Castlevania's Dave Cox: 'We considered PS Vita... for us this is more exciting'
CVG:Dave Cox is a massive Castlevania fan. Throughout our chat he constantly references the 8 and 16-bit classics, suggesting he isn't just a guy who's been randomly chucked onto the franchise. No, he loves it.
(Culture)
"The reason we did it on 3DS, going right back to the beginning again, is that we considered it on Vita as a platform, but I remember the team showing me it on Vita, saying "look, this is the game, it looks great," and I thought "okay, this is really cool."
And then they said: "And this is the 3DS version, but we can do this, we can put the camera in the world, we can sort of play around with people's perceptions so it looks like a 2D game but it's actually proper 3D."
So I was sitting there with Jose Luis, the game's director, and I said: "Jose, we can only do one, mate. We've only got a limited amount of resources. Which one would you rather do?" He said: "Honestly Dave, I'd rather do the 3DS game." For us it's more exciting, there are more possibilities. So as the producer I said: "Okay, we're going to spend two years of our lives working on this, let's do something that the whole team's really enthusiastic about."
The result is an extremely detailed game. Was it difficult to get that level of detail on what's a relatively modest powered handheld?
It was, yeah. We had a lot of help from Nintendo at the very beginning because we originally showed them a prototype and they were saying: "Wow, this looks really good, you guys really know what you're doing", and we were like: "Well, actually, we're struggling with it, can you help us in some way?" And they sent some guys over who worked with us for a bit.
I think we got some really good stuff out of the machine. We found some things about the hardware that we think we could improve on - for example, we used Nintendo's rendering system and we think if we'd have built our own we probably could have improved the graphics even more, but nevertheless we're very happy with it.
It's because we've approached it like a next-gen project. From the beginning we didn't say: "Oh, it's just a handheld game, let's not really focus on it." We approached it as if it was a big next-gen project. We had all the main artists and key team members working on the game and coming in and out of the team, and obviously working alongside the Lords Of Shadow 2 team was good because we could share resources and that kind of stuff.
So it's been a really good experience and we're really happy with the result, to be honest. It feels like a mini Lords Of Shadow game.
The 3D effect is used to dramatic effect at times here...
Absolutely, and as I said before, it also plays with the perception of the player, having them play a 2D game with this fantastic depth and then we bring the camera in, and then later on we fight bosses in third-person and it feels like a proper 3D action game then the camera comes back round to the side. Sometimes in the in-game cut-scenes the camera will come in and move around and when you're playing it's just a really cool effect. That's one of the cool features about the 3DS and I think that's something that makes the game unique. Mirror Of Fate feels a little like Super Castlevania IV at times... the 3D depth effect looks similar to the Mode 7 and rotating room tricks in that game.
Someone actually asked me about that the other day, because you know that rotating room thing? We've got that in Lords Of Shadow 2! I remembered that barrel effect and thought: "We've got to have that."
Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Mirror Of Fate is released in the US on March 5 and Europe on March 8".
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And then they said: "And this is the 3DS version, but we can do this, we can put the camera in the world, we can sort of play around with people's perceptions so it looks like a 2D game but it's actually proper 3D."
So I was sitting there with Jose Luis, the game's director, and I said: "Jose, we can only do one, mate. We've only got a limited amount of resources. Which one would you rather do?" He said: "Honestly Dave, I'd rather do the 3DS game." For us it's more exciting, there are more possibilities. So as the producer I said: "Okay, we're going to spend two years of our lives working on this, let's do something that the whole team's really enthusiastic about."
The result is an extremely detailed game. Was it difficult to get that level of detail on what's a relatively modest powered handheld?
It was, yeah. We had a lot of help from Nintendo at the very beginning because we originally showed them a prototype and they were saying: "Wow, this looks really good, you guys really know what you're doing", and we were like: "Well, actually, we're struggling with it, can you help us in some way?" And they sent some guys over who worked with us for a bit.
I think we got some really good stuff out of the machine. We found some things about the hardware that we think we could improve on - for example, we used Nintendo's rendering system and we think if we'd have built our own we probably could have improved the graphics even more, but nevertheless we're very happy with it.
It's because we've approached it like a next-gen project. From the beginning we didn't say: "Oh, it's just a handheld game, let's not really focus on it." We approached it as if it was a big next-gen project. We had all the main artists and key team members working on the game and coming in and out of the team, and obviously working alongside the Lords Of Shadow 2 team was good because we could share resources and that kind of stuff.
So it's been a really good experience and we're really happy with the result, to be honest. It feels like a mini Lords Of Shadow game.
The 3D effect is used to dramatic effect at times here...
Absolutely, and as I said before, it also plays with the perception of the player, having them play a 2D game with this fantastic depth and then we bring the camera in, and then later on we fight bosses in third-person and it feels like a proper 3D action game then the camera comes back round to the side.
Sometimes in the in-game cut-scenes the camera will come in and move around and when you're playing it's just a really cool effect. That's one of the cool features about the 3DS and I think that's something that makes the game unique.
Mirror Of Fate feels a little like Super Castlevania IV at times... the 3D depth effect looks similar to the Mode 7 and rotating room tricks in that game.
Someone actually asked me about that the other day, because you know that rotating room thing? We've got that in Lords Of Shadow 2! I remembered that barrel effect and thought: "We've got to have that."
Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow - Mirror Of Fate is released in the US on March 5 and Europe on March 8".