Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Interview
Fourteen-year Konami veteran, and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow producer, Dave Cox recently sat with me to discuss the developer’s latest attempt to bring the famously 2D fang-baring franchise into the third dimension. Cox, who started working on the vamp-slaying series with commercial and critical classic Symphony of the Night, talked openly about Castlevania’s rocky 3D history, its notoriously challenging gameplay, and those inevitable God of War comparisons.
AtomicGamer: One of the first things we heard about Lords of Shadow was that Hideo Kojima was involved in the project. Could you elaborate on what his involvement has been?
Dave Cox: Hideo Kojima came on board about two and a half years ago, when we first kind of got the project off the ground, and he’s been advising and monitoring the project. His role really is to view the builds, to give us feedback, and help us with any technical issues we may have. For example, we had a lot of problems with lip synching and facial capture; we originally did motion capture, but didn’t capture faces properly. He sent a team over from Japan and helped us overcome that issue. He also helped us with the design of protagonist Gabriel Belmont himself; originally, the character was more akin to the original Simon Belmont character, much more of a barbarian type character. First thing he said is “You need to change Gabriel. You’ve got this story…this emotional, tragic story you’re trying to tell, and you’ve got this kind of meathead character. You need players to empathize with the character, so you should go back to the drawing board and start again.” So, we refined him and sent Kojima revisions, and he helped us with that. I’m glad he did that in a way, because he’s made a much more kind of nuanced, more interesting character, not your usual one-dimensional action hero.
AG: How do you strike the balance between satisfying the Castlevania fans who grew up with the classic 2D games, and making it appealing and accessible for current-gen players?
DC: Yeah, it is a challenge. I think what we did with this game is go back to the original core concepts of the series--what’s Castlevania really about? For me, it was always about the Belmonts…you know, a lone warrior battling supernatural creatures with a whip. That was really the core; if you strip everything else away, that’s what the series is all about. And from there we built the game around that. Rather than trying to convert the 2D games into 3D, we thought it was better to kind of start from scratch…keep the core elements in the series, but start from scratch. We had to be kind of brave and say: “Okay, this isn’t going to make the cut because it doesn’t work in three dimensions.“ And some of those decisions were quite hard, and we thought people might not like them, but at the same time, we felt that if we’re going to appeal to a mainstream audience…an audience that expects high quality 3D action games on their 360 or PS3, then we need to make these kinds of brave decisions. The key brief that Japan had given us was that we needed to make the kind of game that’s going to appeal to the mainstream…that’s going to broaden the appeal of Castlevania, but also not lose the fans. It was quite a difficult balancing act to do. We wanted to have things that were familiar, but at the same time not be afraid to try new things. I think one of the things people find when they play the game is we have those moments that will give them goosebumps; little elements, tie-ins to the storylines in previous games. But more importantly, a new person can just jump straight in and not need to know the twenty six year history of the series…they don’t need to know every single character that ever lived in the Castlevania universe.
AG: Previous Castlevania games that have tried to bring the franchise into 3D have struggled a bit, at least critically. What do you think some of the issues were with these previous attempts?
DC: I think they’ve tried to emulate the 2D experience in three dimensions, and for me, that’s a bit of a mistake. You’ve got to think of this as a 3D game right from the get go; you might have to make decisions that mean certain things aren’t going to make the cut, and you need to be brave about that. I think we’ve done that with this game.
AG: Did you guys take a hard look at all the previous games, 2D and 3D?
DC: Absolutely. We studied them like crazy. We played them to death…used them as kind of design elements when we were designing the game. All of Lords of Shadow’s levels were taken from previous Castlevania games; we kind of went through all of the Castlevania games we liked and said: “This level is cool, I’d like to recreate that.” So there’s a lot of levels in here that appeared in previous games.
AG: Castlevania games have a reputation for being challenging. Does Lords of Shadow retain that?
DC: It is challenging, but I think it needs to be. We wanted to have a game that presented a challenge to players. We didn’t want them to just waltz their way through it. Castlevania has always been a challenging game, so perhaps it’s more so than other kind of games of this ilk out there, but I thought that was important. We want people to have a long experience with the game…it’s twenty hours. We wanted fifty stages, twenty hours, and a real challenge. At the end of the game, we want players to be spectacularly rewarded. So the game has a lot of content... that’s one of the reasons we’ve been developing it for so long. I don’t think four or five hours, or even six or seven is going to cut it to be honest with you. We also have like 45 enemies in the game, which is a lot for a 3D game.
AG: Given your history, as both a fan and developer on the series, you must have a favorite Castlevania game.
DC: Four is my favorite. And number one is very special to me, because it’s when I first got my NES…that was one of the first games I played. I used to work in a video game shop, then I started my own business importing games; one of the first games I imported was Super Castlevania 4Symphony of the Night. It’s crazy, but that’s fate.
AG: Speaking of that, did you guys know you had a classic-in-the-making with Symphony of the Night?
DC: We didn’t think it was going to be a classic at the time. It wasn’t a huge title when it got released, especially in Europe. It got very critically acclaimed, but it didn’t sell in huge numbers. Over the years, it’s kind of built up this following and has become a sort of cult title.
AG: What do you think of the comparisons your game is drawing to God of War?
DC: I find it irritating because…well, in the movie business, people don’t go up to Martin Scorsese and say: “Goodfellas is a little bit like Godfather, right?” It’s kind of a game thing; people like to compare. Sure, when you’re making a game, every developer looks around or has influences in their own life, growing up, playing games, that they can call upon. But I think it’s fair to say that Castlevania was around a long time before God of War, and there’s certain things in God of War that, to me, are in Castlevania. But of course, if you aren’t a certain age--like myself--you probably haven’t played the earlier Castlevania games, so your experience of Castlevania is only of the more recent entries. So, you might say “Well that’s like God of War. But we didn’t look to God of War for inspiration. I think it’s a brilliant game, but it’s a much more hack and slash type affair than this is. This is more an action platformer, and that’s what we kind of set out to make. It’s really about bringing Castlevania into three dimensions. So it’s nice, in a way, to be compared to a game like that because it’s such a high quality title, but I also think it’s a bit unfair. Once people play our game, they’re going to say: “Hey, this is not quite what I was thinking…this is not the hack and slash game I thought it would be.”
Thanks to Dave Cox for taking the time to discuss Castlevania: Lord of Shadow with us. It arrives on Xbox 360 and PS3 on October 5th; we’re already sharpening our stakes in anticipation.
