@Veloran
So, I’ve only just been made aware of the comprehensive list of responses and rebuttals you made to many of my points. I don’t know why I didn’t receive any kind of alert via my profile, but that may or may not be a sign that I need to simply drop this verbal gladiator match of ours and move on, for both our sanity and the length of this already-labyrinthine thread.
I would go back to quote and reference each point thoroughly and individually like I always do, but I’m a lot more pressed for time and am currently in the midst of cobbling together something of a personal analysis of the first
Devil May Cry for a future thread, so I’ll try to make this snappy and address your points as generally as possible. If, for your own closure, you wish to continue debating the points we’ve discussed thus far, I invite you to leave any lingering rebuttals in a PM.
To address all matters relating to
Hellsing without repeating most of my earlier points yet again, that after evaluating a lot of the questions you seem to pose repeatedly, most of which are renowned facts established and understood by fans, that you may have misinterpreted a number of the series’ most prominent and core themes….which I can’t technically fault you for since, and I can admit this even as a devotee,
Hellsing’s delivery of its more intricate themes are not handled in a very concrete or cohesive manner. They’re certainly there, except they’re established in the narrative and delivered by the characters in an oddly-written way…a fault of Kouta Hirano’s writing style that even plagues his later work, and frankly, is present in a lot of askew Japanese writing as whole
. I must clearly emphasize that none of my points are to
justify or
empathize with Alucard’s reasoning as a character AT ALL, merely to give some garnish of an explanation as to what his mental framework might be. Again, if you wish to pursue this topic, I offer the opportunity to continue it via PM, as I never tire of discussing something as dear and nostalgic to me as
Hellsing.
To respond to the whole “too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen” defense for Capcom, I can’t fully empathize with that argument. They are not Shonen Jump—whose serial writers are constantly badgered and manipulated to satisfy the frantic, nightmarish demand of a weekly print run, with their creative intent eaten away as a result—and they aren’t some office of a company branch commissioned to produce light novels. They are a multi-million dollar conglomerate, staffed by writers aided with resources and assistants most smaller companies can only dream of, and have the supervision, rigid company policies, and access to professional consultation from
overseas writing talent to deliver what is asked of them. Writing for games is not, and never has been a task hindered by a large number of assistants. Other companies, Japanese ones like Square Enix and SEGA no less, have the ability to produce far more cohesive and less hopelessly-vague writing under the same work environment and structure (which I assure you, is practically universal in Japanese companies, given their conservative impulses to mimic decade-long company practices and never change…so this isn’t some hazard unique to Capcom in the slightest). The only potential hazard a writer at Capcom faces is hindrances in development, and considering the same horrendous writing style is present in EVERY game Capcom has released in the past decade, regardless of the flow of their development, I’m hard-pressed to shower sympathy at the “poor, innocent writing staff bullied and rushed by all those greedy empty suits at Capcom’s shareholder’s office.” That excuse doesn’t work after twelve years of the same abysmal writing quality.
Regarding
Trinity of Fates, I was actually warned not to trust the GameFaqs translation by some other people, but that was years ago, and my Japanese is good enough at present to spot any potential errors in grammar or context, the only two areas where Westerners can actually stumble in translation….as such, I have studied the book’s contents, and have a lot to say on the matter in a future thread. The only substantial portion of your claims that were indeed proven true by it were the ones regarding the relation with Vergil’s motives to Eva. This however, along with many other things, does not remedy any of my prior issues with the writing…in fact, it actually raises a whole lot more that I believe are far more damaging to
DMC’s lore than I had initially realize. Look out for a thread where I tackle that in full detail, as I have
A LOT to say regarding that matter.
On a side note, the remark regarding me being “dense”…actually made me laugh. Don’t trouble yourself with the presumption that I took it as some kind of insult, because I didn’t.
I am, however, very happy that one thing we can certainly agree on is the concept of Dante shifting to a secondary protagonist or side character in future games. I also believe he should be given a proper, closing arc to his character before he assumes the role as mentor or veteran for the rest of the series. One thing that indeed irked me regarding
DMC4 was that Dante was replaced with a new character like Nero—not because I had any attachment to Dante.
DMC3 did enough damage to render that as a permanent impossibility—but because we never got to see him fully develop. And switching protagonists before the narrative got a proper chance to allow that kind of development is, yet again, another one of Capcom’s bad decisions.
As for the novels, well…they may not be outright denounced by Capcom as non-canon, but given how little they draw from them and how much canon material like later games and the anime contradict with them, I can’t ever hope for them to be canon assets to the series. I like the novels a lot,
prefer them incidentally, but clinging to them as reliable material would be intellectually dishonest on my part.
There, you see? That was under two pages and as civil as humanly possible. That’s me on my good behavior.
I understand you probably have many understandable qualms with everything I just said, but again, I urge you to carry them over to a private conversation. My inbox is always open, and although I can’t guarantee the swiftness or punctuality of my replies, you can be guaranteed that I’ll address them at some point.
NOW, onto the topic at hand:
And in a lot of ways, I agree. Can't not to. My point is that there are legit and sensible complaints I've heard people bring up over the years, and there are these uber stretched, spite-deformed ones, which to me are little different than stuff like "DmC Dante is emo cause his hair" or "Nero is emo cause Kyrie".
Exactly.
DMC4 is my uncontested favorite of the series, but I will never dispute the mountain of valid and perfectly-justified complaints people have with it as a story and a game.
It’s
what complaints specifically that I take issue with, and most of them are just as mundane and trivial as the examples you just gave. It’s very much in the same vein as the reboot: some people were complaining about the perfectly well-aimed complaints at the console version’s inexplicable 30fps lock or the game’s wildly dumbed-down combat system, while a much larger bulk of people complained about Dante “looking too skinny and not looking anime-esque” and “Vergil pronouncing Yamato wrong.”
Even though you’d know that the original DMC games’ butchered the pronunciation just as badly if you had even a fraction of knowledge regarding the language, you shrieking banal culture-less WEEBS.
I also love how people call Nero whiney because he shows anguish over the potential loss of Kyrie, when his emotional tie to her was 1000 times more convincing and well-delivered than Dante’s
weepingly-hilarious forced bond with Trish in
DMC1.
You can’t sit there and tell me that the echoing shouts of “KYRIE!” even remotely equate to
Dante shrieking like dying horse over a woman he literally met hours prior.
, and I shouldn't have been aggressive about it, you're right. Chiedo perdono. :frown:
