Over the course of Castlevania’s 25 year history, players have been given control over a lot of characters: countless members of the Belmont line of vampire hunters, Dracula’s own rebellious son, Alucard, and even a few random interlopers here and there. But players have never been placed in the role of Dracula*… until now.
*Ok, yes, technically, you could play as Dracula in the horrendous Wii fighting game Castlevania Judgement, but let’s all just pretend that game never happened.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 picks up where the first game (and it’s subsequent DLC epilogue) left off (MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD): Gabriel Belmont has been transformed into an immortal vampire now known as “Dracul” after absorbing the evil power of the ancient Forgotten One, and the first trailer for LoS2 shows the corrupted knight using his new powers to fight his way through an army of soldiers. While Gabriel looks plenty powerful in the trailer, the game’s website reveals that most of the story of the game will revolve around a weakened Gabriel travelling the land in order to reclaim his powers so that he can stop an even more dangerous evil force from emerging.
The trailer ends with Dracula being confronted by a white haired figure with a sword. With the upcoming Mirror of Fate for DS re-introducing classic series characters like Trevor and Simon Belmont into Lord of Shadow’s rebooted continuity, some fans have already begun speculating that the white haired swordsman at the end of the trailer might be the rebooted universe’s version of Alucard.
Outside of those scant details, not much else is known about Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 at this time. The trailer seems to suggest that there’ll be man vs. army battles, a-la Ninety-Nine Nights or Dynasty Warriors, but then again, that scene might just exist for dramatic purposes. I know a lot of old-school Castlevania fans hated the original Lords of Shadow because of the changes it brought to the franchise, but I rather enjoyed it — it felt like a 3D update to the classic, linear 8 and 16-bit CV’s, and while it’s God of War “inspired” combat certainly wasn’t innovative, it was polished and well balanced enough that I thoroughly enjoyed it. The game is currently in development for the Xbox 360 and the PS3, and Konami has yet to commit on a release date for the game.
