The Castlevania series has been in existence for nearly 25 years, and has been on nearly as many platforms. Created by Japan-based Konami, the series has had a unique Japanese feel to it, unlike many games on the market. This is going to change, according to a Konami representative.
Speaking with CVG, Konami’s head of product planning, Dave Cox, told the outlet that the word straight from the big-wigs in Japan was to make the newest game in the series, Lords of Shadows, appeal to “Western audiences”.
“There was a desire in the company to make the game more mainstream and I think at that point we were thinking it needs to appeal to Western audiences outside of Japan
“Castlevania had a quite Japan-centric look and feel to it and was appealing to a very small audience of people – it wasn’t breaking out there. Japan’s brief to us was to make it more mainstream, make it more Western, which is what we did.”
Caught in this predicament, the developer, MercuryStorm, went to video game legend, Hideo Kojima, for advice on how to make the game appeal to a more mainstream, Western audience.
“He kind of said that the story is quite moving and in order to convey that and get people to believe in that character he needs to be much more of an every man – someone people can identify with and not this muscle head type character,” said Cox.
Whether this Western-transformation is a good thing or bad thing for the series, is yet to be known. Hopefully, we will see more of the game at this year’s E3, as it certainly looks promising.
