Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Difference between revisions

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The story is an [[Alternate Continuity]] from the previous titles and concerns Gabriel Belmont, an orphan raised by the Brotherhood of Light and currently tasked to speak with the Old Gods in order to determine the nature of a darkness afflicting the world. Perhaps humanity has been abandoned by God. Perhaps someone -- or something -- has cast a spell powerful enough to separate Earth from the heavens, preventing the dead from moving on. Either way, Gabriel has a personal [[Just for Pun|stake]] in the matter: his wife Marie was recently killed, and he hopes to (at the very least) speak with her again and, if possible, discover a way to bring her back to life.

Traveling through ancient groves, mausoleums, forgotten temples, castles and swamps on his quest for an artifact that may bring Marie back from the dead, Gabriel encounters all manner of characters both mortal and immortal.

 

 

* [[A Boy and His X|A Girl and Her Magical Golem]]: Claudia and the Black Titan. She's a [[Cute Mute]] girl, the last of her kind, he's a magitek animated suit of armor feeding off the souls of the baddies trying to do her harm. Daddy knows best, indeed.

* [[Absolute Cleavage]]: Carmilla.

* [[Badass]]: Gabriel Belmont, so very much.

* [[Badass Grandpa]]: Zobek.

* [[Best Boss Ever]]: There's a [[Magitek]] [[Golem]] who you fight, that constantly rains down meteors made of the lost relics of an ancient civilization upon you. ''It's the second boss, and it isn't even the [[Climax Boss]]''. [[Serial Escalation|And they just get better from there]].

* [[Becoming the Mask]]: {{spoiler|Gabriel, [[Just for Pun|sorta.]]}}

* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: {{spoiler|Satan is defeated, but Marie cannot be brought back to life, leaving Gabriel behind as she passes on to heaven. Some time later, Gabriel becomes Dracula, forever separating him from Marie.}}

* [[Blade Brake]]: Gabriel uses his Combat Cross to stop his momentum when fighting Malphas and Carmilla.

* [[Broken Bird]]: Quite literally, Malphas.

* [[Bus Crash]]: {{spoiler|Baba is killed by Zobek immediately after she sends Gabriel forward on his mission.}}

** Also, the fact the Kojima asked MercurySteam to refine Gabriel to appeal more to players helps. The [[Barbarian Hero]] they originally intended would have been more [[American Kirby Is Hardcore|hardcore - more like Western Castlevania Is Hardcore]].

* [[Byronic Hero]]: Gabriel. Well-spoken, if not as demonstrably intelligent as many examples of the trope. Prone to brooding and "dark moods." He fights vampires and werewolves, but more for his own reasons than those of the Brotherhood, and while he admits that he has done "questionable things" throughout his quest, circumstances continue to force him to perform more. {{spoiler|Then there's the ending....}}

* [[Chosen One]]: Gabriel is, of course, the one spoken of in an ancient prophecy.

* [[Christianity Is Catholic]]: Well, the game WAS created in Spain. And it takes place in pre-Reformation Medieval Europe.

** {{spoiler|Pan is Grey Fox}}

* [[Eye Scream]]: {{spoiler|Gabriel pokes out both of the Giant Ogre's eyes during their confrontation.}}

* [[Fan Disservice]]: The demon summoned by the Dark Crystal sub-weapon is very female, very topless, and very hideous. Fortunately, you can skip the summoning cutscene (or not, [[Nightmare Fetishist|if that's your thing]]).

** Carmilla's {{spoiler|[[One-Winged Angel]]. Until then, she was proving that [[Evil Is Sexy]], but she then transforms into a hideous, naked humanoid vampire-esque beast. [[Yandere|"Look upon Carmilla... am I not beautiful?"]] [[Squick|No comment]].}}

* [[Foreshadowing]]: {{spoiler|Zobek's being [[Evil All Along]] is hinted at by the increasingly ominous tone of his narration. Just two examples would be his continued spying on Gabriel, and the way Zobek murders Baba Yaga without a second thought as soon as Gabriel leaves her hut. And there's other hints along the way, too.}} And, if you are particularly [[Genre Savvy]] (or overly paranoid): {{spoiler|The suspicious wording of Zobek's profile in regards to his armor; it states that he ''claims'' that the old style uniform he wears (as opposed to Gabriel's more up to date armor) is passed down from his ancestor. Red flags go up for this unnecessary piece of exposition as soon as Cornell finishes the explanation of the [[Big Bad|Big Bads]].}}

** {{spoiler|Even Satan's involvement in the plot is subtly hinted at before you encounter him. For example, Baba Yaga says outright that the "King of the Angels" has told her Gabriel would arrive. Angels ''have'' no king; the only one to claim the title is Satan.}}

* [[Full Boar Action]]: Better watch out when Gabriel jumps onto an armored boar and tears around the place.

* [[Gainax Ending]]: If you didn't think it had a Kojima feel, wait till after the credits. Yikes!

* [[I'm a Humanitarian]]: Implied with Baba Yaga, judging by some of the comments she makes in the Music Box level.

* [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice]]: Carmilla. It didn't quite finish her off, though. In the tutorial level, Gabriel impales a warg on a ''sharpened log'' he happens to lift up at the right moment as it leaps.

* [[Interface Spoiler]]: A minor example: the life and magic bars start off being able to be filled up to half of their visible lenght, and thus when you get all the upgrades for them, you have more or less twice as much health and magic you had in the beginning.

* [[Interface Screw]]: A weird example of this or [[You Should Know This Already]]: during the first chapter in the first playthrough, the game slows down the action and displays button prompts to demonstrate several fancy actions while still in tutorial mode. However, during replays of these stages, the slowdown is gone, as are the button prompts. Makes sense, but the problem is that 2 specific ones of these events aren't exactly intuitive: no other place in the game requires you to time a grab button press properly (which is necessary to finish off the Warg) nor is the jump button used to trigger a predetermined evasion action (which is necessary to avoid the Ice Titan's other arm swipe and get to his chest glyph): in every other similliar situation in the game, you just get the normal shrinking circle QTE prompt.

* [[It Got Worse]]: {{spoiler|Gabriel awakes to find he shanked Claudia in the chest, and it's all downhill from there...}}

* [[It Sucks to Be the Chosen One]]: You think Gabriel looked back on his adventures fondly?

* [[Karmic Death]]: The abbot Vincent Dorin was indirectly responsible for an entire village being killed by vampires because he kept the only artifact capable of killing them to himself. Guess what becomes of him when he is left at the mercy of vampires when the artifact is taken from him by Gabriel Belmont and Zobek.

* [[Kill'Em All]]: {{spoiler|Every single main character dies horribly, save for Zobek, who turns out to be mysteriously still alive in the modern era! Laura isn't killed either, and becomes something of a [[What Happened to the Mouse?]] until the ''Reverie'' DLC came out.}}

* [[Knight in Sour Armor]]: Gabriel. After having done so many terrible things to some others - or so he said, he still continues his journey bitterly thanks to the heavy weight the world has placed upon him as well as the thought of his beloved wife.

* [[Large Ham]]: [[Regular Character|Death]]. Very much so.

** {{spoiler|Satan as well, and most of the villains in the game, so it's [[Evil Is Hammy]] in full force.}}

* [[Last of His Kind]]: {{spoiler|Claudia.}}

** The giant spiders also count.

** Not to mention Brauner, who can be miles away one moment and right in your face the next. And he doesn't have speed boots like Cornell.

* [[Orgasmic Combat]]: Just close your eyes and listen to some of Gabriel's grunts. Heck, even the sounds he makes while climbing sound dirty!

* [[Our Ghouls Are Creepier]]: Rather than being undead, the ghouls in Lords of Shadow are living beings descended from [[I'm a Humanitarian|cannibalistic humans]]. Also a case of [[Shown Their Work]], as this is pretty much what ghouls originally were.

* [[Our Werewolves Are Different]]: At the very least, mention must be made of the Wargs, which are horses that have contracted lycanthropy and are ridden by ''other werewolves''.

* [[Our Vampires Are Different]]: The vampires here are fairly standard (even going with the correct practice of exchanging blood in order to become a vampire, as opposed to merely having it drained from you), but they aren't able to assume human forms unless they are several centuries old. They also have [[Buffy-Speak|weird Crab-leg-claw-talon thingies]] protruding from their shoulders in addition to large bat wings. Olrox and Brauner aren't even human in origin; they're ''demons'' that Carmilla turned into vampires (and thus don't have the ability to become human-looking).

* [[Power Glows]]: Cornell transfers his power (or Soul. Or something else.) into the werewolf-shaped pillars that surround his arena. They start to glow, his chest stops glowing.

{{quote|'''Claudia:''' "Down here, '''you bitch!'''"}}

* [[The Precursors]]: The architects of Agharta and the Titans.

*** An odd enough shout out given that the song was [[Cut Song|cut]] from the ''[[Metal Gear]]'' series to avoid plagiarism accusations.

*** Needless to say, the Vampire's Castle chapters - no, the game itself has a lot of gameplay elements from ''[[Metal Gear]]''.

*** And we also have {{spoiler|Zobek}} as the [[Metal Gear|Big Boss]].

*** {{spoiler|Pan is Grey Fox, whose fighting style and personality is not dissimilar to Pan's.}}

* [[Wicked Witch]]: Baba Yaga. {{spoiler|Sends Gabriel on a quest to assist in a spell that will make her a [[Hot Witch]].}}

** {{spoiler|Sadly, we never get to see this transformation.}}

* [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]]: {{spoiler|Dracula}}.

* [[Worthy Opponent]]: {{spoiler|The Forgotten One calls Gabriel this.}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Video Game]]

[[Category:Castlevania]]