proud of that, because it took us a few months to have it right. A bad camera can completely ruin a hack-and-slash type of game.
Amanda: We want players to look at the world and enjoy it. We previously had the camera fixed showing you the amazing vistas which we considered the best. However, a lot of players were saying that they wanted to see what was behind them and look around. It is important we give the player that, and in gameplay, it plays a role. In this game players can look around, and when they do that they may see something they want to investigate or they might not be able to get to it now but later on when they get double-jump or another ability they can go up there. The camera is really useful for that. We wanted to really use the camera for exploration and not just for combat. That is one of the reasons from the get go that we decided we needed a free camera in this game.
Amanda: Will Lords of Shadow 2 be easily approachable for players that haven't played the other games from the series?
Dave: Absolutely. We wanted each story to be self-contained with each story having a beginning and an end. If you remember in Lords of Shadow, it is about Gabriel bringing back his dead wife, and that story had an end. We have an overarching story that spans the three games. You don't necessarily have to play one or Mirror of Fate to enjoy Lords of Shadow 2. Things that happened are explained through cutscenes, and things that happened in the past are re-explained in the game. You could play the game and enjoy it and know who the characters and what happened in the past. If you played the other two games though you will have a much better experience. It is like watching a movie.
Enric: Yes, it is like a very, very long movie that is split into three parts. At the beginning of each one, you have a brief summary of what happened in the previous one. Of course, you are going to get a better context and enjoy it a bit more, especially the characters that appear in the game and where they are coming from if you play all of the games. But if you don't, they are properly introduced in a way that feels natural to the narrative and won't feel like you are missing something here.
Amanda: A completely new soundtrack has been composed for Lords of Shadow 2, and what notable differences can we expect with the main themes of the game?
Enric: We are going to use a lot more electronic music. It is a darker soundtrack and is equally emotional as the first one. We made the decision at the first of Lords of Shadow, and I still believe it was the right decision, to build the soundtrack around character emotions and not around environment. In most games, soundtrack is a secondary thing, built around environments. For example, you have a church and you have church music, you have a cave with cave music, and that is it. We did not do it this way and we will not do it this way in Lords of Shadow 2, because the soundtrack is built around the character’s emotions. If we want to emphasize Dracula’s rage, then we will have music that has those feelings and has you feel them. Music is one of the most important things that help you feel emotion, and we didn’t want to lose the opportunity to use it. This is a much darker game than Lords of Shadow was so the music is going to perfectly follow this philosophy and approach.
Amanda: The Castlevania series has deep roots in the horror industry from its tale based on vampiric lore and even horror references in the credits of the original Castelvania. What will make a horror fan want to pick up and play this new release?
Dave: You can be a vampire! It has been done in video games before, but I don’t think to this extent. We are doing some dangerous things here in terms of vampirism and what Dracula can do. Dracula as a character is obviously well-known such as Bram Stoker and all the vampires you have seen in movies. We do some risky things with this character that hasn’t been seen in video games before. One of my favorite vampire films is Near Dark which is kind of risky even today and things like that will be in this game. We want our version of Dracula be totally memorable. He is not Christopher Lee, and in the past Dracula in Castlevania games has been the very stereotypical “Hammer” type of vampire character. We didn’t want Gabriel to be that and wanted him to be a very modern and doesn’t mess around. You will see in this game that he is vicious and evil with a lot of horrifying moments in the game that will shock a lot of people. We feel that is what a vampire does. Vampires kill people and they drink their blood. C’mon!
