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Nero

@Morgan
You misunderstood completely.

The reason why humans who seek the power of Sparda are depicted as bad is not because "only being born with power is good, if you wanna gain it, it's bad", it's because those humans who wanted it, looked for it for bad intentions.

It's not "power is bad as long as people seek it", it's "power is bad as long as people seek it for evil". Nero, for example, gained his devilish arm pursuing a good cause (protecting his loved one), and he did good things with it.

Likewise, your point about "being born a demon is good, becoming one is awful". That's evidently false at first glance. Mundus is "born a demon" but he's not any good. While Credo, for example, becomes demon, but he is good. It's the same as earlier: the games don't show that becoming a demon in itself is a bad thing, they show that evil motivations that drive you to do so are a bad thing.

That's why your point falls apart.

No, my point still stands. Why did we have three games of humans seeking power for evil means and only one game with an actually evil demon, not counting his minions? Nero gained his arm for a good cause, but he was still related to Sparda beforehand. He was still part-blooded and the Devil Bringer only made that more obvious. Credo, a full human who gained demonic power and the most angelic form of all the Angelo bosses, died in a senseless sacrifice, even though his aim of protecting Kyrie was the same as Nero's (not the exact same, considering romantic love and all). That the story happened how it did is not a justification in and of itself. It's just the story. I'm asking why one human with good intentions for demonic power shared the same fate (death) as the three separate humans with evil intentions for demonic power. The writers chose not to redeem him in any significant way when the option was there.

Mundus was the only "born demon" major villain. Trish was born a demon, but defected to good. Lucia was born a demon, but raised to protect and do good. Sparda was born a demon, the entire backstory revolves around him having become good. There are still more good demons and bad humans than there are bad demons.

The games do show that 'becoming a demon' is either evil, or leads to death despite good intentions. They'd have shown better outcomes for humans if they felt like ever portraying better outcomes, but out of four games, they did not. I'll be interested when the writers decide to change that particular trend.
 
@Morgan
Credo shared the same fate as evil humans like Sanctus and Arkham simply because he was foolish, blind to Sanctus's true goal and decided to follow him regardless even though that meant harming Nero, pretty much a family member. Not because he became a demon in itself.

"There are still more good demons and bad humans than there are bad demons."

All the bosses say hello. Actually, the entire Hell says hello. Good demons are a minority. It's basically just Sparda (which is gone), Dante, Nero, Lucia and Trish vs the entire Netherworld. So that statement is actually as real as a 30 euros banknote.

"Why did we have three games of humans seeking power for evil means and only one game with an actually evil demon?"

Wait, I think Argosax and Vergil have something to say. And Sid too, there in the corner (ya know, anime is canon).
 
Mostly off-topic banter. Would prefer it if we stuck to the main point of this thread. Thankyou.
 
@Foxtrot: "Not counting his minions", and Argosax was not a main villain. Did you miss that or did you just choose to ignore it?

How are we even still doing this.


I'm gonna be honest, I'm not taking seriously any video that claims to "solve" something like the timeline and still thinks Vergil conceiving Nero must be canon while calling itself a theory and therefore only possibly true but not explicitly proven, used to merely explain what's going on, then needs additions from commenters using information that the creator of that video failed to take into account. If it's gonna call itself a solution then it better be airtight.

Here’s a quote from Kobayashi about how much time has occured between DMC3 and DMC4:

WN: Did you want to introduce some of these other characters?

HK: Nero and Kyrie are the two key players in the story. We’ve put them in a love story-type situation. [...]

Because a big part of the fan base is guys, we always put in a nice sexy character, hence Gloria. In the past we’ve used Trish, who is a recurring character, and also Lady. Lady appeared in 3, and now she’s about ten years older than she was in that one, but she’s grown up very nicely, as you’ll see.

Ten years passed between Devil May Cry 3 and Devil May Cry 4.

In the first game it is stated that it has been 20 years since Dante lost his mother and brother to evil from Trish.
Trish: "You’re the man who lost a mother and a brother to evil twenty years ago, the son of the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda, Mr Dante."

Dante lost his mother when he was eight years old. Devil May Cry 1 cites the event as 20 years before the game. The manga establishes itself as 10 years after Eva's death.

Arkham: "About 10 years ago…a woman was killed at the edge of town. It was an unusual death. Her home burned to the ground, and the cause of death was unclear. There was an apparent struggle, and a number of feathers and scale-like objects were scattered around the crime scene."

Let me say this again. Dante lost his mother when he was 8. Ten years later, when he and Vergil are 18, Arkham recounts the story of Eva's death and her home burned to the ground during a struggle against demons, the imagery matching the twins' separate flashbacks. "Nearly a year" later, the game happens, and they're 19. DMC1 is 20 years after Eva's death, so DMC3 is 9 years before DMC1, and Dante is 28, or 29 if you want to bend a bit of the timeline. Kamiya's twitter establishes Dante in DMC1 as "similar in age to [Space Hunter] Cobra" and that guy was 29 when his series started. But 28 is similar to 29, so who knows.

And in short form: Eva’s death (8 years old) > 10 years later, manga (18 years old) > "nearly a year" later, DMC3 (19 years old) > 9 years later, DMC1 (28 years old) > "about 10 years" after DMC3, DMC4 (29 or 30 years old).

DMC4SE cites Vergil's visit to Fortuna, in two separate translations of the text (the Japanese and the German subtitles), as "over a decade ago" (Lit. "Fortuna, over 10 years ago..." for the German, and “十数年前 , フォルトゥナ" or “jyuusuunen mae, Forutuna”/“Fortuna, about a decade ago” for the Japanese.) Singular, and not plural "decades" that the English subtitles have.

Since Vergil visited Fortuna "over/about a decade ago" and DMC4 happens "about ten years" after DMC3 according to Kobayashi, had Vergil conceived Nero then Nero should be "about ten years"/"over a decade" old in DMC4, but not enough to say "20+" because had it been ‘a few decades’ as the English suggests, the Japanese would put ‘suujyuunen’ (数十年) rather than ‘jyuusuunen’. Vergil is in his DMC3 outfit and looks visibly like a young adult (legal age, the age of majority, whatever you want to call it) so Nero as his son should be as old as two out of three subtitles, the cutscenes, and an interview suggest. Saying otherwise means that those sources and observables are somehow all wrong.

From what we see, coming as no surprise to people who know how easily Capcom fumbles consistency, Nero is not as old as the two out of three subtitles, various cutscenes, and an interview suggest, he's older. Anyone who recalls the "Nero is the same age Dante was in DMC3" interview with Kobayashi has his age as 18/19, those who follow the novel say he's 16-17, and both of those numbers are obviously bigger than "about ten years", big enough that Vergil looking like an adult is improbable as he'd still be in the beginning or middle of puberty and not the tail-end of it. Nero's in-game age suggests Vergil would have had to conceive him at (minimum) about ten years old to fit in with the rest of the timeline.

Nero being Vergil's son means either he's the wrong age in his own game, or Vergil was the wrong age when conceiving him and that age isn't depicted accurately (or at all) in the Special Edition. Nero not being his son makes his age fit as it's not dependent on either twin's age or Kobayashi's comments or a pair of subtitles. Nero would just be a descendant of Sparda through a third branch and he'd be 10 or something during DMC3.

The point is they wouldn't have to worry about any of this crap if they had only decided A) not to make Nero a Son of Sparda and write his personality as Dante-lite (or the twins' unholy lovechild) in accordance, and B) not to make Nero specifically Vergil's son (and by extension, not Dante's son either). That the artbook says he "is in fact Vergil's son" doesn't mean much; the DMC3 Sound DVD depicted Lady with green and pink eyes, and Dante with brown eyes, but their eye colors are clearly blue/red and blue in the games. When games and supplementary material contradict each other, or the fans just hate it that much, the games take precedence and knock the supplementaries out of canon especially when the material can't get the characters right (Nero has a 'notoriously twisted' personality? The same character whose haters call him a 'pansy' and 'girly' because he cried a couple of times? The same character whose only crime is maybe dropping an F-bomb, flipping a finger, and saying church puts him to sleep? That's 'twisted'?)

Actually, no. The intro to DMC3 suggests it was more of a side-effect, wherein that because the Demon world was sealed away from the Human world, Sparda's power was sealed too. There could be a dozen reasons why specifically or how it played out, but that is the rundown.

Really? Because the manga and the game manual's 'forbidden Vatican texts' from which Arkham derives his knowledge of Sparda both tell a different story.

"Then greatly fearing his own accursed power, Sparda sought to seal himself away forever with the demons. The key to that seal was the great tower. Sparda, in the depths of the tower, let flow his own blood and the blood of a pure maiden, and in doing so, he sealed away the demons — and his own power — forever." —Taken from the Demon Sword Texts (date unknown), Vatican Library Restricted Text Housing

Arkham : "It seems that you haven’t been able to locate the book you seek. Allow me to help you. There are many, many ancient texts here. Some are… forbidden. Those volumes are kept far from public view. You seek information on the demon warrior, Sparda. Have you read the texts recording the ancient legends? [...] Upon awakening to virtue, Sparda turned upon his brethren, and confronted the lord of the demons, who ruled over all of the dark powers. In his rage, Sparda tore him asunder. Fearing his awesome power, he sealed away not only the demons, but his own sword and powers. A beautiful legend, is it not?"

Lady got 'the fairy tale' version from Arkham, but Arkham got his knowledge of the legend directly from 'forbidden texts'. Arkham has no reason to lie about what's in the text; whether or not Sparda feared his own power or if the sealing was a side effect doesn't affect his plan in the least. Between him, and Lady narrating the version she heard when she was a child over a cutscene where Dante and Vergil fight so blindingly fast that their sword strikes inadvertently shield them from falling rain (and then that speed is never achieved during the actual cutscene in Mission 7), Arkham is more right (Lady's account is meant to be distorted or exaggerated) and that's what happened. Sparda feared his power, then the games before and after that don't align as the sword has not yet corrupted a hero or helped a villain.

But yeah, back to Nero. I'd like him more if Capcom didn't try to shove him into the Sparda family so hard. Anyone remember when his looking like Dante was just to make him more familiar to audiences used to their white-haired pretty-boy protagonists? I miss those days.
 
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@Morgan
...And in fact Argosax wasn't Mundus's minion. And it was the key for Arius's plan as well as the freaking final boss for the game, representing the ultimate evil to beat. :cautious:
 
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@Morgan
...And in fact Argosax wasn't Mundus's minion. And it was the key for Arius's plan as well as the freaking final boss for the game, representing the ultimate evil to beat. :cautious:
Did we play the same game? Argosax didn't express any villainous desire of his own in-game, he was just a tool for Arius to absorb, and gained sentience after a botched ritual. Arius was the main villain of the game, Argosax was just the antagonist and the final boss to close the story. Just because we fight him last doesn't make him an 'ultimate evil' except if 'ultimate' means 'last' rather than 'greatest', by that logic Vergil was more evil than Arkham. Arkham was clearly the villain. Vergil was just an antagonist. The fights were placed at the end to tie up loose ends. I get that Argosax was described as "the most evil god of all time" in the book, but then Mundus is also described as "the most evil". Between the guy that took up most of the plot of the first game and the 'afterthought boss' from the second game, Mundus should be "most evil".
 
Did we play the same game? Argosax didn't express any villainous desire of his own in-game, he was just a tool for Arius to absorb, and gained sentience after a botched ritual. Arius was the main villain of the game, Argosax was just the antagonist and the final boss to close the story. Just because we fight him last doesn't make him an 'ultimate evil' except if 'ultimate' means 'last' rather than 'greatest', by that logic Vergil was more evil than Arkham. Arkham was clearly the villain. Vergil was just an antagonist. The fights were placed at the end to tie up loose ends. I get that Argosax was described as "the most evil god of all time" in the book, but then Mundus is also described as "the most evil". Between the guy that took up most of the plot of the first game and the 'afterthought boss' from the second game, Mundus should be "most evil".

Ok ok. I've got stuff to say, but we've gone off topic enough. I think the best thing to do is to open a thread specifically for this, to discuss humans and such.

Actually it already exists, it's that one "DmC humans vs DMC humans" or something like that.
 
Capcoms timelines are always a little screwy especially when things get rushed to be put out or the original creator's vision was messed with by the desire for another game. It was pretty annoying trying to figure out the megaman timeline for me. I'll go with the fact that Nero is Vergil's son because I don't think Sparda having another bloodline would be that great of an idea and he does have "the blood of sparda" somehow. I like him and his power set, seeing the projected demon as just a natural evolution to projected swords and Kinda reminds me how the Sparda DT could fire giant dragons that held some semblance to him in DMC1. I just hope that someone eventually straightens out the timeline, but I know that no solution is going to please everybody so I'm not too worried about when that happens.
Still hope he gets to be in future games because again I like the guy.
 
This raises an interesting question.

Would y'all prefer a simple explanation like Nero is his son with the devs stretching out the timeline so the dates match.
Or would a more complex answer be more preferable, such as Nero being a result of secret cloning experiments (The Sons of Vergil) to create the ultimate soldier.

I'm not sure which one I would go for.
 
This raises an interesting question.

Would y'all prefer a simple explanation like Nero is his son with the devs stretching out the timeline so the dates match.
Or would a more complex answer be more preferable, such as Nero being a result of secret cloning experiments (The Sons of Vergil) to create the ultimate soldier.

I'm not sure which one I would go for.
There already were two artificially made soldiers in DMC universe, Trish and Lucia, so I'd rather have Nero be Vergil's son, not only cause of that, but also cause it could give Vergil layers in personality and it would be some nice symbolics if father's failures got sort of redeemed through son.
Also, secret cloning experiment smell too much of even more dudes obsessed with Sparda, whereas son theory has possibility of Sparda just being a passing memory on the side, while the focus of Nero's origins is Vergil's own adventure.
 
The whole clone idea was just an example, it doesn't have to be that.

Though I agree that Nero being Vergil's son would deepen his character and I was disappointed that Dmc4:SE didn't show us more.
 
This raises an interesting question.

Would y'all prefer a simple explanation like Nero is his son with the devs stretching out the timeline so the dates match.
Or would a more complex answer be more preferable, such as Nero being a result of secret cloning experiments (The Sons of Vergil) to create the ultimate soldier.

I'm not sure which one I would go for.

Nero Vergil's son, with him being like, Vergil's "horcrux".
 
stretching the timeline seems easier since the game itself never brings it up but another problem is what his place in the franchise should be?

@Gel has a point as outside of his connection to Sparda there isnt really much reason to see him again. So if he is to be the lead and outside of his connection to Sparda, what should his stories tackle?
 
Difficult to determine how it would branch out because the story has basically been written around Sparda for 3 out of 4 games now (and even then 2 had some mentions). What would Dante's story be outside of his connection to Sparda then? To me it seems like the only answer is a team up for some alternative threat, which would basically be difficult to make feel like it didn't come out of nowhere.
 
Why did we have three games of humans seeking power for evil means and only one game with an actually evil demon, not counting his minions?
Because a story of Humans turning to evil for their own gain is more involved and despicable than a story of a Demon being evil because it's a Demon.

Being evil is basically a Demon's default state. It's almost self-explanatory. But for a Human, it's them betraying everything they are in exchange for power, and offers an opportunity for the story to talk about how the power they seek is ultimately meaningless in the face of the humanity they gave up.

There are still more good demons and bad humans than there are bad demons.

Considering you battle hundreds upon hundreds of Demons in each game, that's not quite true.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm not taking seriously any video that claims to "solve" something like the timeline and still thinks Vergil conceiving Nero must be canon while calling itself a theory and therefore only possibly true but not explicitly proven, used to merely explain what's going on, then needs additions from commenters using information that the creator of that video failed to take into account.

His information is solid and corroborated by multiple sources, even if you don't take Nero's parentage into account.

Ten years passed between Devil May Cry 3 and Devil May Cry 4.

That is effectively the only source giving that version of the timeline, especially in numbers. And frankly, it has more to do with Japanese culture than anything else - Lady will probably stay perpetually 29 for as long as the series goes on, because any older and they'd expect her to stop being "cute".

DMC4SE cites Vergil's visit to Fortuna, in two separate translations of the text (the Japanese and the German subtitles), as "over a decade ago" (Lit. "Fortuna, over 10 years ago..." for the German, and “十数年前 , フォルトゥナ" or “jyuusuunen mae, Forutuna”/“Fortuna, about a decade ago” for the Japanese.) Singular, and not plural "decades" that the English subtitles have.

The English translation takes precedence. In fact it would be more accurate to say that both the German and even Japanese versions are the translations while the English version is the original, as Devil May Cry games are always written and VAed in English first, often to the exclusion of other languages.

And even assuming those translations are correct, they also do not give definitive dates, only "over a decade" and "about a decade". Considering statements as to Nero's age being comparable to Dante in DMC3, and Dante himself in DMC4 being in his 30's and approaching 40, that would mean almost twenty years had passed from the events of the third game - A timeframe which would roughly meet each translation.

Nero being Vergil's son means either he's the wrong age in his own game, or Vergil was the wrong age when conceiving him and that age isn't depicted accurately (or at all) in the Special Edition.

Alternatively, you are incorrect in your interpretation of information. This is by far the most likely scenario, as your evidence is miniscule in comparison to everything that contradicts it.

and write his personality as Dante-lite

His personality is not actually all that similar to Dante's. At the beginning of the game it's closer, but the devs noted that this was really akin to a teenager trying to act tough and cool, rather than a genuine display. As the story continues he acts less and less like Dante, to the point where he's almost entirely serious and isn't acting crazy or cracking any jokes at all.

When games and supplementary material contradict each other, or the fans just hate it that much, the games take precedence

And as it turns out, the game does not contradict this information in the slightest. It's quite the opposite, in fact.

(Nero has a 'notoriously twisted' personality? The same character whose haters call him a 'pansy' and 'girly' because he cried a couple of times? The same character whose only crime is maybe dropping an F-bomb, flipping a finger, and saying church puts him to sleep? That's 'twisted'?)

Compare Nero to the other residents of Fortuna, and yes he is quite "twisted". They're all extremely formal, devout, and religious, while Nero is very abrasive and would prefer to shun their customs.

Flipping someone off may not seem like a big deal, but if you did it in front of the Pope they'd take serious issue.

Really? Because the manga and the game manual's 'forbidden Vatican texts' from which Arkham derives his knowledge of Sparda both tell a different story.

Perhaps, but there is no guarantee that was the actual reasoning and account of what happened. Viewed from a Human perspective, Sparda sealing away his power because he feared it was corruptive would fit with the worldview of the church, in that the power of hell is inherently evil.

Sparda feared his power, then the games before and after that don't align as the sword has not yet corrupted a hero or helped a villain.

Alternatively, Sparda did fear his power and intentionally seal it away, but not because it was physically corruptive or bad. Rather, because Sparda did not trust himself to always use his power with righteousness in mind - He may have feared that in time, with no-one to hold him in check, he might come to abuse his power and act as a tyrant rather than a watcher.
 
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@Morgan, i think that if we just use the information in the games, we end nowhere again; supossedly, interviews should be dismissed too if the only content we can take as canon is what made it to the final product. If DMC4SE is right, Vergil visited Fortuna 10 years prior to DMC4, which can mean anything seeing that DMC4 gives us really no clue about when it happened from content in the game. And if it's the case we can take into account information from outside the game, we have to consider the artbook too, it's produced/licensed by Capcom itself; the directors of the games probably had a voice when making the character descriptions and putting the info on the book.

So we are left were we started off. I think this discussion about Nero pretty much has reached its limits and the only consensus is that there's a lot of contradictory information here and there. Pretty much, Capcom and the directors of the game will give whatever backstory they want to him; and since the game was released, as yourself said, they're trying to place Nero as part of Sparda family and implicitly as Vergil's son, so i think that's pretty much it, and they will end manipulating the timeline to make it more believable.
 
the dante-lite accusations came from DMC3 Dante being fresh in people's heads and Nero not feeling different from a surface level. People thought he was just a case of "here's the new guy same as the old guy" or other users on the forum thought he was Dante as a teenager (that might have been cool tho, seeing dante growing up in fortuna and returning as an adult)

So moving forward with nero hinges on the dev team making him feel like his own man through story and gameplay, making him standout from the other two.

that's why people are eager to see Vergil return, cause its easier to hone in on who he is and find opurtunities for new takes on DMC than Dante or nero at this time. So learning from that and making Nero more distinct is the way to go.
 
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