Someone roll up a newspaper and smack me, quick.
(Harder.)
Too late.
The majority of gamers don't know enough about the Holy Bible to keep straight who fathered whom. Yeah, there was this guy and he conceived some bozo with some chick. Lather, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat until we get to Jesus somewhereabouts. Oh boy, Sunday School's over. So long.
Yet, we obsess about the lineage of our favourite video game characters. Lord knows more than one schpincter has been ruptured in an effort to trace Link's bloodline to wherever it started (Ocarina of Time. No, Minish Cap. No--).
Everyone's a little obsessive about their ancestors' original spawning grounds--I'd like to have words with whichever one of my Irish forebears decided to breed with a leprechaun to bestow upon me my towering height of five feet--so it makes sense that we'd wonder a little about game characters and the loins thereof. For instance, the "Symphony of the Night 2" trailer has me wondering about Alucard.
We know Alucard is a dhampire: a half-human half-vampire angsty hybrid mess. His human mother was mistakenly hung out to dry like a piece of laundry and his father decided the whole human race must pay. We know his bloodline is cursed and he keeps meaning to sink into a deep sleep and all that to "end" it, but he just hasn't gotten around to it, y'know?
Alucard serves as an interesting junction in the Castlevania timeline because there's still so much we don't know about him. You may or may not have played Castlevania Legends for the Game Boy; I'm guessing "not." Despite being an epic mess, it hinted that Alucard fathered Trevor Belmont with his lover, Sonia Belmont, before his first failed attempt at taking a big nap. IGA has since said "No no no" and retconned the whole Belmont "origin" with the far more exciting (Zzz) Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. The speculation was fun while it lasted. Of course, I could be thinking about this way too hard and Trevor's tortured bloodline comes from a union between Sonia and a nice farmer.
Another curious little loose end in the Castlevania again comes courtesy of Dracula's son. Eric LeCarde, a no-name brand vampire hunter who co-starred in Castlevania Bloodlines, weilds the "Alucard Spear," which is a pointy weapon of much reckoning. Is it a family heirloom? Is LeCarde a diet vampire? It's possible, since (PORTRAIT OF RUIN SPOILARZ)his daughters, Stella and Loretta, wield magic.(END SPOILAR). Magic can't be found on the ground in the Castlevania series; if someone can shout "Whee!" and throw fire around it's usually because they're descended from some magic-wielding know-it-all further up the timeline. So how did this happen? Well, if you fill in the map in Symphony of the Night, Maria does run after Alucard after he vows to submerge himself again...and graves are cold, cold places...
After all, he just has to be like, "Check out my gravity boots, yo!" and jump on the ceiling. I'd melt, too.
Related Links:
Watcha Playing: Castlevania Portrait of Ruin
When Good Developers Go Bad: Koji Igarashi
Castlevania: Cruse of the Stupid Red-Headed Kid
