Concern for Castlevania's "revival"

At this point, there's no denying that E3 2009 was one of the better E3s, considering how the internet is still abuzz with discussions about what happened and what surprises were revealed days after the convention ended. But like any other convention, there are always games revealed that pique your interest in an alternate kind of way; games whose concepts provoke observational skepticism. This is very much to the chagrin of game developers. There were quite a few of these at E3, but I'll just give my opinion of the biggest three that caught my eye. Starting with this one.

When Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was unveiled at Konami's Press Conference on Wednesday -- with a trailer being subsequently uploaded to Konami's Kojima Productions E3 2009 page -- gamers were immediately taken in by its looks. Admittedly, it looks quite breathtaking from what's been shown; it contains some of the best graphics seen from a game this generation along, with some excellent voice acting by the likes of Patrick Stewart, Robert Carlyle, Patricia McElhone, and Jason Issacs. Even though the gameplay itself looks a little more-than-inspired by God of War, it's quite breathtaking.

But it's only after viewing that until it dawns on you to look into exactly who is developing it. The game was teased on Kojima Productions' main page for a few weeks, and apparently Metal Gear Solid's Hideo Kojima is serving as a producer (though really it's still unclear as to what role he'll have in its development). However, the game itself will be handled by MercurySteam Entertainment. If you've never heard of them, they also handled last year's Clive Barker's Jericho, which wasn't received all that well.

A lot of my concern stems from the fact that I probably care about Castlevania a bit too much. But after thinking about the trailer a little, I don't think it really feels like a Castlevania game. I'm sure there's more to be revealed about it in the coming months -- until its release date sometime in 2010, ideally -- but I hope Kojima and crew (still referring to Hideo, not the series' venerable artist Ayami Kojima) are more integral to the project than they're letting on at the moment.

Though it's not like the previous 3D console Castlevania's have been that great. Though Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness contained elements that made them feel like Castlevania games, the products themselves were of middling quality because of the amount of repetition that was involved. (Seriously, you don't know the meaning of the word "repetitive" if you haven't played these games.) It feels as if Konami had no choice but to pursue an alternate development team to produce a 3D Castlevania right, but time will tell if it's actually MercurySteam. The problem with what's been shown so far is that the trailer has nothing that makes it feel like a Castlevania game. It really seems like it's something that was initially developed as an original project, but Konami happened to see it and slapped the Castlevania name on it. That in itself wouldn't stop it from being a bad game, but there aren't a lot of opportunities these days for the series to be fully realized in 3D, so it would be great if it had a fusion of both a Castlevania feel and a quality action/adventure.

Though admittedly, it looks more faithful to Castlevania than Castlevania Judgement for Wii, which featured some utterly bizarre character designs by Takeshi Obata (of Death Note).

Also, this news makes me wonder what exactly has happened to Koji Igarashi, the (former?) main producer behind every Castlevania game for a little over the last decade. Sure, he and his team couldn't do 3D well at all, but their 2D games have been quite superlative -- including Order of Ecclesia, which was just released in October of last year. I think I'm going to miss the supposed (though nearly guaranteed) lack of involvement from him, along with Michiru Yamane and Ayami Kojima. Here's hoping they're working on a 2D game whose release will coincide with this one, and that, uh, they're not out of work. I was looking forward to the 3D sequel to Symphony of the Night that was teased at the Tokyo Game Show last year (though I have no idea why Gametrailers.com lists that as a teaser for Lords of Shadow, as they're clearly not the same game).

At this point, I'm at two minds in what I think about Lords of Shadow thus far. I'll admit to being incredibly impressed when I saw the trailer, and I always thought that God of War is what Castlevania should have been in 3D -- which makes the fact that this game is borrowing a few ideas from that one incredibly ironic. I'm going to cross my fingers and hope Kojima is really integral to its development (while not adding any hour-long cut scenes to it), and hope that MercurySteam is more talented than I and a lot of people think.