Castlevania General

This youtuber got a hold of some press release papers sent out by Konami for Castlevania Bloodlines. It contains a bunch of poorly translated background info on Bloodlines and the Castlevania series that existed at the time. This includes a bunch of in-depth lore info that was never made public before.

Someone wrote up all the info contained in this pastebin.

Summary on some the more interesting stuff.

• Konami described the Castlevania games up to then as being in three trilogies. The "past trilogy" made up of Castlevania III and Christopher's games, the "present trilogy" made up of Simon's games and Rondo, and the "future trilogy" made up of Bram Stoker's original novel, Bloodlines, and another game set in the 1940s. That last game obviously didn't get made. Though being set in the 1940s and being a sequel to Bloodlines does make it suspicious that the concept for it was later used for Portrait of Ruin a decade later.
• It says the Belmont family rose to prominence as vampire hunters during the crusades and that the main trait that makes them good at it is the ability to resist being corrupted by Dracula's aura. It gives the explanation that the Belmonts disappeared from vampire hunting in the 1800s because they "burnt out' their talent fighting Dracula so many times.
• There's even a Belmont family tree included. This includes showing that Trevor/Ralph and Sypha had a couple daughters that married into the Morris and Helsing families, starting those lines of vampire hunters. Christopher and Simon are in two different branches of the Belmont family from Trevor's kids. And along with Soleil, Christopher is listed as having another son that died mysteriously and a daughter that married into the Ericsson family, which led to Bolt Ericsson, a cut playable character for Bloodlines. Richter is listed here and other parts of the document as Simon's grandson, which obviously isn't the case anymore.
• Originally, John Morris' whip wasn't the same whip the Belmonts used. The original lore was that there were three magic whips. The Belmont family's was called Excalibur, the Morris family's was the Vampire Killer, and there was a third whip called Death Mercury which disappeared. Each was enchanted such that they chose their wielder and got stronger the more mental energy was concentrated into them. Excalibur could generated fire when energy was concentrated into it (the fireballs Christopher can shoot when fully powered in the Gameboy games) and Vampire Killer could generate electricity (John's special abilities when fully powered up in Bloodlines).
• Eric's Alucard Spear is a similarly enchanted weapon that chooses its wielder and can generate fire. It's rumored to have been the spear that decapitated Vlad Tepes. It's unknown if it's related to Alucard. It was kept in the Lecarde family temple behind a door with dragon crest similar to that of the Tepes and Bartley family crests.
• There's a lot of in-depth information on the Bloodlines characters. Such as how John Morris learned of his vampire hunter heritage from his grandfather and learned Indian sorcery from "Indian Morgan of Cow family". Eric Lecarde's fiance was named Lucy Seward, and he got the key to the Alucard Spear from a mysterious old man who was actually a Belmont named Michael R. Belmont. His name is blacked over somewhat, but still readable. Eric's description for some reason has an entire paragraph fully blacked over for the listed reason of it being "confidential".

Edited by KuroBaraHime on Nov 9th 2021 at 1:36:51 PM

A name like "Death Mercury" suggests that this was intended to be an Evil Counterpart weapon to the other two whips.

Holy.... shit.

I need time to process this.

I'm at a loss for words here.

You guys assuming Malus wasn't TOTALLY into Carrie's massive sass.

Indian Morgan of Cow Family for Smash.

Seriously though, that's really cool.

Considering the cartoon version of Lisa, yeah I can see that.

Unfortunately, Dracula is mentally an adult as Malus. Unless it's a reincarnation like Soma, since he was reborn as a kid in this version, and none of Dracula's minions knew which child he was.

Which Indians are we talking about here?

Heck if I know. Sure is some unexpected lore ideas they had in mind though.

Heh, an interesting belated lore dump. I doubt it matters much in the end.

Not a fan of the mystical Lineage Comes from the Father implications that media nowadays has basically completely done away with.

Trevor and Sypha certainly got busy either way though.

Well, we knew that a lot of the later heroes were related to Belmonts in some way.

Both the Renards and the Morrises are supposed to be kin to the Belmonts.

I'm assuming quite a few Belnades members were also still related in some way, even if only distantly due to Sypha.

The Lecarded being meant to be related to the Belmonts is new though.

I wonder who it was who decided to dump all this lore. Considering IGA kinda took over everything, it could have been him, but there's no real proof of that.

I mean, we basically know next to nothing about the early games' development or credits at all.

I bet a fair bit of the answers to our questions are well known in Japanese fandom and they just haven't been translated. Like this article is new info to us and it is old.

The number of devs I'd just love to sit down and chat with for hours on end to straighten things out.

And a fair bit of this info is outdated, we can't exactly take it as gospel.

Though it does amaze me how long it's been established the Belmonts were hunting Vampires, I guess IGA took that info for Lament of Innocence's setting.

Also topic: How would you guys describe Death's role in Portrait of Ruin?

Xbox Live gave out free copies of Castlevania Harmony of Despair as part of Games With Gold recently, and I’ve been playing it some. What’s the general opinion of that game in the fandom? The reviews on the Xbox Store are extremely positive, much higher than I would’ve guessed.

Edited by shigmiya64 on Nov 11th 2021 at 8:58:16 AM

Harmony of Dissonance is easily the most mid and forgettable igavania. Theres nothing about it that stands out at all except for the odd direction of the soundtrack that came as a result of them prioritizing graphics to the point of leaving little room for sound.

No, they're talking about the multiplayer Castelvania.

Thanks for not giving it a better fucking subtitle, Konami! I hated that when it first came out.

Hymn of Despair (which I'm gonna use because up yours) is surprisingly engaging but sadly requires a lot of grinding and paying for DLC to get the most out of. And by the "lategame" you'll basically see why Soma and Alucard get a lot of usage online.

The Lecardes are related to the Belmonts is because Maria was their founder with Alucard and she's a female line Belmont.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 11th 2021 at 6:48:36 AM

Wait does that make the Lecarde twins Dracula's great great-great-great-granddaughters?

I mean, probably.

:)

Death Mercury makes me think of some liquid metal bs like Gaara from Naruto's sand powers

where it like is in a container and the user can just mentally summon it out and it morphs and changes into various shapes and forms.

One has to imagine Alucard and Maria had disgustingly strong kids. Sorceress with powers so strong she was targeted by Death as a child, came back to help 5 years later, and she's with the half-vampire son himself.

Kind of puts Eric's perspective that they're meant to be the perpetual Lancers to the Belmonts in, well, perspective.

Makes it ironic that we actually haven't seen a Belmont and Lecarde work together.