So, during the past few days I've been playing the excellent new DS Castlevania Portrait of Ruin and I'm pretty much done with it at present. However, I recently had a discussion about the future of these 2D incarnations of the Castlevania series on the forum I frequent.
Essentially, every "modern" 2D Castlevania - which is to say the Metroid-esque ones with the explorable dungeons, hidden rooms and new-area-enabling skills and weaponry - have been basically the same since Symphony of the Night. While various new innovations and game-specific idiosyncrasies have been introduced in the half dozen or so 2D games since SotN (an example would be the Soul system from the GBA/DS "Sorrow" series with Soma Cruz) nothing spectacular has been done with the core gameplay. This is no bad thing I'll hurry to point out, since the gameplay is nigh-on perfect and each new game has its own unique characters and take on the universal "defeat Dracula and his minions" storyline, it's just the whole affair can get tiresome without any big leaps made with the material. The 3D games suffer the same problem as well to a lesser extent (though their problems have more to do specifically with the translation to 3D).
Far be it for me to claim to have the solution, since Konami is staffed with creative geniuses far beyond my current ability, I just wanted to share an idea I had for the series for whomever reads this weblog. With this game idea, I wanted to turn the game on its head and use the familiarity of the Castlevania mythos to present an entirely different account of what goes on in Dracula's Castle when there are no heroes currently fighting their way through it. Specifically, I want a game that focuses on the role of Death, Dracula's closest confidante and ally.
The story would follow something like this: Dracula has been defeated and the castle is destroyed and sent back to the underworld in pieces. Death, as an immortal and omnipresent force of nature, survives the destruction as usual and goes about reconstructing the castle and reviving his "master" (the game never really explains if Death is a servant or just a friend of Dracula). To do this, he first employs a denizen of the underworld to find all the creatures and demons that used to live in Dracula's Castle (which I'll just be calling "DC" from now on in this update) and he chooses a tragic fallen soul from his kingdom for this purpose, one who just happens to be a dead Belmont.
Now, this Belmont (I haven't given him a name or era of birth yet) is a Belmont that was never required to fight Dracula in his lifetime but received the martial training just in case like all Belmonts. Somewhat bitter at being raised for a divine purpose he never got the chance to fulfill, he became a mercenary and did a few unsavory things in his career while being employed by various shady characters and eventually died on the job. As such, he descended to the Death-ruled Underworld (or Hell, I suppose) when he died. Death hires him to fulfill his original purpose of defeating DC and in return he can go to the Hero's afterlife that all the other Belmonts (and other game's protagonists) went.
DC, after being destroyed in our world, has sort of integrated parts of itself with the Underworld, which means half the map takes place in various classic DC sections (like the Entrance or the Clock Tower) mingled with the Underworld itself, which vary from hellish lava fields to fetid swamps and all the unpleasant types of places you'd expect the denizens of DC to live between Dracula resurrections. Monsters like Cave Trolls or Mermen don't really belong in a castle basement, but they do belong in the Hell swamps I just mentioned.
Belmont's Role
The purpose of the fallen Belmont is twofold: First, he has to round up all the monsters that escaped the castle back to their Underworld lairs and defeat them. Since defeating them in the Underworld sends their souls directly to the ruler of said Underworld to sort out (that would be Death), Death can then reassign their DC habitats and roles (see Death's Role, below). The second is to procure pieces of DC by severing all the bonds it made to the Underworld when it was destroyed. These will be puzzle-based, and may involve smashing crystals, defeating bosses, pressing switches and what have you. If he successfully "releases" that section of DC it will disappear from Hell and be sent to Death who will then recreate the whole DC with all the parts you send him (again, see Death's Role below).
Other things the Belmont can do is power-up his stats and weaponry (he won't have Vampire Killer down here btw) by finding the souls of various other humans in the Underworld and purifying them somehow. Based on what sin they performed to wind up in Hell, a linked stat increases. I thought it would be neat to categorise them by way of the seven deadly sins, and attach a sin to each statistic: Gluttony would be Health (since food replenishes health), Wrath would be Strength, Sloth would be Magic Resistance (stubbornness), Greed/Avarice would be Luck (Luck increases money and item drops), Pride would be Constitution (being prideful means you're less likely to be hurt, I guess), Lust would be Magic Power/Intelligence and Envy would be.. MP, I guess, because it's a green-colored bar? OK, so it's not a perfect system, but it would still be a pretty cool way of levelling up. Things like ATK and DEF would still be regulated by STR and CON stats, plus whatever equipment the Belmont is wearing.
Talking of which, any equipment you find will also be sent to Death after the Belmont is done with his tasks in the Underworld and will be placed in DC when it reappears in our world. The equipment in the Underworld can be found the same way as any other Castlevania game: either from monsters or found hidden somewhere. There won't be a shop, of course, but fulfilling certain monster totals may convince Death to bequeath you an item (sort of like PoR's Quest system). However, finding a lot of good equipment will benefit the Belmont more than it benefits Death since finding a strong item will mean the currently living Belmont can find it and use it to defeat evil. So even though you may end up providing Death with a lot of defeated monster souls for your valuable piece of equipment, finding that item might be worth having to fight more monsters to the living Belmont.
Death's Role
After the Belmont section of the game is done, you'll have a screen detailing how much of DC has been recovered and how many of the monsters and items have been found. It's then up to Death (i.e. you) to piece together what you have of DC, assign all the monsters to their posts (if the right monsters in the right quantities have been found) and finally scatter all the equipment around. Although Death has to follow the rules of the castle (no putting the biggest and most dangerous monster right at the gate), he can still win if many of the monsters have been found and not enough equipment has been provided. This section is mostly for show, since anything you did to effect the game's outcome was done in the Belmont section. I just thought it was neat to allow the player to be the one who puts DC back together again. The computer will do a simulated runthrough with a computer-controlled protagonist to check the difficulty and if you successfully "killed" the current Belmont during his adventure you get Death's ending, which involves bringing back Dracula and taking over the world. The fallen Belmont still gets sent to Heaven for his work, but he's reviled by all the heroes in there for helping Death and Dracula conquer the living world.
If the fallen Belmont was successful enough in collecting as much equipment in the game as possible while minimizing monster acquisition, your descendant will win instead and you'll get Belmont's ending, which involves the destruction of the castle and all your hard work and the Belmont receives a warm welcome when he arrives in Heaven.
There's also a third ending, for finding all the items (full equipment list) and all the monsters (full bestiary); finding all of just one will only give you one of the two endings above. The third ending I'll leave secret for now, but it may allow the player to play as the living Belmont going through the reconstructed DC, using Vampire Killer if he wishes.
While essentially the same game (wouldn't want to wander too far from the formula), there's plenty in this new version to give the series a little more originality, especially if you're trying to get Death to win. The bits of the map which partly integrate Hell with DC should somewhat resemble Silent Hill's transitions into its "otherworld", as you pass from the ornate fixtures and sometimes warm interiors of DC into the hellish landscapes that comprise Death's kingdom.
So, I dunno, it should be fun to see how the other half operates.
