Dracula: Origin - Guide for Dracula: Origin

Platform : PC 
Publisher:  The Adventure Company
Developer: Frogwares Studio
Release Date: 2 Jun 2008 
Last Updated: 17 Sept 2009 
Genre: Adventure 
ESRB: Teen
ESRB Descriptors: Blood, Mild Language, Partial Nudity, Violence

Number of Players: 1 Player

DRACULA: ORIGIN
Dracula: Origin is the exciting new adventure game from Frogwares studio, the 
developers of the popular Sherlock Holmes series on PC.

Having stylishly blended H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythology with Sherlock 
Holmes in Sherlock Holmes - The Awakened, Frogwares is once again venturing 
into a disturbing and fantastic universe, the world of the Prince of Darkness, 
a world full of Gothic adventure, romance, mystery and terror.

Dracula: Origin reveals the origins of the Dracula curse. Once the ardent 
defender of Christendom, Dracula loses his faith in God when he is abandoned by 
his one true love after she marries. Dracula then makes a pact with the Prince 
of Darkness, and becomes a vampire.

As time goes by, Dracula discovers the existence of a manuscript that allegedly 
details a rite which brings damned souls back from the beyond. On the body of 
one of his last victims, Dracula finds the photograph of a pretty young woman, 
Mina, who looks so disconcertingly like his beloved one; he determines that her 
body would be the perfect host for the damned soul of the woman he worshipped.

In Dracula: Origin, the player takes the role of the famous Professor Van 
Helsing whose life’s aim is the destruction of Dracula. Van Helsing must stop 
the vampire from finding the manuscript. A rich adventure that takes him from 
London to Egypt, Austria and through Carpathian Europe right into the 
terrifying home of the Dark Prince.

Mysteries, enigmas, love, thrills and vampires…. Dracula: Origin offers an 
adventure that advances the genre in leaps and bounds with superb graphics and 
a solid story line. Made up of a subtle graphic mix of detailed 2D scenery and 
full 3D characters with a powerful sound track, the game brings to life the 
imaginary world of the original literary work by Bram Stoker. This new 
adventure game makes full use of the traditional vampire stories (horror, love, 
blood, crucifixes, stakes, garlic...) and the genre’s terrifying, Gothic, 
romantic and fantastic atmosphere.


DRACULA, THE ORIGINS OF EVIL

Dracula: Origin reveals the origins of the Dracula curse - that of a man 
tortured by the loss of a woman he held more precious than anything and 
offended because she would rather kill herself than give in to him. Slowly, the 
thirst for vengeance has done its work, turning the ardent defender of 
Christianity into a hardened servant of the Demon. Dracula begins celebrating 
terrifying satanic masses involving terrible atrocities. He was still alive, 
still human, until the day he drank his rival’s blood and then made a pact, 
sealed for all eternity, which made him the first vampire. He became the great 
monster of legend, bent solely on the destruction of humanity and with an 
unquenchable thirst for blood and warm, bloody flesh in his fangs… But the 
woman he loved has killed herself and has thus been condemned to eternal 
damnation; Dracula feels he was the guilty party as he was unable to save 
her.Thus condemned to wander the world endlessly and without aim, forced to 
suffer alone in his pain, he can only feel better when feasting upon the blood 
of the living.

THE GAME

Dracula: Origin retranscribes Bram Stoker’s world faithfully. The player 
evolves by a traditional Point & Click gameplay. Plunged into a troubling, 
Gothic atmosphere, the player will find all the typical themes of an adventure 
game through superb graphics with a skilful mix of 2D environments and 3D 
characters. The player will have both his mind and his nerve tested by the 
traps and mysteries that he will have to face. Stake, crucifix, garlic clove, 
mirror… these are some of the 150 vampire-themed objects in the game that you 
need to use alone or in combination to succeed in your mission. You will meet 
Bram Stoker’s epic heroes: Van Helsing the disciplined scientist, Dracula, the 
insatiable vampire, Mina, the idealized reincarnation of Dracula’s dearest 
one... You will meet more than fourty other disturbing or angelic characters 
with whom you need to interact with intelligence in order to gather precious 
clues.Those adventurers who may struggle to solve mysteries will be pleased to 
hear that Dracula: Origin offers an exclusive Help System. It allows players to 
be helped progressively out of their fixes by providing clues that slowly give 
more and more away.

Travel through a rich variety of decors and locations as you hunt; a hunt full 
of leaps and bounds that will take you throughout Europe, to London and to 
Transylvania via Vienna and with a breathtaking stop in Egypt. Plunge into a 
Gothic adventure, where everyone’s every move is driven by the horror of blood 
and the longing for Eternal Love. Supported by a sound track quite terrifying, 
the player is forever propelled towards more suspense and horror preparing to 
take part in the struggle between two conceptions of the world: chaos and 
order, fantasy and reality.


MAIN FEATURES:

- A Gothic, romantic and fantastic atmosphere, true to the original as conjured 
up by Bram Stoker, providing a completely immersive adventure.

- A relentless hunt through several countries for one of the most terrifying 
characters in horror literature.

- A confrontation between 2 radically opposed heroes: Van Helsing, the 
spiritual hero, a sober scientist fighting the young and flamboyant Dracula, as 
inhuman as he is evil.

- Superb graphics mixed with 2D environments and 3D characters wrapped up in an 
excellent story line.

- Interact with over 40 characters. Use and combine more than 150 objects 
associated with the vampire-themed of the game (stake, statue, garlic, 
mirror...).

- A progressive Help System, for players who get stuck on a riddle or mystery, 
provides increasingly pertinent clues.


THE ADVENTURE

In London, Professor Van Helsing receives a letter from his disciple and 
friend, Jonathan Harker, who had left a few weeks earlier to hunt down Voivod 
Dracula and bring an end to his activities. In this message, the young man 
explains that he has found the castle and has even managed to enter it. 
Unfortunately, the arrival of this letter tends to prove that Harker has become 
a victim of the vampire, as he should have arrived several days before the 
letter did. Moreover, various tragic recent incidents persuade Van Helsing that 
the Count is in London. In fact he believes him to be in Bloomsbury around the 
cemetery that backs onto the old private house of the Godalming family. With 
research, Van Helsing learns that Dracula has come to London in search of an 
antediluvian manuscript containing the details of a strange rite. This rite 
apparently summons the damned back to Earth and the Count is planning to use 
the rite to bring his loved one back to him and to rain chaos on humanity. To 
add to the horror of the situation, it seems that Harker’s fiancée is the 
perfect vessel to host the damned soul of Dracula’s lost love.

In the role of Professor Van Helsing, the player will throw himself into a 
relentless hunt full of terrifying leaps and bounds. To go off on his search, 
the professor must leave the beautiful Mina and explore the paths of a 
lugubrious London cemetery and the sinister rooms of a derelict London house. 
The hunt continues in Cairo among Egyptian relics in a museum and through the 
tortuous alleys of the city; the player will have to escape the horrible 
degenerate vampire, the product of a failed ancient rite who is trying to 
escape a cursed tomb. Then, the hunt brings Van Helsing to Vienna on the tracks 
of a lost monk. He visits the salons of Vienna’s brilliant aristocracy and a 
Rococo library bursting with forgotten secrets. Here Van Helsing discovers 
that, to get hold of his informer, he has to find his way into an isolated and 
troubling monastery where damned monks wander and stop their evil plans. The 
vampire hunter has to go to Transylvania at last, to the famous castle of 
Dracula. His journey is coming to its end or rather to its origin, that of 
Dracula and that of Evil…

Characters:

COUNT DRACULA:
Young, attractive religious character who has been broken by his loved one’s 
suicide. Count Dracula has since become a blood-thirsty monster wreaking 
vengeance and doomed to immortality. Dracula is a monster but also a godless 
soul, rejected by God and man, he is a character that inspires both fear and 
pity.

PROFESSOR VAN HELSING:
Van Helsing is a famous Dutch teacher at the University of Medicine in London. 
He is however, even better known as a vampire slayer. Dynamic and brave, full 
of compassion and respect for others, Van Helsing is above all driven by his 
quest to destroy Evil. He has devoted his life to his mission of eliminating 
Dracula.

MINA:
Jonathan Harker’s fiancée, pupil and friend of Van Helsing. She is the 
incarnation of the young devoted woman, brave and pure: the perfect victim to 
be sacrificed for the Demon. She succumbs to Dracula who sees her as the ideal 
vessel for his lost lover.

DR SEWARD:
This young doctor is another of Van Helsing’s disciples and has been sent to 
Mina’s bed side to free her of the Vampire’s demonic grip.

HERODOTE:
A priest living in Cairo who is a sage and a healer. He knows how to free you 
from the demon’s grip. He is too old to do it himself but is willing to help 
the right people to allow Good to triumph.

JADA:
As beautiful as she is Evil, this female vampire has devoted herself to serving 
and protecting Dracula.

IGOR:
Dracula’s coachman in Transylvania, he is utterly devoted to his master. He is 
demonic, of ill intent and despises the human race. He is always willing to do 
any dirty work asked of him by his master.