As someone unfamiliar with the games can someone explain the setting to me? It feels vaguely Christian, but then you also have Egyptian gods, 'forgemasters', African Shamanic Spirits, 'Death', Sorceresses... But also Hell and other dimensions???
Are the show writers doing their own thing or is the established lore? The writing is typical late 2000s Coastal American overall so I can imagine it.
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It's just the show writers trying to we wuz. None of this kang shit was in the games, which are set in Christian Europe.
The games were a massive B-movie, mythological creature feature crossover that just happened to be centered around one family and their eternal feud with Dracula. The original game had the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Frankenstein Monster as bosses while the Creature from the Black Lagoon were mooks you could kill. There was no actual rhyme or reason as to why these creatures were in the setting outside of "they were in the Universal Studios monster movies let's put them in". Back then the lore was barely anything beyond "You are a Belmont, your job is to stop Dracula." Around Rondo of Blood they started developing not just the lore of the world but also its bestiary, by drawing from mythology because it just added more things to snap your whip at with the explanation that Dracula and his castle have mastery over such things.
The show just very clumsily adapts all that.
Show writers give about as many fricks about castlevania as Catwoman the movie or the trank fantastic four.
There's a certain amount of thought and research that goes into the design of some of the monsters, particularly the bosses, but they draw them from everywhere.
Because the series gives no fricks about the few plot points the game has, and wants to ramrod whatever garbage they feel like running with.
>There's a certain amount of thought and research that goes into the design of some of the monsters, particularly the bosses
>legion: a giant ball of human husks referencing the biblical line "we are legion"
>headhunter: a sorcereress who has a collection of severed heads that she can place on her neck stump to gain their power, reference to return to oz
>the golem, clay humanoid of hebrew myth
>many, many greek myth enemies (minotaur, scylla, medusa, et al)
>aforementioned universal horror bosses (dracula, mummies, frankensteins monster, et al)
>carmilla: named for a gothic horror novel about a vampire who bathes in the blood of virgins, though the usual design of a floating mask only vaguely calls that to mind
Anon, changing the setting, lore and history to your IP for political reasons and calling anyone who points this out is not adaptation. It is co-opting it.
Early games where basically Conan the Barbarian vs the Monster Mash little care for lore except being vaguely medieval.
Later games are also vaguely medieval but ran out of universal monsters and use basically any mythological creature they can find. The last games in the timeline happen after WW1, post 2000 and a few months after the game that takes place post 2000
Just to ad the latest games in the timeline take place in 2035 and in Japan. If the show gets another series after Nocturne i am expecting them to jump to this as its the next major point after Bloodlines and Sotn.
Other things like OoE or Portrait of ruin could make for some fun shorter seasons but i don't think they have any interest in them.
>OoE
would make a good series except the fact that the MC would be devoid of emotion.
It does have the largest cast of characters of any Castlevania, tho.
They would need to pair her up with someone or use her constantly interacting with the other cast to show her emotionless so she doesn't seem completely boring.
After the Netflix show i thought we might see something but its fricking over man. We aren't getting any new games and they aren't even interested in remaking games like SOTN.
I worry Netflix would lean far too heavily into the setting. Its going to be vampire nazis feeding on israelites or something. If they do get another season Aria and Dawn adaptations feel likely just due to the characters that are in it and presents a large enough setting shift it would seem different.
Why are there no new games since 2014? is it over?
Lords of Shadow 2 underperformed and it coincided with Konami's leadership change that led to them ditching AAA console games - remember all the stuff in the media about Kojima and MGSV?
A PoR show could work very well if they emphasize how it's set during WW2. A Bloodlines adaptation would be cool for similar reasons - two bros travelling around Europe during WW1 trying to stop the ressurection of Dracula.
>as its the next major point after Bloodlines and Sotn
I think you mean “it’s the next major point where Alucard shows up”
But frick if I know how they’re even pretending to adapt the games at this point. They already blew SOTN’s narrative in season 2 of the last run, Nocturne is pulling sparknotes from Bloodlines when it isn’t busy channeling modern day sociopolitics, and they’re kinda screwed on adapting Sorrow when Dracula the rational science man got a good ending with his loving rational science wife to really drive home that “Evil” doesn’t exist in the Netflix setting outside of the white bourgeoisie population
I am fairly certain the Netflix showrunners see Alucard as the protagonist of the Castlevania series with the Belmont's just as an accompanying element of its world. So the next logical game setting for them is going to be Aria. Outside of that Aria atleast has something different enough with Dracula it wouldn't feel like a direct repeat.
I would put money down that the end of next season is going to be Dracula ressurected by whatever netflix version of Shaft they create to kill the Vampire god b***h. Then after that we are going to get Richter and Alucard going through the upside down castle to kill Dracula again.
"Vaguely Christian" is exactly it. It's not as fedora-tippy as the show, but it doesn't delve far into Christianity aside from using it the same way most vampire movies do
Some games also incorporate monsters/gods from a bunch of other folklores, but they might as well be regarded as exotic flavors of demons
Why does the series have such trouble with the relationships, especially in regards to friendship/family? The original trio from the first series felt silted and forced, and they did a little better in the newest season, but not by much. For example, the newest Belmont and his grandfather just felt odd. Was there a need for that in the narrative? And why do priests always have to be hilariously evil and oblivious to that fact?
Because the show is directed by a trustfund manchild edgelord with a chip on his shoulder
This guy's bastardising Ubisoft franchises now, he hasn't been involved with Castlevania since season 2 or 3 I believe. It was mostly Warren Ellis fault, but then again, he's also gone so the studio just sucks in general
Night Creatures are either paper beings or elite soldiers of hell in these shows, depending on what the writers need them to be in the scene. Although I do like the variation in designs. The Mullato character got a good one, even if all he ever does is sing.
With Alucard coming back can we assume other plot points are gonna be dragged up again. I forget, what happened to Hector and Isaac?
>Night Creatures are either paper beings or elite soldiers of hell in these shows
Its pretty accurate to the games. Some are paper that die in a single hit then suddenly theres one thats going to take 10 hits to kill or do some ridiculous attack that hits for a stupid amount of damage.
Hector got turned into a puppyplay sex slave for a vampire girl who killed herself, Issac actually got a happy ending. Just like fricking Dracula.
they're trying to show how powerful/skillful the belmonts are at what they do vs the commonfolk
It's a Monster Mash and Richter needs to stop being a b***h and smash some Vampire MILF.
The show mostly does its own thing.
>Egyptian gods, 'forgemasters', African Shamanic Spirits, 'Death', Sorceresses... But also Hell and other dimensions???.
In the games, Dracula gets his army of monsters from Chaos (or Hell). The monsters manifest as representations of humanity's beliefs, culture, mythology, movies, literature and so on. So an in-game monster can be depicting a god from some religion, but it's not actually that god. It's just an interchangeable monster and there are many others like it. Within the games worldbuilding: magic is real, Hell is real, Dracula is a real person and any other explicitly human characters/vampires in the games are real. All the conflicting gods and religions in the games are just demons from the Chaotic Realm.
Also devil forgemastery literally appears in one game as a gameplay gimmick and it gets little to no lore justification either. Its importance in the show is super overblown.
>Egyptian gods
Show stuff, not in the source material.
>forgemasters
Only added in the 3d era of the games and not part of the source material.
>African Shamanic Spirits
Show stuff, not in the source material.
>Death
is Death.
>Sorceresses
are sorceresses.
>Hell and other dimensions
Part of the source material's direct sequel, Symphony of the Night.
Annette was not Black in the OG and Maria is wearing the outfit from her PSP redesign.
Age of mythology but with vampires
If you're asking if the games use other mythologies, then yes.
All the time.
The show writers have quite literally been pulling page names from Castlevania’s Fandom wiki and making up their own OC to fill in the rest since the beginning.
Nocturne went a bit overboard when the hired a bunch of British sociopolitical activists to write, but considering the previous series was written by a bitter old British anti-theist it’s still got roughly the same target audience.
The games started out as a kitchen sink of horror monsters with some behind the scenes lore documents giving the original devs a vibe to work towards, though it went through a couple distinct eras of worldbuilding and aesthetics as new dev teams came and went. The basics are pretty easy to pick up by playing any game or watching longplays, since it’s an atmosphere thing first and foremost. The intro to the mobile game Konami threw together and killed in short order is a fantastic abstract:
The show has literally nothing to do with the games. It makes no sense that they called it castlevania, they could have just made their own original thing.
I never understood why they barely use monsters and music from the games, is Konami being as stingy as Toho and charging for every extra monster/song or Power House just sucks?
I think it's a pride thing. The Lords of Shadow games also did the same thing. The composer had to come out and say he planned on doing more Castlevania tracks in the sequel's soundtrack just to get everyone happy.
>Are the show writers doing their own thing or is the established lore?
The Castlevania games have always been a campy horror kitchen sink. The castle itself is a psuedo-living magical construct that exists outside of time and can pull stuff in from the future which is why despite Castlevania 64 taking place in 1852 there were skeletons on motorcycles. The setting will definitely go for "all myths are true" so long as it results in something cool.