I tend to avoid these kinds of threads in fear that they may be more of the same new and exciting flavors of speculation/lamentation of the absence of any new
DMC game news, but surprisingly, a lot of intriguing points have been brought up in this thread….ones, I daresay, I never
dreamed I’d see on this forum.
But in regards to the topic, I’d strongly advise against thinking about “what fans deserve”, and what the “
SERIES deserves.” Going out your way to exclusively please the fans is exactly how the seeds of a franchise’s downfall are planted (just take a gander at the safe-playing snoozefest that is the current
Star Wars license). Fans don’t oversee development, understand budget limitations or meddling from shareholders, or the archaic methods Japanese companies like Capcom still employ to rush their games out to market, in spite of their developers having the game half-finished.
And with all of that in mind, and take firm grasp of your armchair rests as I verbalize this….I think the original
DMC series should be prioritized for continuation. Why? Because unlike
DmC, which answered a lot of its narrative questions adequately within the confines of its story, even WITH some mythos-related inquiries left open.
…
DMC, on the other hand, had and still has a
horrendous number of questions its writers have refused to acknowledge, and continue to bury with eight new retcons in each product they churn out.
DMC4 literally wrote itself with a new setting, characters, and plot elements it was clearly setting up to be looked into via a proper sequel, but with the game’s sales failing to match the mountainous budget Kobayashi evidently wedged into the game, the series has been left on the backburner for almost a
decade.
I like the reboot, and will always be one of its most starch defenders here on this forums, but I won’t pretend for a moment that it takes high priority for continuation. The original series is in dire need of revival not just because it has a longer, more established continuity…but because so much more of it needs to be
FIXED.
Oh I know but at the same time, I also know what happens when you overdo it and prioritize that over all the rest... *cough cough* The Order 1886 *cough cough*
I don't want to risk that when it comes to DMC, you know what I mean?
Games like
Order 1886, Heavy Rain, and the absolute abhorrent Tumblrite fecal colossus that was
Until Dawn all have a similar problem, but it’s not that the story takes center stage over the gameplay; Light novels, dating sims, the
Telltale games…they’ve all proven that you can have the gameplay be a minimal factor in a game, and still maintain a level of appeal, because the
story itself is good enough to make up for its lack of gameplay. The problem with those three games I mentioned is that their story isn’t GOOD. These developers are locked in this James Cameron-mentality where they think that pain-staking motion capture and elongated cutscenes give their games a “cinematic” quality, but don’t realize how
worthless all of that is if the player isn’t INVESTED in the digital wax figurines being pawned off as main characters.
I think the closest any hack-n’-slash game has come to capturing its story effectively through a cinematic presentation is
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Not only was that game’s writing and cutscenes done exceptionally well, but it also wove elements of its narrative and pacing into the game…like when Gabriel is approaching Carmilla’s castle, and the camera and music shift to place emphasis on the sudden shift in locales, to move the next act of the story.
I’d love to see
DMC5 try something similar, if the writers can get their act together and deliver something competent for once, instead of binge-watching
Dragonball Z and pinching whatever they found cool about it onto
DMC’s plot. :shifty:
Nobody here ever asked a complicated story: DMC has a basic, simple story and that is fine.The problem is the canon's consistency is null: Capcom is totally incapable of doing a story that makes sense at all.
^This.
So much this.
If you want some idea of the absolute best Capcom can do when it comes to putting all their eggs in one basket and committing the bulk of their effort to producing a story, just consider this:
The most intricate story they’ve ever told, with their largest and most dedicated team of writers in company history for any game…was for
Resident Evil 6.
Just wrap your head around that, if you can.
Now if they think that DMC will subsist only in cool looking characters and gameplay, they are wrong.That was fine in 90's/2000's, but not now. DMC rivals have already done better and there are already fans complaining about DMC gameplay.
I keep telling people this, and I always get the same intellectually-dishonest write-off about how “the series is about gameplay, not the story”, when these are the same people who shrieked to the high heavens and rattled the Earth’s stratosphere with their wails of anguish when Capcom made changes to the story and characters with the reboot.
The series, for better or for worse, became more story-centric with the questionable advent of
DMC3. Cutscenes were no longer under an hour’s worth of hammy cinematics to cobble together some barebones plot like in
DMC1. Starting with
3, cutscenes became longer, more dramatic, with a large emphasis placed on character monologues and interactions. The budget was augmented to support pain-staking motion capture performances for Langdon and Southworth, and the script—by Capcom’s own admission—was being proofread and done with the consultation of American scriptwriters, to enforce its cinematic appeal with Western audiences (a fact I find hard to believe, given how aggressively Japanified and anime-esque these last few games have been).
Anyone who thinks the story isn’t being handled with large emphasis or taken seriously by its creators are not only deluding themselves, but flat-out ignoring the efforts made by Capcom themselves.
That's what Kamiya had planned for his Vergil, it was apparently stated in an interview and part of the fandom is aware of it being canon once upon a time till it was retconed.
It wouldn't be the last, or even the most damaging retcon
DMC3 would plunge into Kamiya's vision, either. I've written on this in great detail in other posts, but I think having Dante require Lady to remind him about "what's important" and "the vital ties of family", is flat-out disgusting and dismantles everything we learned about Dante in
DMC1.
That retcon will NEVER stop irking me.
All I want in a DMC5 is a non-invincible Dante. He annoyed the **** out of me in 4 because he had no personal stake in the conflict and nothing was a threat to him.
Sorry, sorry…I’m just….I can’t even believe someone besides me has even said this, because I’ve offered this exact same complaint to the fanboy pirhannas over at the
Devil’s Lair forum for years, and have been drawn-and-quartered and burned at the stake for even bringing it up.
One of the reasons Dante has
never worked as a serious protagonist is because he not only refuses to take any threat seriously, lessening our investment in the plot because of HIS lack of investment in what’s going on, but also because he’s too much of an overpowered and insurmountable Gary Stu deviantart OC-creation that he literally
HAS NOTHING TO LOSE.
I would argue that Dante’s more laid-back and chill in
4 because he’s gotten over his emotional dips in the first game after completing his ultimate objective, to confront Mundus and avenge his mother and brother, a task that had burdened him throughout his devil hunting career. With that out of the way, he had the chance to become older and wiser, to season himself with experience, and even laugh at himself occasionally. The character of Takezo in the manga
Vagabond undergoes a similar transformation as age begins to shape him out of the spiny rebellious attitude of his adolescence, and his growth into a master swordsman fills him with enough wisdom to take himself less seriously. I’ve always felt this actually really worked for Dante’s role in
4, for no other reason than
he wasn’t the main protagonist. He was really just fulfilling the mentor role to Nero as the series veteran, helping him out with his own personal struggle and making sure he ended up on the right path as the next inheritor of Sparda’s lineage.
The reason it didn’t work for
3 and the anime was because he WAS the main character. With the plot and stakes placed on his shoulders, him struggling or having something to lose becomes all the more vital, and instead of giving him weaknesses or giving him a genuine struggle that he actually has to work for…
…the plot just conveniently course-corrects it so that he shakes off pain, damage, injuries, and loss like stains to his jacket, right before he vanquishes the threat in a killer combo, taking the time of course to dish out some cringey one-liner or pose like a stupid cosplayer.
Dante won’t ever receive proper development because of this, and will continue to be the weakest thing in the overarching
DMC narrative. Not unless Capcom stops writing him as the God-mode recolor anime character of their dreams, gives him some actual limitations or imperfections, and make him a
CHARACTER for once.
And instead of acknowledging it as a problem, most of the fanbase will actually crucify you for even suggesting that he's poorly-written.
A problem with Classic Dante is they never figured out what to do with after DMC1 so he's given the impression of being stagnant and going through the motions.
I think this really stems as another unfortunate side-effect of the series shifting authority on the story after Itsuno and co. replaced Kamiya and Team Little Devils.
Kamiya and the other writers established a clear, set goal for Dante, one that defined his character and really provided the only understandable motivation to justify his hunt for demons. But as soon as he vanquished Mundus…his primary motives kind of just vanished along with him.
After that, the new writers didn’t take any opportunity to explore his character some more, or give him some new motivation to be utilized in future plots. Every new instance in the games or anime, where he’s given a new threat to fight, he’s not shown to have ANY emotional investment in what’s going on: it’s just another job for him, because it’s not the demon who killed his mother. So the core problem is that the plot has to require Dante to get emotionally-stimulated or invested in what’s going on, to rattle him out of this laid-back and careless state of mind…and the writers seem to operate like they’re out of ideas, even though all they have to do is sit down, and creatively formulate a new plot-thread that could involve him properly, and make him a part of the on-screen struggle.
In a lot of ways, this is kind of the reason I prefer Nero as the series’ new protagonist, because there’s more you can do
with him. He’s not as “OMFGZ11!!1! MOST PWRFUL CHACTER EVAR1!!1!”, because he’s more flawed and imperfect. He’s less experienced, and has a lot more journeying to do to reach his full potential…whereas Dante seems to demolish every threat with ease, and is so powerful that he has no development left to do. And most importantly, Nero’s more emotionally versatile, and will actually do something that Dante used to do in prior games:
give a crap about the strife and pain of people outside himself—Nero actually cares when Credo dies, despite him being an enemy…in a remarkably-similar fashion to the contempt Dante reserves for Mundus when he obliterates Griffon right in front of him. In addition, he has Kyrie: a living, emotional investment that he can spend the series protecting…or even fighting alongside, if the writers are creative enough (because it’s not like any interesting or substantial story-telling is going into outlining the camaraderie between Dante and his two female compatriots, even though it’s simply oozing with narrative potential).
Heretical as it may sound, if there was a petition to remove Dante as the series protagonist, my name would be the first on the list. I’d rather they boot him off instead of fail at developing him in future, tiresome escapades.
