Castlevania producer says DLC "was a mistake"
Mercury Steam did not plan to have DLC for its Castlevania revamp
Konami head of product planning and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow producer Dave Cox believes the game's downloadable content was "rushed" and a "mistake". Cox told Gameranx that both expansions, Reverie and Resurrection, were unplanned, so they weren't everything they could've been.
"The problem was that the game's success caught everyone by surprise. It caught senior management by surprise and they wanted us to do DLC," said Cox. "We never planned to do DLC, so we ended up doing DLC after the fact and in hindsight that was a mistake. It was rushed. We had to rush it to market."
"I think we enriched the story that we wanted to tell, but I think if we were going to do DLC again it would have to be planned right from the get go. And it wouldn't be something that would try to build upon an ending-it would be something that's perhaps a side story that enriches the original story. If we were going to do DLC again it would be something much more carefully considered."
"When you have success there's pressure on you to bring something else to market very quickly," he said. "And I think it was wrong of us to do that."
Cox admits that he doesn't like most current DLC implementations, but counts Bethesda's Dawnguard expansion for Skyrim as a stand-out.
"I'm not a big fan of most modern day DLC. I think if DLC is going to be done it has to complement the main game-not be a continuation of the main story but more of a side story. It should add to the experience, not take away from it," he added.
"Well, there's a market for it-but I think people want to get value for their money so I think that in that respect you need to give them an expansion of the universe you've created. Like what they've done with Skyrim. Instead of giving players a part of the story and giving them the other part as DLC, I think the DLC has to expand the universe of an already whole product."
Konami and Mercury Steam are currently working on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, coming to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2013.