Castlevania dev diary discusses putting the player in Dracula's boots

A new trailer for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 discusses what it means to put the player in control of one of fiction's greatest villains.

Lords of Shadow 2 sees Gabriel Belmont, the protagonist of the first game, having fallen into darkness and becoming Dracula. The first game took Gabriel from light to dark, says the game's producer Dave Cox, and this game takes him from dark to darker, being significantly crueler than its predecessor.

Dracula is not a nice person, of course, but this incarnation of him is intended to be more complicated and human than iterations in previous Castlevania titles, where all he did was show up and be evil. This was the purpose of having a game explaining his fall, say the devs, in that he becomes a character that human players can relate to.

The video also covers what the actor playing Dracula brought to the role and how he influenced the developers' portrayal.

Lords of Shadow 2 is scheduled to hit PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 next February.