In a recent interview with Game Informer, Evil Empire - the development studio responsible for Dead Cells' post-launch content - talked extensively about the upcoming 'Return to Castlevania' expansion.
According to Evil Empire's co-founder, Benjamin Laulan, the DLC will be the studio's most embitious expansion so far and will be "twice as big" as all of the expansions released previously:
"It's our biggest DLC yet. That's something we always say, but it really is. It's basically twice as big as [the DLC] we previously released. You get this new storyline, including all of the usual suspects of the Castlevania series. So, you will see Richter Belmont, Alucard, Dracula, Maria Renard, and many others that will guide you through this new storyline to basically discover the content that we included.
"Since this is a roguelite, we tried to find a way to make it interesting to new players and newcomers to be introduced to this world and the new items and stuff. We have 14 new weapons like Alucard’s sword, Alucard’s shield, the old classic cross."
Not only that, but Laulan also spoke about what players can actually expect from the expansion in terms of content, revealing that new biomes, music, and weapons will all be included, in addition to an "incredible showdown" that the team are not quite ready to talk about yet:
"We have three new bosses, one of them being an incredible showdown that we won’t talk [about] yet, but that is super exciting and something never seen before in the game. What else did I forget? New biomes. We have two new biomes based on the classic Castlevania levels. We’ve got music, a whole new soundtrack.
"We had permission from Konami to use all the old soundtracks from the old Castlevania games. So what we did is we [basically created] a Castlevania mod into the music submenu of the options. So you can basically replace all of the Dead Cells music [with] their version [from] Castlevania. All music. And we also have new compositions that were made by the Dead Cells composer of all the classics, such as Bloody Tears…"
It's all sounded pretty exciting, we have to say! We'd encourage you to check out the full interview for more insights into how the team got started with the Castlvania IP and which franchise the team might like to collaborate on next.
There's currently no firm release date for the 'Return to Castlevania' expansion, but we'll be sure to keep you updated as soon as we know more.