Playable Character Poll

I can only choose 1.

Yeah, I was looking back through my old thread yesterday when I saw you make the "attacks & skills" thread. Note that Dominique didn't exist yet when I made that, and later on I say in that thread "hopefully, maybe we can get a Charlotte/Yoko character?" or something like that lol

It's something we're sort of divided on. XombieMike says he thinks Zangetsu/Johannes are the other characters, I'm thinking it's Zangetsu/Dominique or Zang/Gebel.

My thoughts on it recently: people don't really see Johannes as a cool character or someone they want to play and I think the team knew that reaction would happen. He has a whip and that kind of says Belmont (a point I made myself way back for his inclusion), but otherwise I don't think he has much going on playable character-wise unless he has another form/outfit. His outfit and appearance lacks any distinct design for a character you'd play as.

Both Zangetsu and Dominique conversely have much more going on with their character design that stands out or more easily recognized/cool-looking. You could say the same about Gebel, too. One of Mike's points was that Dominique wasn't shown/talked about until later, so it'd be likely she was just a supporting character because of that, but I would wager that all of these characters were planned and thought of back in 2015. If anything, maybe just their final designs weren't finished or he didn't want to show us all the cards at once. Zangetsu was originally supposed to not be shown until "much later", but they used him for that Microsoft show to have something good for the event (and maybe his design was finished earlier than others).

haha, yeah Zangetsu will undoubtedly dominate this poll. What will be a factor in this poll too is what people want vs what they expect. Some people will expect Johannes but want Domi or someone else. You could phrase the poll's intention with a question on if you're asking for their preference or what they think is coming. My impression on both of those just happens to line up.

Yeah, Johannes is just a bit too biege/brown and gray with traveler/merchant clothes for him to strike me as an action character, along with the studious and quiet demeanor. I and several others think of course he's hiding something important behind this guise, which might be his playable persona, but who knows.

A possible counter to my character design point is Albus from OoE - he didn't have much color or flair either and certainly ended up a PC (an unexpected one imo).

A common theme however in playable characters for video games are their association to colors, for recognition and screen presence. We've also seen this from the concept art how the characters so far have their own representative colors - Miriam is obviously blue, Zangetsu is the red, and that leaves potentially Dominique purple (plus a bit yellow) and Johannes only slightly green (just from his cravat and the background of his concept art lol).

Red/blue/purple is a pretty classic pattern. Blue/red are usually interchangeable as player 1 and player 2 (whether you're talking about Contra 1's Bill and Lance, DD Billy and Jimmy, X and Zero (as well as Rock and Proto), Charlotte and Jonathan, or...Miriam and Zangetsu). The 3rd playables in these games most often have some distinct color representation to them.

Well, we know she's an NPC as it is, but Anne apparently exists to take over for her while she's gone. That to me means when she's running around the castle.

Strong case to be made for Gebel too though. Even if he doesn't have his own distinct color theme going on, he will have the cape/cloak and magic going for him. That was enough for Alucard.

heh yeah XombieMike I suggested he clear that up earlier

Shoutouts to that proving my point though: "people don't really see Johannes as a cool character or someone they want to play and I think the team knew that reaction would happen" lol

edit: But I think Angel may have just voted for Johannes too...

You wouldn't violate a non disclosure agreement... so we essentially know what characters aren't playable based on what you voted for... right?!

Why?

One vote was enough for me.
I voted for IGA.

I want them all it's so hard to choose