#nor has he had any lore entries from his perspective | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lechevaliermalfet · 5 years

Text

Seasonally Appropriate, part I: A Long Look at Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

So it's Halloween season, and I thought maybe it would be interesting/entertaining for me to tackle some themed content. So here we go.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

There are few video game series that so clearly fit the season as Castlevania. A series that usually has Dracula as its final boss, with any number of mummies, werewolves, and Frankenstein's monsters prior to the ultimate showdown with Bram Stoker's Wallachian sensation, there are few that are perhaps a better fit for the season. And this is just a small sample of the horror and horror-adjacent enemies (we've also got your standard zombies, ambulatory skeletons of varying sizes, gargoyles, giant bats, and giant spiders, gorgon heads, Medusa herself, and even the grim reaper).

But despite the parade of classic horror monsters, Castlevania has never really been scary. It's really always been more of a sort of horror fantasy than anything.

Most installments prior to Symphony of the Night featured you playing as a muscular hero who is the latest scion of the Belmont clan, a powerful, nearly barbarian folk whose sole heirloom appears to be an enchanted chain whip (with a spiked morning star on the end) which is consecrated for killing vampires and other creatures of the night. It's a good thing they have it, because Dracula, in life an evil sorcerer, and in death the king of vampires, seems to come back to life every century. Sometimes this happens on its own, sometimes he's resurrected by various disciples.

Listen, the lore here is neither deep, complex, nor consistent. Anyway, Symphony of the Night marked an interesting fork in the series development.

Let's look back for a minute at the mid-90s.

More below the cut.

It was the dawn of the fifth generation of video game consoles. Sony's PlayStation, Sega's Saturn, and Nintendo's N64 (the three consoles of this generation that mattered, and that are worth remembering as more than a footnote) were collectively the vanguard of 3D graphics in game design. Blocky and pixellated as a lot of those games look, believe it or not, it was an exciting time to be into video gaming. Boundaries were being pushed. New genres (such as survival horror) were being invented. And many developers were struggling mightily to find ways to translate their existing franchises into three dimensions.

TV Tropes refers to this phenomenon as the Polygon Ceiling. Some series, such as Final Fantasy, had a relatively easy, painless transition into 3D. In fact, RPGs broadly speaking weathered the change with few growing pains, if any. The main reason for this, I think, is simply that the mechanics that defined an RPG had very little to do with how those kinds of games were presented, in terms of graphics. The switch from 2D to 3D didn't really change anything about the essence of an RPG, and in most cases was actually beneficial.

The same was not true of more action-oriented titles, such as Mega Man, or Contra, or Ninja Gaiden, or... well, Castlevania. For an RPG, the way a player and the player's character(s) interacted with the world was fairly rudimentary, and the specifics were largely (in most cases) inconsequential. But in an action game, the player's interaction with the game's world is everything. Running, jumping, shooting, slashing, exploring, commandeering vehicles... The feel of these things was every bit as important as how they looked. And the specific details of the mechanics were important. Does the character have a life bar, or do they die in one hit? Can they control their jump mid-air, or are they committed once they launch themselves? Is the game a side-scroller, or a top-down action game? Is there a lot of jumping and verticality to the environments, or is it largely a horizontal affair? And so on, and so forth.

The transition to 3D presents a couple of problems, then.

Problem one is a pet theory of mine: 3D gaming compels a certain adherence to reality, at least notionally. I think that, subconsciously, players are better able to accept the more abstracted characters and environments of a 2D game because its nature as a 2D game means it is not operating in a space the player can recognize as real. So the abstractions – things like floating platforms, massive leaps, double-jumping, etc. – don't really seem troubling. But 3D environments have to look, if not realistic, then at least plausible given the restrictions or abilities of the setting. Platforms hanging in mid-air are an abstract thing that's du rigeur in a 2D game, but they look really weird in a 3D game without some kind of justification.

Problem two is less theoretical: 3D gaming requires a from-the-ground-up re-think of level design. Part of the reason the level layouts of a 2D side-scrolling game work at all is that the player has that side-on perspective that lets them see what's over the next rise, and react or plan their movements accordingly. 3D games generally don't allow for that, unless they're going for what's referred to as 2.5D – 3D graphics, but levels laid out and played the same as if they were in 2D. The reason this is a problem is the domino effect it causes. If you're re-designing the levels, you also have to re-design the way the player interacts with them. The player character's moveset has to change to accommodate this new setting. And then you have related problems to solve, which were never an issue in 2D games, such as camera control.

In essence, taking an established series from 2D into 3D changes everything. The environments, the way the player character interacts with said environments, the character's moveset, and the pacing. Meanwhile, franchises tended to be built on a certain consistency. You tend to buy a Contra or Castlevania or Mega Man game because you know what those games are like. The name indicates a certain kind of experience. So, the dilemma: How do you change literally everything recognizable about your game while preserving the essence of the experience so as to maintain continuity with what the franchise is all about?

Outside of Nintendo's major first-party franchises at the time, most of the heavily action-oriented series that were already big when the 3D revolution either:

Stayed 2D, and saw diminished exposure and popularity as a result (some went portable)

Went 3D, failed (sometimes after multiple tries), and died out in a console generation or two

Which brings us to Castlevania, and the fork in the road.

So, like most developers in the mid- to late 90s, Konami was trying to find ways to make their existing franchises work in 3D. This was at some point before Metal Gear Solid became their major cash-cow franchise.

Castlevania was a proven money-maker for them in the U.S. About the only entry they'd left in Japan had been Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, mainly because it was a game for the TurboGrafx-CD, which was doing almost nonexistent business in the States, and had been from its beginning. Which is a shame, really, because Rondo of Blood was damn near perfect. The Super NES conversion, Castlevania: Dracula X was good in general, but paled in comparison. But we'll come to that.

So naturally, the thing to do with their big franchises was to make them over in 3D. Which is exactly what they were doing with Castlevania on the N64. The result, Castlevania 64, was to be the the definitive statement of the series on modern consoles.

It... didn't work out that way.

Castlevania 64 went on to become one of the defining examples of what it meant to hit the Polygon Ceiling. Later that same year (1999), Konami brought out Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness, which expanded on its ideas and made some improvements, but still wasn't all that well received. But there was this other game that came first...

Koji Igarashi, a programmer at Konami, had put together a B team and gotten permission to make his own spin-off Castlevania game for the PlayStation, titled Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It was going to be a 2D game, so Konami didn't put much effort into marketing or advertising it, at least not in the U.S. I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but in the U.S. at least, there was a certain drive to leave 2D gaming behind in favor of 3D. A certain amount of this (it's difficult to say how much) was admittedly driven by the console manufacturers and software publishers themselves, in an effort to sell more games by making said games look as cutting-edge as possible.

But gaming in 3D was in a transitional state. And most transitions are ugly and awkward. Two-dimensional games like Symphony of the Night or Rayman or Silhouette Mirage lacked a lot of the immediate wow factor that 3D games possessed; they were an iteration on what had come before in a generation when everyone was fixated on what was new and shiny. But at the same time, they had the benefit of established technique. Developers had at least two console generations' worth of history to draw upon when it came to designing a 2D game, to help them understand what worked or didn't work, and why. Many conventions of game design had been pioneered in the 8-bit days – the third console generation – and had been refined in the fourth generation. This fifth generation and its newer technologies offered the opportunity to refine it further still.

Time has been unkind to many of these early 3D efforts. However impressive most of these games looked upon release, many of them have aged poorly. With controls that are often both clumsy and awkward, and with graphics that frequently looked rudimentary even one console generation removed, they can be hard to go back to. And I say this despite all my intense personal nostalgia for games in this period. Two-dimensional games, meanwhile, have frequently aged much better.

Symphony of the Night, for example, which went on to become the face of the Castlevania franchise.

It's a little strange to think about Symphony of the Night being the odd one out, nowadays. It, and all the portable games that chased after its success and were to varying degrees crafted in its image, became what the franchise was known for in the end. There's a reason the genre is called "Metroidvania". But this was where all that began, and as a non-linear exploration-based side-scrolling game with RPG elements, Symphony of the Night seemed like a weird fit for the series at the time it came out.

There was some precedent for this in the series prior. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest had seen the player character traversing the Transylvanian countryside looking for bits of Dracula in order to unite and destroy them, and thus break the curse upon him. It was also a non-linear and exploration-based side-scrolling game. However, it was bad at communicating with the player and providing the necessary clues to make sense of its challenges. Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, meanwhile, featured multiple routes through its levels by the simple expedient of giving the player a discrete choice at the end of most stages leading up to Dracula's castle. Rondo of Blood featured multiple paths, but presented them more organically, by having branching pathways and hidden routes in the levels themselves, which often led to different subsequent levels when pursued.

But all of these were mere flirtations with the idea of exploration compared to the sprawling, open mass of content that was Symphony of the Night.

Likewise, the series typically featured physically imposing, practically barbarian heroes before. Symphony's immediate predecessor, Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, had about the most characterization the series had seen in any of its heroes with Richter Belmont, who went on his adventure not only because Dracula was a bad, bad man, but also because he had kidnapped Richter's fiancee (along with a few other village girls, and a young lady named Maria Renard, who could also be played once rescued).

In place of the usual pseudo-barbarian hero, Symphony instead features a new playable character, Alucard, Dracula's half-vampire son. His true name, according to the manual, is Adrian Farenheits Tepes (yes, really), which... I can't decide whether that's awesome or ridiculous. Anyway, he goes by Alucard, which of course is his father's name spelled backward, to symbolize his opposition to his father.

Alucard first appeared back in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, which Igarashi has stated was his favorite game in the series. There, Alucard was one of three possible partner spirits the main character could recruit, after first facing him as a boss enemy. In that game, Alucard had a weaker version of his father's trademark triple-fireball attack, and the ability to turn into a bat and fly to locations other characters couldn't reach (at the cost of a constant expenditure of special weapon ammo). There, he was probably the least useful of the three partner spirits. His bat transformation was really helpful in only a small number of situations, and his attack was weak even when powered up to the three-shot version, unless you could make all three shots hit the same target. And like all the partner spirits, he was more fragile than the main character.

He's appeared elsewhere in the series since. In addition to an appearance prior to Symphony in one of the old-school Gameboy entries, he also shows up (under the alias Genya Arikado) in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for the Gameboy Advance, as well as in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow for the original DS. His appearance in Symhony of the Night led to a change in how its heroes looked. Character designer Ayami Kojima has a far more shoujo design sensibility, and as a result the franchise's leads have tended toward being more slender and androgynous ever since, even in the games she didn't design characters for.

But getting back to Symphony of the Night, Alucard was the perfect character for what Igarashi had in mind for the game. Both in his personal identity and in the kind of character he was, he represented something altogether different from the series norm: a slender, impeccably dressed nobleman in place of a broad-shouldered, leather-clad warrior; a cold, remote swordsman over a muscle-bound whip-swinger. He served as much as anything else to communicate that Symphony of the Night was headed in a different direction from the rest of the games up to that point.

Most games in the series were fairly typical for side-scrolling action games. Enemies tended to be weak defensively, but packed a punch, and were intended to soften you up for the bosses. You had your standard layouts of platforms to navigate between, with spike traps and instant-death falls into bottomless pits as punishment for bad timing of your jumps. Your player character did not grow as the game progressed: You had a single weapon with which to attack the enemies, though Castlevania allowed you to supplement this with sub-weapons, which you could find scattered throughout the game's stages, and which required ammunition to use. The game, meanwhile, grew in difficulty as you progressed, requiring you to hone your skills as you went. What was unique about Castlevania was its difficulty (its particular mechanics put it on the high end of fair, for the standards of the day) and its medieval/gothic horror setting.

Symphony of the Night is still a side-scrolling game, but that's essentially where the similarities end. Igarashi took a page out of the Metroid playbook, and crafted a non-linear, exploration-based action game. Then, for good measure, he bolted on some basic RPG elements. So rather than a linear march to the endgame, the player is allowed – encouraged, even required! – to explore every nook and cranny, gradually acquiring new weapons and abilities as they go, and to revisit old locations with their new-found powers and abilities in order to open up new pathways.

Yet for all the ways it's different from the series that sired it, Symphony of the Night leaned more heavily on the (admittedly somewhat anemic) series lore than any game had previously.

Rondo never saw release in the U.S., which is a goddamned crime, even as I understand perfectly why Konami passed on localizing it. What we got instead was Castlevania: Dracula X for the Super NES (known as Vampire's Kiss in Europe). This version of the game has some interesting trade-offs going on. The graphics are somewhat better, since it's a Super NES game. However, the music, while nice, doesn't hold a candle to the CD soundtrack featured in the original game. It also loses out on the multiple routes that were perhaps the defining feature of the TurboGrafx-CD version, which seems more questionable. The result is something that feels very much like a bright, shiny consolation prize.

Symphony of the Night is set in the 1790s, about five years after the events of Rondo of Blood. Alucard himself first appeared in the fifteenth century during the events of Castlevania III, so he's been around a while already; Symphony is therefore tied to two different games in the series. But as much as there was a shared continuity between installments, their taking place a century apart meant that none of them really required you to have played the previous installments to appreciate the current one. It isn't the first game in the series to revisit a particular point in time and set of characters – the very first sequel did it, after all – but it is the first to show real growth of any kind in those characters. Richter returns in a startling reversal of his original role as vampire hunter, and Maria Renard is all grown up and looking to take care of things on her own. And while it's true that you still really don't need to have played Rondo of Blood to enjoy Symphony of the Night, there was that added layer of interest for fans of the previous game.

Among the many other things Symphony gets right is its gameplay. Overall, the game is a little on the easy side, but that's easy to forgive. One of the things that makes it easy is simply its design. As an exploration-based game rather than a linear side-scroller, a lot of the traditional instant-death traps (such as bottomless pits) really don't make a lot of sense from the standpoint of environmental design. Punishing the player's bad timing is basically antithetical to the design of a game like this. The challenge lies far more in figuring out the correct path to the end, instead. Instant-death scenarios would be deeply unfair in that context. Instead of running a gauntlet, the player is navigating a labyrinth.

As befits a game that takes up as much geographical space as Symphony of the Night does, the enemies show wide variation in shape, size, strength, and tactics. Their placement is likewise well-considered. Enemies of the same type only rarely occupy more than one region of the game's map, giving each region its own ecosystem. Many of them pose little threat, playing into the relative easiness of the game. They're there because fighting them gives you something to do as you traverse the castle. The real challenge is finding your way through... and, of course, fighting off the bosses.

While many of the bosses pose only a middling challenge, a few encounters are genuinely harrowing, and many of them – Olrox, Granfaloon, and Galamoth, just to name a few – make for fantastic setpiece fights.

In addition to its gorgeous and varied environments, Symphony also offers the player several different powers and abilities. Over the course of the game, Alucard gains access to powers that allow him the classic vampire transformations (into a wolf, bat, or mist) which are essential for navigating the environment. This is in addition to abilities such as double-jumping and being able to walk underwater. There's also a multitude of weapons the player can find, with a variety of abilities and drawbacks, as well as several with hidden moves.

The only place the game really falls apart is in its second half. After uncovering enough of the castle to find a particular item, then player can then face off against the seemingly final boss, only to discover that this boss isn't so final as previously believed. In fact, it's just the halfway point. The game then reveals that there is an entire second castle to explore, where the real final boss is hiding. This is great in theory.

In practice, it’s somewhat less great. The second castle is a mirror image of the first; take the castle, rotate it 180 degrees, and you have the second half of the game. The problems here are manifold.

It's not as interesting to explore, because you've seen all this before. The color palettes are altered in much of the reverse castle, but the layouts are otherwise exactly as they were in the first castle, right down to all of the secrets. But at the same time...

It's disorienting, because while essentially familiar, it's also upside-down. It constantly messes with your ability to navigate without constant reference to the map. And while it would be nice to praise clever level design that works both right side-up and upside-down, the fact that you can double-jump, high-jump, and fly means that pathfinding is trivially easy no matter which way the environment is pointed. And since you already have all the essential expansions to your moveset...

There's less to get excited about. Part of the appeal of any good Metroidvania game is the player character's slowly evolving moveset, which allows increased exploration of the game's environment. There's a small thrill at the "Ah-ha!" moment when you realize that your double-jump or ability to fly or turn into mist will allow you to access an area you couldn't reach previously, either granting access to new areas or to yet another new power-up, expanding your moveset further. But that sense of excitement goes away since you already have all the essential maneuvering capabilities. It also means...

Since you've already acquired all your essential abilities, there is no direction suggested by limitations upon your movements, as there would usually be in a game like this. Most Metroidvanias are structured so that there are initially only a few places you can go, with tantalizing hints of what might lie beyond currently accessible regions. Thus, while you're free to explore in the reverse castle, the lack of growing capabilities means every direction is arbitrary. You spend the whole latter half of the game just going wherever, because one direction is as good as another.

While the game still never gets really hard, the difficulty does spike in the inverted castle. Unfortunately, it does this mainly by just making the enemies give and take more punishment. Monsters who served as minor bosses in the first castle now show up as basic enemies. As a result, the game slows down as you slog your way forward.

The thing is, this doesn't make Symphony of the Night a bad game. It does mean the latter half falls apart a bit, and is somewhat disapointing as a result. Most of the time, when I play through it these days, I tend to stop once I reach the inverted castle. The level of novelty adn inventiveness on display throughout the first half tapers off pretty abruptly in the second half. But it's still overall a vastly entertaining game, and one that I love. It’s worth playing through by basically anybody.

Inverted castle aside, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was a smash hit. It was one of the first PlayStation games I ever bought, somewhere in the spring of 1999.

I remember suddenly recalling, out of the blue one day, that I'd read about a Castlevania game for the PlayStation that was a little different from the rest of the series. That was it. I knew it existed. So renting it seemed like the safest bet.

The problem with rentals, of course, is that after the end of the rental period, they actually do expect you to give it back. And that was a problem, because after just about half an hour spent playing the game, I decided that this was one of the most phenomenal games I'd ever played. It went without saying that I wanted to own it. In fact I wound up picking up a copy that night (technically, it was after midnight, so that would really make it the following morning) for $20 at a Wal-Mart that was open 24 hours. I returned the rental the next day, since I wouldn't be needing it any more.

Really, I think I knew I wanted to own this game the moment I got into the Alchemy Laboratory, the second main area, and the first that really allowed for some exploration at the very beginning. It was perhaps the first area where everything I loved about the game came together perfectly: the graphics (lushly detailed and lovingly animated), the environments (big, eclectic in theme, and interesting to look at), and the music (as eclectic as the environments, beautifully orchestrated and arranged).

I still wind up digging into it for at least a little while every year – and, yes, it's usually around Halloween that I do. I don't usually go through the inverted castle, as I mentioned before. I have stuff to do, and my enthusiasm usually wanes around that point. But I did it this year, for old times’ sake.

It’s always a pleasure playing Symphony for the little details here and there throughout the game. But I especially took notice playing through it earlier this month, since I was playing it to finish it, and to take a more critical look at it.

For all that the PlayStation is routinely (and, let's be honest, correctly) assessed as a system with anemic 2D capabilities, Symphony of the Night is a 2D powerhouse for the standards of its day. And as pixellated as it looks when viewed on HD TVs or monitors today, it still looks fairly amazing.

There are all sorts of tiny details that work to sell the environments of the game as places with their own distinct identities. Birds nest in the belfries of the Cathedral. The frozen-over sections of the underground caverns have a thin skin of ice on the pools of water there, which will break off, a bit at a time, as you collide with them. Then you have the rats doing their rat business in the little inaccessible nooks and crannies of the Outer Wall. For that matter, the Outer Wall's weather will randomly change whenever you enter it: It can be clear, foggy, or raining. There's no effect on the gameplay; it's purely for effect. Then there's the way many enemies (not just bosses) have unique and involved death animations. This is on top of them being already highly detailed as it stands. And these enemies are rarely repeated throughout the game. Each area has its own unique ecosystem of enemies which aren’t often found elsewhere in the game. Seeing the full range of the game’s bestiary is in fact one of the few real joys of exploring the inverted castle.

The only part of the game that’s aged somewhat less gracefully is its 3D graphics, which thankfully don’t matter too much. There��s actually very little 3D in the game proper, and what’s there is used either as background elements (rushing clouds in the Cathedral and Clock Tower areas, and the clock tower itself), or as a supplement to the 2D graphics (the ice crystals that the Ice Maiden enemies use to shield themselves or shoot at you, the pulsing lake of lava, etc.). About the only instance of 3D where I cry foul is the wings of the giant bat. Those are honestly kind of embarrassing. Everything else is fine, if a bit low-fi. But I find myself getting pretty nostalgic for that, honestly.

Still, as easy as it is to get wrapped up in extolling the virtues of Symphony of the Night’s technical mastery, what should be kept in mind is that buried under all the flash is a solid game. Like the best Metroidvania titles, it challenges you not through your steel-trap reflexes but by your ability to navigate the world, to find the correct way ahead, to ferret out the secrets necessary to success. Unlike its predecessors, it presents not a gauntlet to be run, but a puzzle to be solved.

Because it amuses me, let’s take a look at some of the localization oddities of Symphony of the Night.

Someone at Konami – I'm about 80 percent sure this was someone on the localization team, not the original Japanese development team – was hell-bent on inserting fantasy and sci-fi literature references into the game.

The boss Granfaloon takes its name from a word invented by Kurt Vonnegut in his book Cat's Cradle. It's used to describe a collective of people whose commonalities might seem to be significant factors in their association, but which are in fact meaningless in the grand divine plan. This boss shows up in at least one later game (Aria of Sorrow), and is renamed to the more-appropriate Legion.

There's a handful of references to The Wizard of Oz, of all things. These come in the form of three different enemies: a scarecrow who jumps around fairly brainlessly, an enemy called Tin Man which is essentially a steam-powered machine full of blades, and an enemy called simply Lion which is described as being cowardly.

And then there are the references to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion...

This will be easier as a list:

The Nauglamir: In-game, it’s a necklace that raises the player’s defense. In The Silmarillion it’s a necklace made by the Dwarves for the Elvish king Thingol, which among other gemstones contained one of the Silmarils – a gem (out of a set of three) containing vast but frustratingly vague magical powers.

The Sword of Hador: In-game, it’s described as belonging to the House of Hador. This is a reference to The Children of Hurin, which is one of the main tales of The Silmarillion, and more recently was expanded into a book in its own right. The House of Hador is more famous for its dragon-crested helmet, but the game has a dragon helm as a major piece of Alucard’s equipment already, and the developers probably didn’t want to name one of the more important items after something in an intellectual property they didn’t own.

The Fists of Tulkas: In-game, they’re a set of gauntlets to be equipped for punching enemies. Tulkas in The Silmarillion is a god-like being whose area of divine responsibility is war.

The Mormegil: In-game, it’s described as a black-bladed sword, and by its statistics, it’s especially powerful against holy-aligned enemies. In The Silmarillion, it’s a sword used by Turin Turambar, of the House of Hador (though it’s not an heirloom of said House), which does indeed have a black blade, and a sinister past.

The Ring of Varda: In-game, it’s a ring that gives stat bonuses to the player. In The Silmarillion, Varda is a goddess of sorts – the queen of the highest tier of divine beings, just below the creator – who is associated with the stars.

Azaghal: In-game, a unique enemy who appears in exactly one location (the inverted version of Olrox’s quarters, for the curious). He is an enormous glowing phantom who swings a sword that’s at least twice the size of the player’s character. In The Silmarillion, he’s a Dwarvish king slain in battle by a dragon. He has a dragon-crested helm which is given to one of the Elvish princes after his death, which is the same helm that ultimately becomes the heirloom of House Hador, after changing hands a few times.

The Crissaegrim: In-game, it’s the most game-breakingly powerful sword the player can find, being a sword that strikes four times in the amount of time most other swords take to strike once, strikes diagonally upward and downward on two of its strikes, and has the best reach of any of the game’s other swords’ standard attacks. And you don’t have to stop moving to swing it. In The Silmarillion, it’s a mountain range where the Eagles dwelt. By the time of The Lord of the Rings, it no longer exists, having sunk into the sea along with much of the land where The Silmarillion takes place.

Castlevania has always borrowed from pop culture to some extent. The original game borrowed its boss monsters from classic horror movies and literature (Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and the mummy), and its sequels up to this point borrowed still more. But the specific things being borrowed in Symphony of the Night have always struck me as weird. There's something a bit more... universal? (pun unintended) about Dracula or the mummy or the wolf-man or Medusa or... The list goes on. The Silmarillion and Cat's Cradle and The Wizard of Oz are more puzzling, at least to me. Maybe it's just that they're not in the public domain (well, The Wizard of Oz is; the book, at any rate). Maybe it's because they're not as firmly in the horror genre themselves, or even horror-adjacent.

The success of Symphony of the Night helped propel Koji Igarashi to the position of de facto steward of the franchise. After Konami's double failure to craft a worthy Castlevania in 3D on the N64, they decided to go smaller-scale for the series, at least for a few years. The next game, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was released in 2001 for the Gameboy Advance. While it wasn't directed by Igarashi, it clearly aped Symphony of the Night in most respects. Regrettably, its overall quality wasn't one of them. Igarashi returned to the director's seat for the next several games in the series. He got his band back together (Michiru Yamane on music, Ayami Kojima on character designs) for Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, which has a somewhat divisive reputation among the fanbase. The follow-up, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, is often considered to be the first truly worthy successor to Symphony. The following games on the DS – Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia – saw diminishing returns.

Igarashi's success with his Metroidvania titles in the series eventually saw him put in charge of a new attempt to make Castlevania in 3D. The results, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness on the PlayStation 2, were... competent, at least. I’ll probably talk more about those another time.

The Castlevania franchise ultimately got farmed out to Mercury Steam, a Spanish developer, who took the series in a different direction (though one of their games is at least to some extent a Metroidvania in Igarashi’s mold).

More recently, Igarashi's gotten back in the saddle. While he's no longer with Konami, he's been toiling away on a Kickstarter project called Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which follows aggressively in the footsteps of his Metroidvania games. His initial Kickstarter pitch leaned heavily into his success with the Castlevania franchise. While Ritual of the Night has yet to be released, his team put together a faux-8-bit homage to Castlevania III titled Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, which seems to be positioned as a prequel to Ritual of the Night. It's fantastic, and is available for PC and all current consoles.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Symphony of the Night; I should probably discuss its availability for whoever is curious. I’ll break this down by systems.

Sony: By far, Sony’s systems have the widest availability for this game. The original PlayStation disc can be played on a PlayStation, PlayStation 2, or PlayStation 3, or via any halfway decent PlayStation emulator on PC. Almost any computer you can buy today will run PlayStation games just fine with emulation. In addition, this same version is available digitally as a PS One Classic on PSN, so you can download it version for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, PS Vita, or PS TV. Like most single-disc PlayStation games on PSN, it runs about five dollars. Then there’s Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles. This is a PSP release whose main purpose was to be a shiny new 2.5D remake of Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, a.k.a. Castlevania: The One That Got Away for many years in the U.S. However, you can easily unlock Symphony of the Night in it (as well as the original TurboGrafx-CD version of Rondo of Blood). This version of Symphony features a new voice cast and a rewritten script, which may or may not recommend it. The original game was never going to be High Drama even in some theoretical ideal form, and the original script and hamtastic acting at least gave it a kind of B-grade charm. As it stands, the newer version’s acting is more professional, but loses some of that overwrought but undersold charm. However, it's completely serviceable, and the fact is that all three games in the collection make it well worth a purchase. It's available physically (for PSP only) or digitally (for the PSP, PS Vita, and PS TV). Finally, there’s Castlevania: Requiem, a combo pack for the PS4 which contains both Symphony of the Night and the TurboGrafx version of Rondo of Blood, with the English translations and voice work from the PSP release. These updated versions of the game feature a new song that plays over the ending credits (more on that below). Castlevania Requiem also allows you to enable filters to soften the sharpness of the image, or to play it stretched fullscreen as well as in the original 4:3 aspect ratio with a variety of frames for vertical letterboxing.

Microsoft: An HD remaster of Symphony of the Night came out early in the Xbox 360's lifespan for Xbox Live Arcade. It offers a smoothing filter for the graphics, and a frame for the vertical letterboxing (the game itself is still presented in 4:3 aspect ratio with no option to stretch the image). The script and voice acting are the same as the original version. There are two brief CGI cutscenes in the original version of the game which were cut from this version to save disk space (originally, Xbox Live Arcade titles had to come in under a certain size limit), but nothing of value here is lost. The music for the ending credits has also changed from the original version. The original song, "I Am the Wind", was replaced with a new piece due to licensing issues. Again, personally, I think nothing of value was lost. "I Am the Wind" sounded tremendously out of place, tonally, compared to the rest of the game. In addition to the Xbox 360, this version of the game is also playable on the Xbox One via backward compatibility.

Nintendo: Nothing, sadly. The closest Nintendo ever got to this game was having a near-perfect port of the Japanese version of Rondo of Blood on the Virtual Console, but the VC's basically shut down at this point. You can still download games you've already purchased, but new purchases are no longer possible.

PC: No official release of Symphony of the Night has occurred on PC, despite it being an excellent candidate for Steam, because Konami is a shit company run by shit people, and they've decided to leverage all their intellectual properties for pachinko machines these days, which is a very shit thing for them to be doing. Your best bet for PC is to get the PlayStation disc and download an emulator.

#castlevania #symphony of the night #halloween #effortpost #deep dive #video games #video gaming #gaming #castlevania symphony of the night #castlevania sotn

11 notes · View notes

unknown-de-mordor-blog · 6 years

Text

Five ships I’m still not over

Beleg Cúthalion/Túrin Turambar

Universe: Middle-earth, first age

Ship name: Nothing that’s widely used in the fandom, I don’t think. But I like to think of them as ‘Black Sword (referring to Turin’s cursed weapon) and Strongbow (direct translation of Cúthalion)’

To me, there's no character more tragic than Turin son of Hurin, and no pairing more tragic than him and Beleg. And no clearer love, too. I don't know if J. R. R. Tolkien intended for them to go that far, but their emotional connection is so deep and powerful that whether you ship them or not it's undisputedly one of the most beautiful relationships in Tolkien's lore. Alas! It's not powerful enough to undo the curse placed on Turin and his clan, which ends both his and Beleg's life all too soon and all too tragically. So, yes, I count Beleg as one of the elves who die for love.

Favourite quote: 'I would lead my own men, and make war in my own way,' Turin answered. 'But in this at least my heart is changed: I repent every stroke save those dealt against the Enemy of Men and Elves. And above all else I would have you beside me. Stay with me!' 'If I stayed beside you, love would lead me not wisdom,' said Beleg.

Uh, I love this so much because it shows the difference in their temperament and maturity. Beleg's an elf who has lived through and fought in so many wars. He's an (elf)man of duty, honour and intellect, and Turin is still a young man whose pride and stubbornness can seriously get in the way of a grown-up conversation. And Beleg is so not having any of that in this scene. He’d do anything for Turin, including ditching his command to find him, but he can pull some tough-love moves, too, when Turin’s unreasonable.

Uzumaki Naruto/Uchiha Sasuke

Universe: Naruto

Ship name: sns, narusasu, sasunaru

I think Naruto and Sasuke canonically love each other, I really do, but I don’t think they are together romantically at any point in the series. And that’s by design, really. Sasuke -- the last of the Uchiha, the tragic figure of the Naruto series (still not as tragic as Turin, but let’s not do this morbid comparison) -- has too many issues to work through, and Naruto isn’t in the position to really help him through them. So as soul-deep as their bond is, they couldn’t have been together and survive each other. Although, I really want that to happen. That’s what fanfictions are for, I guess.

Favourite quote: ‘If you attack Konoha, I will have to fight you... So save up your hatred and take it all on me, I'm the only one who can take it. It's the only thing I can do. I will shoulder your hatred and die with you.’

Honestly, Naruto might just as well propose to Sasuke with that because he’s essentially saying ‘give me your worst, I’m not leaving and never will’. I know friends could be like that, too, but normally not to this degree and not with this kind of commitment. I’m not surprised at all when Sasuke has to ask Naruto why the hell he is doing all this for him. It just goes beyond reason, really.

S'chn T'gai Spock /James T. Kirk

Universe: Star Trek

Ship name: K/S, Spirk

The Daddy of all ships! Pun intended! Spock and Kirk's friendship really walks that fine line of are they/aren’t they. I personally think they aren’t (another controversial statement coming from a shipper), but they’re so cute together you just can’t help think: what if they are? They have this deep trust and affection for one another anyway; why not push it a notch further? ‘This simple feeling,’ as Spock calls it, might as well be love.

Favourite quote:

Kirk: How's our ship? Spock: Out of danger. Kirk: Good... Spock: You saved the crew. Kirk: You used what he wanted against him. That's a nice move. Spock: It is what you would have done. Kirk: And this... this is what you would have done. It was only logical. I'm scared, Spock. Help me not be. How do you choose not to feel? Spock: I do not know. [tears fall] Right now, I am failing. Kirk: I want you to know why I couldn't let you die... why I went back for you... Spock: Because you are my friend. [Kirk places his hand against the glass and gives the Vulcan Salute as he dies]

It’s actually really hard for me to pick a quote for these two because I think every ‘Jim’ from Spock does the job except nobody else would understand it but me. (Second to that is, ‘Captian, not in front of the Klingons.’) While I love them teasing each other a lot, I think Kirk’s death scene from Star Trek Into Darkness has all the right punches to it. Spock has been unable to accept the feeling of friendship towards Kirk (actually just feelings in general) until the moment he watches Kirk dies behind the glass door. And all just comes out like BOOM! Not to mention how close Spock comes to killing Khan for revenge before Uhura tells him that Kirk can be saved but they need Khan alive. Honestly, that’s the only reason Khan’s head doesn’t go plop in Spock’s hands.

Morgoth/Sauron

Universe: Middle-earth, first age

Ship name: it just came to my attention that the fandom is calling this ship Angbang (a wordplay on the name of their home/fortress Angband). Nicely done, you naughty people. Also Melkor/Mairon if you’re going by their proper first-age names.

I think a lot of people seeing this ship would go ‘what?!’ Like, how is that even possible when Tolkien didn’t write a single scene with the two of them in it. I’d say in this case the absence is more powerful. Tolkien wrote the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales as lore, so they necessarily come from the perspective of the tellers; i.e., humans and elves. That doesn’t mean Tolkien didn’t drop hints about the complex characters that the dark lords of Middle-earth are. He even has Elrond says that people don’t start out evil, not even Sauron. So the question becomes, what the heck happened? And the heck that starts it all out is pretty much in the first few chapters of the Silmarillion where Morgoth is clearly a powerful and inventive figure but in many ways an outcast and shunned by everyone including the very power that made him. (*cough* daddy issue *cough*) And then we are made aware of the fact Sauron, who is also powerful and creative, isn’t on Morgoth’s side from the get go but decides to join him later. The power-hungry dark lords we are later told about aren’t that at all, so it raises the question of their true characters and motives. If anything, I think the length in which Sauron would go for Morgoth thousands of years after his master is defeated and shut away says something about their bond with each other. And if I know one thing, it can’t be fear or respect. If I have to make a guess, I think it is akin to love.

Favourite quote: There isn’t anything I can quote from the source material since there hasn’t been a dialogue or anything they say to an audience that could be trusted as genuinely representing who they are. One thing I do scream about is the scene in the Return of the King movie when the black gate opened and behind there isn’t just the tower with the eye of Sauron but Mount Doom next to it in the same frame. I was like ‘I know Morgoth’s not here but isn’t that him in spirit.’ Yes, I’m a proper trash for these two.

Also, there’s this awesome comic series (unfortunately discontinued) by Suz. It’s legitimately hotter than the fire of Aule’s forge, honestly.

Beren/Lúthien

Universe: Middle-earth, first age

Ship name: I’m not aware of any ship name for these two but ‘Beren and Luthien’ is catchy enough as it is.

How else to finish this list but to dedicate the last entry to the greatest love story of Middle-earth, and, yes, I'm saying that with a straight face because, holy hell, this couple defies expectations left, right, and centre. Luthien, our elven princess, is an active participant in her own fate. She falls in love with a human who, in an act of valour, accepts her father's stupid, impossible task to steal the most treasured jewel from Morgoth the Dark Lord himself. Luthien basically runs away from home, finds her man captured and tortured, and tears the goddamn fortress down in a showdown with the-dark-lord-to-be Sauron himself (which makes you question the competency of everyone else in Middle-earth). They then proceed to steal the jewel together. They don't quite succeed in bringing it back and Beren loses his hand in the process, but hey, they could say it's in his hand, somewhere, and now could they please marry because otherwise I have a feeling that Luthien is going to elope with her boyfriend and her mom and dad won't be seeing her again ever.

And this is really just scratching the surface of Luthien’s feisty personality quite unbefitting of most princesses until the recent overhaul of attitude by Disney. And all this came from a man who was born in the Victorian era when women's autonomy wasn't given or respected. But I think Luthien's depth of character comes from the fact that she has a real-life counterpart, and so she feels more like a real woman. And the love between Beren and Luthien feels compelling because its the love the professor himself had for his wife and life-long partner, Edith. You can check out their gravestone. I'm so not making this up.

Favourite quote: The song of Lúthien before Mandos was the song most fair that ever in words was woven, and the song most sorrowful that ever the world shall ever hear. Unchanged, imperishable, it is sung still in Valinor beyond the hearing of the world, and the listening the Valar grieved. For Lúthien wove two themes of words, of the sorrow of the Eldar and the grief of Men, of the Two Kindreds that were made by Ilúvatar to dwell in Arda, the Kingdom of Earth amid the innumerable stars. And as she knelt before him her tears fell upon his feet like rain upon stones; and Mandos was moved to pity, who never before was so moved, nor has been since.

It’s not a scene between them, but this is how far Luthien’s love and badassery goes. She loses Beren in a battle to protect her father’s kingdom, and she dies grieving him. In the afterlife, she gets to meet the god of death Mandos and sings him a song of their love and her grief. Apparently, she’s so good with words and music that Mandos is like, ‘I can’t handle the feels. You can have your husband back and have a mortal life with him.’ And Luthien takes the deal, of course.

#my post #tolkien verse #naruto #star trek #beren and luthien #spirk #angbang #sns #narusasu #sasunaru #turin and beleg #shipping supreme #I'm enterprising these shit

19 notes · View notes

mymagicalstudy · 7 years

Text

OK! time to pick the winners from my giveaway thing!!!

I’ve chosen the stories I enjoyed reading the most, and will message those people privately. If you don't have messenger enabled, make sure you open it up.

I wish i could send you all things, but postage is expensive :’(

Got some awesome stories from everyone who entered, so i thought i’d post all the entries below the line.

@the-tarot-boii : “One night, after reading my book, La Santa Muerte by Tomas Prower, La Flaca herself spoke to me. I was doing an automatic writing (as instructed in the book), and she said something to the air of, “My child seeks wisdom”. I have a feeling she was speaking to me because, at the time, i was reading up on the Western Mystery Tradition and the Qabalah”

@sparklesbrightly : “It was Samhain about 5 years ago, and it was the autumn of my maiden years. Both myself and my current partner had just recently eloped. So much in our lives was uncertain, as if a volume had completed itself that summer, so many loose ends were waiting to be tied that evening. We were staying in a simply radiant Victorian bed and breakfast,and our plans were rather loose. We set about putting together costumes that suited our moods, and painting our faces for the occasion. We brought with us many tokens that represented those thing we meant to let go, among them were seven garnets in the shape of pomegranate seeds. We walked down the street without plan or direction, the fog growing thick, as we went along folks became scarce and avoided us when they were about. The silence was so deep and nearly as thick as the fog, strange to hear in a large city. We made our way to the center of a wooded park that we found, and made our ritual there. I have never felt so far beyond this realm as I did that night. We buried our tokens, and left that place. There were some swings where we sat for a while watching some lanterns float into the air from a nearby yard, more messages for the dead, from other people. When we returned to our room we slept hard, the morning broke with bright light broken into rainbows through the cut crystal windows, and I never felt so rejuvenated and free as I did that morning. It was a very lovely goodbye.”

@transboystrength : “One night this past winter some friends & I went out to a popular smoking spot at our college to participate in the cursing trump thing. The spot is called bamboo fortress, because its in the middle of a huge swath of bamboo & people built up a treehouse & fence there. I was leading the ceremony & had picked bamboo fortress bc bamboo is protective. four of us went, but we were half expecting more to join us. We got about halfway through the ceremony when we heard someone approaching. We didnt think anything of it, until we noticed that the footsteps had begun circling the fortress. It made a full, slow circumference until it left the way it came. We worked through the curse till the end, but we were all clearly pretty spooked. We walked back to the dorm in silence. I was only a freshman so I didnt know much of the local lore, but apparently wendigos are known to sometimes appear in the local woods, and two in our group had heard them calling while camping in the winter. Thank god we were as thoroughly protected & armed as we were else we may never have left bamboo except in body bags.”

@recolligio : “I lean hermetic, but have been striving to center my practice on the familiar base of my Christian upbringing, although my own perspective is of course a bit unorthodox.I had been seeking to do some elemental balancing work, but wasn’t sure where to start; so I turned to St. Raphael as associated with Air and healing.It turns out he’s also associated with “happy meetings,” and the first prayer to him I came across was in this light. It seemed warm and positive, so I made my introduction this way.And for weeks I couldn’t step out the door without having some kind of noteworthy and pleasant interaction. I ran into all kinds of neighbors, the dog made friends with people on almost every walk, and I had a handful of genuinely strange run-ins too - meetings with very useful or heartwarming outcomes that depended on schedules intersecting in unlikely ways. (e.g. running into a visitor from out of state during the 30s we happened to be in the same parking lot).It went from astonishing to charming to genuinely eerie before it started to taper off.I am very grateful though, for those opportunities. It reminded me how many there really are, on any ordinary day.”

@fluoritechild : “Withcraft has followed me all my life, even before I knew it. In my childhood my friend would bring me pendulums to play with, we would look up mantras to say to feel better, and make up spells for all sorts of things like getting boys to like us and getting good grades. It’s safe to say that I have always had a fascination with it, but there are two big milestones that I remember which set me off on the path I am currently on.The first was in middle school when my friends and I thought the locker rooms and the hallway outside it were haunted. We spent a week researching ouija boards and how to safely use them, and we made our own and put protective symbols on the back. We brought candles from home and borrowed a lighter from one of the cool kids who were already smoking, and during lunch we went down there and talked to the spirits who live there. We were right. It was haunted. The whole time there were banging on the door from the girl’s room. It was a great experience.The other milestone is when I got my first tarot deck. Two of my friends had already started to dive into the occult, and they brought me to an alternative convention where we spent the whole day attending lectures and buying readings from professionals. At the end of the day I passed by a stand that sold tarot and oracle cards. My friend explained the difference to me, and I decided to get a tarot deck. The choice was difficult, the seller had many to choose from, but eventually they showed me The Mystic Faerie Tarot. It was the last copy they had, and the moment I touched it I was filled with this overwhelming, warm energy. It was meant to be. To this day I always look for this feeling when choosing a new tarot deck. All my life my occult experiences have been the result of following someone else, until about a year ago when I decided to truly dive into it and research it on my own. It is a whole other world which has opened up to me, and the more I learn the more questions I have. I love this lifestyle that I am trying to make for myself, and I am never turning back.”

@notjustanyannie : “One time, I was at an overnight party at my friends house out in the country. They let me sleep in a guest bedroom. I awoke suddenly in the middle of the night, sure that someone was watching me. I rolled over and saw a boy, about 10 yo, standing beside the bed. He had brown hair and was wearing jeans with a flannel shirt. He was looking right at me, like he wanted to ask me something. I reached over and turned on the lamp, but he was no longer there. I eventually went back to sleep. When I woke up the next day, I told the host what I’d seen. His eyes got really big, and he told me to go tell his wife, G. As I started telling her, she got excited and started to describe the boy along with me, even down to the outfit. Then she told me that she had been seeing him in her dreams for the past two weeks. In her dreams, there were these 2 or 3 people or entities that were trying to take the boy somewhere. She got a really bad vibe from them. He did not want to go with them, and had asked her for help. She was having these intense physical and spiritual battles with these dream entities, and waking up with actual injuries. She and her husband both told stories of terrible battles that she finally awoke from, battered and exhausted. She was really concerned for the boy, and afraid of what might happen if she couldn’t help him get away. After we talked, I went home to rest. I napped for a couple of hours, to recover from the overnight party. Later that same day, my two housemates told me that strange things had started happening in our house that day. Little ‘poltergeist’ things, like items being moved around or doors opening and closing. Then, over the next few days, I also started seeing lots of little things, including cabinet doors opening and closing behind your back in the kitchen, things like that. Nothing scary to us, it never felt threatening in any way. A few days later, I was talking with my female housemate and I told her about seeing the ghost boy, and about G’s dreams. She asked if I thought that the boy might be related to our new 'ghost visitor?’ I decided to call G and see what she thought. When I contacted G, she said she had not seen the boy, nor had any dreams since I had been there. We decided the boy had somehow hitched a ride home with me. We all thought this was where the story ended, but many months later, I found out it had another chapter! We had to move not long after this, for completely unrelated reasons. While our landlord was showing the place, D & C, a couple I sorta knew (through other friends), came and looked at the place. They ended up moving in after we left. We never got a chance to talk to them before they moved in, and didn’t tell them about our ghost friend. Almost a year later, I was at another friends house and ran into D. I asked him how it was going, living at the house. His eyes got big, and he told me about their experiences in the house after we left. He told me that he and C had the same type of little things happen that we did, things getting moved around, doors opening & closing, nothing big. But they had another housemate, and he had terrible battles with a spirit presence or something. It apparently was really focusing on him, and making his life miserable. He was really struggling to keep it together, until finally he asked them to call in an exorcist! He felt like his life was in danger. They had an exorcist come out, and she did a house reading. She said that the room he was sleeping in (one we hadn’t used), had an open passageway to the really old pioneer cemetery just over the next hill, and spirits could easily pass through. She called it “a spirit superhighway”! She did a banishing and then a closing ceremony, and sealed off the portal. They (D & C) didn’t have any more problems there afterwards, but their housemate moved out anyway. So that’s how it ended, as far as I know… “

@newenglandyankee : “Reached enlightenment by age 19 from constant meditation through a journey into myself, there was a flushing sensation where the third eye is and white light. From there I unlocked new conscious levels, lucid dreaming and astral body, amongst other things.”

@dr-gene-ray: “I could talk about the manifestation of The Tower between hod and netzach & my enriching Enochian experiences but I feel those are too idiosyncratic and emotional to interest anyone but me. So other than the amazing personal growth, one of my coolest occult happenings is: I once (accidentally) caused a mans death. I don’t necessarily feel guilty but I do now see the importance of clearly defined boundaries while working the lemegeton hahah”

3 notes · View notes

kittymaverick · 7 years

Text

Tyranny Tarot Card Motifs: Major Arcana

So some folks in the Discord asked about Tarot Cards and who would be what. I’ve some knowledge in tarots, so I’ll post what I think are good symbolic equivalents with explanations below. There might be some spoilers so read at your own risk. Edit: Made to finish some entries that were missing (?) and a few place with weird wording.

The Fool: Young Fatebinder This one’s pretty simple. The fool is a blank slate, ready to begin it’s journey. The Young Fatebinder at the very start of the game is therefore the perfect example of the fool.

The Magician: Lantry At first it might look like this is because sage = mage, it’s actually a bit more than that. Lantry isn’t actually necessary a good representation of a Magician is like, perhaps minus his versatility, breadth of knowledge, chronicler and jack of all trades tendencies. Rather, he’s more of a WITNESS to the Fatebinder’s actions, all of which can be classified under the Magician card.

The High Priestess: Verse This one surprised me, because it was a coincidence post elimination, but Verse, murderous and ruthless as she may be, exhibited an incredible amount of insight, especially in a fight. It’s part of how her ability to learn any skill comes from, without her really knowing exactly what is going on.

The Empress: Amelia This is from a bit later in the game unfortunately, plus some say Eb would be a good candidate, which I agree, except emphasis on the would part. (See the Hanged man below for why.) That leaves the very protective mother of the unexpected baby as the perfect, almost literal (it runs in the family even! Look below!) representation of the nurturing and protective nature of the Empress.

The Emperor: Graven Ashe Graven Ashe is the stereotypical representation of the Emperor from the get go: in command, laying down the rules, protective and paternal. There couldn’t be a better candidate for this.

The Hierophant: Tunon I know, I know. WTF is Tunon doing HERE instead of Justice. I’ll explain part of it here. Tunon, though he is the Archon of Justice, is one who IMPLEMENTS Kyros’ Law upon the newly conquered Tiersmen. He is the one who introduces them into Kyros’ empire and the society at large, and helps them conform to it. Not only that, he HAS an organization under him that helps him implement those rules. Though he may look like a representation of Justice, he role in Tyranny lore is in fact the very definition of what a Hierophant is.

The Lovers: The alliance? This one really threw me for a loop, because there wasn’t any significant relationships that is obviously romantic, nor do we know of any couple in game where both parties are alive, nor in a healthy relationship. Death Knell and Fifth Eye was suggested at one point, which I thought of for a while, then rejected because that’s more “carnal catharsis”, as Lantry would put it. So instead, we’ll have to settle for the next best representation of forming relationships that can be found in the game: forming an alliance on the rebel path. There IS an option though that may be considered, even though it’s not romantic (lovers in tarot doesn’t automatically mean romance, though it heavily leans toward it). It’s not in the game itself, nor does it actually pass the “both parties are alive” test, technically. But if anyone has read the short story “The Epistolary of Song and Stone”, you would know that Cairn and Sirin had the most innocent, pure, and healthy friendship on the face of Terratus going on. Next time you kill Cairn, think about what you just did and feel guilty.

The Chariot: Barik Chariot and Strength are actually two very commonly confused cards even in general Tarot culture, because Chariot represent Strength, while Strength represent...while...itself. XD However, there is indeed a different. Chariot is about using the strength one possess to work towards a goal. It’s about gaining control and steering you to where you want to be despite obstacles. It’s about bringing an order to the chaos around you. All these are very well represented by our resident stuck-in-his-armour Disfavoured, Barik.

Strength: Sirin I didn’t pick this just because it’s a tiny girl opening a lion’s mouth in the picture, I swear! The card Strength itself is different from Chariot in that control itself is the goal. In Sirin’s case, she’s still a budding archon learning to use and expand her powers over the course of the game. Her power itself is a form of mind control. Of course, we know she gets stronger at the end of the game should you guide her, but does she become someone who use that power for good, or someone who use that power for evil? The dual nature of nearly all tarot card is actually also part of the consideration of which symbol represent what.

The Hermit: Kills-in-Shadows With this one, I did take some artistic liberties in why Kills is the Hermit. Killsy’s motivation in game was to survive by being in the shadow of the strongest person in the Tiers, which is very far flung from the typical Hermit, representing introspection and solitude. However, on closer examination, you can see a resemblance, as the hermit isn’t just about looking into one self, it’s also about hiding yourself away. Killsy’s powers and intention is very much that, and who could blame her, given that she’s the sole survivor of the Shadowhunter’s clan?

Wheel of Fortune: Ascension Hall Runic Hall Edit: Somehow I missed writing the explanation for this one! The wheel of fortune is the representation cycles, luck and turnings points of life. Think of the dharmachakra, if you will. In Tyranny, I think the runic halls, especially Ascension Hall Runic Hall, is a good symbolic equivalent given that it is the location where the Fatebinder took their first step towards becoming the what they will be.

Justice: Tunon’s gavel, his mask, and the Scales of Mercy Okay, back to the topic of why Tunon =/= justice. Tunon himself pointed out that Kyros’ Law doesn’t ACTUALLY serve justice in principle as much as it should. By extension, he, the instrument that her laws are delivered though, therefore cannot be justice ITSELF even if Kyros is adamant of making him the very symbol of it. In fact, the endeavour itself is impossible. He knows Justice a notion that you reach for, not something you can truly embody. That being said, the gavel, mask and scales, however are symbols that can represent what is it he technically wants be serving.

The Hanged Man: Eb Other than being the only one with enough rope to tie herself to a post, Eb has sacrificed everything to the war with Kyros. Family, the School of Tides, Country, home, she’s pretty much lost all of it. At the same time, she’s forced to contend with the new life of living under the Overlord’s rule. This is the embodiment of the Hanged Man: Sacrifices and change in perspective. Of course, being incredibly stubborn, Eb isn’t quite ready to hand everything over yet, which is often represented when the Hanged Man is upside down.

Death: Kyros Death represent change, it represent endings, beginnings, and transition. While Kyros, faceless like our representations of Death IRL, never shows up in the game, she’s the driving force of introducing change to the Tiers, all be it through her armies and Archons.

Temperance: Matani Sybil The reason why I associate Temperance with Sybil is mostly because of the water motif. Whether she embodies the virtue is a matter of debate, though I think giving rude gestures across a river is rather reserved in comparison to other actions. XD

The Devil: Bleden Mark Ah, the Devil. The Temptation, materialism, addiction and surprise surprise, bondage. Mark doesn’t seem much of a threat on other paths until he stabs you at the end of the game, but on anarchy he plays the role of the Devil down to the “is he serving you, or are you serving him” bit. Also, the Binding of Shadows? It’s like he can’t wait to put something on you that says “THIS ONE’S MINE”.

The Tower: The Mountain Spire The Tower is the one frigging card in the Major Arcanas where the meaning does not change no matter which way you turn it, other than perhaps your reluctance towards what is to happen. It’s destruction, it’s upheaval, an explosive conflict. So what better object can we find than the Spire from which we rain destruction and upheaval upon as the game’s representation of the Tower?

The Star: Tarkis Arri The Star is the thing that brings hope to someone (you know, because you wish upon it), or inspires you to do something. It’s about what makes you start something new, or in this case, a rebellion. Arri, being the leader of the rebels, is therefore a good fit for the card.

The Moon: The Voices of Nerat Moon is the symbol of illusions and lunacy. Nerat is all about trickery, secrets and being off his rocker. These two were made for each other like Ashe was made for the Emperor.

The Sun: Florian Pelox, or should it be Travost? Or maybe ELDIAN? We might just have to go with Vittles here... @elegiacescapist, you might be right. Okay, with this one, I just wanted to throw someone from the first act in. My justification was “you know if he wasn’t so hostile Florian is pretty much a cheery and boisterous guy”. And if you don’t think about it too hard, it fits! Actually, you know what? He’s kinda a bravado-fill war jockey. Florian’s brother, Travost, seems chill though, and I think they have the same game model so we don’t have to change anything. The alternative of Eldian is really weird because usually, the Sun is represented by a boy toddler (a bit of a reference to Apollo) and associated with youth. However, Eldian does exhibit some of the traits of the Sun, especially in the positivity and warmth. Plus you know, he lives under the Sunset Spire... Though in honestly, Elegia’s suggestion of Vittles is a pretty good fit that you can’t argue too much against. Soooooo until further notice, I think we’ll go with the poor forced into conscription boy.

Judgement: Edict (of Execution, though all fits) Speaks for itself.

The World: The Tiers Speaks for itself.

#Tyranny game #Tarot #Tyranny lore #lore #It's been a while since I've done some heavy analysis like this

11 notes · View notes