Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 + Mirror of Fate

[REmaster]

Yes, I'm aware that I'm one of the only CV fans on this forum but here's a boatload of news regardless.


Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2


The debut trailer of Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 was finally released a few hours ago. Not much to say, except that it is awesome. It is to be released in 2013.

The official website for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

www.thedragonreturns.com



Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate

Also coming to the 3DS is a prequel to LOS2, titled : "Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate", which is also one of the longest video game titles ever. A reboot of the classic franchise, the "Lords of Shadow" series once again sets out pull legendary characters from original CV games and fit them into it's own universe. For instance, Mirror of Fate will feature Trevor and Simon Belmont, and Trevor will also be featured in LOS2 as Spoiler:

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Alucard. Yes, that's right. Take it how you will, but Trevor is Gabriel's son and the events of Mirror of Fate takes place 25 years after the LOS1. The rumors are saying that at some point Trevor is apparently defeated by Gabriel and turned into a vampire, where he meets Gabriel for battle once again in LOS2( if you notice his costume from Mirror of Fate is spot on, with the exception of his flowing white hair, a signature feature of Alucard .

In the pics below, Simon is featured on the cover, who is a descendant of Trevor who is shown in the following ones.








Teaser for Mirror of Fate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJW8UQztwto

[Canas Renvall]

You're not the only fan! I've recently become a huuuuge fan of the series. Started with the DS games, then moved to Super Castlevania IV, then the NES games, now I'm playing the GBA games. I liked Lords of Shadow, so I'm excited for that, and Mirror of Fate is looking fan-freaking-tastic. Taking the character swapping from Castlevania III/Portrait of Ruin, 2.5d Metroidvania style gameplay with occasional 3D bits...


This is nice and all, but um...

Um...

Where is my goddamn Castlevania 1999 game, Igarashi?!

[REmaster]

You're not the only fan! I've recently become a huuuuge fan of the series. Started with the DS games, then moved to Super Castlevania IV, then the NES games, now I'm playing the GBA games. I liked Lords of Shadow, so I'm excited for that, and Mirror of Fate is looking fan-freaking-tastic. Taking the character swapping from Castlevania III/Portrait of Ruin, 2.5d Metroidvania style gameplay with occasional 3D bits...


This is nice and all, but um...

Um...

Where is my goddamn Castlevania 1999 game, Igarashi?!

I'm sad to hear that LOS 2 will be the conclusion of the "Lords of Shadow" trilogy and the end of the series seeing that it just started two years ago, I thought it was such a nice reboot. The first LOS was very low key and flew under the radar despite being one of the best games released in 2010. Hopefully MOF and LOS2 sell well and they will consider making more entries, but then again maybe they originally intended it to be a trilogy and this stand alone series will go out on a high note. There's also the chance that they will just drop the "Lords of Shadow" subtitle and continue on in the same universe(which myself and many others have tweeted David Cox about so hopefully we'll find out sooner or later). Who knows, but I'm pretty damn excited after seeing that trailer.

Also, Mirror of Fate makes me feel less bad about buying a 3DS just for RE mercs and Revelations, now I'm actually starting to build up a small library for it unlike the usual consoles I buy solely to play exclusive RE titles on

On a side note, have you played Symphony of the Night yet?

[[STARS]TyranT]

I absolutely love the Castlevania games, you are not alone
But, as much as I enjoyed Lords of Shadow, I didn't like the rebooted storyline. Now if there's some distant shred of hope that the two timelines can be intertwined, and I believe some fans are trying, there's a great write up of one theory here:

11-21-2010, 04:32 PM
I refuse to think this game is not canon because it fits into the current mythos so well, and I'll explain how. Though, there may be many spoilers for this game and others in the series in this post. Just to warn you.

Right away at the beginning of the game you can read Gabriel's entry in the journal. Inside it tells an important thing. He is an orphan who is quite possibly from a wealthy family such as the Cronqvist's.

Lords of Shadow takes place in about 1047. Lament of Innocence, which had previously been the first in the timeline takes place in about 1094, almost 50 years later. In this game a man named Mathias Cronqvist tricks Leon Belmont into killing the vampire, Walter Bernahrd and taking the ebony stone from him. Together with the crimson stone, these are what makes Mathias Cronqvist into what we know as Dracula. My guess is that after the events in Lords of Shadow, Gabriel started a new life with a new identity, using the Cronqvist name. He once again fell in love with a women named Elisabetha, but she dies which drives Gabriel/Mathias over the edge. Thus he seeks immortality as a way to get back at god. (This is told in Lament of Innocence, but it just says he wants to get back at God for taking his wife...which is actually two wives now.)

Also it's important to mention here that the vampire that Leon Belmont kills in Lament of Innocence is breifly mentioned as the owner of the castle that Gabriel goes through to find Camilla. It's mentioned in a scroll you find on a dead brotherhood. There is also a scroll that says that this castle hasen't been able to be mapped due to the fact it seems to always change. So while they don't directly say it, it's to be assumed that this castle is indeed Castlevania.

Another imortant detail connecting Lords of Shadow and Lament of Innocence is the fact that they heavily mention Rinaldo Gandolfi. In Lament of Innocence you meet him in the forest outside the castle. He wants to destroy Walter because he killed his daughter. In Lords of Shadow, you find a scroll that says that Rinaldo had set out to find the vampire that kidnapped his daughter. So it's assumed that in those 50 years, he found out it was Walter and that he had killed his daughter. (Personally, and there is no real proof of this, but I believe that the little girl vampire you meet in Lords of Shadow, Laura is in fact Rinaldo's daughter. After all, she is in Walter's castle.) Also in Lament of Innocence, Rinaldo makes a new Vampire Killer, so the what has happened to Gabriel's vampire killer is still unknown.

Now it would be enough for me if it was just all of that, that fit so well with the canon of Castlevania. But let's talk about the ending to Lords of Shadow and how that connects really well with the cannon and where I think the series will go from here.

In the ending, we see Zobek find Dracula and ask him why he's been hiding. Now, they hint to it, but it's never 100% clear if Zobek is Death or if he is just a necromancer. If he is Death, then clearly he and Gabriel have been working together for almost 600 years. The fact that Dracula attacks him could either mean that he's done this for so long, that he's just tired of it, and is lashing out, or that Zobek is NOT Death, and he is seeing him again for the first time, and is not happy about it. It could be either way, it's hard to say.

As for the ending being modern times, here is my prediction on that. The last real fight in the timeline with Dracula was in Portrait of Ruin. This game takes place in the 1940's. Using the Vampire Killer passed down from the Belmont line, to his own family line, Johnathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin fight and defeat Dracula. The next fight with Dracula is mentioned in Aria of Sorrow, but not shown. It's said that in 1999, a Belmont finally re-claimed the whip and stepped forward to defeat and seal Dracula for good. This was Julius Belmont. The Castle was sealed in inside the lunar eclipse and Dracula was supposed to be gone forever.

My predictions about the ending of Lords of Shadow all depend on exactly what the time frame is. It could be that this is foreshadowing that event that is said to happen in 1999 that we have yet to see in a game yet. If that's the case, and the Devil and Zobek are involved, it's possible things didn't go exactly as Julius tells it. However it's also possible that the game is sometime in the 2000's and Dracula was actually never sealed away, he just went into hiding. If that's the case, it certainly draws into question how Soma has Dracula's power if Dracula is still alive. Either way...it should be pretty awesome.

I refuse to believe the game is NOT cannon. They did so well making sure everything fit into place, that it seems foolish not to have this be a cannon that just turns the whole mythos upside down. Besides what I mentioned here, there are so many nods to other things in the Castlevania universe that are so hard to ignore. Wygol village was the village outside of Castlevania in Order of Ecclesia, and also is in Lords of Shadow. Vincent Dorin is also an abbot from Portrait of Ruin, which might mean he is the ancestor of the Vincent Dorin in Lords of Shadow. Cornell, Camilla....it just all...fits.

This actually makes Lords of Shadow a lot more interesting for me, and I'd readily embrace it into the series canon.

I like these new games, but I yearn for the days of old.

Btw, if any of you guys ever play Harmony of Despair I'd be more than happy to go dungeon crawling with you guys, Richter's my main guy on that one.

Must say though - that trailer for Lords of Shadow 2 is absolutely incredible.

[Canas Renvall]

I've played Symphony, yeah. It's a fun game, but I think I've been spoiled by the DS games and some of the gameplay improvements they made and I prefer those.

As for HD, I actually main Simon on the 360 version. Dat whip speed!

[Code_R]

Hopefully they fix the story telling (endless narration instead of Gabriel doing/saying things) but I'm good if it plays and sounds as good as the previous one.

[Carnivol]

I don't think they have anything to "fix" on their narrative process. You didn't really need to listen to Zobec's narration and all it really did was give a lot of extra insight to something that rarely portrays itself well on film to "normal" people. It was all there in the game and the cutscenes, but you just kinda had Zobec "confirming/re-telling" it in the narration (in case you, as an outsider, didn't quite "get/understand" it. Without it really being condescending or making the presentation take shortcuts.)

However, it felt like Gabrial's narration in the DLC was a bit ... phoned in.

[REmaster]

Yea I liked Zobek's narration much more, then again, I wish Sir Patrick Stewart would read me bedtime stories. I felt like he could read just about anything and it would sound haunting. Gabriel was reading dark poems to sound dramatic. I'll include spoiler tags for those who still haven't played it for some un-godly reason.You could sense something wasn't quite right about him as the story progressed and by the end when it's revealed that he's actuallySpoiler:

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death

it leaves you with a lot of things to reflect on.

Spoiler:

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When he escorted the village boy back to "safety" as Gabriel continued to the Castle, did he suck his soul out moments later? When Gabriel finds Zobek, the lone survivor standing in front of a mass of dead knights that were supposedly killed by vampires, was Zobek actually the culprit? Did Baba Yaga restore her youth with the rose before Zobek arrived and slayed her as well? She was a powerful witch, I wonder if she put up a decent fight or if it was a quick death.

[Code_R]

Yeah or they could have actually animated some cutscenes with Gabriel showing emotion, doing things, saying things, interaction... anything at all. Like any normal story in visual entertainment, instead of a one liner before a boss which is basically "I hate you because you are the bad guy, die monster" every time. You honestly think that is was anything but cost cutting exercise which could have been done in-game given the budget? Fair enough. But I didn't get it haha that's a good one.

[Carnivol]

He should be saying things to whom? If there's anything I'm glad the game does not have, it's Gabrial running around talking to himself - or the devs cramming in stupid encounters with some other person, just for him to go all Metal Gear on our asses and tell us what an angsty and sad man he is - and I'm eternally thankful for them not doing that.

If anything, MercurySteam should be applauded for not treating the player like a complete moron shopping for a C-movie experience, going all "Gabrial is sad! Look! He said so himself. Even though he looks like a tough man, he's still soft on the inside - 'cause he said so himself! Pay attention, player! Gabriel's about to tell you how miserable he is!"

[Code_R]

"Gabrial is sad! Look! He said so himself. Even though he looks like a tough man, he's still soft on the inside - 'cause he said so himself! Pay attention, player! Gabriel's about to tell you how miserable he is!"

Funny, because that's what almost all the load screen dialogue is saying - Zobek rambles on and on about how dark and powerful and full of hate Gabriel is, but in game he's just devoid of personality. No, what I am talking about is actually writing a good script in which character development is built naturally. Patrick Stuart phoning it in just doesn't cut it for me. Which is a shame because I like the guy and like the rest of the game.

[REmaster]

Funny, because that's what almost all the load screen dialogue is saying - Zobek rambles on and on about how dark and powerful and full of hate Gabriel is, but in game he's just devoid of personality. No, what I am talking about is actually writing a good script in which character development is built naturally. Patrick Stuart phoning it in just doesn't cut it for me. Which is a shame because I like the guy and like the rest of the game.

I hear what you're saying, but you didn't find Stewart's narration the least bit awesome? I could understand after the tenth level intro, but at the very start of the game when it shows Gab arriving at the village and Stewart cuts in with the, "These are dark times" speech. Holy shit it was great.

Also, it's so nice seeing evil Gabula in LOS2 after getting screwed over so many times in LOS.

[Code_R]

Yeah of course, I loved the stuff where I could hear the quality - the intro as you said and the other in-game parts. Unfortunately there's a noted difference from my point of view with those parts... and segments where it sounded to me like he'd been handed 20 pages of dialogue and had to get them done in a few hours studio recording time. I still hope everyone involved returns for the sequel, and the project is on my high anticipation list even before real gameplay vids get released.

[Kaneco]

The white haired warrior at the end of the trailer kind of reminds me of 'Hector' from 'Curse of Darkness'...but most likely it's going to turn out to be Alucard for all we know.

Spoiler:

show spoiler

I'm pretty psyched for this game (loved LOS), but I still want Konami to finish the old-storyline with 1999 game where Dracula finally goes down once and for all.

Hmm, I think I'm going to go ahead and play some Harmony of Despair on PSN now... xD

[Wrathborne]

Didnt play Lord of Shadow, was Dracula even in that game as a character?