Wow, I have not posted to this blog in a long ass time. My last blog was in mourning for Ryan Davis. I feel a little weird following that up with me complaining about a video game.

So this is a blog post I wrote for my tumblr about Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Now, it started as just me wanting to get my thoughts on it into words, as I sometimes do with games. Then it...kinda spiraled. Like, you know that way you get when you're not angry, but you find yourself swearing a whole bunch? It's like that. It is a rant. I think I backed my opinions up, and I obviously stand by it, otherwise I wouldn't be posting it here for public critique. But go in knowing it's a rant, and that it kinda rambles but that I do eventually get to a point I think.

Passionate, that's the word. I got really passionate while writing this. So, uh, enjoy.

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Okay, so last week I played through Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, the reboot of Castlevania into a more western style of game, in particular taking inspiration from God of War. As a game, it was fairly competent. It played well, not with the polish of God of War but certainly with ambitions to greater mechanical complexity (with a little bit of Shadow of the Colossus thrown in for the bigger boss battles). The parry system felt satisfying, and there were some really good bosses around the beginning of the game (Cornell, in particular, is my favorite in the game) as well as some great fanservice (going through the actual Castlevania was pretty awesome, if filled with some frustrating jump puzzles).

The mechanics are not why I want to talk about it though. I want to talk about the story, so there will be unmarked spoilers.

In Lords of Shadow, you play “Gabriel Belmont”, a new character introduced in LoS as the progenitor of the Belmont clan. Throughout the game you fight the Lords of Shadow (Cornell the Wearwolf, Carmilla the Vampire, and Death [Played by Sir Patrick Stewart]), but never Dracula, the lord of the Demon Castle: Castlevania.

I wanted to play this game because I knew Gabriel, by the end of the game, became Dracula. And I really like stories of heroes turning into villains.

I’m going to cut to the chase: that part of the story, the change into Dracula, the only part I actually cared about, sucked. It sucked such amazing dicks. It sucked so bad so as to ruin any interest I have in the rest of the Lords of Shadow series, which sucks because Mirror of Fate HD seems pretty neat.

First, before playing the DLC, here is how it’s conveyed: Gabriel has defeated the Lords of Shadow. He has defeated Satan, who had been using Death (Played by Sir Patrick Stewart) to gather the pieces of the God Mask MacGuffin in order to challenge God again. Gabriel is God’s Golden Boy. Literally, he became an Arch Angel for the duration of the final boss battle. The only problem was that he could not use the God Mask to bring his wife back from the dead (yeah, that was his whole motivation. I’ll get to Gabriel in a minute, don’t worry).

So that’s bittersweet, but otherwise he has defeated the devil, asked for forgiveness for his sins (of which there were none. Again, not done with Gabe). It’s a Hero’s Ending.

Roll credits.

Death (Played by Sir Patrick Stewart) sneaks into a Church, and speaks to a shadowy figure on a throne. He says “something something Satan is coming back, Gabriel” to which an old, wizened Gabriel responds by jumping out of the shadows saying:

“Don’t call me Gabriel! Eu sunt Dracul!” which is Romanian for “I am the Devil/Dragon” or, if you’re not being stubborn, “I am Dracula!”

That’s it. That’s the reveal.

Okay. That’s jarring.

But there’s DLC. And I knew that’s when the deed happens for real. So I go on to play those. They suck, as DLC chapters have a habit of doing, and the difficulty got jacked up. But more to the point, Gabriel drops the Golden Boy thing like immediately. And not to go “but now I’m EEEEVIIIIL >:D” which would have been weird, but I could get behind that (will go into more detail about that later).

No, he’s just sad and despondent. “I don’t care about the world or its problems” he says to quest giver vampire girl who just told him about an EVEN EVILER DEMON THAN SATAN who was about to break free of its bounds that were weakened by the Lords of Shadow dying (as it goes). After being nagged into saving the world (he may as well have said “ugh, fine MOM!”), he gets to the demon portal, at which point quest giver says “wait, humans can’t go in there. You’ll have to become a vampire, sorry,” and Gabriel is like “k.”

And then he becomes a vampire.

That’s it. Suddenly vampire. Because the new Dragon Ball Z villain was in a different dimension.

This is a world that has established that beings of power are weaker outside of their realm of influence, which is why you can (fucking curbstomp) Satan. This Demon God was about to leave it’s home universe (which is not hell). If Gabriel really doesn’t care about the world or collateral damage, he could have just fucking waited for the demon to show up.

So he becomes a vampire by sucking vampire girl's blood and killing her because…reasons? Is that how it works? Why is there more than one vampire? It would have been more poignant if she had said “okay drink, but not too much or I’ll die” and if he just said “fuck yoooou”. At least then he would have done A SINGLE DARK OR EVIL THING OF HIS OWN CHOOSING!

I haven’t even GOTTEN to Gabriel yet!

So he goes in, finds the demon god (called the Forgotten One because creativity). Fights it in one of the shittiest, most poorly designed, unbalanced boss fights I have ever had the displeasure of subjecting myself to. Accomplishes nothing in doing so. So the demon is going to get its power back because it had sent it out to break the seal. And so Gabriel just…jumps in front of the “power ray” before it hits the demon. And then he…kinda eats it.

Now he has Dracula powers. And he one shots the demon.

That’s it.

That’s the story of how motherfucking Dracula came to be.

So, now I get to Gabriel, because my problems all actually circle around his lack of a character, and what the story does with that lack of a character. The story of Gabriel is supposed to be the story of a Knight of the Lord who, in service to his Lord, travels down a dark path ending in destruction, and ultimately in falling to evil. It’s the “he who fights monsters” quote made into narrative form.

I know this because the narration between chapters (voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart) drives this point home repeatedly, chapter after chapter, level after level. At a certain point it is nothing but “Gabriel is filled with a rage that knows no mercy, and I fear that what is left of his soul shall be forever tarnished!”

Which is great, Captain Picard, but you never actually see any of this. Gabriel has no personality beyond “I want to bring my wife back, and I will have revenge against the evil that killed her”. Plot twist, he killed his wife…while under Death’s (as played by Sir Patrick Stewart) control. And then he killed a little girl who was actually several hundred if not thousands of years old…while under the control of Death (as played by Sir Patrick Stewart). Otherwise he killed Werewolves, Vampires, zombies, trolls. Evil creatures. With no room for debate. They are all evil. They kill people and destroy the world around them. There is nothing morally gray. There is no dark path.

Gabriel does nothing dark, or evil, of his own accord. Not even becoming a vampire. He did that because plot demanded he had to.

Gabriel has all of eight lines of dialog I’m pretty sure, and they consist of variations of “who are you”, “I’m here to kill the Lord of Shadow”, “help me kill the Lord of Shadow”, “I miss my wife.”

And there’s no change in his demeanor. In his dialog. In his design. So while we’re told he is getting darker and more twisted, none of that shows. They really try to sell it. Gabriel delivers the in-between mission monologues for the DLC, and he talks about how as a vampire he wanted to murder everything and drink blood, but it all felt hollow. I didn’t believe it. And he has no real agency. He doesn’t decide to do anything. Everything just kind of happens to him. Up to and including becoming a vampire.

And I think I know why I’m so disappointed. It goes back to liking stories about heroes becoming villains, and it didn't feel like that happened. There is no turn to evil, no rejection of good. Gabriel does everything because he has to. Never because he wants to. And being evil is, at its core, about doing exclusively what you want to do! There is never a moment where Gabriel sees the good option and goes “nah, I’m evil now!” and does the evil option.

Yeah, I just described the fall to darkness in the cheesiest way. But if you’re going to tell me the origin of Dracula, you need to sell this guy as mother fucking Dracula! You need to establish that his guy is now not just a villain, but the villain of the entire franchise! And they never did that!

As a counter example, I want to talk about another video game vampire: Kain, from Legacy of Kain. Now, Kain begins the game as a vampire, but I think it is still a good comparison because the first game of that series, Blood Omen, tells the story of how the greatest vampire in that world became what he was, not too much unlike Dracula. Now, Kain started off as a prick. But he wasn’t the lord of darkness that he ends as. He was a guy who wanted revenge on his murderers, and then wanted to stop being a vampire. And he was told at the outset that in order to stop being a vampire, he would have to die (”there is no cure to death”).

So he goes through his quest, and in the end in order to to save the world he has to sacrifice himself, which accomplishes his goal. His murderers are dead, the guy who hired them is dead, all of that guy’s friends are dead. And he can stop being a vampire.

Canonically (you have the choice), Kain says “nah, I’m evil now” and rules the dying and ruined world as a dark god. And the series continues from that ending. And it’s fantastic. And they actually sell that Kain gets darker over time, because you are murdering people and drinking their blood, not just monsters. And Kain talks all the fucking time, and he has actual personality. When you make that decision, it’s “yeah, this is how this guy would react to these circumstances”. The “Good Ending” actually makes no sense given the character.

And Lords of Shadow doesn’t have that. At no point does Gabriel look at the path of good and say “no, fuck this, I do what I want”. And they had the perfect chance! At the end, when his wife was like “you saved the world, and now the souls can go to heaven. I must leave you now” he could have said “fuck that”, taken the God Mask (which is apparently enough to let Satan challenge God) and fucking Madoka Magica’d that shit, pulling her from heaven and shattering the whole thing, ruining everything. Then the rest could have fallen into place very easily, and it would have followed the theme of “love will ruin you and lead you to destruction” that the game kept hammering on. Yeah, it would have rendered the main quest, fix heaven and save the world, completely pointless, but it would have fulfilled Gabriel’s quest: get his wife back, no matter the cost!

Because saving the world was never the fucking point! The point of that entire story is that Gabriel becomes Dracula!

OTHERWISE HE WOULDN’T HAVE BECOME FUCKING DRACULA!

Edit:After some more thinking, I realized I forgot something. There was one moment where I actually felt "oh right, this guy I'm playing as Dracula now" and that was before fighting the Forgotten One Gabriel says "Enough talk, have at you!" It's a cheesy, throw away fanservice line but at that point I took what I got. Also, I've since watched a trailer of Mirror of Fate HD, and that game does seem rad as hell, and Dracula acts like freaking Dracula, so I'll probably end up playing that at some point.