Hello everyone, this is the second part of my Castlevania review. In order not to lose the thread of the argument that I am making here, I recommend that you read the first part if you have not already done so.
"A small review of the literary aspect of Castlevania Lords of Shadow" — Hive
Now let's start
THE CHOSEN ONE
One way to identify an epic story is that the main hero has some form of divine favor, and Castlevania presents this in the form of a prophecy, seamlessly integrating the god-chosen hero storyline into the mechanics. One way to capture this in Castlevania is by looking at Gabriel's weapon, the combat cross, which is obviously shaped like the Christian symbol, the cross. We can also delve into this by reading the lore behind the weapon, which was forged for holy purposes and that allows Gabriel to have superhuman abilities.
Furthermore, the idea that Gabriel is the chosen one of God, and so the power of Gabriel is derived from God is justified, as are the game mechanics that present us with Gabriel achieving things that a normal human usually could not. But let's talk about God, the way they integrate Christian lore with the story in the world of Castlevania might seem that it won’t work, but in fact, its epic aspect provides the space to achieve a background that feels alive, and that is that although the story presents us with other gods and this may be contradictory to Christianity, in reality it is not. After all, it has already been presented before how certain ancient versions of the Old Testament show the interpretations of Christianity as henotheistic, that is, the belief that although other gods exist, only one god should be worshiped, in this case “God”.
So, it is not contradictory that castlevania presents other gods, and therefore we are presented with Pan, who with certainty is a representation of the Greek goat-god of nature. As for the way in which they present him, the story addresses him by calling him the Old God, which can be interpreted as a character who loses more and more relevance, which allows us to predict one of the most emotional moments of the game, the death of Pan.
Pan is a special case, the player's reaction can be ambiguous to his participation in the story, several games usually present a character in this way only as a method of exposure, but in this case, Pan was more than that, although the story never makes it totally clear, and not knowing his intentions well, I found myself raising my guard whenever I was with him although a part of me wanted to trust him, so when the game tells me that I have to fight against him, i didn't want to do it, but i had no choice, and this is important to understand, not only did i have no choice for the simple fact that if i didn't fight i wouldn't be able to progress in the game, also narratively, the fight conveys the urgency to fight or die, and that made it difficult and confusing, I didn't want to fight him but I knew I had to, and this feeling of impotence and lack of choice was felt not only by me as a player, but also by Gabriel.
Then in his final moments, we discover that we had to kill him for the prophecy to be fulfilled, which only adds to the difficulty of the matter since we empathize with Pan since he is another tool of the prophecy just as Gabriel is.