Also: "I have serious misgivings about Belmont's Curse." (OK, that's not as catchy and widely-applicable as the other "Also"s.)

The past Summer Game Fest season was terrific! It seemed to have announcements and good news for everyone. (And not just because of my own announcements!) The Code Veronica remake, and the newfound prominence given to the title and Claire as the remake team figures out how to handle RE5 and 6, helped me decide to get a PS5 (used, right before everyone else thought of it!). It's disappointing that Until Dawn 2 doesn't have the same acclaimed writer as the original, but I'm willing to see where they go with this "documentary horror in paradise" concept. Folks actually got a Kingdom Hearts IV trailer! Ah, I see my newfound fave has jumped to a new, twinkier body. Give me back my beast! Did you know that if you preorder Silent Hill: Townfall, you can get an '80s pastel radio?!!?

I am not exaggerating when I say this was the clincher in my decision to get the PS5. (On a serious note, I think that the various current devs' decision to break with Silent Hill the town proper, leave it as a legacy title, and explore Otherworld scenarios across time, life circumstances, and the globe is very wise, injecting new blood into the core series concepts and putting 1–4 aside inviolate on a shelf and pedestal, where they belong as genre-foundational titles and unique, induplicable achievements.)

But one game was a big letdown for me, and that was Castlevania: Belmont's Curse. I don't have the huge problem with the art style others do (with one exception, which I'll address). Trevor's older design, and the design of the protagonist, looks great. It's precipitated a great resurgence in Castlevania fanart for characters new, recurring, and otherwise. But I have some major misgivings about the direction they're taking. (Spoilers from the promo and prerelease material behind the cut.)

Now, this game isn't for me. Previews have revealed it's a Soulslike of the Dev Abdication school of gameplay design, where 10,000 cheats are added so that no one can complain about difficulty or balance shut up. (See also: Mina the Hollower.) I've handled much of the worst this series has had to offer difficultywise - Ecclesia, Castlevania III without the HELPME code, Chronicles in Original mode - but I will never find spending dozens of hours on every single boss analyzing the coiffure of their pubic hair to predict their attack patterns entertaining. The devs also revealed that they fridged my fave Sypha, dispensing with her right after childbirth and not even allowing Trevor and her a happy marriage. I'm not sure what about Sypha inspires new franchise handlees to think: "Hey, you know what would improve this female character? If she were dead and couldn't say or do anything, or impact the story in any way!". (It's probably the female bit.) Since we're taking cues from Mirror of Fate, I suppose we can look forward to the scene where she motorboats her progeny with her naked ghost tits.

It sucks that I'm no longer interested in a series that I've loved for so long, but so it goes. Konami's current policy of farming out its venerated franchises and raking in the bucks was eventually going to hit an instance where a licensee was more interested in using the name to promote a pet project than being a good steward of the franchise.

But: I was disturbed before this, and I find that certain plot bits that have been revealed point to other unwise character decisions. I hope that the scenario below isn't what's on the menu, but...well, this team isn't being exactly subtle.

My misgivings started with the devs carving out a prime spot in the timeline: a generation after CV3, starring the offspring of Sypha and Trevor, with a promised culmination of an alleged but previously-nonexistent trilogy that began with CV3 and Curse of Darkness. Now, I can understand that a Castlevania game revival would start with a story starring characters familiar to viewers of the very popular show and that could be considered a continuation of the show's best-known plotline. This does, however, signal a marked lack of humility on the devs' part in being relative newbies taking over one of gaming's most influential and storied franchises. We're not only going to make a sequel to one of Castlevania's best and most-foundational titles; we're going to retroactively reclassify as part of a never-intended trilogy and just a table-setter to our crowning installment! They want all the franchise's best toys, and they want to fling them around the room. This is a lot of dick-swinging, to be honest - and a story that, frankly, this team is too new to be telling.

Then there's the treatment of the lead, Rose Belmont. Character commentary in the SGF trailer on the heroine falls into two categories:

• Oh, my God! A Girl!
• Don't underestimate me because I'm a girl!!!

Now, we live in a time when misogyny is virulently resurgent. However: the cartoons I watched back in the '80s featured more complex treatments of this concept. I understand that they're trying to emphasize that Rose is the first woman in the mold of whip-wielding Belmonts - well, second after Sonia - but after Maria, Shanoa, Sypha, Sonia, Charlotte, Carrie, Yoko...to treat a heroic woman as such an entirely foreign concept in promotion is a bit bizarre and regressive, to have her entire story stop and end at "I'm a girl" simplistic and counterproductive. Order of Ecclesia's story for its heroine has flaws (that "smile for me" subplot), but instead of insisting that its heroine be taken seriously, the game just, you know, takes her seriously, giving her a rather complex (for the series) plot to shoulder.

When Rose's design was revealed, everyone assumed she was Sonia, because she looked just like Sonia. I don't think her being a Sonia doppelganger is unintentional. This brings me to my big, big problem with the game: an enemy called the Fallen.

The devs are being as subtle as a diplodocus that the Fallen is Leon Belmont, progenitor of the Belmont family. (The devs are making a big deal about the curse Simon was under in II, claiming that it now affects the entire Belmont clan because, um, both CV3 and Hector's game had "Curse" in their titles; presumably, in this new story, Leon fell victim to it after his dramatic stand in the events of his game and has been a mindless slave of Dracula for centuries.) The design of the Fallen, as shown above, is uniquely awful. It looks like Lobo from DC Comics fell in a barrel of toxic waste. No other character design in the game even approaches this level of incompetence. This is deliberate disrespect.

Sonia Belmont, Rose's visual inspiration, was originally intended by the devs of her game to be the progenitor of the Belmont line. This was nixed by Koji Igarashi, who claimed, somewhat self-effacingly, that he personally didn't feel a woman warrior was historically accurate in this period. (I'm not sure that was his actual motive, though; he likely didn't want the origin of the series carved out and shouldered by a just-OK Game Boy title by a second-tier studio, and there are aspects of that story, such as Alucard hinted as the father of the Belmont line, that Igarashi might just not have liked.) Her role as the original Belmont was taken by Leon in the replacement story, Lament of Innocence, a tale regarded as not spectacular but serviceable so far as an origin went - preferable to that of Sonia's game, at least. Sonia wasn't regarded by fans as the problem with that initial origin idea, though, and many fans wanted and treated Sonia as part of the canon in some capacity.

Here's what I'm hoping isn't happening here but heavily suspect is: Leon has been reduced to a figurehead for both the patriarchy and old Castlevania - something to be vanquished as nothing but a remnant of old wrongs (markedly, by an visual reincarnation of the slighted Sonia) and to illustrate the perceived superiority of the devs' new Soulslike product.

There are, to put it lightly, a few problems with this approach. Most basically, it's tearing down an established character to build up a new character. This has never worked in the history of storytelling. To emphasize: this is not Rose's fault! I am predisposed to like Rose! But as established, the devs don't seem to have a strong concept for their lead besides what she isn't, and resorting right out of the gate to such a ill-conceived and historically-unsuccessful gambit (combined with them killing off a successful, important female character once she'd fulfilled her childbirthing duties, before she could grow old and haggy) is a very bad sign - a signal that these devs aren't capable of creating someone on par with Shanoa or Sonia or Sypha.

Second, it denotes a lack of humility and respect for the franchise they're handling. They consider it a shambling corpse, rotting from within. "THIS THING THAT WE'RE MAKING SUCKS!!!!!!!" is not a good or well-considered look, and "THE THING YOU LIKE SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!" - for which they're clearly going with making a former beloved hero and shining night an oozing zombie and secret Evildoer All Along - is just childish and devoid of ideas.

Third: I don't have an particular affection for Leon, but I don't like him being treated like this - a joke, an affliction, a punching bag, a sin of which to be ashamed and to overcome. Even if it were sheer sexism that fueled the decision to replace Sonia's Belmont origin story with Leon's, that isn't Leon's fault. Castlevania didn't invest heavily in characterization, but what we gets speaks well of him: he was a loyal and caring friend to Matthias in his grief; he cast aside his peerage and title to save his beloved. That speaks to something worthwhile. The man may have a period-inappropriate perm and an odd idea of what can and cannot be fought, but he is a worthy hero.

I want more Roses in Castlevania - or, rather, I want more Syphas and Shanoas and Sonias. But that doesn't mean I want to throw the Leons and Trevors and Simons overboard. In a franchise huge enough to encompass Alucard flipping peanuts into his mouth, cow summons, and specially-trained attack wargeese -

- there's no reason why Leon and Rose can't coexist, or why the new devs can't create a memorable, worthy heroine - and a memorable, worthy game! - without tearing down what came, and was beloved, before.