Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow – The Epic Konami Interview – Part 1 of 2

Let’s go back to the first time the general public heard about this game. When Lords Of Shadow was announced it had nothing to do with Castlevania but, a year later, it did. What happened there?
It was a secret Castlevania game. The situation was that Europe, Japan and America were asked to pitch a new Castlevania game that could appeal to a mainstream audience. It was basically felt that Castlevania wasn’t appealing to a wider audience because it had boxed itself into a niche, and they wanted to make it a big pillar of Konami’s line-up once again. So we pitched the idea and our original concept was actually a remake of the very first Castlevania game, and the demo that Mercury Steam initially put together starred Simon Belmont. It had a very similar atmosphere and storyline to what we have now but it all revolved around Simon Belmont.

We got the green light to produce a prototype and started but at that point we weren’t quite sure how people would respond to it so, at E3 2008, we chose to show the game off as just Lords Of Shadow. And I think a few people did pick up on the similarities to Castlevania. After that we went to prototype stage and took playable code to Japan where we met with the board members and at that meeting when they actually saw the game running they understood where we were coming from. That’s where things changed and that’s where Hideo Kojima said, ‘Look, can I help in some way? I think it’s fantastic, what you’re doing, I love it and I want to give you guys a helping hand.’ And that’s the point where it officially became a fully-fledged Castlevania title.

That must have been quite an ego boost
Well it was tough getting to that point, a real challenge. And there was a lot of worry about whether people would accept it. But I think once people saw where we were going with it and understood the whole vision, I think it put a lot of minds, internally to rest. Now, we obviously hadn’t shown a lot to the outside world and I think there’s was a lot of trepidation at that point, but as we’ve shown off more and more, people have become more excited. Which is a lot like the way that meeting went.

The same year that Lords Of Shadow was announced, Koji Igarashi showed off a trailer at TGS, unveiling a new Castlevania starring Alucard. What happened to that game?
I have no idea. I’m not privy to that kind of information. The way it works inside Konami is that each studio is an independent entity, almost competing against eachother. And getting projects greenlit at Konami is, let me tell you, really tough. We got our project greenlit but I don’t know what happened to the others. People have asked if we’ll carry on with the 2D games and I presume we will because we recently released Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth. So I presume there will be other 2D games. But all I’m focussing on is this version of Castlevania. This is the new direction for Castlevania and this is where Konami has chosen to put its backing towards.

So how did Mercury Steam become involved in Lords Of Shadow?
We talked to them about working together, before they did Jericho for Codemasters, and we pitched that project internally but it wasn’t greenlit and we didn’t move forward with it. But we stayed in touch with them, and they went on to do Jericho with Codies where things didn’t go so well for them. But it was quite fortuitous for us because they got in touch and said, ‘We’ve finished Jericho. Is there anything we can do for Konami now?’ And we asked them if they’d be interested in pitching for Castlevania. They created a trailer using a real-time engine. It had Simon Belmont in it and had very much the visual style you see in Lords Of Shadow today. It was a gritty take on the series but it had more of a barbarian style, traditional Castlevania character design. And that’s what we pitched to Japan and got our foot in the door. But as we started development and got the funds released from headquarters, we realised that the idea had really been done before and there was 25 years of history that would prevent a new player from jumping in and understanding what was going on. So that’s when we decided to reboot the story and do something different with the universe. It was always in our mind that anyone should be able to jump in and play, even if they’ve never played Castlevania before.

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