Interesting interview

[IncarnatedDemon]

This is a translated text so be aware of grammar issues:

Devil May Cry Director Hideki Kamiya Interview

STYLISH Desires-3


Dante's personality is cool, and it makes a unique atmosphere in the game. How did Hideki build up Dante's personality and what kind of image were in Hideki's mind?
"To be expressive is important in the real world, but if I build a character's personality like in the real world, it is not going to be a hero type personality in the imaginary world. I felt the guy inside is more stylish and cool."
In the process of building Dante's personality, the first thing that came up in Hideki's mind is the character came from the Japanese comic "Cobra".
"Even when Cobra fights, he has a little smile on his face, it is cool. But, sometimes Cobra makes a serious face and it makes tension for the readers. Dante too, usually Dante talks to devil like he doesn't care, but he is carrying sadness and spiteful feelings because his family was killed by devils, so his mind can't be calm like water without a wave. He is not going to be scared but his mind is burning with anger. But if he lets devils know about his feelings, the devils provoke and try to hurt his feelings..... so he pretends to be calm and keeps pretends.... then in the end, he can't keep doing it anymore and his story climaxes.
"The beauty of keeping feelings inside" is really Japanese way, I think. But I wanted to create not always mad or calm character, the character has liveliness."He put all the feelings of a hero in to Dante.
When he asked the character designer to make visualized image of Dante, he gave three focus points for designer.
"I gave "Stylishly run with long coat", "British guy" and "Doesn't smoke cigarette". Long coat is I just wanted to put something showy on character. British guy is I wanted for Dante to be not only a fighting man, witty and traditional fighting man. About cigarette, this is simple, I just thought man without cigarette is cool.
After all, designer gave me his idea and we finally came up with the final Dante. His cloth color is red because the red color is showy and cool from all the other colors."
Hideki didn't have exact image of Dante in his mind, more like he left the work for the designer. And this way is not only character designing.
"I always do job like that, so sometimes things turn to really different than what I expected. But I think it is OK, because the designer went above my idea. I know it is important to keep first idea too, but development of the game is a long turn job and sometimes your feeling of what is good changes. I think it is natural and I trust those feelings."
It was like build up to STYLISH by Hideki's thoughts. But it was not an easy job to make all staff members to understand "STYLISH". Especially, Devil May Cry staff members were over 40 people.
"Yes, to keep good communication among staff members was the most important thing in development. Actually, if I go to a business trip one day, in the next day, we had a whole lot of problem. But I wanted to make THE GAME, I wanted to make the game that users can feel we really enjoyed to create. So, I tried to keep the team's atmosphere motivated. To make people understand what I want to make, I tried to chat with all staff members. Directors job is not only direct game, make team's mood is one of the important jobs too. If I always say stuffy things, Devil May Cry will be a stuffy game too. Actually, I'm not a serious person anyway *Laugh* If I tried to be serious, maybe Devil May Cry would never make the game like it is now."


Interview from: Devil May Cry Graphic Edition
Published date: Dec 20 2001
Published by: Kadokawa Syoten Co,. LTD

 

[Gel]

This is Cobra, the Space Pirate:

He was teen's wet dream back in sixties/seventies.In every episode he has a lot of gorgeous women as their sidekicks, alll of them only wearing a thong and a bra and his main sidekick was called Lady who's became a android to save her life. But this guy was inspired in a famous french actor Jean-Paul Belmondo and his roles on action movies.

 

[berto]

This is Cobra, the Space Pirate:

He was teen's wet dream back in sixties/seventies.In every episode he has a lot of gorgeous women as their sidekicks, alll of them only wearing a thong and a bra and his main sidekick was called Lady who's became a android to save her life. But this guy was inspired in a famous french actor Jean-Paul Belmondo and his roles on action movies.

Blah. I wasn't that big on the anime. The manga on the other hand was my Cobra of choice. In the anime he spend alot of time been goofy and often retracting the comments he made at women while he was more serious in the manga and more confident about what he said.

 

[Gel]

Yeah, I read the manga too.But do you remember how Lady Armaroid's role was so similar to Trish's role? And how Jane Royal's partnership with Cobra was so similar to Lady's role on DMC? With the difference Cobra was generally kinder to Jane than Dante to Lady and vice versa, Jane often asked Cobra for help to catch some baddies, except those baddies were space criminals, not demons. Maybe knowing about Kamiya's inspiration on Cobra, Capcom continued using that manga/show for inspiration.