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How Robert Carlyle Influenced The Design Of Castlevania's Dracula
It takes a lot of work to design a character, especially a character with as much history as Castlevania's Dracula. Actor Robert Carlyle helped put his stamp on the iconic villain, and even altered his design for Konami's Lords of Shadow series.
During a sit down interview with actor Robert Carlyle and producer Dave Cox, the two talked about the evolution of the design of Dracula throughout the series.
"I didn't get to see any character designs or art for the game before the performance," said Carlyle, "I think that Dave and the team brought me on board to actually give something of myself to the project rather than just, 'okay, say the lines this way, and try to get them within 2.4 seconds.' It was never like that. It was quite an organic process. They were really open to interpretation, and they gave me a lot of leeway to give this performance a lot of gravitas and emotional weight that we thought it needed."
Left, Robert Carlyle, A.K.A. Dracula, middle, Ben Reeves, and right, Dave Cox, Lords of Shadow 2 producer.
"The character actually changed a lot once Robert was on board," said Cox. "There is actually a little bit of Robert in the character. When we originally designed Gabriel, he was much more of a big muscly, Conan-type character. When Robert came on board we realized that we needed to make him a bit more of an everyman and a more realistic character. Once Robert did his performance then we started to tweak him even more. In fact, we're still tweaking the character pretty much on a daily basis to try and get him to fit the performance that Robert has done."
"But as you can see, physically we look almost the same." added Carlyle.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 comes out this winter, check out our recent preview of the game here.
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