that was to me, the running theme of los1, the idea that gabriel belmont was expendable, that he was little more than a tool being used by forces he himself scarce comprehended.
in castlevania lords of shadow, you play as gabriel belmont, the eponymous first of his lineage, a belmont who, in many ways, is a combination of many belmonts and even vampire hunters (see van helsing for the most obvious inspiration) but still very much not a hero.
in the opening we get a taste of who gabriel belmont was through his combat, he was rough, violent, vicious, he dominated and destroyed the werewolves who plagued the small town he was defending.
in fact, his fighting style was so extreme that the villagers themselves almost turned on him out of fear once the werewolf siege had ended.
but who was gabriel belmont really?
anger, violence, the thirst for vengeance, but not vengeance against a single monster or sinner, but against all who he perceived as evil.
we begin to understand that gabriel is not a subtle or understanding person, he's violent, angry, and he likes to group the objects of his hate together indifferently, killing those who attack him, throttling those who annoy him.
he was also blatantly racist, as seen when he spoke to cornell "I am on desecrated land, and you, and those of your clan, do not deserve to live!"
the immediate "writing off" of an entire species in that one statement alone showed that gabriel had no compassion for werewolves, the majority of which were victims of a plague created by the dark lord.
victims. gabriel didn't care, in his mind they were evil and they were going to die.
he held vampires and ghouls in the same contempt and was not above killing innocents if it served his ends, take for example the fairy subweapon, every time gabriel used them, they'd die. hell he could kill them himself if he imbued them with light magic.
the self-centered "discard those who aid you" theme with the fairies was brought in shortly after gabriel had unwittingly killed claudia in his sleep and was forced to face the black knight, furthering his confusion and feeding a rage that would one day consume him entirely.
along his journey gabriel becomes increasingly vile in his actions, when he hears that an abbot went insane and abandoned his people, instead of trying to reason the abbot's madness and helping the man out of the prison he made for himself, gabriel immediately condemns his actions, despite being told that it was only due to the abbot going mad with terror, and takes the relic while abandoning him to die in the abbey he holed himself up in.
later on zobek himself begins to marvel at just how brutal and violent gabriel has become, impressed by his hate-filled determination to end all evil.
it isn't until the fight with pan that we see just how far his conviction to defeat evil runs, when he faces pan, fighting the old god to the death and impaling him on his own silver wings.
instead of apologizing, he demands to know "why did you make me fight you?" as though he had no self control, that he was going to kill anyone who stood in his way, and that pan's death wasn't his fault, but rather, it was pan's for throwing himself in gabriel's path.
this "I am destroying evil, all who stand in my path are wicked" mentality begins to evolve into something far worse at this point.
let's not even begin to revisit the fact that he aids a witch who openly admits to killing members of his own brotherhood and eating them without batting an eye, just to get the help he needs.
gabriel belmont was a proud, vain being who hungered for destruction and death but wouldn't immediately take that last step and embrace it.
when speaking to death's impostor, the necromancer laughs at him, stating that "we are the same, you and I! you revel in death!" to which gabriel merely replies "You will not stop me!" Not "You're wrong! I am a hero! i am a force for god!" no, it was "You will not stop me!" you won't stand in my way, you won't even begin to slow the murder train.
of course the necromancer even admits it himself, going so far as to summon a dracolich that gabriel kills to prove the point.
when zobek finally confronts gabriel belmont with "well done! I see you have united the powers...excellent!" gabriel replies with "let's put an end to this, once and for all."
right here gabriel's visage changes to one almost hungry, as though he's fully prepared to kill zobek, expecting a challenge from him, almost as though he knew zobek was going to betray him, albeit for reasons based on zobek being a member of the brotherhood of light, whereas gabriel fell from their graces in secret.
however, when zobek pulls a zobek and turns into death, killing gabriel after revealing to him that every dark impulse he's enacted has been largely due to gabriel's influence, we see that gabriel feels genuinely upset before he dies.
because he finds out that he killed his own wife.
then gabby dies, zobek gets a zobek of his own pulled by satan, and gabriel returns to life as an angel to fight him (no, really, the game over tip screen outright says that gabriel is an angel at that point)
Satan, upon realizing gabriel has returned to life, immediately sees the value in having one such as him serving under him, any man that could kill the lords of shadow with such power and determination must be formidable indeed.
when gabriel refuses and cites god's love and forgiveness, satan is understandably outraged because it seems like the height of hypocrisy coming from one who was about to kill an elder of the brotherhood of light not mere moments ago.
.jpg)
the two fight, gabriel wins and god marks gabriel belmont as his chosen one, gabriel even gets to put on the god mask and finds out, to his horror, that this whole nightmarish quest, the whole goddamned thing, was just a sick lie cooked up by zobek.
there was never any prophecy to make him god's chosen one, god rewarded him with that role of his own accord based on gabriel's sudden increase in devotion, and indeed, at that moment when he fought satan, he had truly become a holy being.
when he found out that his human life had been returned and he'd be forced to live in repentance, he was understandably depressed that he wouldn't be able to share it with the woman he loved, but grudgingly, when the vampire laura called him to castlevania for aid, he resolved to do exactly that.
it was all he had really.
but laura had other plans, and she revealed that a near-godlike creature was about to be unleashed, the forgotten one, and after spending much time in the castle alongside laura and pitying the poor chibi-vampiress, he's finally told the cruel truth.
he has no choice but to save the world, and the only way to enter the forgotten one's prison and do exactly that is by taking laura's life, drinking all of her blood and becoming a vampire himself.
this sickening realization comes with another epiphany
god set him up for this.
he was the only one who'd have even been remotely capable of killing the forgotten one, he was the only one who could have made it to the prison at all.
and if he just let the beast free or waited for assistance, the forgotten one would be freed and the world he'd promised marie he'd help save would die.
and with marie's memory most evident on his thoughts, gabriel belmont commits the horrible act of killing a child-vampire and enters the prison.
it's at this point that gabriel is understandably furious, not only with laura, but with god, god who put him through this, his just reward for saving the world and even volunteering to save it a second time is to be forced into a situation where he had to discard the humanity he'd been told to preserve?
in gabriel's mind, god's sin had been committed, the betrayal enacted, and this demon he'd been put in the same prison with would be his first prey as the vampire lord dracula.
this demon would bear the unimaginable weight of gabriel's fury, and it would literally beg for mercy before he ended it.
he even says as much upon their first meeting, his words boiling over with unbared wrath as he shouts at the creature: "Enough talk! have at you!"
the forgotten one, shortly after their first confrontation, is genuinely impressed with the newborn vampire's prowess and even admits that it now holds him in a new respect.
once it makes its escape, gabriel trails it, always four feet behind it, in one of the most imposing stalker sequences imaginable, dracula is always at the fiend's side, shadowing its movements, remaining in its blind spots, waiting for the moment when it would have to weaken itself by unlocking the doors to its prison and striking.
finally he finishes the creature off, skinning it alive and cutting it in half after absorbing its near-godlike power.
and then gabriel, staring at his cross, this symbol he's carried with him, staring right at the emblem of his god, crushes it in a blind rage and enters castlevania and the real world, leaving its broken fragments behind, along with his faith in god.
thus, becoming the dracula of the lords of shadow series.
Los is followed shortly by mirror of fate, where you play as the belmonts who were hidden from gabriel because (surprise) god and fate had indeed set gabriel up, as had the brotherhood, and the prophecy he'd been fulfilling was one that would turn him into god's opposite, the prince of darkness.
mirror of fate faces gabriel with not only the betrayal of the brotherhood, but that of his own wife, the last remaining pillar of his humanity which crumbles by the time simon faces him.
it also shows that there was one remaining pillar, his own son, whom he turns into a vampire after killing him, having done so without knowing trevor's true identity until the last moment.
with his son returned from the grave, dracula desperately tries to convince him to join, but when alucard refuses, gabriel goes mad with fury and decides to just say "to hell with all of it"
and the theme of mirror of fate is made painfully clear.
"Dracula is here to stay."
Dracula, the main antagonist of castlevania and the protagonist of the lords canon, ain't going anywhere.
lords of shadow 2 carries this out rather well, making you think that gabriel might want redemption or eternal peace, then turning the tables by reminding you from the outset that "dracula is here to stay."
dracula, lord of darkness, ain't going anywhere.
lords of shadow 2 has one twist however, one that does "redeem" dracula and put an end to the madness of his quest for vengeance, during his time in the dream castle he's faced with pieces of his own humanity that roam the castle as apparitions of his past, namely young trevor, the physical love he has for his son.
whenever dracula has to enter the castle or leave, it's his love for his son turned white wolf who guides him.
whenever dracula is making a crucial decision, it's because his love for his son made manifest inspired it.
and it's here that dracula as a character becomes fully realized, because in castlevania, dracula always held love for his son, and it's this theme that carries on within lords of shadow 2 as dracula's only redeeming quality, one that even prompted him to forgive marie for her betrayal.
but is dracula truly redeemed?
No, he's never going to serve god again, but he's not going to hate him for all eternity either.
if los1 and MoF were the death of gabriel belmont, lords of shadow 2 are dracula's coming to terms with the parts of his heart he'd thought long dead and regaining enough of a semblance of humanity that he will no longer plague mankind as the ultimate evil.
he may no longer serve god, but he will serve mankind, if only for his son's sake.
but in the end, dracula is here to stay.
and that's really all that needs to be said, every part of lords of shadow 2, dracula's character is already mostly developed. However, as seen in the various encounters with creatures of the night from his disregard for his servants, his conflict with the castle, his fights with the children of satan, it's all about one thing.
Burying Gabriel Belmont's memory and making Dracula as a character at least somewhat redeemable.
Gabriel Belmont was, despite his good intentions, a very evil person at his core, zobek even cited him as being "naturally evil" and already holding a terrible darkness within him. his descent into madness as dracula shows this to its extremes. his capacity for evil was so great that even his humanity could scarce contain that already deeply ingrained innate savagery, but instead of being directed at mankind as a belmont, it's directed at anything inhuman.
thus it becomes truly ironic when he becomes the monsters he's fighting, as he's forced to suffer as they had at the hands of "heroes" just like him who have similarly written off the victims that the creatures of the night were.
The game never revisits the atrocities he's committed, glossing them over in bestiaries and descriptions because really, it's ancient history, heavily implied but never needing an expansion.
if we can imagine what classicvania's dracula would do, then we can get a solid idea of what the lord's dracula has already done.
this game isn't about showing how evil he's become, it's about showing how good he can become in those final moments, when all of his reasons for being evil are now gone, when his suffering finally comes to an end.
but is he gabriel belmont?
no, he's merely a heroic version of dracula, no longer the villain, but not quite a true hero.
and so he'll remain that character, the byronic hero, his great hatred for humanity mercifully held in check by his love for his son.
and that's all we really needed from los2, to see an end to his suffering, to see the pain of betrayals and vengeance finally put down, for those were what fueled his evil.
and now that it's over, dracula can finally rebuild what's left of his life in peace, but again, it's implied, never stated.
why?
because we may see him again, or we may not, the ending was left ambiguous because dracula can be the hero and the villain now, he has both choices and equally good reasons to become both.
in a way, it's the perfect ending because it's subjective to how we perceive the character, do we see gabriel belmont or lord dracula? depending on how you view him, the ending can be taken two different ways.
what is known is that he'll rule the world, but in what sense?
perhaps it's best left to the imagination.
No comments:
Post a Comment