David Cox, head of development at Konami EU and producer of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, doesn't want Mercury Steam to be pigeonholed as a studio that only makes Castlevania games.
Of course, that sentiment is perpetuated more by the fact that Mercury Steam is working on two Castlevania games at the moment. There's the sequel to Lords of Shadow, aptly titled Lords of Shadow 2; and there's also Mirror of Fate for the 3DS — which is also a spin-off of Lords of Shadow.
Cox goes on to say that they're aiming to finish Lords of Shadow's story in the sequel and move on.
We’ll somebody else can do that. I don’t want to be known as Mr Castlevania, and we don’t want the team to be known as the Castlevania team. Working in a creative industry, you’ve got other projects and other ideas you want to work on. And that’s something that we and Mercury Steam want to do. We want to work on other projects. We’ve got other ideas…We were surprised by the success of our game and weren’t sure that we were going to get the chance to do another one. That’s why there’s the epilogue in the first. However, now that we’ve got the chance to finish the story we really want to do it justice and do something really special.
So, what does the team want to work on next if it's not another Castlevania? Try Contra. Yep, the old-school shooter is on their docket.
I want to do something else. I love Contra. I’d love to do Contra. At Mercury Steam we’ve got an original idea that I think is really awesome. We’d love to bring that idea to market and I’m hoping that the success of Lords of Shadow 2 will allow us to do that.
Some of you might remember that a Contra game was teased at last year's E3 by Konami. Sadly, no new info has been released or if it's even on the plate now.
As someone who loved Lords of Shadow, I hope Mercury Steam can wrap up the story in their own way. If so, they can then move on to successfully reboot another franchise. Of course, the fact that Lords of Shadows 1 is the highest-selling Castlevania game of all time doesn't make that easier for them. I can imagine Konami would want them on the saddle yet again if LOS2 rakes in the dough, no?
Source: VG247
