MercurySteam surprised by Castlevania success, says DLC was 'rushed'

Developer MercurySteam and publisher Konami weren't expecting Castlevania: Lords of Shadow to be as successful as it was, which ultimately resulted in its poorly received downloadable content, according to producer David Cox. "The problem was that the game's success caught everyone by surprise," Cox recently told Gameranx, "It caught senior management by surprise and they wanted us to do DLC."

The team "never planned" to create DLC, and the content that they created was then "rushed" to market, Cox added, referring to the whole situation as a "mistake." If it could be done again, he said, DLC would have been planned from the get-go, and what was released would have been more of a "side story," as opposed to content that adds to the ending. This appears to be Cox's philosophy for downloadable content in general, as he noted further, "Instead of giving players a part of the story and giving them the other part as DLC, I think the DLC has to expand the universe of an already whole product."

Presumably, if Lords of Shadow 2 has any DLC – which Cox won't admit just yet – it will be handled with much more care.