Castlevania was close to never happening

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, the franchise reboot from Spanish studio MercurySteam, came very close to being canned, producer Dave Cox has revealed.

“At the beginning there was scepticism and worry and mistrust,” Cox told Eurogamer. “It took us a long time to get this project off the ground – well over a year of convincing people, bringing presentations and showing them the work we were doing.

“People weren’t convinced. At the beginning it was very frustrating. I remember coming back from the States after a presentation thinking, this isn’t going to happen. But slowly and surely we carried on.”

Asked if the game ever faced any serious threat of being canned, Cox said: “Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Many times. Many, many times. In fact, there were a couple of times when it got stopped.”

However, the game eventually got the backing of Hideo Kojima, giving the project a green light to proceed.

“We did a playable level prototype – one of the levels in the middle of the game, actually. We brought it to Japan to a line-up meeting,” explained Cox. “Konami has line-up meets twice a year where all the development studios show what they’ve been working on. At that meeting everything changed. I’ll never forget it. I came out of the meeting, Kojima-san was shaking my hand and talking to me about helping. And then it was, yeah, you guys have got the green light. This is go. Do it. It was a fantastic feeling. After so much hard work and tears and everything else it was brilliant.

“Since that day it was relatively easy. Before that getting the project off the ground wasn’t easy.”

The game was released in the UK on October 8 for PS3 and Xbox 360.