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Thanks to the super-cool dudes at On The Stick, I played Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Now that I’ve talked about the gameplay, I get to talk about the plot. So, I suppose, this is spoiler territory if you care. Consider yourself warned.

—OMG SPOILARZ—

Poor Patrick Stewart.

There is so much bad monologue in this game. Every level opens up with some, and Patrick Stewart reads all of it, and it’s all terrible. I mean, my good buddy Patrick Stewart (yes, I have to write his whole name out every time) does his best, but man. Man. It was painful to listen to, because I know he can do better. I want him to make good money, of course, because he deserves it, but man. Man.

Basically, one Gabriel Belmont has had his wife killed. He’s a member of “The Brotherhood,” an organization that seems to exist mainly to have it’s knights die in places all over the world so that there’s always a corpse with a power up or background info around any adventuring location. He gets told that the world kind of sucks because of the Lords of Shadow by some dude named Zobek, who is Patrick Stewart, and that if he fufills some prophecy, and kills them all, then hey, maybe things will get better. This involves a mask for some reason I was never clear on. Oh, and Gabriel is also told he can revive his wife this way.

It’s not very deep, and there are no real twists and turns. Okay, there’s a twist, but it’s not a REAL one by any means. Basically, Zobek is the third Lord of Shadow in disguise. Or something along those lines. That’s just kind of lame. Also, I guess he used mind control to make you kill your wife, and that makes you unable to go to heaven? Something like that. In any case, no real surprises. Side characters appear, and are gone next level, and you don’t really give a shit about them, even when they die heroically. Even when you kill Pan, the person you probably interacted with the most, it doesn’t really mean much, because half the time he’s just a plot contrivance to get you to a new-looking location. One of which is the land of the dead. I think? I got a bit confused as to why I was where in the end, I admit. It just wasn’t interesting enough to keep my attention.

In the end, Patrick Stewart, now a guy in a dumb mask with horribly stupid-looking animation, talks for awhile, and then suddenly Satan appears for some reason. Satan is the last boss. He is by far easier than many other bosses in the game. Satan is kind of a pushover. You kill him, and he’s kind of gone, and there’s no reason for any of it. Somehow, though, this brings the plot to a close.

There are credits.

Then there’s a scene where, in modern day, Zobek goes to see Gabriel, who is still alive, and tells Zobek to call him Dracula. He then falls out a window.

What the fuck.

This event makes no sense at all. Zobek was killed by Satan, so why is he there? Why is Gabriel suddenly a vampire? Especially considering he doesn’t look anything like all the vampires I killed in the game. Is this supposed to set up a sequel? How could it? Does this relate to actual Castlevania canon in any way? I know enough to be perplexed at the very notion that it might. It was a pretty scene, I guess, but it’s disconnected from literally everything else in the game, and that’s the last thing they leave you with.

Yeah. the story in the game is kind of a clusterfuck. It sucks that games just can’t hack it often in that regard. Luckily, you can mostly ignore it, but especially with the production values on the game, it would have been so much better if there was something to care about. Oh well.