Well, yes, but I was thinking of the book segments that pop up seemingly every single loading screen.
I actually really dig the book segments between chapters, because they essentially save all of Gabriel’s emoting and mental processing for off-screen, almost to give the player something to contemplate at the start of each level while they’re traversing platforms and exploring the vast scenery…to let everything going on in Gabriel’s head really sink into the player through gameplay, rather than cutscenes.
The only part of them I didn’t care for was the constant hammering of “Gabriel rescuing his love” over and over again, as if to constantly remind the player what the protagonist’s objective is in case they had forgotten in a span of a few minutes of playtime.
It kind of reminded me of those awful forced Codec portions of the
Metal Gear games, albeit far shorter and less fatally-tedious. Also,
LoS had the benefit of Royal Shakespeare Company legend Sir Patrick Stewart than whatever B-list voice actors made up the
Metal Gear cast, and that gravely ear-poison that was David Hayter’s voice.
It's a bit odd given that it sort of leads us to believe that he emotes all the time, just not on screen. He sort of gave me DMC2 Dante flashbacks.
Except, I would argue that we actually
knew what was going on in Gabriel’s head to suffice for him not emoting constantly on-screen. We have SOME idea of what he’s feeling, as opposed to the lack of, really
anything to explain Dante’s behavior in
2, much less the absence of Trish, who was very much an established character by then.
Gabriel’s a man of few words, with the insight into his emotions actually PROVIDED somewhere.
DMC2 Dante is a walking enigma.
I mean, they at least don't refer to each other as "my love".
Meh, I can believe a medieval couple in 1087 AD talking in the rigid dialogue of a Shakespearean tragedy, so it never shattered immersion for me.
And compared to the exchanges between Nero and Kyrie, I don’t find myself wanting to plunge a steel rod in my ears quite as often. Just how many times do they like hearing each other’s names, exactly?
Yes, though I think there were ways to have improved it. Say perhaps Dante enters the city from a different route Nero left and traverses the slums, showing the town has a dark side under the Order's rule. But more importantly I think the game would have benefitted greatly from the catacombs housing Yamato to have been expanded into an entire level.
I never put that much thought into the environments for
DMC4, mostly because it was obvious that the devs didn’t put the same kind of thought Team Little Devils put into Mallet Island. They weren’t going for ambience so much as pristine production value, which I’ll certainly concede that they succeeded.
That was one of the things I hated most about LoS as well, but in DmC it's really egregious. Enemy introductions, boss fight phase transitions, platforming transitions, room transitions, walk and talk segments, gameplay is interrupted seemingly every few minutes, and that's not counting when there's just ambient dialog.
It’s down to personal preference. Again, I’m desensitized by the cinematic orgy that is the
Yakuza series, which switches to cutscenes in combat with a breathless frequency, and that’s in
every fight in the game. You really have to have the stomach for that kind of thing.
I remember there were issues, but that it was more deliberate memory suppression than memory loss.
Whatever the specifics may be, it boiled down to some form of memory fragmentation, which I can say is a reasonable narrative justifier for Dante being more detached or “forgetting about the meaning of family”…
…which I would argue he
doesn’t, but that’s another discussion.
Dante at the end of 3 is pretty similar to the beginning of 1, just a bit less hotheaded. I never felt like he had much of a revenge inclination per-say, more like retribution.
I can’t say I really agree.
DMC1 Dante was not in the same league of hot-blooded cockiness as
DMC3, and the way he was acting at the end of
3, especially with the entire fight scene following Vergil’s death, is not like the former’s personality at all.
At the start of
DMC1, we see him start his confrontation with Trish in a laid-back and arrogant fashion, but he quickly shows spikes of caution, before actually getting serious, and even prepared to kill Trish.
He stops clinging to one-liners long enough to act serious, for the sake of the confrontation at hand.
THAT is the primary difference between the two in-game portrayals.
DMC3 Dante could rarely or never drop the hyperactive man-child persona to match the seriousness of the situation, even intrusively dragging puns and one-liners in what
should be more serious confrontations.
It’s like that cringey scene of Starlord dancing with the main villain in the climax of
Guardians of the Galaxy. The writers can’t suppress their urge to drop the gimmick they’ve assigned to the character to adjust his behavior to match the situation he’s in.
It’s the one thing I hate about modern portrayals of Dante the most. In a lot of ways, it’s gotten better in
4, where he wasn’t playing a serious role in a story where he wasn’t the central protagonist, but it’s one of the reasons I’m dreading the possibility of him returning for a sequel.
You do know that ten whole years pass between 3 and 1, right?
I believe you’re mistaken. It’s ten years between
DMC3 and
4, with Dante being 19 in the former and 29-30 in the latter.
The whole point of
DMC3, or at least it was my impression, was to set up
DMC1’s beginning through the events of
DMC3.
That's very strange, because my interpretation was the exact opposite. At the beginning of the book he's already known Nel and Grue for some time, with Nel sort of being his surrogate mother and Grue's family similarly being a surrogate for his own. But over the course of the book all of them suffer due to being connected to him, Grue and one of his daughters whom Dante was close to dies, and Nel is murdered. Even all of Dante's friends at Bobby's Cellar are killed. This is all what drives him to seek justice against Mundus for the sake of the families he's lost and stop hiding from his name, but at the same time it drives him away from other people and leaves him alone.
Again, I would call that striving for fallen comrades than any kind of symbolic familial attachment of any sort, especially when Dante’s interactions with Nel don’t really enforce the whole “surrogate mother” thing that you’re referring to.
Oh, well. We’re free to interpret it any way we wish. It’s not like it has any canon bearing on the current story in any way.
I disagree with you on practically every single one of those points, and I've outlined why multiple times, but very specifically I don't think that any part of Dante's story should ever involve a direct desire to grow stronger.
A drive to acquire more power is, in fact, Vergil's thing. A story where Dante needs to power up to overcome a threat is practically antithetical to his character, because one of the core messages reiterated time and again in DMC is that the power to fight is inferior to the resolve of one's spirit.
I think maybe we’re running into a bit of a crossroads of misunderstanding here. I never implied that Dante’s motives should rely on becoming more powerful, purely for the sake of getting stronger. I was more implying the notion that him actually working towards getting stronger, enduring training and mental obstacles, could flesh him out a bit. Instead of just having each victory handed to him on a silver platter, have him work for it.
Have him try. Have him fail. Have him fall. Have him rise.
These mental and emotional traversals are exactly what fleshing out a character, especially a warrior, come about from. It’s built up some of the most memorable characters in fiction, and is a struggle that is identifiable and relatable for us as the audience,
even if he’s superhuman to the point of absurdity. That one strand of human nature, to work or to strive for something, is a universal principle that can be injected in any story, given that the writer is willing to equip the character with a few mental or physical setback, or here’s another idea….
actual flaws.
And I’m not talking mild, inconsequential flaws, like Dante being lazy, or being bad at gambling, or being insufferably cocky around the office when people are talking to him, because those flaws never play seriously into his struggle as a character, or are used for anything outside of comedic value.
Part of Dante’s issue as a Gary Stu is that in addition to being overpowered beyond the point of weeping hilarity, he’s also too perfect and immune to fallacy that he basically renders the plot meaningless. He doesn’t have any personal obstacles that ever hinder him during battle to be significant or provoke any emotional value in the plot.
He’s been written into a state of bland, predictable, ultra-perfect mundanity that the plot can basically do nothing
with him.
And if there’s one thing that, in my personal opinion, the reboot did well enough despite the rest of its narrative shortcomings, it was at succeeding at giving Dante both imperfections and a personal, relatable struggle.
And yet all of Alucard's actions contradict this. He slaughters humans offhandedly, with no respect given or effort put forth, whenever they challenge him. He doesn't even have much of a reason to respect Anderson, given that he's not really human either. The fact that he was outwitted and defeated by the plan of a human should have been enough for Alucard, given that there is absolutely no way any human could ever even come close to beating him any other way.
Alucard doesn’t view all humans on the same level, only the ones he feels pose a challenge to him or embody the values he admires so much. The entire scene with the human SWAT team in Rio was a perfect example of this, where he explicitly told them that “it takes a [proper] man to kill a monster”, and obliterates them with the lack of dignity he reserves for the rest of his prey.
This also ties directly into Anderson, whom he doesn’t come to respect until their confrontation on the streets of London. Prior to that, he was just another interesting chew toy flung at him by Integra’s enemies, no more or less. It’s only when Anderson started to push himself to his limits, falling apart by flesh and bone through Alucard’s mass of undead familiars, that Alucard truly starts to admire his surprisingly-human and endearing qualities for a bio-engineered holy weapon. He even starts comparing the Judas Priests’ maddened drive and relentless failure to acknowledge his own pain or staggering to “those men from back then, at that time”, where he mentally flashes to Van Helsing and his bold, ill-equipped, hopelessly outmatched band of underdog Vampire Hunters. He sees their same admirable and endearing qualities in Anderson.
And no, a human
has defeated Alucard….Van Helsing did, and quite spectacularly, back in 1899 in the Carpathian Mountain Range (referring to the Bram Stoker Novel, which is very much canon to
Hellsing, apart from its ending). So much so, that it was enough to win Alucard’s respect for humans
like him and his descendants, not humans as a whole.
I like Hellsing as well, but it's not exactly comparable in that way.
Given how both
Hellsing and
Devil May Cry deal with ultra-powerful protagonists written to be similarly God-tier entities of insurmountable power, I felt it was a worthy comparison, especially how one demonstrates how to write such a character
properly, and make it work in the confines of the narrative.
In the ocean of overpowered and absurdly-written characters in anime, video games, and the bulk of Japanese entertainment at large,
Hellsing is one of the scarce examples of a story doing it correctly, effectively, and believably.
I wouldn't say that's so much an urgency or threat type as thing so much as it is an intensity sort of thing.
I agree, you worded it better: It’s an intensity that fuels his emotions to some believable degree, which is the most, I’d argue, that Dante has ever received in the original canon.
Wait a second, why is it okay to make inferences for DMC1 but when someone does anything similar for DMC3 it's just "reaching" and "headcanon"?
Because unlike the cauldron of bubbling, rancid theories and baseless claims surrounding Vergil’s motives and Dante’s emotions in
DMC3, there’s an actual basis in the story of the first
Devil May Cry to make these things believable, and less far-fetched.
Nothing I stated as what I believe for Dante’s emotions in that scene are explicitly factual, and can be dismissed as non-canon under far harder scrutiny. The difference is that it’s actually believable within the context of that scene, that game, and what the writers were probably intending for it.
Most of what I tend to hear from starch defendants of
DMC3 sound so far-fetched, it doesn’t seem likely the original writers intended ANY of it that way. It’s taking the base-line, simplistic, barebones narrative of
DMC3 and tossing it in a taffee-puller to justify the grasping need to give it more depth and narrative nuance than it ever actually boasted itself.
But that’s just how
I feel about it, so don’t construe my stance as the popular opinion for the series.
It didn't occur to you that the "gleeful combat" at the end of the game was in fact Dante using the fight as an outlet to deal with his feelings?
When he says "I love this! This is what I live for!", he is either lying outright, lying to himself, or just plain taking refuge in physical, adrenaline-pumping thrill of it in order to keep functioning. The entire thing was anything but gleeful, in fact it's practically tragic.
Given the writing, the short span of events, and the delivery of the scene itself, I almost doubt that’s what the writers were intending with that.
Right down to the gameplay sequence that follows to the aggressively-stylized pose that Dante strikes when he delivers his line, it reeks more of the developers’ intention to finish off the game with some flashy, high-octane finale to break off from the uber-serious and melodramatic tone of the prior cutscene.
I sincerely doubt the developers or writers were intending tragedy in that scene. But watching the cutscenes of that game is such a grating exercise in excruciation for me that I’m probably not a reliable source for emotional reciprocation of that game’s story moments...so for all we know, you may be right.
In the anime, Dante's lethargic attitude is what pushes the whole climax of the story to happen. He had multiple chances to end Sid's plot, but in the end he allows it to go through. Either because he was desperate for some kind of action, or, and I think much more likely, he was practically suicidal and was looking for something to kill him. Possibly BOTH, really. Whatever the case, he neglects to deal with the problem until it finally erupts, which ends up getting a lot of people killed.
I think implying depression or suicidal urges for Dante building out throughout most of the plot is a really,
really big stretch.
Not only is that something that the writers didn’t allude to at all by the end of each slice-of-life scenario of each episode, but that require so much emotional allusion that frankly, isn’t anywhere or justifiably present in the game’s story or in Dante’s mannerisms at all. Even if you could believe that Dante’s harboring some kind of depression or suicidal need behind every comedic scene he enters with the other characters, why would the writers never allude to something so important, so dramatic to the character?
Japanese writing, especially when it comes to anime of this kind, is never that subtle. I’m almost laughing just thinking about, because I doubt ANY of the scenario writers for the series had that intention with the nature of these episodes. And letting Sid go repeatedly really only showcases the show-writers’ needs to establish some kind of proper indication that the series was building up and going somewhere, not because of any uber-complex motives Dante has.
I appreciate the idea of Dante having some deeper meaning behind his cockiness and arrogance, and it’s certainly one I’ve heard from fans of the franchise, but there’s no factual basis for it or evidence of it being the writers’ intention
at all.
In 4, his attitude sort of follows. When it shows that he can't avoid getting involved, he's suddenly eager to go to Fortuna and tries to end the threat of the Order immediately by cutting off it's head. When Nero gets involved and things get more complicated, he then prioritizes closing all the Demon gates and tells Trish to keep as many people safe as possible. Simultaneously Trish, who understands Dante just about better than anybody, intentionally took Sparda and used it to try to escalate the situation, because she knows that Dante is exceedingly bad at keeping himself together without some kind of crisis on his hands.
But again, all of this ends up getting people hurt, and Dante's attitude develops into 2, where he's almost actively avoiding any kind of excitement and is solely out to do his job. Unfortunately it goes badly anyway, and again an entire city basically implodes, at which point he decides to just stay in the Underworld.
Again, where is the evidence or factual basis for any of this? Where is it ever implied that Trish took Sparda and rushed off immediately as a means to accommodate for Dante’s feelings or mental well-being?
Was there some emotional undertone I missed in the cutscene in Dante’s office, which I’m a little more than inclined was only included for comedic value and no other reason?
This is rummaging around in the barebones writing of
DMC4 for aspects of the story that flat-out
don’t exist. I’d be down of they were, I like
DMC4 and think it would add to the plot significantly if it were true, or was substantially hinted at in the actual plot…but it isn’t. This literally doesn’t exist in the plot, or in any exchange between characters.
As for it being the basis for Dante’s attitude in
DMC2….no offense, but that
is straight-up head-canon right there. The developers of this series could not have possibly planned the narrative of both
2 and
4 so intricately over five years of shifting staff members or writing changes to accommodate Dante’s persona in a poorly-received game that Capcom has all but chosen to ignore for the better part of the series’ run. The writers had no pre-concieved idea about where they were taking the plot after
2, and I’m 100% there’s no factual basis for that, or the notion that
DMC4 was developed and written to transition Dante’s personality into that game.
That’s just overreaching, and giving the house of retconning and bad-planning that is the
DMC writing team far more credit than they’re worth. They aren’t that smart or creative.
Moreover:
I think all this speculation on Dante’s inner workings in both the anime and in
DMC4 is really yanking this thread out of the confines of its original topic. Let’s just agree to disagree and move on, before a certain mod swoops down from his stone gargoyle overlooking Wayne Enterprises and berates us for driving this thread off a cliff.
Because what's challenging Dante's character isn't so much any one person, it's Dante himself. He believes that the strength of the human spirit is strong and worthy, but consistently, throughout the entire series, what has brought him victory has been his own power, and he's seen humanity fail time and again. Hell, three-fourths of the series' villains have been humans corrupted by their own desires. Even Nero, with a strong human heart and drive, failed because he was too weak, and needed to be saved by Dante.
The drama to Dante's character is that he himself is a walking contradiction to his own ideals, as is his father Sparda.
I could believe this, but it’s never properly emphasized in any game or by Dante himself for it to hold much credibility. He never expresses a whole lot of emotional investment in anything he fights outside of Vergil and Mundus, and never once even contemplates the role his powers play in his combat or in liberating the world from demon forces. He never refers to the human spirit or acknowledges it as a personal driving force….he uses it as a means to lecture and school his opponents for what they lack (Nero does something similar when confronting Sanctus for the final time), but taking such a speck of character interaction and blowing it up to be the basis of his entire personality is—well, like taking one of Vergil’s lines and making it the basis of his motives and emotional investment, but…you know. I’ve already ranted plenty about that.
He expresses a few moments of veteran wisdom to some of the people he helps out in the anime, which I actually like, since it’s making the idea of him being a wiser and seasoned hunter in
DMC4 all the more believable, and the mentor-like interactions between him and Nero all the more plausible.
But hiding anguish or disappointment in humans over watching them make the same mistakes again and again? That’s nowhere to be found in a single thing he says or does.
That’s a level of philosophical reflection that, frankly, is not supported by any branch of
DMC lore or media, and quite contradictory to the simple nature of Dante as a character. Capcom’s writing staff never once wrote him that way, and if they did, they probably would’ve made it far more apparent.
Again, subtlety is not their strong point.
If you read on, you'll note that I said Dante is intended to both not be relatable, in terms of his design and persona, but also still be relatable in terms of his core character as someone who is forced to accept his heritage and live up to his family legacy, even if it means going against members of that same family. I think it's like this specifically so different people can enjoy the story on different levels.
That’s such a basic aspect of Dante’s character that plays so little of a role in his fight in future games, not to mention playing almost no role in the dramatic tension of half of his in-series battles, that I’m not even sure it’s a valid defense for the lack of depth or development in just about any other department.
If that one aspect is the only one Capcom can highlight successfully, than it only drives home the point about how limited and painfully under-written Dante is as a character. So one-note and restricted is his role in these games that his half-demon, half-human status is one of the few things anyone can narratively draw from.
And in the world of anime and video games, that’s probably the most cliché and woefully unoriginal well of narrative material to draw from. There’s a mountain of characters with the same “mixed heritage” description that are written ten times better, and still manage to provide enough intrigue so that their “mixed heritage” origins is barely used as a narrative asset.
With Dante…that’s practically the framework of his character, since Capcom seems content to do nothing else with him.
I mean, just think about Agnus Redux from 4. On the one hand it's some kind of absurdist comedy skit with the characters in a play for no reason. On the other, under all the flash, what the characters are actually talking about are things like the frailty of the human condition and the corruptive influence of power as Dante seeks to reclaim the weapon of his fallen brother.
I like and understand that scene quite a lot. But I think it only really works because of, again, Dante’s status as the side-protagonist and juxtaposition to Nero’s more serious and dramatic role in the story, and the fact that this confrontation unfolds between him and a minor villain like Agnus.
If Dante pulled the comedic sthick, AS the main character, against the main villain, it wouldn’t be funny or charming, but absurd.
I should think you would understand this dualistic nature of the story, considering the entire premise of the plot is a man who is half Human, half Demon, and the novel which you've often professed to like explicitly states that Dante's entire boisterous personality is almost entirely a coping mechanism he invented to serve as a mask for his true feelings.
For one, the novel isn’t canon, but handles the demon-human duality far better than any game, at least from the confines of my humble, controversial opinion.
Secondly, while I think that duality works in moderation, I think Capcom has formed an annoying tendency to focus on that narrative thread, and that alone, when formulating the story for the bulk of these games. It’s getting so tedious and was already tiresome by the time they got to Nero, and regurgitated the same bile about the “balance between being human and a devil”, I was already dreading the notion of a sequel that would undoubtedly recreate it.
DmC touched on it quite briefly with Dante’s encounter with Phineas, but the writers had the good sense to shift the main focus of the story on different things, like the growing tension between the Sparda Twins, and Dante’s growth as a warrior (even if you’re of the opinion that they weren’t well-executed plot-points, they were still different enough from the usual “human-devil duality” tripe).
It’s the most brain-dead, uninspired route Capcom can narratively go with this series, and instead of trying new things, they keep repeating it.
Again, I think there is a very good way they could do this, but it's so risky that I'm afraid they wouldn't chance it
I don’t think there’s a whole lot of risk in developing Dante in a fashion that’s both reasonable and believable with his other actions throughout the series.
All it takes is competent writing talent, which….as of
RE6, Capcom has shown they’re quite devoid of.
On a slightly more serious side note, basically every character surrounding Dante calls him out for being an unmotivated, uncaring idiot constantly. That's effectively Lady's entire role.
But that never amounts to anything substantial. It’s all for comedic play, and it never once comes back as a consequential plot-point, brought up in any serious or plot-affecting situations, or builds into any shift or development of his character.
The only time I ever saw this amount to anything was in
DmC, where at least there, other characters acknowledged Dante’s attitude and lack of motivation as an actual problem, one that’s on his shoulders to fix. It’s used for comedic purpose in some instances, yes, but for the bulk of the story, it’s something used by the writers to shape Dante for the better, and remains an integral portion of
DmC’s plot.
And that's sort of the route I was thinking of as well. When 5 happens, and if Dante plays a larger role, Sparda should be absolutely central to the story.
Specifically, Sparda should be the antagonist.
Sparda, as the main antagonist? Do explain, I’m actually quite intrigued by that idea. What would force him to challenge his own son, or vice versa? And more importantly, how would that play into Dante initially starting his quest to avenge Eva?
Do tell.
