With Konami rumoured to be bringing futureSilent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, and Castlevania games exclusively to the PS5, it could be exciting times ahead for the Sony faithful, and a homecoming of sorts for three series that had some of their best years on Playstation consoles.
While I’ve already talked about theSilent Hill 2 remake and its closed-door predicament, we already kind of know the deal there about the games in question. What’s more of a mystery at this point isCastlevania, and the form a new entry could take. The world’s changed a lot since 2009, which is when the last new Castlevania game that wasn’t aGod of Warknock-off (hi, Lords of Shadow) came out. Metroidvania games have made a big comeback on the indie scene since then, while From Software’s Souls series—itself descended from Symphony of the Night-style design—has dragged millions of us along for its tortuous journeys through ruinous fantasy kingdoms.
Now, Konami could just play things safe, keep things old-school and opt for the 2D format that which the series has historically thrived, but would a new 2D Castlevaniareallystand out amidst the likes of Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, or its own spiritual successor Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night? There are a lot ofgreat Metroidvania games out these days, so wouldn’t it be more intriguing for a new Castlevania to finally break into that 3D space—something it’s always struggled with—and offer us something truly modern?
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Don’t worry. I’ll answer that one for you: yes it would, and it should take inspiration from Dark Souls, a series that we shouldn’t forget was itself clearly influenced by Symphony-style Castlevania games. Now, clearly translating that cool design—the interconnected map, the eye-catching environments, the checkpoints/bonfires—is no simple task; Konami tried it themselves years earlier with Curse of Darkness on the PS2. But now that Dark Souls has provided the recipe for how to make that style of game work in a 3D environment, with dozens of games using said recipe, a 3D Castlevania has something to refer to other than its past failings.
Calling Dark Souls ‘3D Castlevania’ really isn’t as reductive as you’d think. Let’s join up those dots. First up, there’s the heavily interconnected map, which often makes you backtrack through previous areas when you find new items or perform certain tasks, as well as opens up shortcuts back to checkpoints or bonfires to let you save your progress. And what is a bonfire if not a glorified Castlevania-style checkpoint? Both serve to build up tension as you get deeper and deeper into unknown territory, and further and further from safety, before finally giving you the sweet relief of sanctuary. RPG-lite mechanics, replaceable weapons, larger-than-life bosses, all those familiar ‘vanian elements are right there in the formula that Dark Souls so successfully propagated over the last decade.
Not entirely unlike Dark Souls, Castlevania has always prided itself on packing in a vibrant variety of environments into its castle setting—battlements lit up by a blood moon, pustulent cisterns, catacombs, graveyards, grand halls where the paintings fly off the walls to attack you, every campy spooky castle trope you could dream of lavishly presented in gorgeous pixel art. A problem with those early 3D Castlevania attempts was that the graphical horsepower just wasn’t there to embellish those environments, which looked drab and murky compared to the glam-rock-horror stylings of Symphony of the Night. Today however, there’d be nothing holding these environments back from shining, especially with a bit of that Soulsian flair where an area’s name appears on your screen as you turn a corner onto a spectacular vista ahead of you—be that a mad scientist’s laboratory full of strange specimens in jars, or a grim chain-draped dungeon with a Katamari ball of human bodies at its centre waiting to fight you.
Of course, one of the areas where Castlevania really deviates from Dark Souls is in tone, and that’s something the returning series could use to its advantage. I can’t be the only one who’s getting a little tired of how every Souls-like game feels the need to mimic that ‘kingdom’s in ruin and everyone’s miserable’ tone of From Software games. Don’t get me wrong, FromSoft presents these kinds of stories and worlds damn well, but there are so many Souls-likes out there that deliver this tone with the grace of a sulky emo teenager complaining about the misery of the world from the comfort of their childhood bedroom. It’s this weird given that Souls-likes need to be all grimdark, and we could really use a 3D Castlevania to break that pattern, replacing all those fallen zombie-knights, mumbling NPCs, and dour grey-and-brown palettes with the eccentric bestiaries, iconic characters, and flamboyant colours of Castlevania; not to mention a rocking soundtrack courtesy of Michiru Yamane.
Difficulty-wise you’d expect Castlevania to be a lighter touch than Dark Souls too, though there’s no reason why it should drop the checkpointed design it itself helped pioneer, and of course there’d be big decisions to make about the game’s combat and whether it should retain the platforming elements of the classic games in the series.
By retaining its campy tone and remaining the awesome procession of kitsch-horror silliness it’s always excelled at, Castlevania wouldn’t just another derivative Souls-like, but reclaim some of that gaming space that’s now so heavily associated with Dark Souls and the legion of games in its shadow.
Above all, wouldn’t it be cool to see Castlevania, a series that’s been so influential for Dark Souls, to re-emerge and be influenced in kind by Dark Souls, borrowing some of its best ideas as it seeks to forge a new identity for itself? It’s kinda poetic, and could be just what Castlevania needs to rise again.
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