Chaos Raiden
Avid Gamer & Reviewer
DmC Devil May Cry might have fans split, but there's one thing clear from Capcom's Captivate 2012 event and that's that the game certainly isn't pulling the punches.
So we sat down with Alex Jones (Capcom US producer), Motohide Eshiro (Capcom Japan producer) and Tameem Antoniades (creative director at Ninja Theory) about how DmC Devil May Cry is coming along, and what that means for the series.
So, did Bayonetta have any impact on the development of DmC?
Tameem: When we talked to Capcom and worked out what we wanted this game to be, Bayonetta was never mentioned. We’re trying to create a progression from previous DMCs and Capcom came to us because they want the world to feel more accessible to a western audience, so we’re treating it like a western movie. So the idea of comparing ourselves to Bayonetta just hasn’t come up. We’re trying to make the best DMC combat experience possible with a western take on the world.
Alex Jones: It’s pretty clear tonally, story-wise, atmosphere, that we’re not trying to compete with Bayonetta.
Which previous DMC was your biggest frame of reference for this one?
Eshiro: I don’t think there’s any way I can specify one particular title but I can say that we’ve taken the world view of games 1 to 4 and we’re taking a fresh look at that world. What we’ve done isn’t quite the same as those games but it’s not completely different either.
What’s the best piece of advice Ninja Theory received from Capcom Japan?
Tameem: It’s probably ‘if the player wants to do something then let them do it, without delay.’ That applies to everything from instant movement and turning to feedback in the combat, swapping between weapons on the fly, anything you can think of that the player would want to do, do your best to do it. And through that process you open the system up for people to discover things that even you hadn’t anticipated. That’s a good philosophy.
What aspects of previous DMC games did you want to improve upon with this game?
Tameem: It was more a case re-interpreting the world in a way that makes sense to the man on the street. So it’s more like making it like we’re in the real world rather than a fantasy. To explain things like demon doors that block you in in the old DMCs, we’ve made the world alive, like a creature, so it makes sense that it traps you and it makes sense that it spawns enemies like white blood cells to attack Dante.
And maybe open up the levels a little bit to give you traversal abilities – that maybe wasn’t so common in previous DMCs. But I think a lot of it is just re-interpreting the world and expanding in what was already there.
Eshiro: I’m not saying there’s something wrong with the old games but I think by explaining the world a little more we can make them more accessible to the average user. Capcom Japan didn’t bring a brief of the world view to Ninja Theory, it was very much a case of saying ‘you guys create the world that you see in the game’.
To your previous question about the best advice, I can’t say what our best advice was but I can say that the most important thing to us was input response with no lag. Players press a button, it happens. Players pull off a combo, it happens. As you know, Capcom is a big producer of fighting games so input response is very important to us. So that’s what we wanted to stress.
Do you think a game like DMC could feasbily feature multiplayer?
Alex Jones: We did think about it at the very beginning, when we were just blue sky thinking. Co-op play came up but I think the story that we wanted to tell would feel false unless Dante was alone in the world.
That would detract from that element of the story that we wanted to tell. As far as why previous games never did it I would totally defer to Eshiro-san.
Eshiro: I wasn’t directly involved in the previous DMCs but I have worked on many action games at Capcom. I think the ideal way to create a good co-op experience is to first of all create a good single-player experience. So you start the game with that.
The co-op system comes after that, it can’t be the one you start with. The thing about Devil May Cry is that it’s a stylish action game, where you’re trying to show off your moves, pull off combos and wow your friends.
If you were trying to do that while playing with someone else, you could of course do that in whilst competing, but ultimately it would get in the way of you doing what you’re trying to do. When a bunch of enemies come out you want to kill them all and go for that SSS rank.
If your friend waltzes in and gets one of the other enemies, your SSS goes down to an A because there just aren’t enough enemies to kill, so these aspects of co-op will probably interfere with Dante as a cool character who just comes in and kicks ass.
Is the story a parody?
Tameem: It is a satire. Because the game is set in the real world, what is the demon presence we can’t see that Dante can? So while in the real world we can’t see the demon dimension, Dante goes across into Limbo and he can see from the other side of the mirror.
So that gives us a great opportunity to make fun of or satire elements of our own world in clever ways. I wouldn’t say criticise, well maybe it is. This kind of satire… There’s an element of cultural satire, political satire, some things that are a little bit risky.
