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foxinthestarsI wrote this up to save for tomorrow, but, after midnight, it's technically tomorrow now, so...
One last century of the Castlevania timeline, the Twenty-First Century, where we are right now! Even more too close to home, oooh...
With Dracula having, as noted yesterday, died for real in 1999, we pick up again in 2035 with Aria of Sorrow, wherein we meet Soma Cruz and other friends both new and old. Another Metrovania, this is probably my second favorite game (Symphony first by a length, then Aria with Ecclesia close behind, and Harmony lagging in the rear gawking at furniture---I actually didn't mind that bit in Harmony as much as some seem to, but I can still joke...). The playthrough is another by TheRagnarokSeeker and happens to be Hard mode. However, it only includes the best ending, so here are the others: Good but premature (from Resulli), Bad but stylish (ZSlyzer), and Almost-Best (krazywalrus). (ETA: Actually the playthrough does have all the endings except almost-best, but I don't feel like deleting the links...)
Not feeling any need to spoil the big plot twist with my own comments (even though anyone reading this probably knows it already), I can see where it might come across as cheesy and probably did to some people, but somehow I fell in love with it...
Soma got perhaps the least downtime of any Castlevania hero, and the very next year landed him in the sequel, Dawn of Sorrow. I'm in the same boat with this one as Portrait, planning to play it soon and so not wanting to spoil myself, so, short and to the point: here's the cinematic intro from time2come22, and TheRagnarokSeeker sees us through to the end on the playlist front, with all the endings this time: First Half, Second Half --- and for added options/insurance RodriguezJr also has a playthrough with all the endings, plus a playthrough of Julius Mode (it even includes all three dialogues for the final boss). Having gotten so attached to Aria, I'm actually a touch nervous about playing this one (don't screw it up! ::fingers crossed::), but I'll have to get over that eventually... Like after I play Portrait but before I play Circle, is my current plan.
ADDENDUM: I have attempted to play through Dawn since writing and was thwarted by the infamous Magic Seal System (I have bad boss anxiety; my hands shake), so I just watched the playthrough. As it turns out, I would give Dawn my personal award for Silliest Writing in a 2D Adventure Castlevania, but I can work with it...
And that, as of this writing, brings us to the end! Dawn is the last game in the timeline. Tomorrow (or technically later today) I'll wrap this up with an extra little something...
Mentioning that I fell for the plot development of the Sorrow games no matter how cheesy it is, it got me thinking generally about fictional media and their effects on suspension of disbelief. The absurdity thresholds are different. I've usually expressed fiction in prose, and part of it surely is my own inclinations, but I do think that prose is by nature a very down-to-earth kind of medium and just won't let you get away with a lot of things. For example, an animated or comic character can have purple hair or perform wild physical feats and a viewer easily accepts what they see (this is true but less true in live-action cinema because the Uncanny Valley effect can come into play), but if you just write in a prose story that a character has purple hair or that they jumped up onto a thatched rooftop and chased a baddie across it at high speed, the absurdity of the idea is immediately apparent and suspension of disbelief is much more threatened---I think this is one reason why fanfic can sound weird to people, if it faithfully describes things from those other media. In comics, you can get away with a helluva lot between panels where prose wants a consistent flow and holds you more accountable for every moment, every link in the proverbial chain. And then in today's case of video games... As they become more naturalistic in detail, this has gotten less than in the days of Donkey Kong, probably, but the sheer absurdity that they can get away with is stunning even now. (Hell, I just watched EvilTim Let's Play Shinobi and Nightshade. See also my post not long ago about how the second half of Symphony of the Night makes no sense at all, or watch the non-sequitur that is Maria in Rondo of Blood; but in those cases it didn't hurt the game or even helped make it wonderful.) On the one hand, video games have the "seeing is believing" benefit that cinema does, but I think they have the additional advantage of placing the audience inside the character in a deeper way; it's harder not to sympathize with the character and buy into their situation when the character spends most of their time as essentially an avatar of you.
It's part of each medium having its own unique strengths. I remember hearing a bunch of stuff awhile back about how prose should be like cinema, and it always annoyed me, because that kind of advice just seemed like throwing away what prose does uniquely well. And it's part of what makes cross-medium adaptations challenging and/or dicey so often. Probably also a reason I'm so annoyed by the very idea that one medium would ever render another obsolete...
After talking about it, I also finally started a game of Portrait of Ruin and got to the first save point in the first painting; little early to say too much... I'm not sure I like the writing on this one quite as much (economy, folks; important in video game writing...), but no big deal. So far Jonathan seems better for normal enemies (his regular attack is stronger and his defense is better), but if anything big and scary shows up, get Charlotte to fry it. ^_~
One last century of the Castlevania timeline, the Twenty-First Century, where we are right now! Even more too close to home, oooh...
With Dracula having, as noted yesterday, died for real in 1999, we pick up again in 2035 with Aria of Sorrow, wherein we meet Soma Cruz and other friends both new and old. Another Metrovania, this is probably my second favorite game (Symphony first by a length, then Aria with Ecclesia close behind, and Harmony lagging in the rear gawking at furniture---I actually didn't mind that bit in Harmony as much as some seem to, but I can still joke...). The playthrough is another by TheRagnarokSeeker and happens to be Hard mode. However, it only includes the best ending, so here are the others: Good but premature (from Resulli), Bad but stylish (ZSlyzer), and Almost-Best (krazywalrus). (ETA: Actually the playthrough does have all the endings except almost-best, but I don't feel like deleting the links...)
Not feeling any need to spoil the big plot twist with my own comments (even though anyone reading this probably knows it already), I can see where it might come across as cheesy and probably did to some people, but somehow I fell in love with it...
Soma got perhaps the least downtime of any Castlevania hero, and the very next year landed him in the sequel, Dawn of Sorrow. I'm in the same boat with this one as Portrait, planning to play it soon and so not wanting to spoil myself, so, short and to the point: here's the cinematic intro from time2come22, and TheRagnarokSeeker sees us through to the end on the playlist front, with all the endings this time: First Half, Second Half --- and for added options/insurance RodriguezJr also has a playthrough with all the endings, plus a playthrough of Julius Mode (it even includes all three dialogues for the final boss). Having gotten so attached to Aria, I'm actually a touch nervous about playing this one (don't screw it up! ::fingers crossed::), but I'll have to get over that eventually... Like after I play Portrait but before I play Circle, is my current plan.
ADDENDUM: I have attempted to play through Dawn since writing and was thwarted by the infamous Magic Seal System (I have bad boss anxiety; my hands shake), so I just watched the playthrough. As it turns out, I would give Dawn my personal award for Silliest Writing in a 2D Adventure Castlevania, but I can work with it...
And that, as of this writing, brings us to the end! Dawn is the last game in the timeline. Tomorrow (or technically later today) I'll wrap this up with an extra little something...
Mentioning that I fell for the plot development of the Sorrow games no matter how cheesy it is, it got me thinking generally about fictional media and their effects on suspension of disbelief. The absurdity thresholds are different. I've usually expressed fiction in prose, and part of it surely is my own inclinations, but I do think that prose is by nature a very down-to-earth kind of medium and just won't let you get away with a lot of things. For example, an animated or comic character can have purple hair or perform wild physical feats and a viewer easily accepts what they see (this is true but less true in live-action cinema because the Uncanny Valley effect can come into play), but if you just write in a prose story that a character has purple hair or that they jumped up onto a thatched rooftop and chased a baddie across it at high speed, the absurdity of the idea is immediately apparent and suspension of disbelief is much more threatened---I think this is one reason why fanfic can sound weird to people, if it faithfully describes things from those other media. In comics, you can get away with a helluva lot between panels where prose wants a consistent flow and holds you more accountable for every moment, every link in the proverbial chain. And then in today's case of video games... As they become more naturalistic in detail, this has gotten less than in the days of Donkey Kong, probably, but the sheer absurdity that they can get away with is stunning even now. (Hell, I just watched EvilTim Let's Play Shinobi and Nightshade. See also my post not long ago about how the second half of Symphony of the Night makes no sense at all, or watch the non-sequitur that is Maria in Rondo of Blood; but in those cases it didn't hurt the game or even helped make it wonderful.) On the one hand, video games have the "seeing is believing" benefit that cinema does, but I think they have the additional advantage of placing the audience inside the character in a deeper way; it's harder not to sympathize with the character and buy into their situation when the character spends most of their time as essentially an avatar of you.
It's part of each medium having its own unique strengths. I remember hearing a bunch of stuff awhile back about how prose should be like cinema, and it always annoyed me, because that kind of advice just seemed like throwing away what prose does uniquely well. And it's part of what makes cross-medium adaptations challenging and/or dicey so often. Probably also a reason I'm so annoyed by the very idea that one medium would ever render another obsolete...
After talking about it, I also finally started a game of Portrait of Ruin and got to the first save point in the first painting; little early to say too much... I'm not sure I like the writing on this one quite as much (economy, folks; important in video game writing...), but no big deal. So far Jonathan seems better for normal enemies (his regular attack is stronger and his defense is better), but if anything big and scary shows up, get Charlotte to fry it. ^_~
