Dracula: Origin demo
The 600Mb-and-a-bit Dracula: Origin Demo attracts my attention this morning on Gamers Hell, if only because of a splendid title line: "Can you imagine what it feels to be an immortal vampire, to love and hate eternally?". Well, we're not sure about the immortal vampire bit, but Alec especialy is well up to speed on the hate eternally thing. Not so sure about the love, as it sounds like it may involve hand holding and smelly girls, and we despise all forms of human intimacy. Anyway - haven't had a chance to play the point and click adventure yet, but there's a trailer out beneath the cut, along with one of those second-by-second breakdown things.
00:02: Title. “Dracula: Origin” with a subtitle “The Adventure Game” which is handy, because it sets us up for what's coming next. Point and clicking, yes? If only other developers would follow suite in this clarity-over-all approach. Sins of a Solar Empire (The Space 4X-real-time game), Armageddon Empires (The Turn-based post-apocalypse strategy game) and Beowulf (The film game that's a lot nob). It also suggests that there's other Dracula: Origin games in Focus' vaults – like Dracula Origin: The bejewelled clone and similar.
00:06: Epic music starts on slow pan across book shelves. Immediately you start to worry about how you're going to get a dramatic trailer out of a point and click adventure.
00:08: Close up on newspaper and letter shoved beneath the door. Hmm. Also hope this doesn't suggest a pencil/paper/door problem (SPOILERZ: Ever adventure game ever).
00:11: A bloke reading a letter. A Victorian lady playing a piano. A foppish looking bloke leaning forward in a chair. Since the cuts are happening every second or so, you realise the way they're going to try and make a trailer is a series of rapid across rapidly more melodramatic music. And I'll be damned if I'm doing a sixty-plus entry one of these to note 'em all, so it's going to be edited highlights from now on.
00:22; Relatively fancy fade effect of woman, tortured and writhing in bed faded over some country side.
00:26: Ooh! Cultists in a ruined temple worshipping some kind of demon god. DARK POWERS BEYOND OUR KEN 4 THE WIN, etc.
00:28: A close up in a aged book of what I think is Onions for a second, before realising it's more likely to be Garlic.
00:31: A completely empty street, which looks like Assassin's Creed after a bomb scare.
00:34: Was that Lenin?
00:38: Music picks up. Horse and carriage racing.
00:44: Really rapid cuts leading to sexy lady walking towards us.
00:46: Obvious follow on from sexual titilation: Man walking towards a bookshelf. Bookshelves make me hot.
00:48: Rocks falling in a rockfall.
00:53: Music picks up again. Foppish bloke turns towards camera, determinedly.
00:54: Hunchbacked ugly dude opens door, holding a lantern. It's Egor! Win!
00:58: Lots of hard cuts between people picking up weapons, hammering in stake (USE STAKE WITH COFFIN) and someone running around on fire.
00:59: Sexy woman has fangs. I knew it. I bloody well knew it.
01:00: An alligator. Or a crocodile. I can't examine its teeth it appears so quick. The alligator being the totemic animal of the vampire is well known, of course.
01:03: A really awesome zoom on Igor's face. Yay! I'd play any game where I got to be Igor.
01:06: The bloke reading a letter is back for some reason in a hard cut. Why?
01:08: Trailer ends with a picture of the box, which features the foppish guy lying back on a sofa – or probably, due to incredible foppitude a Chaise Lounge – and looking like he's about to get out his Keats anthology. Or have sex with someone he probably shouldn't.
01:09: Screen starts to darken. Mocking laughter!
01:11: “All you need to know is on www-dracula-origin.com” Which is in the most blood-smeared font they could find, which makes it look quite scary before you realise it's just plugging the website.
More on Dracula: Origin's website, apparently, because that's what websites are for.