Why does Dracula ride the elevator?

Because his bats were on the other side.

So I mentioned last week that in Lords of Shadow 2 we get to play as Dracula, one of the great villains of literature, cinema, video-gamey, and most famously, Castlevania 64. This Drac ain't no pretty-boy good guy vampire like Twilight Sparkle or Kid Dracula or Bill Frampton - he's a bona fide lord of the night whose power was ripped directly from the face of Satan and used to send armies of darkness (on DVD) across Europe, decimating kingdoms, raping babies, and crushing the saintly warriors who dared challenge him. The first scene post-prologue gives us a first person view as Dracula feasts on a wailing mother and father (and implicitly their baby). He's definitely got a bit of the-world-wasn't-fair-to-me-so-I'm-not-gonna-be-fair-to-it brooding going on, but that's buried deep down inside where any good Darth Vader keeps it. 

We play as textbook "anti-heroes" all the time in games (it's the easiest way to justify murder-based gameplay), but the potential for an outright villainous protagonist is tempting. A villain has limitless potential - he isn't bound to a journey of redemption or evolution, so his arc can proceed in all kinds of unexpected directions. We aren't required to sympathize with a villain, only pity him. The Legacy of Kain is perhaps my favorite example - the story of the wrongfully murdered Kain whose quest for revenge is twisted by his moral destitution into world domination which in turn tears apart the metaphysical fabric of right and wrong, reflecting his inner perversion on the lands he claims to rule. Playing as a villain gives us the chance to live out power fantasies and perceive the translation of an internal compensatory struggle into external violence. 

In Lords of Shadow 2, our main character and would-be main villain Dracula, the final boss of dozens of Castlevanias past and single-handed slaughterer of an entire crusader army (seen in the prologue), rides a lot of elevators. 

That's how he gets up and down multi-story skyscrapers (and of course how the game hides loading times in the background)

The first time I found my Dracula-self milling about in an elevator the same way I do every night on the way up to my apartment, I realized something was wrong. It's an infinitely mundane and passive activity. Boring, maybe a bit soothing; patient. It's not that I believe Dracula is a stairs man or needs to turn into a bat and smash through the window everywhere he goes (although that is kinda what I imagine), it's just that I don't need to see him taking the elevator. Were it left off-screen I could infer that it happens, but I never would, because why the fuck would I be thinking about that. It is eminently skippable. Watching it, being made to think about it, ponder what's going through Dracula's head and if he's staring at the buttons light up as I do, totally disengages me from the character, particularly any sense of menace he may wield. Another game I played recently that used elevators for loading was DmC - in that it was made into a joke about Dante's impatience and fit with a character who was being railroaded through events, only barely able to clutch at threads of his own destiny. If Dracula is supposed to be a godly being, the only monster capable of matching Satan himself, he'd probably ought to be beyond things I do in my daily routine. Do we need to see him taking a leak? Or brushing his teeth? With all those nasty mutants and demons he digs his teeth into, Dracul probably needs some pretty potent Crest. 

Movies are a lot pickier about what they show because of time limitations and technical freedoms. They can easily switch perspective or setting without disorienting the viewer because they're already cut together from bits and pieces. Video games are typically more straightforward narratives and while indeed they may take the filmic approach, as does Asura's Wrath, they tend to mine realism from continuous worlds. Could Shadow of the Colossus present its boss battle gameplay with a stage select and loading screens? Sure, but it would come at the cost of its grand scale, oppressive isolation, and haunting melancholy. Not all game worlds form such a cohesive picture, and we tend to make jokes of the little absurdities: why is Link breaking pots instead of saving Zelda? Why are we breeding racing chickens in Final Fantasy VII when the world is on the brink of apocalypse? These asides may threaten our suspension of disbelief, but they're driven by a gameplay-first mentality that only undermines the narrative for the sake of sustaining playability. If we're having fun we're more likely to keep engaged and distracted from mundanities, so this works as an exchange. 

Dracula's elevator rides certainly aren't an exchange of gameplay for realism, so do they maintain the continuity of the virtual world? Well, they fill it out in some sense. They answer the question that Yes, Dracula does ride the elevator. And that answer makes me feel a lot lamer to be taking the reigns of the classic villain. It's only a component in a larger story syndrome - Drac is once again taking orders from an ostensibly more knowledgeable and influential character, he's fighting his own minions (mind-controlled!) rather than holy warriors and vampire slayers (except for that tantalizing intro segment), and he plays almost identically to Gabriel Belmont from the previous game. In fact he isn't much of a character at all. It's nice to suck my foes' blood, but that's just not enough to make me feel like the Prince of Darkness. 

Preamble to Lords of Shadow 2: How I feel about Lords of Shadow

Been playing Lords of Shadow 2 of course. I was a big fan of the first game, thought it was one of the better action games of last generation with its simple no-combo heal/powerup mechanics that emphasized reactive opportunistic combat through two magic modifiers - that is, take advantage of a pattern opening early on in a fight and you could use it for a huge punish that allowed skipping through mundane grinding or break-waiting. It was also nicely paced coming off something like Bayonetta that is just fight-fight-fight - not that I object to that, just that Lords of Shadow found its own niche making for a relaxing play exploring mini-labyrinth environments peppered with a pretty steady stream of new enemy and boss types. It had its cinematic moments but it wasn't drilled to the cutscene/variety-fest that is God of War where the combat is really just thin filler/icing on top of a core of event gameplay like kicking a box up a hallway or flying a pelican across the Mediterranean.

The weird enemy design was largely worthy of the Castlevania name

And even the most generic Tomb Raider environments were loaded with detail

Lords of Shadow was a confident game that felt like Castlevania - you walk around some and appreciate noxious swamps and desolate cliffs and dank dungeons where unholy abominations crawl out of the woodwork to challenge your progress. It found its own identity within the series - it wasn't a Platformervania like the early games; it's light press-in-a-direction-to-get-there climbforming was more in line with later games like Symphony of the Night or Dawn of Sorrow, yet like those games it also had a Clock Tower and a few later areas (those cliff areas whose name I can't remember atm) that brought challenging platforming to the forefront and happily threw the player to their death repeatedly, reminding us of the series origin. Without a continuous world it wasn't a Metroidvania either, but it still contained traces of that design pattern, from multi-pathing in the large stages to dozens of collectibles that could be reached only by backtracking after obtaining abilities during the story's progression. Chunky enemies with tight patterns that challenged the player to weave through a flurry of attacks to land a single whiplash have been an integral part of the series since Simon met his first Axe Armor - mid-period games like Rondo of Blood and Circle of the Moon were loaded with these tough enemies like Minotaurs and Arch Demons. It's this combat that Lords of Shadow brings to the forefront - instead of using battles to drain life and hinder progress through a larger obstacle course, they are the only obstacles, and the player has to string together perfect hits and dodges to survive each one. It's Combatvania for sure, but there's no reason that's not a valid paradigm. Fighting enemies was probably my favorite part of the other games and I enjoy comparing the principles on play there with those in Lords of Shadow. 

This computer chess match probably brings back nightmares for players who got this far, but I liked the occasional stumper - it's not like you couldn't go back to other levels while you were stuck to hone your combat or find collectibles, and you never had to play the puzzles again thanks to the stage format

The presence of climb-able bosses was lambasted as a Shadow of the Colossus ripoff, though it fit quite well as a translation of the sky-high screens-tall bosses of 2D Castlevanias

So why am I wasting all this time talking about Lords of Shadow when I actually just want to post about Lords of Shadow 2? Because I'm about to levy some complaints at the sequel - something that it's been taking a lot of. Actually I'm mostly having a great time (the excellent combat and boss fights are still in tact, the climbforming seems to be at late-game levels from the beginning, and the castle environments in particular might be more gorgeous than ever), I just needed you to know I'm not one of those people that has hated this entire reboot series and that I do not in any way shape or form conform to the prevailing current opinion that this is a bad game. I have no objection about it being a "real" Castlevania. I have no problem with elements supposedly "stolen" from God of War or Shadow of the Colossus. I even loved the twist that the hero of Lords of Shadow, the first Belmont, ends up becoming Dracula, and felt it fit perfectly with the story of that game and the tone of the series. I couldn't wait to see where they were going with things. 

Admittedly I kinda thought the sequel should be played AS Simon vs. this new Dracula (what's the point of turning your protagonist into a villain if he's going to stay the protagonist?), but Konami did give us that story in the form of Mirror of Fate. Unfortunately that was a handheld spinoff that I didn't really want to play - why put a crucial plot chapter there? Regardless, the Simon/Trevor/Alucard chapter DID happen in whatever form, so it's expected that we're back in the shoes of Dracula. He's now had his fall and his time as a villain, so it's time for the redemption chapter. How do I feel about these vampiric slippers? Well I should have a moment to talk about that tomorrow....