Official Xbox Magazine has published an article about Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 in which were finally revealed the first concrete details on the Konami title. Let's look at them together.

First it was confirmed that Lords of Shadow 2 ends the story of Gabriel/Dracula began in the previous title. The developers emphasize how this player's progress will be less driven; for example, the handles and objects with which you can interact will be shown only if the player wants, and at higher difficulty levels will not be noticeable at all. With regard to the exploration of levels, on the other hand, this will proceed this time without interruptions or pauses for loading: end-of-mission screens were replaced with teleportation points similar to those of the old Castlevania, which will allow us to move quickly in places already visited game map. Another novelty is the handling of the camera, no longer fixed and rotatable at will, but the player can also decide not to touch it and if so will behave exactly as the first LoS.

The action game takes place now through two distinct time periods: most of the story takes place nowadays in environments designed for maintaining the Gothic style of the series, while a portion will take place in the castle in a different time era. Platformer stages will be present and improved compared to the past, while we will find the possibility to unlock secret areas using new powers in areas already explored; This time, however, this does not allow us to simply uncover hidden chests but will give us access to entire new unexplored levels, some sort of prize for the players more determined. Extension level the title was confirmed as broader than the previous one.

As for the fighting, the cross of Gabriel has now been replaced with "Blood Whip (Whip), which has similar characteristics to the cross: will launch attacks towards distant enemies and will again be possible to chain together powerful attacks directed at a single enemy or lighter attacks but that affect all enemies around us. Even the boss battles have been revised: are now longer and different, although it is unclear so far whether checkpoints will be introduced in key moments of such clashes.

The magic now leaves the place to the "blood of Dacula": this will respawn not alone but we will have to collect it by killing the enemies. Fighting without ever making us hurt we can also fill a "concentration" that, once full, allows us to extract blood from enemies simply by hitting them, without necessarily having to kill. The accumulated blood may then be used to activate the powers of "empty" and "chaos": the first will give us access to the Sword of the void, allowing us to regenerate health at every shot, while the second materialize claws capable of destroying enemy shields.

The game will introduce a new system of "Mastery": during the fighting you earn experience points which are used to unlock new moves and combos, and once unlocked a move we can improve the effectiveness with increasing mastery of Gabriel in that particular move. Then the moves that we will use more gradually become more powerful. Similarly the Blood Whip, sword, vacuum and chaos claws can level up as it increases the Mastery in their use, allowing us thus to recover faster, kill enemies faster and so on. Developers warn, however, that if we use the same moves increasing Mastery only in those most difficult levels, we could find ourselves in difficulty should serve to fight by using certain moves that we haven't developed enough.

Other interesting ability to Gabriel will be to lure mortals to check and that can turn into a cloud of smoke to pass through undetected certain areas or enter secret areas through grates and other steps.

For now: we leave you with some pictures taken by the magazine might show pending further.