Update #48: The Village By The Castle

Wow! Good update. Quite a few things to talk about it here, so, let's start:

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Damn, this looks gorgeous! Take a look at the whole  feel this village has. The buildings are crumbling due to the attack and probably due to the eruption of the Laki volcanic fissure, but you can clearly see they are simple buildings, like a rural village. The moon partially hidden by the red sky, the houses and trees in the background. I have to say, things look really promising. The village itself looks great and the whole place looks realistic.

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Some said, here and at the update page on kickstarter, that Miriam looks out of place with the rest of the scenario, as if she was pasted there, like if she was filmed in a chroma key and put it there later on. I also got that feel, but only in some small parts. That felt strange. "Why i think she looks a little off just in some parts of it?" and then, i started to look at the video in a slower motion and understood why.

Take a look at this:





I think that happens due to the colors. In places that have a brighter color, she looks a little off, or out of place. That also reminds me of something. VEPAR also felt off and out of place for some players due to how bright it is colored. Maybe there is a connection? Bright colors in this graphical style are making things look pasted and not really blended in?

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Soooo the shop is going to be here, at the village! Good call. I can guess we will need to clean the whole place of demons, and beat a boss, maybe to save the shop keeper to make him/her move here and start his/her business. If the shop keeper doesn't go inside one of the buildings (prompting you to enter it and show up inside in another map), it would be cool if the shop would be close to the oxcart. The shop keeper could grab a chair, sit down there and put it's items inside the oxcart.
So, Johannes will be here too? What will be his role in the game? Giving out quests? Upgrading shards through alchemy? Advisor? Everything i said? Intriguing...

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"In addition to Johannes...Oh, we can't quite tell you yet, but you'll hear more about them in our later updates. Please look forward to it."
New characters, for sure. The village will have quite a lot of people to talk, grab quests and do stuff. Something close to what Order of Ecclesia did. That would be cool, although it is not really creative.

CLOSING  COMMENTS

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I don't really believe the music is from the village. I still think that music is from a church or something, but they don't want to show us more pieces so, they put that music there as a placeholder.
I also think that the crumbling things are really good, but yeah, we need nice and tidy places too.
Overall, nice update. I like the village and everything still looks good. I give my opinion about the concerns over Miriam looking "a little off".


That's all folks!

Indeed, the shadows seems off on the platforms. It's almost like they have different lighting altogether.

I almost thought she had no shadow on the roof top platforms until I looked closer. The coloring o the platform almost look like it's daytime with light shining downward right at it, but her shadow cast looks like it's almost from the front, which makes it look extremely bizarre.

As for being disappointed with the updates.... I liked the last 2 updates myself, the procedural damage was awesome imo.

Pretty sure it's castle side due to that quote, but it could just be the way I read things. Consider though that although it's not clear if the village is something that Miriam will return to often, it may be and if that is true I'd lean even more towards assuming it's castle side.

Aside from what everyone else has mentioned, I have two things I thought I'd mention:

Directional Aiming - I saw that Miriam has the same Right Stick aiming that she did in the demo. I'm strongly urging that you include an alternate control scheme that ties directional aiming into the Left Stick with movement. The Right Stick aiming felt really weird to me, and takes your fingers away from the face buttons, preventing you from easily and comfortably jumping while aiming. Most games that use the Right Stick shift focus of important actions from the face buttons to the shoulder buttons for that exact reason.

Enkeria Personally, I'd go the other direction and add a shader to the background, but that's partially because I absolutely love her look, and partially because, while I understand and accept that 2.5D had to be used because pure 2D is too costly, I also feel that an attempt to follow the aesthetics of the old games should be made as much as possible.   And they are succeeding to an impressive degree.  As others have said, this village looks like a direct call back to Rondo of Blood.  And I'm not saying that they need to go as low detail as SotN anymore than Miriam is as low detail as Alucard.  But a little stronger shading combined with dialing the small details in the textures down a notch would go a long way toward making it look like a world Miriam would live in and the 2D Castlevania games we all love.

Here is a wild though..

Cel shading applied only on surface that can be interacted by Miriam, and scaled / faded down to zero as further it goes into the distance / background?

While I feel like complaints about Miriam looking disconnected from the environments is a litter hyperbolic, if a change is necessary then I'd hope they change the characters rather than the environments. Miriam has never looked especially good to me. She skews a little too anime and "cute" I think. Especially seeing these fantastic environments a character artsyle closer to Order of Ecclesia would look far better I think. OoE had perhaps my favorite CV artstyle and it wasn't too dissimilar from what we're seeing of Bloodstain's world. Moreover, I've seen a billion characters that look similar to Miriam artistically. I haven't seen many games (if any) that captures the 2D sidescrolling feel of classic platformers using 3D assets as well as Bloodstained is. Seeing a game world scrolling by left, right, up, and down so well while maintaining the detail and presence and atmosphere that only 3D assets provide is truly an achievement. I'd hate to see any of that lost trying to match a standard anime-styled protagonist.

This lady on the other hand would feel much more at home in Bloodstained's gorgeous world.

Mana you are probably aware, but there is some good constructive feedback on the update comments on Kickstarter at the bottom, including Tom Happ's opinion.