Norguard

Strider and Deuce, I'm glad you guys agree. Technically, real gothic would have been half plate or full platemail, like Simon in the days of yore. Alucard's backward style (to match his backward name) has more to do with 'The Crow' than it has to do with knights in ornate, awe-inspiring castles and churches.

Post 1999 is fine... ...but if I were a Belmont, and I swore that I'd only fight these things with a whip, a knife and some sanctified water, I'd also swear to wear something that would actually protect me long enough to get close enough to actually use those things. ...otherwise it'd be "This is my boomstick!".

There you go. Replace the new, Freddie Prinze Belmont Jr. with Ash - complete with the breastplate. I know he'll make short work of those demons - and spew forth cunning one-liners whilst doing it.

...actually, guys, Vlad Tepes (Tse-pesh) or "Vlad the Impaler" lived in the mid-16th century. He missed the early gothic era by a few hundred years. ...I mean, he was just short of living into the Renaissance. So "Dracula", even though he didn't actually 'live', anyway, didn't live in the Gothic era. Romania and its surrounding lands weren't even that caught up in the European movements. Look at early Russian architecture, compared to the Britains' at the time.

Stoker wrote from his imagination, and that's where these character designs are coming from. Both of those designs are 'anime'. One's gritty, the other's colourful and minimal. They both suffer from 'misunderstood-girlyman' and 'bishoujo-itis' (yes, they're both cute, young girls) and look like a Japanese swing on gothic, and a Japanese swing on a Japanese swing on gothic, respectively. Surprise?

If you're going to march to Konami on a crusade about art style, bring Simon Belmont back with you. Tell him to dress like he did for Simon's Quest. He looked like He-Man in chainmail with half plate on top. There's a man who means business - who can kill a festering zombie or two without having to stop to fix his ridiculously convoluted hairdo.

...actually, while you're at it, tell Simon to bring back his half-RPG, truly free-roaming world from his second game, while you're at it. I miss it, so.

There's no subsurface scattering on the bust. I can't speak for the rest of the photos, but definitely on the face. What you're seeing is a very hi-res normalmapped texture. Source and the Doom3 engine both support the exact same technology. They didn't really show off anything of that resolution, because they knew that it wouldn't perform in real-time, at all on a PC that matched their target audience on their projected release date.

Far Cry bored me. I'd rather be playing on a pretty railroad track with a great story, than in a game that pretended to give you all the freedom in the world, but still expected you to do things the 'right' way.

Anyway, there would be much more realism there if designers/programmers would start looking at the wonders of diffuse lighting, and treating it with a little respect, instead of saturating these pictures with specular gloss. Even the soldier's fatigues shine, and cast ridiculously dramatic shadows.

I know that it's not going to happen, but I'd really like to see a return to the RPG element of Castlevania that hasn't been around since Simon's Quest. I know that with each new game, they try to make a new element - like a collectible card system with mix'n'match powers, but a simple RPG inventory with easy equipment and upgrades, and a non-linear world to traverse (in high definition, stylized 2D, of course)would make my day.

Oh, and a traditional return to Bloody Tears would be great, too.