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]].}}

*** {{spoiler|[[Evil Makes You Ugly]], period...}}

** And of course, it wouldn't be a Kojima game without a naked dude, right?

* [[Fate Worse Than Death]]: {{spoiler|Gabriel suffers this right after banishing Satan, which he hates to the bones.}}

* [[Fission Mailed]]: {{spoiler|Right before the final battle Gabriel gets this after his death in the hands of the Necromancer, and then is revived by Marie.}}

* [[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!

* [[Good Is Not Nice]]: The Game.

* [[Gone Horribly Wrong]]: The Brotherhood of Light's Founders' attempt to purify themselves and ascend to Heaven as powerful spiritual beings worked well enough...{{spoiler|too bad their bodies became the vessels for the evil they left behind and became the Lords of Shadow.}}

* [[Groin Attack]]: Gabriel knees the gremlins in the groin when he catches them, and then they explode.

* [[Guide Dang It]]: When rappelling, you can kick-jump off the wall. If you kick again immediately after landing back on the wall after the first jump, you'll fly out farther. Incidentally, the game and manual never tell you this and it happens to be required to get through part of the Clock Tower level.

* [[Heroic Second Wind]]: {{spoiler|After Zobek killed Gabriel, the spirits of the departed helped resurrect him after Marie pleaded with them not to take him so he can combat Satan and break the spell that separated the Earth from Heaven.}}

* [[He Who Fights Monsters]]: Fighting against hosts of monsters alone and without sleep or much food is not good for Gabriel's sanity, though as [[The Stoic]] he doesn't show it much. Two thirds of the way in, Zobek describes him as talking to Marie as though she were still there. {{spoiler|To his credit, he's resolute enough to ask for forgiveness when made aware of his unwitting evil acts. It remains to be seen if that repentance stuck during his time as Dracula.}}

* [[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels]]: Squire (easy), Warrior (normal), Knight (hard), Paladin (very hard)

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

* [[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.

*** Despite the above, the fact still remains that no other "grab" action involving glowing objects needs to be precisely timed to be successful (as opposed to just being too late to trigger it and letting the boss recover: if you try to hold the log up right when the view changes, the Warg will just stand around endlessly until you put it down) and avoiding Rock Titan's swipes doesn't involve predetermined animations, just moving to a different ledge: that, plus the prompt to press A to avoid Ice Titan's swipe doesn't appear either when out of tutorial mode, unlike the countless times the game keeps telling you to hold RT/R2 to avoid being tossed off or falling off a beam.

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

* [[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.

* [[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.

** One of Zobek's narrations says that Carmilla will "cry bloody tears" before the night is done. Aside from the well-known song from Castlevania II, Bloody Tears is also the name of Carmilla's primary attack in each of her appearances.

** Gabriel is rumored to be an illegitimate child of the Cronqvist family. Mathias Cronqvist was the childhood friend of Leon Belmont in ''Lament of Innocence'' {{spoiler|and, like Gabriel, he became the main continuity's Dracula.}} The vampires' castle is also said to have been built by the Bernhard family (Walter Bernhard being ''Lament's'' main villain and Dracula's predecessor).

** ''Reverie'' sets things up for a confrontation with {{spoiler|The Forgotten One, the optional super-boss of ''Lament of Innocence''.}}

* [[Mythology Upgrade]]: {{spoiler|Malphas.}}

* [[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.

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

** {{spoiler|Claudia is the [[Last of His Kind|only one left]], and that doesn't last long after Gabriel's entré.}}

* [[Press X to Not Die]]: Usually has to be done with bosses once you reduce their health to a certain point, either to proceed to the next phase of the fight or to kill them. They're somewhat easier than the quick time events in other games, thanks to you being able to press any button for most of them, and not getting killed if you fail one (though the boss usually regenerates some health).

* [[Real Is Brown]]: ''Spectacularly'' averted.

* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: Zobek narrates that {{spoiler|Gabriel's devotion to destroying the Lords of Shadow so ferociously is a more than mission-oriented tunnel vision, and hope to save Marie. He is furious at all the creatures of evil and is destroying them with extreme prejudice.}}

** {{spoiler|The Black Knight}} goes into one after arriving to find {{spoiler|a dead Claudia with one of Gabriel's daggers sticking out of her chest.}} Cue [[Boss Fight]].

* [[Scenery Porn]]: To an absolutely ridiculous extent. A very early level, a swamp, may have you remarking upon how gorgeous the foliage is (and marveling that apparently the swamp is filled with the fallen corpses of ''green dragons''.)

* [[Schizo-Tech]]: Frankenstein's laboratory, the game is supposed to be set in 1047 AD, yet we encounter lots of mechanical devices powered by electricity, the Mechanical Monstrosity which is effectively a robot with a human brain, and a '''Tesla coil''' with ''that very same name'' (Nikola Tesla was born in 1856).

* [[Screwy Squirrel]]: The Chupacabra for the player.

* [[Sequel Hook]]: After the credits, we see {{spoiler|Zobek meet with Gabriel, who is now Dracula, and ask him for help to stop Satan from returning. In return, he'll help Dracula finally die. And this takes place in modern times.}} Curiously, while this game is supposedly an [[Alternate Continuity]], it seems to be hinting at {{spoiler|the long-awaited 1999 incident mentioned in the Sorrow games.}}

* [[Sensitive Guy and Manly Man]]

* [[Shout-Out]]: [[Star Wars|"Search your soul, Gabriel. You know it to be true."]]

** The way the Chupacabras speak is also very Yoda-like.

** A Shout Out to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrlHGCpstzc MGS]. (It's not only the music you hear, but the camera angle when Gabriel is inside the tunnel is a reference to MGS's gameplay, too.)

*** 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.}}

*** From another scroll: A deceased knight mourns the death of two of his companions and vows revenge. The names of those companions? [[Day of the Tentacle|Sister Laverne and Brother Bernard]]. The log is signed H{{spoiler|oagy}}.

** The way the Focus meter works is very similar to the way the combo system works in ''[[Dance Dance Revolution]]'' series, also made by Konami, as both increase to the max when you successfully perform consecutive hits without interruption and reset to zero when you get hit or miss a step.

** During the Reverie DLC, you come across a scroll which mentions a time machine built by [[Back to The Future|Emmett Marron]]. If you know what Marron means in Spanish, this could count as a [[Bilingual Bonus]].

** Gabriel's answer to the Forgotten One's boast? [[Symphony of the Night|"Enough Talk...! Have at you!"]]

* [[Show, Don't Tell]]: Averted. At least insofar as character development is concerned.

* [[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:Horror Video Games]]

[[Category:Action Adventure]]