Dracula: Origins

Things have been pretty busy on my end but I'm back and eager to talk about games again!  And I'm actually starting off with a game that I'm honestly a little torn about:  Dracula Origin.  I've actually started to write a post about it four times now, each time stopping about midway and deleting it altogether.  

Dracula Origin is not a bad game.  It's got a good, creepy atmosphere.  The music is appropriately doom and gloom.  The graphics are gorgeous to look at.  The puzzles are challenging and enjoyable for the most part.  The story and characters, while somewhat one-note and predictable, aren't terrible and are able to keep enough of my interest.  In fact, all things said Dracula Origins is a pretty decent adventure game.  So why on earth do I feel this way about a fairly straight-forward adventure game?

Well, when I thought about it and thought about it some more I realized that it was the title that absolutely ruined my experience of the game.  Dracula Origin.  The box art displays Dracula, all sexy looking and lounging on a couch with blood dripping off his fingers  When I saw the game on sale on steam I thought at most it would be some good cheesy fun.  In fact, I was kind of intrigued and excited.  A game about Dracula's origins?  Awesome.  The possibility of playing AS Dracula?  Oh man, I was gearing myself up for some emo Dracula moral dilemmas!

So imagine my surprise when I booted up the game for the first time and I start hearing Van Helsing reading a letter from Jonathon Harker, characters from the novel Dracula.  Okay...maybe Harker is searching for Dracula's origins in the castle and it will flash back...no, the game launches straight into the events of the novel and puts you in the shoes of Van Helsing, the vampire hunter obsessed with Dracula's demise.  So it seems this is not an origin story, just another retelling/re-imagining of the novel.  But is it a good retelling at least?

Like the novel, the game centers around Dracula's obsession with Mina, the damsel in distress who is in danger of becoming Dracula's newest vampire bride.  Unlike the novel it gets rid of about 75% of those pesky things called characters and whittles it down to Van Helsing, Mina, Jonathon Harker in letter form and the various NPC's you run into through the game.  So if you're a fan of the novel, this game is going to be a bit jarring for you.

Do you MIND?!  I'm busy!

But do you know what's really missing from Dracula Origin?  Freaking Dracula!  He appears twice: in a cutscene and then at the end in the somewhat lackluster final fight.  But other than that?  Nowhere!  Now, I do realize that the best villains often barely appear in a story.  But because my expectations were completely thrown off, because I sat down expecting an entirely different story than what I got (in a bad way, there are many games I've played where defying expectations actually helped the game), all I could think about was how sucky it was that Dracula was barely around.

Even if a villain isn't always physically present, their presence is usually felt.  Think about any murder mystery or psychological thriller.  The killers are never seen, but there is a huge build-up to the final meeting.  Think about villains like Moriarty, Kevin Spacey in Seven (I can never remember his name), even Jack the Ripper in Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper.  You saw their hand in everything.  They had almost mythical feels about them.  You'd see the effect they had when you see the way people talk about them.

At this point, he's STILL wondering if Dracula lives here...guh...

Dracula Origin unfortunately just sort of fell short of this.  It wasn't as though they didn't try.  Admittedly, one of the first locations you go to is an abandoned house where Dracula is supposedly staying and that creeped me right out.  But after that?  The game kind of feels like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego Dracula style.  You guess where he's going next, but by the time you get there he's off to another country.

There is fear in the people you run across, but they don't know what they're fearing.  No one but Van Helsing ever really puts together that you know, MAYBE this guy is something to fear.  By the time the end comes around, you mostly just want to get the killing overwith.  In fact, the best location in the game has nothing to do with Dracula.  It's an Egyptian Temple he just happened to visit.  I was more interested in the dark and sinister history behind that than the actual vampire I was chasing!

Also, don't get me started on the dreariness of this guy.

All of this because of a simple word in the title:  Origin.  Whether it was because the developers wanted to hook people into buying the game or because there was some copyright issues with just using the title  "Dracula" it was still a poor word to choose to label this game.  If it had been a different title, or if it had been a better adaptation, or even if it had been a bolder re-imagining, then I might have been able to enjoy it more.  As it was, this is a decent game with some extremely poor marketing choices.  I guess if you want a vampire origin story, go with the Soul Reaver games (which I will get to soon).

But hey, upon reading some reviews a lot of people actually liked this.  So it might make a difference if you know what kind of story you're getting into because it's actually a fairly engaging game otherwise.  If you're expecting to see a lot of Dracula though...I wouldn't get your hopes up.