Editor's Note: I'm doing something out of the ordinary this time and making the final blog entry for this month about what someone other than me wrote. This particular text is lifted from the ResetEra forums (yeah...I know the admin and mod team there are trash, but the same doesn't hold true for all the website's members). Case in point, a user going by the name of "PlanetSmasher" shared an interesting idea they had regarding From Software developing a new entry in the Castlevania franchise. Everything that follows in this post is their words (aside from a few minor typos that I corrected). Please enjoy...and I'll be back in a week or so.
I've been thinking a lot about how Castlevania needs to be brought back. Konami's put a ton of muscle (rightly or wrongly is up to you) behind Silent Hill, but the original Konami classic is as of now relegated to a few remaster collections. I don't think this is right. Castlevania deserves a full revival, with real meat and bone behind it.
And I think the ideal candidate for such a revival is From Software.
Now, before you accuse me of using From Software as a new-generation version of the "give every game to Platinum" meme, hear me out. I think the ideal way to bring Castlevania back as a franchise is as a hybrid of design elements from Bloodborne and Elden Ring. In many of the linear Classicvania games, especially the ones after the original Vampire Killer, the player begins their journey outside of Dracula's castle and has to cross Wallachia to get to the titular Castlevania before beginning their climb up to face Drac himself. This has also been reflected to some degree in some of the Metroidvania games such as Mirror of Fate, Portrait of Ruin, Curse of Darkness and Order of Ecclesia, all of which spend significant time outside of the castle.
So imagine this: you get to create your own vampire hunter and pick their lineage at the beginning of the game. Are they a Belmont? They get bonus damage with whip weapons. Are they a Dhampir? They can regenerate HP by damaging enemies, but only at night. Are they descended from clan Belnades? Their MP passively regenerates. And so on and so forth. Once you've created your hunter, you're dropped into a ramshackle hut on the outskirts of Wallachia. Your only goal is to reach Dracula's Castle and kill the big man himself. Once you leave the hut and finish the tutorial, you get a view of this, looming in the distance on the other side of a great field:
The Wallachian countryside is littered with villages under siege by Dracula's supernatural forces, and smaller palaces run by his lieutenants. Countess Elizabeth Bathory's blood-soaked mansion sits on an island in the middle of a lake, filled with the bodies of her blood-drained victims. Count Orlok rules over a small gateway fortress dividing part of the map off from the rest - he must be defeated to open the colossal gate. Each of these lieutenants' home bases can act as the spiritual equivalent of a Legacy Dungeon, providing the player with mid-scale goals to conquer on their way to face off against Dracula in the main castle. And along the way, smaller areas like haunted graveyards, vampire-operated dungeons and cursed temples can fill the role of the smaller dungeons, providing shorter-term goals and sources of special weapons and gear.
Obviously, Dracula's Castle will make up a substantial chunk of the game. I see it as being the size of two or two-and-a-half Elden Ring legacy dungeons stapled together - reaching the castle is your first goal, and then actually surviving the journey through it is the second half of the game. The castle can be divided into several sub-dungeons like the Alchemy Laboratory and the Long Library, each with their own level design quirks, special loot finds and bosses. As you make your way to the top, collecting artifacts to unlock doors and higher floors, you'll occasionally be able to look out over the countryside and see the places you explored before, or spot areas you missed on your journey to the castle, before finally reaching the Keep and facing Dracula himself.
While I could see the logic in making the game more of a Sekiro-type with a fixed player moveset based around the Vampire Killer, I think the goal should be to try to encapsulate multiple playstyles. The classic Belmont playstyle of a whip (and a backup sword) mixed with classic subweapons standing in for spells or Hunter Tools would be fairly easy to adapt, but they should also allow players to go with a more Belnades-inspired spell-slinging build, or one more inspired by Alucard with quick, speedy melee attacks and technical magic. This would allow them to fill out the side content with all kinds of weapons, spells, and items to discover, including classic Castlevania weapons like the Crissaegrim, the Cross Boomerang and Sypha's litany of ice spells, giving players more customization choices for their builds.
And hell, now that From has finally figured out jumping in their games, you can even work in some mild platforming challenges. Maybe one of the dungeons is the legendary Clock Tower, full of Medusa Heads and giant clock gears that the player has to navigate to reach the top, where everybody's favorite scythe-slinging bastard is ready to challenge them.
When I played Bloodborne all those years ago, the entire way through it I thought to myself "this is the way Castlevania should've evolved in 3D" - and with the improvements to movement and exploration that Elden Ring premiered, I think it's now finally time for From to take the reins of the Castlevania series from Konami and make something truly legendary that blends the strengths of Castlevania's core concept with the challenge and dedication to a setting that From has built their entire brand around.
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