New development for Kyrie in DMC6?

[Morgan]

Kobayashi himself said it.

Source: https://www.siliconera.com/sengoku-...-on-how-to-make-action-games-appeal-to-women/

It’s quite amazing that the Basara series, an action game series with a bunch of male leads, is so well received by both genders. It seems like companies are trying to figure out how to appeal to women, but are resorting to gender stereotyped games instead.

I took similar steps while making Devil May Cry 4 as well. The first thing was to take away things girls don’t like, things that are disgusting and violent graphics or events. Also, big, buff, macho guys. There are girls that like that, but most girls like a realistic nice, sweet guy.

If we made someone like the Hulk, a big overly muscular guy, girls probably won’t be into that. If you take that character and tone him down a bit, make him more of a smart type, that little difference can change the perception of how females receive that character.

Just so we understand Kobayashi correctly, his goal was:

> Make action games appeal to women, without "resorting to gender stereotyped games".

Ways to achieve this, according to Kobayashi:

> Remove the blood and gore that the series is known to have, because "girls don't like that".

> Make a "nice, sweet guy" [Nero] because "most girls like [that]", also "tone him down a bit" and "make him more of a smart type" for the same reasons.

But then, per Tatsuya Yoshikawa, Yuichiro Hiraki, Hiroyuki Nara, and Bingo Morihashi:

> Decline ideas where Nero is actually depicted as a "Sherlock Holmes-type" and switch out of calling him Rodin because that's too smart. Give him a simple name with simple reasoning. Also make him "a violent character, one brimming with power" and given a "momentary spark of rage, brutality, and insanity", because previous depictions of "refined, noble nuance" in his character was not well-received by the team -- ironically making the end result "someone like the Hulk".

> Make Dante buff, while saying "girls probably won't be into [big overly muscular guys]". In fact, be so concerned about the men's features, primarily Nero's, seeming "delicate by Western audiences" that multiple adjustments are made to Nero's physique to make him "more muscular" and "beefy", then settle on giving him a physique similar to DMC3 Dante, who looks like this. Instead of just toning Dante down so Nero would look less slender in comparison, or something.

> Make the women in the game serve no purpose to the plot and bland in character but tick all the sex-appeal boxes. Gloria "is sexy, and that’s pretty much it. She really wasn’t necessary". Kyrie is "cookie-cutter", "not very memorable", "created almost as a goddess" but "is reasonably tall, sensual, and [has] huge breasts" as "a matter of course". Lady's design emphasizes "the fact that she’s not wearing a bra" and "The monitor at my workstation constantly had either Lady’s cleavage or short shorts displayed, because I was working on those aspects the whole time…" All because "Female characters play very important roles, so even when they don’t appear much, you’ve got to work hard on them" and "That’s just how it is when it comes to sex appeal".

Destroying characterization for the sake of sex appeal = appealing to women.

 

[windleopard]

Kobayashi himself said it.

Source: https://www.siliconera.com/sengoku-...-on-how-to-make-action-games-appeal-to-women/



Just so we understand Kobayashi correctly, his goal was:

> Make action games appeal to women, without "resorting to gender stereotyped games".

Ways to achieve this, according to Kobayashi:

> Remove the blood and gore that the series is known to have, because "girls don't like that".

> Make a "nice, sweet guy" [Nero] because "most girls like [that]", also "tone him down a bit" and "make him more of a smart type" for the same reasons.

But then, per Tatsuya Yoshikawa, Yuichiro Hiraki, Hiroyuki Nara, and Bingo Morihashi:

> Decline ideas where Nero is actually depicted as a "Sherlock Holmes-type" and switch out of calling him Rodin because that's too smart. Give him a simple name with simple reasoning. Also make him "a violent character, one brimming with power" and given a "momentary spark of rage, brutality, and insanity", because previous depictions of "refined, noble nuance" in his character was not well-received by the team -- ironically making the end result "someone like the Hulk".

> Make Dante buff, while saying "girls probably won't be into [big overly muscular guys]". In fact, be so concerned about the men's features, primarily Nero's, seeming "delicate by Western audiences" that multiple adjustments are made to Nero's physique to make him "more muscular" and "beefy", then settle on giving him a physique similar to DMC3 Dante, who looks like this. Instead of just toning Dante down so Nero would look less slender in comparison, or something.

> Make the women in the game serve no purpose to the plot and bland in character but tick all the sex-appeal boxes. Gloria "is sexy, and that’s pretty much it. She really wasn’t necessary". Kyrie is "cookie-cutter", "not very memorable", "created almost as a goddess" but "is reasonably tall, sensual, and [has] huge breasts" as "a matter of course". Lady's design emphasizes "the fact that she’s not wearing a bra" and "The monitor at my workstation constantly had either Lady’s cleavage or short shorts displayed, because I was working on those aspects the whole time…" All because "Female characters play very important roles, so even when they don’t appear much, you’ve got to work hard on them" and "That’s just how it is when it comes to sex appeal".

Destroying characterization for the sake of sex appeal = appealing to women.

Thanks for the reply.

Your posts have certainly given me a lot to think about in regards to this franchise's history with female characters. I definitely agree with your take on Lady in 4 and 5 but I can't say she was done dirty in 3. I think the writers handled her quite well. Her stance on whether or not it's right to kill Vergil could be taken as her not being in a right head space after killing her own father and not wanting Nero to go through the same thing. But her opinion in that game doesn't occur in a vacuum.

With Trish I think the writers just never figured out how to integrate her into the games as Dante's partner. While I like Lucia, I think DMC 2 was a missed opportunity to show Dante and Trish's partnership.

Lucia was certainly a step in the right direction when it came to writing female characters. I really hope we see her in future games.

Nico is an entertaining non-combatant.

Speaking of Nico, your idea of a moral dilemma for Kyrie made me wonder how she'd react to the knowledge of him killing Nico's mother.

That said, I think these ideas would best be explored in a medium other than the games like a t.v. series or a novel.

 

[V's patron]

@Morgan
Honestly i would've just given them a female protagonist but im simplistic like that.

So to recap for @Ronin, its possible to make Kyrie a better character. Its just that there is less incentive to do so because you very little to work with. Even Patty could get by on being an 8 year old who has sorcery in her family history.

I disagree with @windleopard because i don't think the medium was the problem. There are better videogame love stories out there nor would an anime automatically present it better. To me the anime is the worst DMC story we have. My thing is they just didn't come up with a good love story to tell. Even if you got rid of Dante and the others, nero and Kyrie's relationship would still need serious work.

So unless the next writer really wants to use Kyrie or Bingo has a change of heart, i wouldn't get my hopes up.

 

[Morgan]

Your posts have certainly given me a lot to think about in regards to this franchise's history with female characters. I definitely agree with your take on Lady in 4 and 5 but I can't say she was done dirty in 3. I think the writers handled her quite well. Her stance on whether or not it's right to kill Vergil could be taken as her not being in a right head space after killing her own father and not wanting Nero to go through the same thing. But her opinion in that game doesn't occur in a vacuum.

I have my reasons for thinking that she was done dirty with regards to how Lady and Dante's characters in that game were constructed as a standalone installment, the fact that her opinion in 5 doesn't occur in a vacuum (and undermines the reason why the scene existed in 3 to start with), and comparing Lady to the similar character of her type, Beryl from the DMC2 Novel.

DMC3 starts with Lady narrating the game. She narrates the game about the Sons of Sparda. That wouldn't be a big deal, except her narration deals entirely about what she heard from Arkham about Sparda, her opinions on it, her meeting both Sons, and what she learned from interacting with Dante that caused her to develop as a character, while most of what we play in the game has her be absent for most of it. So why weren't we playing as her, then? That's like if Trish had narration in DMC1 talking about herself and occasionally Dante, or if it were the other way around, Dante narrating about Trish but Trish is the sole playable character and Dante is secondary/cameo'ing. They're pulling a Moby Dick, but this isn't Moby Dick-tier writing.

Her presence in the third game boils down to, "She's a bit racist and an irrational psycho, but she's also soft and vulnerable too!", and for Dante she's a Manic Pixie Dream Girl with Guns, Rockets, and Clunky Dialogue. Arkham, a human, killed her mother for ambition and power. She then blames all demons for Arkham's darkness. She proceeds to want to Kill All Demons, but fires a rocket at Dante and then shoots him in the head later, before she finds out that he is a demon, meaning she's not above committing Human Murder on her way to Demonic Genocide. She determines that Dante is a demon, but then spills out her life story to him even though she's under the impression that he "knows nothing about family!" because of his assumed genealogy, which makes her ranting about Arkham's crimes to Dante as functional as explaining quantum physics to an ant. She lets her guard down around a man she believes is a cold-blooded, inhuman murderer, while staring at the body of another cold-blooded, inhuman murderer. That's just irrational. Later she, after having thought that Arkham killed Kalina on his own (yet still wanting to Kill All Demons?), is tricked by Arkham into believing that he was forced/possessed by Vergil, which stokes her fire to Kill All Demons Even More Now and pushes her to Mission 13, and all Vergil does there is call her a "foolish girl" and has her questioning everything again. She does and thinks all of these things even though the entire series hinges on the Legend of Sparda being true when the Legend is pretty much #NotAllDemons, a.k.a. Demons Can Be Good, a.k.a. Lady has no reason to think All Demons Are Evil when the world exists solely because they're Not All Evil, and her quest starts when a Human Commits Evil, even though if she picked up a history text book or thought about the existence of jails or prisons, she'd be well aware that Humans Commit Evil All The Time.

But like, let's move on from that one.

Her character files state she's of "weak flesh and blood", and that really shouldn't matter in a story that's espoused the morals of "not judging people by their birth", and "humans are capable of tremendous feats" -- literally, Dante in DMC1 says "We humans never give up!" -- but the story as executed in game shows that yes it does matter. Lady even with her humanity is weak, so she matters less than Dante who embraces his humanity only 4/5ths of the way through the game. Dante beats Lady in a fight to convince her not to go through with her life mission (kill Arkham, because it's her responsibility). She gives up and entrusts Dante with her only useful weapon, the Kalina Ann, named after her mother, and tells Dante to "Please, free my father". The Kalina Ann has sentimental value to Lady, but doesn't mean anything to Dante himself. He doesn't know who Kalina Ann is. Lady never mentioned her by name; in dialogue she's "[Arkham's] loving wife" or "[Lady's] dear mother", no name given. He just gets the weapon because he defeated the Boss Fight that had it, making Lady no different than any other Boss Devil in the game (Cerberus, A&R, Nevan, etc.). He defeated her, she gave him her Soul.

Why? Hell if I know. As mentioned before, Dante's whole character arc is about him being totally apathetic to what Vergil's actions mean for the world and even for his own personal story, until Lady teaches him what's important. He admits it in Mission 16. So why is he even there? Usually, a protagonist must want something and the antagonist opposes them. That's what makes them antagonist. But what does Dante want? He saw it as "fun" and "a party". It's not even like he had his Amulet stolen in the first mission and scaled the tower to get it back, and he'd take it and leave. That would mean his apathy is really a hyperfocus on protecting his personal belongings (the Amulet, the memory of his Mother) at the expense of everything else. But this was not that story. He has everything already (his amulet, his shop), wants nothing, isn't interested in Vergil's machinations or attaining power, he didn't go there out of personal pride in his bloodline since "Father? I don't have a father. I just don't like you, that's all", didn't mention his mother's memory or his quest for vengeance so it can't be that either, and he didn't do it out of an internal sense of Justice because "At first I didn't give a damn, but because of you, I know what's important now". So he shouldn't even be there. Him being in the Tower anyway actually makes things worse because he gets his Amulet stolen in Mission 7. He could have just skipped town. What's Vergil gonna do, get mad?

Back to Lady. She's there because Arkham killed Kalina, thus she wants revenge. She's willing to take her revenge and let nothing get in her way, because her determination is that strong. She has compelling motivations to be in the Tower and survives some pretty lethal events across the course of the game. She does some straight-up unrealistic stuff, like reaching high places in the Tower with a souped-up motorcycle, fighting her way across what's actually the Mission 6 Trial of Might without either being locked in to the area or getting the trophy, falling from the Tower and getting caught in the air without snapping her neck or even letting go of her guns, getting to the bottom of the Tower anyway in time for Leviathan to crash land next to her and Dante to come out, having an obligatory Super Cool Strong Female Character scene against more lesser demons, being stabbed in the leg with her own bayonet without bleeding out from her femoral artery being severed, standing on that recently-impaled leg without any sign of pain, bandaging it up in the next scene with no comment, climbing up the side of the Tower on that injured leg and reaching the library quicker than Dante did. By that point she's fired a bunch of missiles from her missile launcher without ever being seen reloading it or carrying the missiles that the launcher fires to begin with and pretty much runs on the Infinite Ammo cheat until Mission 16 (and later Mission 20), but in Mission 16, while somewhat tired, she picked a fight with Dante and had that boss fight, no problem. She lost, but she didn't die.

So the game had no problem with Lady doing unrealistic things and saving her from scenarios that should have killed her, except for a version of the Mission 13 scene where Lady fought against Dante and Vergil for a few minutes. The scene we got instead shows her being overpowered very quickly. The previous version of the scene was replaced because it wasn't realistic for a human to face two half-demons. Right. But it is realistic for her to do basically everything she's seen doing in the game anyway? Cool. Sure. The game implicitly gave Lady a high pain tolerance and inexplicable healing ability for her to do anything she does, and she did that as a relatively inexperienced devil hunter who was just a normal schoolgirl a year prior to her vengeance quest (see: manga). They hit her with the Realism Stick when it was convenient. Because it was convenient.

For DMC Vol 2 we had Beryl, who has more or less the same backstory of "Demon Hunter with a dead mother, father was involved with the occult, father became a demon due to his obsession and the transformation is related to the dead mother, the Hunter gets a scar from the incident, wields a big gun, and eventually teams up with Dante". Beryl had her moments where she questioned herself and what she knew, but the storyline didn't diminish her, have Dante fight her to discourage her from her mission, or anything like that. She was still involved with events and in the final boss fight against Chen by breaking his armor so Dante could exploit that weakness. And that was DMC2 Dante, who until 4 and 5 came out, was considered by fandom and general canon as "Dante at his strongest". He still needed Beryl's help, and that was fine because it made for a cool boss fight. Beryl was in it for the Beastheads and Chen, and she got the Beastheads and Chen. She later gives Dante her weapon as a sign of thanks, as her fight is over. She had a place in that story.

Lady, though? Even though it's her father she's after, making her fight more personal, she got sidelined for some guy who "embraced his humanity" very late in his own arc and had no prior personal motivations even with the personal element of Vergil. To add insult to injury, even Vergil joins the fight against Arkham, and he didn't do it out of a great epiphany about humanity (since he only has this epiphany in 5), he did it to finish the job he thought he did in Mission 10. Lady sits out the fight against her own dad. She had every right to be there, even more than the guy who stabbed Arkham because Arkham outlived his usefulness. But a half-demon that forsook his humanity for power has more right to defeat a human that forsook his humanity for power, over the human that overcame her own prejudice and taught a half-demon how to embrace his humanity through her own struggle. Somehow. And after completing her personal mission, instead of hanging up her weapon or letting Dante keep it like Beryl, she specifically asks for it back. Her narration says she "[has] a job to do that's far from done" to kill more demons and prevent anyone from going through the same tragedy she did. A tragedy committed by a human. And then 4 and 5 show her method of doing her job is being on the sidelines, fobbing work onto Dante, or jobbing to Urizen.

But let's get back to 3. She sits out the struggle and the Sons of Sparda do the legwork of defeating Arkham. That'd be fine if that's all it was, but instead Lady's scene with Arkham is still added to Mission 20. For the scene to work it takes unironic acceptance that Lady couldn't overpower Arkham physically and was outwitted by him mentally, and the only way she had an upper hand on him was when he was rendered a paraplegic madman ranting about godhood. Lady shoots Arkham with the bullets she magically reloaded into her gun even though M16 made it a point to show that she ran out of bullets. If you remove the scene, nothing really changes. Arkham was already assumed dead from Dante and Vergil finishing him off with a Jackpot shot (and Vergil straight-up saying, "Not very classy for someone's dying words.") because Dante has always beaten bosses with Jackpot shots. Arkham is still dead without the Mission 20 scene, only that Lady goes from watching Vergil pass her by in M19, going up to the top in M20, killing Arkham, then going all the way back down by the end of M20 (I guess we have to assume that Dante fighting Vergil took hours instead of a few minutes, or Lady has super speed?) to her watching Vergil pass her by, and.... simply leaving the Tower to wait for Dante at the bottom because she's not needed. She already decided on her own that she wasn't needed when she gave Dante the Kalina Ann. Vergil going past her wouldn't really do much to change her mind. He didn't even talk to her.

But the scene is there anyway. She does shoot Arkham. She didn't do this in 3 with anything from 5 in mind. No one at Capcom even had 4 and Nero being Vergil's son in mind when they did anything about the third game. Lady shooting Arkham wasn't done with sole intention of her teaching a lesson to some dude later about how traumatizing it is. She did it for closure and it exists in parallel with Dante handling Vergil, where Vergil chooses not to change his ways and he's assumed dead. Neither Dante nor Lady could save their family via turning them good. They died. They both shed tears about it for what they lost and what could have been. Lady consoles Dante a little, then they go on to Fight More Demons because the series doesn't dwell on drama.

Except now 5 shows up and renders that closure pointless. She was wrong to have done it, she wasn't in the right mental state to make that call, whatever. So it shouldn't have been there. It was anyway, and including that into the character arc of 5 means her overall story is one where even her own decisions come to bite her in the ass and affect her negatively in service to the Sons of Sparda. Dante at most only cried for Vergil in 3 and thought he was dead, put him down again in 1 and thought he was actually dead, made his peace with Nero's presence as proof Vergil was good for something after all, and then doesn't try to reason with Vergil/Urizen in 5 or express regret for not saving him in 3, he tells him a story about Eva to appeal to his childish ego, then decides the guy is a lost cause and needs to Die until Nero stops him.

The resolution to Lady's arc, unless they want to extend it even more, is to tell Nero it's wrong to put an end to a terrible, genocidal man because he happens to be the next of kin to that genocidal man, and to leave it to Dante, who's also kin with the genocidal man. Nero then decides to save the genocidal man because of his hang-ups about Kyrie's Brother, even though Vergil is the kind of character that would have murdered Credo himself if he were in Sanctus's position. Vergil and Lady are then civil to each other (I guess) when Vergil's thoughts around Lady during 3 were him not caring that Arkham killed Kalina Ann, relying on Arkham's murder of Kalina Ann to suggest Arkham could have (and should have) murdered Lady in cold blood, being annoyed he didn't do it and murdering him for not being evil enough and therefore useless, thinking Lady a foolish girl, and then not talking to her since then.

That's it, that's her plot. She's just there to motivate whatever guy is in the game into killing or not killing the villain of the day. The writing arbitrarily chooses when she can or can't do unrealistic things, who can or can't regret their killing a bad person, or even which bad person is capable of redemption or not.

Lady still doesn't have her own playable spin-off. As much as Itsuno says that she's his favorite, "definitely [a] cool enough and strong enough character", and her high popularity, it still took, what, 7 years for her to show up in the Special Edition to 4? Trish is in Marvel vs Capcom 3 to represent DMC alongside Dante and Vergil, not Lady. But at least she's in the DMC mobile game! Right?

*crickets*

With Trish I think the writers just never figured out how to integrate her into the games as Dante's partner. While I like Lucia, I think DMC 2 was a missed opportunity to show Dante and Trish's partnership.

Lucia was certainly a step in the right direction when it came to writing female characters. I really hope we see her in future games.

Nico is an entertaining non-combatant.

Speaking of Nico, your idea of a moral dilemma for Kyrie made me wonder how she'd react to the knowledge of him killing Nico's mother.

That said, I think these ideas would best be explored in a medium other than the games like a t.v. series or a novel.

Nico's grandmother? Vergil didn't have anything to do with Nico's mom unless I missed something, but the game tries really hard to dodge the fact that the novel being canon means Vergil was responsible for mass murder on three separate occasions and killed everyone Dante ever knew about except Enzo, or forced Dante to mercy-kill Jessica. Vergil killing Nell as well means Dante would have had 1001 reasons to pull a Fatality on Vergil in the third game and not shed a single tear for him, but that's not what happened, because 3 wasn't written with the novel being canon. 3 pushed the novel into non-canon status until 5 dug it up from its grave.

If Kyrie found out that Vergil killed off Nell, considering Kyrie happens to think Nico is good company and Nico likes her in return, that'd make her less sympathetic to Vergil.

They keep insisting on there being a story in this game to get us invested in the characters, so they should do better on the story since it's in the game. Otherwise we could just have Bloody Palace with a roster.

They're content with throwing Lucia into the DMC5 novel which limits who even hears about her, so I don't think they care much about her character anymore except for reminding us she exists. It was too much work even for them to make Gloria her own character to insert development of Dumary Island in DMC4 and they opted to make Gloria a Lucia-lookalike for fanservice as an existing character's skin. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but that's how it is.

 

[windleopard]

I have my reasons for thinking that she was done dirty with regards to how Lady and Dante's characters in that game were constructed as a standalone installment, the fact that her opinion in 5 doesn't occur in a vacuum (and undermines the reason why the scene existed in 3 to start with), and comparing Lady to the similar character of her type, Beryl from the DMC2 Novel.

DMC3 starts with Lady narrating the game. She narrates the game about the Sons of Sparda. That wouldn't be a big deal, except her narration deals entirely about what she heard from Arkham about Sparda, her opinions on it, her meeting both Sons, and what she learned from interacting with Dante that caused her to develop as a character, while most of what we play in the game has her be absent for most of it. So why weren't we playing as her, then? That's like if Trish had narration in DMC1 talking about herself and occasionally Dante, or if it were the other way around, Dante narrating about Trish but Trish is the sole playable character and Dante is secondary/cameo'ing. They're pulling a Moby Dick, but this isn't Moby Dick-tier writing.

Her presence in the third game boils down to, "She's a bit racist and an irrational psycho, but she's also soft and vulnerable too!", and for Dante she's a Manic Pixie Dream Girl with Guns, Rockets, and Clunky Dialogue. Arkham, a human, killed her mother for ambition and power. She then blames all demons for Arkham's darkness. She proceeds to want to Kill All Demons, but fires a rocket at Dante and then shoots him in the head later, before she finds out that he is a demon, meaning she's not above committing Human Murder on her way to Demonic Genocide. She determines that Dante is a demon, but then spills out her life story to him even though she's under the impression that he "knows nothing about family!" because of his assumed genealogy, which makes her ranting about Arkham's crimes to Dante as functional as explaining quantum physics to an ant. She lets her guard down around a man she believes is a cold-blooded, inhuman murderer, while staring at the body of another cold-blooded, inhuman murderer. That's just irrational. Later she, after having thought that Arkham killed Kalina on his own (yet still wanting to Kill All Demons?), is tricked by Arkham into believing that he was forced/possessed by Vergil, which stokes her fire to Kill All Demons Even More Now and pushes her to Mission 13, and all Vergil does there is call her a "foolish girl" and has her questioning everything again. She does and thinks all of these things even though the entire series hinges on the Legend of Sparda being true when the Legend is pretty much #NotAllDemons, a.k.a. Demons Can Be Good, a.k.a. Lady has no reason to think All Demons Are Evil when the world exists solely because they're Not All Evil, and her quest starts when a Human Commits Evil, even though if she picked up a history text book or thought about the existence of jails or prisons, she'd be well aware that Humans Commit Evil All The Time.

But like, let's move on from that one.

Her character files state she's of "weak flesh and blood", and that really shouldn't matter in a story that's espoused the morals of "not judging people by their birth", and "humans are capable of tremendous feats" -- literally, Dante in DMC1 says "We humans never give up!" -- but the story as executed in game shows that yes it does matter. Lady even with her humanity is weak, so she matters less than Dante who embraces his humanity only 4/5ths of the way through the game. Dante beats Lady in a fight to convince her not to go through with her life mission (kill Arkham, because it's her responsibility). She gives up and entrusts Dante with her only useful weapon, the Kalina Ann, named after her mother, and tells Dante to "Please, free my father". The Kalina Ann has sentimental value to Lady, but doesn't mean anything to Dante himself. He doesn't know who Kalina Ann is. Lady never mentioned her by name; in dialogue she's "[Arkham's] loving wife" or "[Lady's] dear mother", no name given. He just gets the weapon because he defeated the Boss Fight that had it, making Lady no different than any other Boss Devil in the game (Cerberus, A&R, Nevan, etc.). He defeated her, she gave him her Soul.

Why? Hell if I know. As mentioned before, Dante's whole character arc is about him being totally apathetic to what Vergil's actions mean for the world and even for his own personal story, until Lady teaches him what's important. He admits it in Mission 16. So why is he even there? Usually, a protagonist must want something and the antagonist opposes them. That's what makes them antagonist. But what does Dante want? He saw it as "fun" and "a party". It's not even like he had his Amulet stolen in the first mission and scaled the tower to get it back, and he'd take it and leave. That would mean his apathy is really a hyperfocus on protecting his personal belongings (the Amulet, the memory of his Mother) at the expense of everything else. But this was not that story. He has everything already (his amulet, his shop), wants nothing, isn't interested in Vergil's machinations or attaining power, he didn't go there out of personal pride in his bloodline since "Father? I don't have a father. I just don't like you, that's all", didn't mention his mother's memory or his quest for vengeance so it can't be that either, and he didn't do it out of an internal sense of Justice because "At first I didn't give a damn, but because of you, I know what's important now". So he shouldn't even be there. Him being in the Tower anyway actually makes things worse because he gets his Amulet stolen in Mission 7. He could have just skipped town. What's Vergil gonna do, get mad?

Back to Lady. She's there because Arkham killed Kalina, thus she wants revenge. She's willing to take her revenge and let nothing get in her way, because her determination is that strong. She has compelling motivations to be in the Tower and survives some pretty lethal events across the course of the game. She does some straight-up unrealistic stuff, like reaching high places in the Tower with a souped-up motorcycle, fighting her way across what's actually the Mission 6 Trial of Might without either being locked in to the area or getting the trophy, falling from the Tower and getting caught in the air without snapping her neck or even letting go of her guns, getting to the bottom of the Tower anyway in time for Leviathan to crash land next to her and Dante to come out, having an obligatory Super Cool Strong Female Character scene against more lesser demons, being stabbed in the leg with her own bayonet without bleeding out from her femoral artery being severed, standing on that recently-impaled leg without any sign of pain, bandaging it up in the next scene with no comment, climbing up the side of the Tower on that injured leg and reaching the library quicker than Dante did. By that point she's fired a bunch of missiles from her missile launcher without ever being seen reloading it or carrying the missiles that the launcher fires to begin with and pretty much runs on the Infinite Ammo cheat until Mission 16 (and later Mission 20), but in Mission 16, while somewhat tired, she picked a fight with Dante and had that boss fight, no problem. She lost, but she didn't die.

So the game had no problem with Lady doing unrealistic things and saving her from scenarios that should have killed her, except for a version of the Mission 13 scene where Lady fought against Dante and Vergil for a few minutes. The scene we got instead shows her being overpowered very quickly. The previous version of the scene was replaced because it wasn't realistic for a human to face two half-demons. Right. But it is realistic for her to do basically everything she's seen doing in the game anyway? Cool. Sure. The game implicitly gave Lady a high pain tolerance and inexplicable healing ability for her to do anything she does, and she did that as a relatively inexperienced devil hunter who was just a normal schoolgirl a year prior to her vengeance quest (see: manga). They hit her with the Realism Stick when it was convenient. Because it was convenient.

For DMC Vol 2 we had Beryl, who has more or less the same backstory of "Demon Hunter with a dead mother, father was involved with the occult, father became a demon due to his obsession and the transformation is related to the dead mother, the Hunter gets a scar from the incident, wields a big gun, and eventually teams up with Dante". Beryl had her moments where she questioned herself and what she knew, but the storyline didn't diminish her, have Dante fight her to discourage her from her mission, or anything like that. She was still involved with events and in the final boss fight against Chen by breaking his armor so Dante could exploit that weakness. And that was DMC2 Dante, who until 4 and 5 came out, was considered by fandom and general canon as "Dante at his strongest". He still needed Beryl's help, and that was fine because it made for a cool boss fight. Beryl was in it for the Beastheads and Chen, and she got the Beastheads and Chen. She later gives Dante her weapon as a sign of thanks, as her fight is over. She had a place in that story.

Lady, though? Even though it's her father she's after, making her fight more personal, she got sidelined for some guy who "embraced his humanity" very late in his own arc and had no prior personal motivations even with the personal element of Vergil. To add insult to injury, even Vergil joins the fight against Arkham, and he didn't do it out of a great epiphany about humanity (since he only has this epiphany in 5), he did it to finish the job he thought he did in Mission 10. Lady sits out the fight against her own dad. She had every right to be there, even more than the guy who stabbed Arkham because Arkham outlived his usefulness. But a half-demon that forsook his humanity for power has more right to defeat a human that forsook his humanity for power, over the human that overcame her own prejudice and taught a half-demon how to embrace his humanity through her own struggle. Somehow. And after completing her personal mission, instead of hanging up her weapon or letting Dante keep it like Beryl, she specifically asks for it back. Her narration says she "[has] a job to do that's far from done" to kill more demons and prevent anyone from going through the same tragedy she did. A tragedy committed by a human. And then 4 and 5 show her method of doing her job is being on the sidelines, fobbing work onto Dante, or jobbing to Urizen.

But let's get back to 3. She sits out the struggle and the Sons of Sparda do the legwork of defeating Arkham. That'd be fine if that's all it was, but instead Lady's scene with Arkham is still added to Mission 20. For the scene to work it takes unironic acceptance that Lady couldn't overpower Arkham physically and was outwitted by him mentally, and the only way she had an upper hand on him was when he was rendered a paraplegic madman ranting about godhood. Lady shoots Arkham with the bullets she magically reloaded into her gun even though M16 made it a point to show that she ran out of bullets. If you remove the scene, nothing really changes. Arkham was already assumed dead from Dante and Vergil finishing him off with a Jackpot shot (and Vergil straight-up saying, "Not very classy for someone's dying words.") because Dante has always beaten bosses with Jackpot shots. Arkham is still dead without the Mission 20 scene, only that Lady goes from watching Vergil pass her by in M19, going up to the top in M20, killing Arkham, then going all the way back down by the end of M20 (I guess we have to assume that Dante fighting Vergil took hours instead of a few minutes, or Lady has super speed?) to her watching Vergil pass her by, and.... simply leaving the Tower to wait for Dante at the bottom because she's not needed. She already decided on her own that she wasn't needed when she gave Dante the Kalina Ann. Vergil going past her wouldn't really do much to change her mind. He didn't even talk to her.

But the scene is there anyway. She does shoot Arkham. She didn't do this in 3 with anything from 5 in mind. No one at Capcom even had 4 and Nero being Vergil's son in mind when they did anything about the third game. Lady shooting Arkham wasn't done with sole intention of her teaching a lesson to some dude later about how traumatizing it is. She did it for closure and it exists in parallel with Dante handling Vergil, where Vergil chooses not to change his ways and he's assumed dead. Neither Dante nor Lady could save their family via turning them good. They died. They both shed tears about it for what they lost and what could have been. Lady consoles Dante a little, then they go on to Fight More Demons because the series doesn't dwell on drama.

Except now 5 shows up and renders that closure pointless. She was wrong to have done it, she wasn't in the right mental state to make that call, whatever. So it shouldn't have been there. It was anyway, and including that into the character arc of 5 means her overall story is one where even her own decisions come to bite her in the ass and affect her negatively in service to the Sons of Sparda. Dante at most only cried for Vergil in 3 and thought he was dead, put him down again in 1 and thought he was actually dead, made his peace with Nero's presence as proof Vergil was good for something after all, and then doesn't try to reason with Vergil/Urizen in 5 or express regret for not saving him in 3, he tells him a story about Eva to appeal to his childish ego, then decides the guy is a lost cause and needs to Die until Nero stops him.

The resolution to Lady's arc, unless they want to extend it even more, is to tell Nero it's wrong to put an end to a terrible, genocidal man because he happens to be the next of kin to that genocidal man, and to leave it to Dante, who's also kin with the genocidal man. Nero then decides to save the genocidal man because of his hang-ups about Kyrie's Brother, even though Vergil is the kind of character that would have murdered Credo himself if he were in Sanctus's position. Vergil and Lady are then civil to each other (I guess) when Vergil's thoughts around Lady during 3 were him not caring that Arkham killed Kalina Ann, relying on Arkham's murder of Kalina Ann to suggest Arkham could have (and should have) murdered Lady in cold blood, being annoyed he didn't do it and murdering him for not being evil enough and therefore useless, thinking Lady a foolish girl, and then not talking to her since then.

That's it, that's her plot. She's just there to motivate whatever guy is in the game into killing or not killing the villain of the day. The writing arbitrarily chooses when she can or can't do unrealistic things, who can or can't regret their killing a bad person, or even which bad person is capable of redemption or not.

Lady still doesn't have her own playable spin-off. As much as Itsuno says that she's his favorite, "definitely [a] cool enough and strong enough character", and her high popularity, it still took, what, 7 years for her to show up in the Special Edition to 4? Trish is in Marvel vs Capcom 3 to represent DMC alongside Dante and Vergil, not Lady. But at least she's in the DMC mobile game! Right?

*crickets*



Nico's grandmother? Vergil didn't have anything to do with Nico's mom unless I missed something, but the game tries really hard to dodge the fact that the novel being canon means Vergil was responsible for mass murder on three separate occasions and killed everyone Dante ever knew about except Enzo, or forced Dante to mercy-kill Jessica. Vergil killing Nell as well means Dante would have had 1001 reasons to pull a Fatality on Vergil in the third game and not shed a single tear for him, but that's not what happened, because 3 wasn't written with the novel being canon. 3 pushed the novel into non-canon status until 5 dug it up from its grave.

If Kyrie found out that Vergil killed off Nell, considering Kyrie happens to think Nico is good company and Nico likes her in return, that'd make her less sympathetic to Vergil.

They keep insisting on there being a story in this game to get us invested in the characters, so they should do better on the story since it's in the game. Otherwise we could just have Bloody Palace with a roster.

They're content with throwing Lucia into the DMC5 novel which limits who even hears about her, so I don't think they care much about her character anymore except for reminding us she exists. It was too much work even for them to make Gloria her own character to insert development of Dumary Island in DMC4 and they opted to make Gloria a Lucia-lookalike for fanservice as an existing character's skin. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but that's how it is.

Right, grandmother. My mistake.

 

[Ronin]

Maybe I'd feel better if they slowly turn Kyrie into a fighter somehow.

Have her learn to defend herself if Kyrie wielded a gun similar to Blue Rose.

It would be nice for her if some new corporation better than Uroboros or Uroboros itself, kidnaps Kyrie & the orphans for their experiments in creating new hybrids. Creating own Devil Hunters & Huntresses to match Sparda's sons.

Even a cult better than the Order does that instead, turning Kyrie into an unwilling warrior in Credo's fighting ability.

Best I can think of is fighting.

 

[Morgan]

Question: why does she have to be unwilling and reactionary, though?

 

[Ronin]

Question: why does she have to be unwilling and reactionary, though?

I dunno, The one thing on my mind is when Resident Evil 5 Jill got brainwashed by Wesker after saving Chris.

 

[V's patron]

Question: why does she have to be unwilling and reactionary, though?

It would feel out of character if she does. Granted it could've worked in 4 or if you wanna explore a group that wants to become demonic out of more sentimental reasons. You know like a person who wants to revive their loved ones etc.

 

[Morgan]

I dunno, The one thing on my mind is when Resident Evil 5 Jill got brainwashed by Wesker after saving Chris.

And Jill never showed up in an RE game again that wasn't the 3make, while we got treated to Roid Rage Chris, Amnesia Chris, #NotMyChris, etc.

It would feel out of character if she does. Granted it could've worked in 4 or if you wanna explore a group that wants to become demonic out of more sentimental reasons. You know like a person who wants to revive their loved ones etc.

Introducing powers in 6 by repeating a scenario that happened in 4 will raise the question of why she needs to be kidnapped twice. She already had the suitable situation of her being inside of a demonic core to a god statue made up of 2000 years worth of demonic energy, with the Sparda within her proximity. If she were going to be demonic through kidnapping, their opportunity was the first game it happened in. Or say in 6 that the seeds were sown in 4.

Making her an unwilling reactionary victim twice loses the audience by making her come off as rather dumb for not protecting herself against the same scenario. Someone that gets their house robbed due to faulty locks would know to get better locks, not go "Eh, my husband will handle that". It's like if in the next game, Nero loses his arm. Again. Because it's already in character for him to lose his arm and undergo some kind of metamorphosis that brings back his arm in a different form. Or a game where Vergil comes back from being presumed dead and raises-- ..... oh, right.


Why not a story like Orpheus and Eurydice, where Kyrie goes to great lengths to bring Credo back from the dead, and she gets the opportunity to either meet his spirit and come to terms with how he left, or she pulls his soul from whatever Hell it's in and actually brings him back to life. Lord knows Nero still being hung up about Credo's death would've affected her ability to come to terms with it, but she'll actually do something about it instead of gaining an inferiority complex from a Dante-adjacent character calling her a mean name.

Like...

Here's the thing. Having bad stuff happen to a character is not Character Development. It's just bad things happening to a character.

Making a character Sexy and Badass is not Character Development. It's just the character getting a superficial makeover and cool powers.

Does this character have a goal or wants?
What are they willing to do to achieve the goal and get what they want?
What will stand in the way of their goal, is it a person, the environment, or their own ideals?
Are they willing to break their ideals to achieve their goal, if so, why? If not, why not?
Does this character have a flaw? Do they know they have a flaw? If not, what will expose this flaw, and what will they do about it once they find out it's there? Can they do anything about this flaw, or can they accept it for what it is and minimize it as much as possible so it doesn't interfere with their life?

Start there with Kyrie.

 

[Hungry Alien]

The problem with Kyrie, and with DMC in general, is how nothing is set on the long run, and anything can be changed in order to suit the current game. Kyrie is a damsel in distress in DMC 4 because Nero need it to move forward. Lady suddenly mentions how traumatizing it is to kill your own father (she doesn't look that traumatized in DMC 4 and 5, but ok) because Nero just realize his dad is the one that took his arm.

The worst is how the Yamato gain new abilities to serve the narrative. In DMC 3, it was just Vergil's katana given by his father. DMC 4 made it the key of the Hell Gate in Fortuna, BUT didn't Mundus captured Vergil at the end of DMC 3 ? Why didn't he used it to invade the world right away ? The Yamato had been broken, but Mundus know it is the key (Dante knew it, so Mundus must know or he is a complete ignorant about his own world), so logically he will carefully avoid breaking it during the fight. He has all advantages against Vergil (fight set in his territory, Vergil is in poor shape), so what ? Vergil broke it when he saw he was done for ? Why would he do it ? To protect humanity ? No, he didn't cared for it in DMC 3, so why was the sword broken ?
And in DMC 5, the Yamato can open portals. So how can Dante arrive at Arkham BEFORE Vergil ? Why is Vergil walking his way to the top of the tower ? Why isn't he just waiting for Dante with the Force Edge in hand and Arkham dead at his feet ? He didn't knew how to open a portal (this will probably be the easy answer if we ask Bingo) ?
There are even incoherence in the same game sometime. When Credo die in DMC 4, his body disappears. So when an ascended knight of the Order dies, he disappears ok. Bianco and Alto Angelos also disappears, so why not. BUT when Agnus dies, he doesn't disappear. So what ? Dante missed him and Agnus fainted ?

We can't have a good story when the scenarist just pull his story from nothing and expect the audience to just eat it. DMC 5 was for me the worst story until now, just because no one seems to actually try to defeat the villain. Nero get his ass kicked once, come back with new weapons, but he got no plan or special attacks specifically to defeat Urizen and just get his ass kicked again. V decide to cut the root of the Qliphoth, but isn't it too late now ? Plus he didn't even scout ahead to locate every roots to destroy, or how many there are. Urizen didn't even bother reacting to the destruction of some roots, how are we supposed to believe it had any effect at all ? And for Dante, after waking up, he just run straight to Urizen without even listening to V. Why ? He just got overpowered on his last fight, why run back to die for real this time ? Fortunately, he pulled the Sin Devil Trigger from his ass and boom, Urizen dead. So what was the point of focusing on Nero and his Devil Breakers when he was basically the dead weight Dante told he is ?
Even the Sin Devil Trigger (SDT) is ****. The transformation is cool, it is visually great, it's well implemented in the gameplay, but story wise it is a disaster. Dante stab himself with the Rebelion with the Sparda on his back and here we go. Where is the point of this other than moving the story forward because Nero just realized he is still a deadweight ? The SDT means nothing for Dante : he is in perfect control when using it, even use it to fly around, he can talk etc. Plus the SDT completely override the special DT from DMC 2 which had some meaning for Dante, being the representation of his pure demonic side and thus having Dante only use it when cornered because of the lack of control over it. Why not link the two and have Dante use the special DT against Urizen only to be tricked and defeated because of his lack of control ? Then the SDT would be Dante trying to find a way to stabilize his pure demonic side in order to defeat Urizen. Right now, the SDT is such a joke that Vergil got it on discount (because we can't have the overly forced Dante vs Vergil if Vergil can't keep up right).

So to come back to Kyrie, I think she simply can't become a relevant character with the current state of DMC story. There is some way to make her stand out, but first we need some solid foundations for the story before focusing on her. We need some world building, with defined elements that doesn't change between games and bears a signification, and only then we can focus on character such as Kyrie. For me, she can't be used to discover those elements given that she is set in the human world and taking care of an orphanage. Just use Dante and Vergil to explore the world, since they fit this role and are already in hell. The best way to act would be to first make a spin off game that show Dante and Vergil exploring hell (searching for Mundus is good enough for this), then use this game to expand on the DMC universe, especially on the demon world (which we almost haven't seen in 5 games). Then we end the game by hinting at a new big bad antagonist, and we continue with DMC 6 starting with Nero and using some of the element introduced in the spin off to drive Kyrie into evolving.

 

[V's patron]

@Hungry Alien

I disagree about Lady. In 3 she was reluctant to actually kill her father, even crying when she ultimately did it. Neither 4 and the anime deal with her trauma in any way but they took place almost 2 decades later. She would've learned to manage it by then plus we don't see everyday of her life.

In my own life, i suffer from dysthymia which is a high functioning version of depression. I have my good days, my bad days, and my breakdowns. Ive had it for 5 years and its easier now than when i started. So thats how i saw Lady's behavior.

I don't mind Lady not wanting Nero to kill his father because of her own experience. I just don't feel the game earned that sentiment in regards to Vergil being spared. Granted i don't care about nero nor him being Vergil's kid so that could be my biased.

I also disagree about DMC not building stuff for the long run. I don't need them to have 5 games planned out before they did the first. I just need them to make their current story great.

To me DMC's problem is the writers don't want to build each other work. They rather do their own thing which is fine, i rather they just gave me a new cast/story each time.

At the end of the day, I don't think anyone cares about Kyrie beyond @Ronin. Unless Bingo wants to do more with her or a new writer comes in and they want to actually use her well, i don't think more would happen than what we got in 4/5.

 

[Morgan]

@Hungry Alien Finally! A worthy opponent! Our battle will be legendary!

Nah, jk. I agree with the post. DMC isn't set up with any real consistency and it's too obvious that they're willing to retcon any and everything to serve the game they're making the retcons in. Still, fans can dream. Or make a fan-game? They don't put out C&D notices on fangames, right? I can't recall anymore if Capcom pulls a Nintendo every now and again.

Lady suddenly mentions how traumatizing it is to kill your own father (she doesn't look that traumatized in DMC 4 and 5, but ok) because Nero just realize his dad is the one that took his arm.

They'll never address what Lady should have done in 3 instead of killing her father. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, considering he still didn't repent from his megalomaniacal ways. What else was she supposed to do, let him crawl until he found something to heal himself with, if not shown overt filial piety to him? Wait for Dante to come back and point out Arkham's bloody streak so he'd finish him off? Lol. Didn't think DMC would be one of those stories that'd fall into the tired trope of "You can't hate your abusive parent because they're family," but there they went and did it. Can't wait for the future DMC games where Trish tries to suggest that Mundus wasn't so bad and that she regrets helping Dante seal him, or Lucia starts going on about how she shouldn't have killed Arius. Redemption arc when, Capcom?

The worst is how the Yamato gain new abilities to serve the narrative. In DMC 3, it was just Vergil's katana given by his father. DMC 4 made it the key of the Hell Gate in Fortuna, BUT didn't Mundus captured Vergil at the end of DMC 3 ? Why didn't he used it to invade the world right away ? The Yamato had been broken, but Mundus know it is the key (Dante knew it, so Mundus must know or he is a complete ignorant about his own world), so logically he will carefully avoid breaking it during the fight. He has all advantages against Vergil (fight set in his territory, Vergil is in poor shape), so what ? Vergil broke it when he saw he was done for ? Why would he do it ? To protect humanity ? No, he didn't cared for it in DMC 3, so why was the sword broken ?
And in DMC 5, the Yamato can open portals. So how can Dante arrive at Arkham BEFORE Vergil ? Why is Vergil walking his way to the top of the tower ? Why isn't he just waiting for Dante with the Force Edge in hand and Arkham dead at his feet ? He didn't knew how to open a portal (this will probably be the easy answer if we ask Bingo) ?

Not pictured: Mundus recreating a Qliphoth tree in DMC1 since DMC5 established that's how he rose to power, and the fruit boosts Vergil from being beneath Mundus to being even stronger than Dante with the Sparda Sword that was able to defeat Mundus. Urizen and the Qliphoth surface at the same time, it originates from Hell/plants its roots there and grows across worlds, and the Qliphoth gives its user a boost by giving them a blood-pumping throne and healing pools for their allies so the user can defeat any opponents and recover themselves to full strength while literally sitting down, even before the fruit is finished. So we're supposed to get that Mundus is dumb? It's not even like there's that many years between DMC1 and 5. It's just ten years. Somehow. It stretches belief that the Qliphoth wouldn't be able to grow in DMC1 "because reasons" and the trick is to wait it out for one decade which might as well be a second in Demon time.

I mean, jeez, it would have been funny if Dante were lured to Mallet because "Mundus is there", he goes to the secluded island away from any form of communication and civilization while he fights through Phantom, Griffon, etc. under the impression he's about to face the King of the Underworld and then at the end, "Your villain is in another castle!" because Mundus ordered Trish or Nero Angelo to summon the Qliphoth (they both know about it!) right in Dante's city to harvest humans while he was out. Trish being the one to do it would make the betrayal super deep. Then he has to go back to his city, deal with Trish/Nero, face Mundus, etc.

It's already bad that they made the novel somewhat-canon, in which Gilver summons another demonic tree that harvests humans and opens access to the demon world. Was that a Qliphoth? The world may never know.

Also not pictured: Mundus creating multiple Trish clones to power the Cavaliere Angelos since they needed "a battery" to function, and 5 established that he invented those armors himself and that Trish is a suitable battery, while Mundus bragged in 1 about making as many Evas/Trishes as he wants.

Also also not pictured: During the Tower's ascent at the beginning of 3, Vergil is already standing at the top, but if the tower was underground, underneath entire streets and buildings just before that, he must have busted the pavement with his head, maybe, on top of skipping every single boss devil on his way to the peak.

Also also also not pictured: Because of 4, Vergil has already had a son from the moment he appears in 3, so they can try and play it that Vergil "absolutely did not know" that Nero was still alive after having his entanglement with Nero's Mother, but there's no way Mundus would have skipped torturing him for any information on potential survivors of the Sparda bloodline anyway. Then if Mundus didn't learn about Vergil having a son, he would have learned about Dante instead since Vergil last saw him an hour ago. and it wouldn't have taken another decade for them to face each other. On a related note, sure wish they would stop bringing up characters detecting demon relations via their sense of smell. Beowulf hasn't smelled Sparda in 2000 years but noticed Dante and Vergil were his sons, Dante noted Bael or Dagon's stench (Nero doesn't make a similar remark, though) to explain why he wasn't distracted by the Rusalkas, but Vergil couldn't pick up that Nero maybe smells like him? Sometimes their huge noses are good for something and sometimes they're not, I guess.

Also also also also not pictured: Vergil does know how to cut across space in 3 in a clumsy way. His entrance to the boss fight in Mission 19 shows the giant slash he cut into the area to get in. Lord knows why he didn't just do that from the beginning, but to their credit, he had to have been already in Hell to get to where Arkham and Dante were. So he must have brute-forced his way and cut through multiple stages until he landed on the right one. They still cribbed everything in 5 off of the reboot, though.

The series operates on Rule of Cool to a detriment.

There are even incoherence in the same game sometime. When Credo die in DMC 4, his body disappears. So when an ascended knight of the Order dies, he disappears ok. Bianco and Alto Angelos also disappears, so why not. BUT when Agnus dies, he doesn't disappear. So what ? Dante missed him and Agnus fainted ?

Not only Agnus, Sanctus died and definitely did not turn into faerie dust even though I'm sure all of their Ascensions came from the same Arm. He still had enough presence to fuse into the Savior and give it his face. .... but Kyrie was there for much longer (as well as Nero) and the Savior took none of their forms.... hmmmmm....

We can't have a good story when the scenarist just pull his story from nothing and expect the audience to just eat it. DMC 5 was for me the worst story until now, just because no one seems to actually try to defeat the villain. Nero get his ass kicked once, come back with new weapons, but he got no plan or special attacks specifically to defeat Urizen and just get his ass kicked again. V decide to cut the root of the Qliphoth, but isn't it too late now ? Plus he didn't even scout ahead to locate every roots to destroy, or how many there are. Urizen didn't even bother reacting to the destruction of some roots, how are we supposed to believe it had any effect at all ? And for Dante, after waking up, he just run straight to Urizen without even listening to V. Why ? He just got overpowered on his last fight, why run back to die for real this time ? Fortunately, he pulled the Sin Devil Trigger from his ass and boom, Urizen dead. So what was the point of focusing on Nero and his Devil Breakers when he was basically the dead weight Dante told he is ?
Even the Sin Devil Trigger (SDT) is ****. The transformation is cool, it is visually great, it's well implemented in the gameplay, but story wise it is a disaster. Dante stab himself with the Rebelion with the Sparda on his back and here we go. Where is the point of this other than moving the story forward because Nero just realized he is still a deadweight ? The SDT means nothing for Dante : he is in perfect control when using it, even use it to fly around, he can talk etc. Plus the SDT completely override the special DT from DMC 2 which had some meaning for Dante, being the representation of his pure demonic side and thus having Dante only use it when cornered because of the lack of control over it. Why not link the two and have Dante use the special DT against Urizen only to be tricked and defeated because of his lack of control ? Then the SDT would be Dante trying to find a way to stabilize his pure demonic side in order to defeat Urizen. Right now, the SDT is such a joke that Vergil got it on discount (because we can't have the overly forced Dante vs Vergil if Vergil can't keep up right).

Most fans rejected Hungry Alien's message. They hated Hungry Alien, because he told them the truth!


I gotta meme, because it's true. DMC5 operates on most of the cast being dumb, and Dante being the biggest moron of all because Capcom continually doubles down on him being a slob and not a man possessing any shred of shrewdness that would outwit demons on the daily. He's just as brainless as they are, he's just stronger. Nero isn't much better since he's deliberately-accidentally designed to be a Hulk-type and prone to rages. Maybe they've revealed something new in the artbook for 5 that low-key retcons something they put in the story or reveals something that should definitely have been in the game. Dante gets a DB Super-tier powerup, Vergil engages in fruit-eating ASMR and cheats his way into power, and Nero... gets into his feelings. It's not even true righteous rage or overwhelming sense of justice driving these characters because they're pretty much all jerks that don't seem to care much at all about humanity-- even V is duplicitous and willing to mug someone for cash-- and as a result, stories like these where "everyone is a jerk but at least slightly better than the villain" wears down on the average person's ability to care about any of them or the story.

They had a perfectly good concept of Dante's "Perfect Devil Trigger" in 4 being a point where he loses control of himself, and when the timeline was 3142, it would have worked plenty. Theeeeen it became 31245 because reasons, therefore Dante unintuitively commits sudoku in front of a family portrait and it works by using the Sparda as a catalyst, because Sparda could see the future and just knew his son would need to do exactly this because his other son would have been a jerk that used the Yamato for its apparent intended purpose and would summon the.... Qliphoth..... for the power boost.......

So to come back to Kyrie, I think she simply can't become a relevant character with the current state of DMC story. There is some way to make her stand out, but first we need some solid foundations for the story before focusing on her. We need some world building, with defined elements that doesn't change between games and bears a signification, and only then we can focus on character such as Kyrie. For me, she can't be used to discover those elements given that she is set in the human world and taking care of an orphanage. Just use Dante and Vergil to explore the world, since they fit this role and are already in hell. The best way to act would be to first make a spin off game that show Dante and Vergil exploring hell (searching for Mundus is good enough for this), then use this game to expand on the DMC universe, especially on the demon world (which we almost haven't seen in 5 games). Then we end the game by hinting at a new big bad antagonist, and we continue with DMC 6 starting with Nero and using some of the element introduced in the spin off to drive Kyrie into evolving.

Sadly, they probably won't do even this. They've implicitly made Mundus too irrelevant and stupid by pinning idiotic feats to him (see: creating Cavaliere but unable to make it function when he also created its battery-- I mean, Trish) and having a character surmount his better feats (going toe to toe with Dante+Sparda Sword) literally by sitting on his butt. So Dante and Vergil could find Mundus, but they'd defeat him quickly. If the intention is Endgame-style "I went for the head", and aim for an underwhelming victory with a bigger focus on the journey and worldbuilding that'd be perhaps a bit unorthodox, if Mundus got a power boost (something like, him absorbing the remaining energy of Despair Embodied, Abigail, etc), it'd be more expected, but big grandiose boss fights with atrocious powerscaling is the series' cocaine.

That and they've exhausted their big bads. Three games, an anime, and a novel where humans seek demonic power and become demonic themselves, two games and another novel with Vergil raising some Hellish structure to attain power or just make Dante suffer out of pettiness, only one game with a born-demon antagonist maintaining the story. So actually, there being a full-demon maintagonist (it's a new word) would be fresh and original in comparison.

And you're forgiven for thinking we haven't seen the demon world in 5 games. We only went through DMC4 not seeing the Underworld/Demon World/Hell/whatever they want to call it. Dante definitely traversed the Underworld in 1, in 2 it was a featureless void but he locked himself in and traveled until he found his way out and BtN describes that somewhat, and 3 was the angelic hellscape. All of those are Hell. Somehow. Maybe Hell is vast enough to have different landscapes?

But expecting them to straighten out all this mess before they focus on anything to do with Kyrie is a bit too much to ask for. Kitbashing a plot is the name of the game. Maybe someone comes in with some fresh ideas and a hate-on for Capcom's mishandling of old IPs and they create a DMC spinoff as a spiritual successor to Haunting Ground or Clock Tower, where Kyrie takes the role of Fiona but with more agency. They could get away with that if someone in the team had some pants on; it's not like DMC isn't a niche title in comparison to other AAA entries that they can't take risks. They took one already by making 5 such a fanservice-laden continuity-tangled ransom note to the rest of the series and alienating some players.

 

[Lain]

Hmm...not a lot else I can add to the topic really. Sadly DMC is not of a genre of videogames that lends itself to deep characterization, even when you put aside the other factors like the changing of writers and the penchant for retcons.

However if I were to flex my brain muscles and give her some kind of "development" for DMC6 without radically changing the nature of a DMC story, then what I'd do is use the handful of minutes I'd be given to work with to explore what's next for Nero and Kyrie as a married(?) couple. Namely the dangers that come with being in a relationship with a demon hunter when you're an ordinary person. Nero isn't going to be around to protect her so she'll have ideally have learnt how to defend herself at least against lesser demons since Lady proved it can be done - though I'm not talkin' fancy flips or anything special just grab a shotgun from under the bed and fire.

That last point needs special emphasis, the idea isn't to turn her into Lady 2.0 but rather to show how the events of the previous games have impacted her and what she's learnt. To its credit, 4 did show Kyrie can be gutsy when it counts (using her own body to shield the kid from the scarecrow) without detracting from her status as the "sensitive one" to contrast Nero's tough guy persona.

Huh, I just realised I've been rambling without talking about what I'd actually have her do in a hypothetical DMC6. Uh...I dunno have her work in demon relief or something? Like providing first aid or evacuation during demon attacks. That's if you want her to have a more proactive role in the story though. I don't particularly care if they want to keep her a housewife or whatever - her pathetically small screentime will amount to the same productivity anyways.

Bah, I spent way too much time thinking about Kyrie then either I or the DMC writers care to.

 

[Hungry Alien]

@Hungry Alien

I disagree about Lady. In 3 she was reluctant to actually kill her father, even crying when she ultimately did it. Neither 4 and the anime deal with her trauma in any way but they took place almost 2 decades later. She would've learned to manage it by then plus we don't see everyday of her life.

In my own life, i suffer from dysthymia which is a high functioning version of depression. I have my good days, my bad days, and my breakdowns. Ive had it for 5 years and its easier now than when i started. So thats how i saw Lady's behavior.

I don't mind Lady not wanting Nero to kill his father because of her own experience. I just don't feel the game earned that sentiment in regards to Vergil being spared. Granted i don't care about nero nor him being Vergil's kid so that could be my biased.

I also disagree about DMC not building stuff for the long run. I don't need them to have 5 games planned out before they did the first. I just need them to make their current story great.

To me DMC's problem is the writers don't want to build each other work. They rather do their own thing which is fine, i rather they just gave me a new cast/story each time.

At the end of the day, I don't think anyone cares about Kyrie beyond @Ronin. Unless Bingo wants to do more with her or a new writer comes in and they want to actually use her well, i don't think more would happen than what we got in 4/5.

For Lady, the problem is that the player don't saw her dealing with her guilt about killing her father, so having her say that hold no impact, especially when she looks fine in DMC 4 and 5. I agree that she probably put on a happy face when around the gang, but it doesn't change the fact that we never saw her dealing with negative thoughts. If for example, we had a spin off about Lady (which would be a great idea) where we see her in her private life and she act completely differently from usual (not crying out loud, but be rather silent and lonely like she was in DMC 3), it would have made the scene much more impacting. But in the game, it just look as impacting as the one line Nero said before fighting Artemis ("Without power, you can't protect anything. I know that"). Meaning it just tell the player "SEE, REFERENCE. Like the game now dummy". This is the worse way of using fanservice : using it without any thought on how it serve the story just because it will please the blind fans.

I strongly disagree about DMC not building up a story on the long run. The DMC universe allow for enough freedom to basically do anything, and nothing is done because no one is willing to tell a story among the different writers the serie had. But if it was truly the case, why not go for another format ? Why not tell another story with another cast in another place for each game in Jojo style ? This is the paradox of this serie 'with DMC 5 : it tries to tell a story using elements and characters from previous games, but at the same time it sabotage itself by retconning elements of previous games to serve the current narrative. I know that the serie has a big problem with change of writers, but the problem is that no one (instead of Kamiya probably) is willing to actually take the serie for himself. That cause every writers to be scared of imposing their visions in the serie, and instead they just go for unoriginal character design like Nero who, even if DMC 5 gave him more of his own persona, look like Dante 2.0 (sword + gun, cocky attitude around demon). Even V was ultimately heavily inspired by Vergil, with his persona being Vergil, but softer. The serie is trapped in his past, and since no one has, and sorry for the rude expression, the balls to actually impose their vision on the serie and take it for themselves, it remains trapped. DMC 5 brought almost nothing new and is build on fanservice alone.

Another problems that come with it is the fandom. Except for some groups like this site, most of them are content with the status quo of the serie and doesn't want it to move forward. When I go to reddit (I know, I took the wrong place to begin with) and express my problems with DMC 5 story (which is the worse of the serie imo because it was done intentionally on fanservice), I often get attacked right away by a bunch of ape that call me a toxic person or whatever they are thinking at the moment, and only because I bring a negative view with arguments to support it. They just don't want to hear how bad the story actually is. And we remember what happened to Ninja Theory with the reboot where the "fans" didn't even tried to understand their vision of DMC and just dumped it to the trashcan as soon as they saw something different. This scares me for the future of the serie, and I honestly think that some stupid **** like Devil Sword Nero or Borunero taking on the business as a 10 year old "genius" kid kicking Mundus's ass could happens, and most of the fans would approve it.

 

[V's patron]

@Morgan
Do you mind explaining the Fiona/Clock Tower reference?

@Lain
Good work bruv.

@Hungry Alien
I don't disagree about Lady, I just didn't think her portrayal in the scene was the problem for me.

I just meant I didn't need DMC to start doing a "Xehanort saga" style storyline set over multiple games. I don't mind the standalone "case of the week" structure, just wish they did a better job with them.

Neil Gaiman once described fans as wanting the last thing you did which is true of most fans. Its definitely true of me because i would've preferred more young Dante adventures instead of 4 and the anime. Honestly as someone who gave up on other franchises, I'd say you gotta decide where your heart is and what you wanna support. I'm not saying don't critique it, just figure out if being the lone voice of dissent is worth it.

I remember being the one guy who liked DmC in my anime club....

In their defense, DmC was a pretty radical change. I never felt Tameem and NT insulted us. Whatever he said were things other writers had said in different interviews. DmC's problems were more of PR and presentation. I never felt like they had a real plan on how to connect DmC to DMC. Later on they walked it back with DmC Dante's final design and story so it felt compromised.

Ironically V being Vergil showed us that DmC Dante becoming Dante could've been done.

 

[Morgan]

Haunting Ground and the Clock Tower series are survival horror adventure games that don't center around the protagonist being a one-man army and mowing down enemies with guns. The protagonist is actually not all that physically powerful, and so they have to rely on their intelligence or any companions to help surmount obstacles or avoid capture. Fiona in Haunting Ground is characterized as clever, strong-willed, introspective, and determined to survive at any cost. Alyssa Hamilton in Clock Tower 3 is more or less the same, except she's much younger and relies on her compassion to help the victims of serial killers so that their souls are at peace, but she ends up having a "typical" teenager stubbornness that the game relies on to function (not calling the cops when supernatural events happen around her and the fact that she takes it on herself to solve all these spirits' problems).

Capcom developed Haunting Ground and Clock Tower 3 specifically, so they know how to make games that revolve around unconventionally strong or physically disempowered characters who still have control over their story through their personality and actions. They almost did it with V, given that he's physically impaired, sick, and relies on his demon companions, but V is more like if Fiona in HG had a Bad Ending.

 

[Lain]

@Morgan Man, I miss the Clock Tower series so much. I was hoping that RE7's return to survival horror would encourage the revival of other dormant S.Horror series but alas that did not happen.

 

[BlackAngel]

Well, I have a few ideas. When they want to introduce new characters like Nero, at least they should write Kyrie as a person, not a damsel in distress. Maybe they can write how Nero met her, when they were in training. How she came to care for him, what are her beliefs, etc. And they could make her a witch who was born with having magic, and they could come up with an unique ability to use her singing voice to manipulate emotions of people. (Hell, they could set her up as a lover of music and plays a guitar, because she wants to be a musical artist.) And that's when the Order of the Sword recruited her when she was a toddler.

 

[windleopard]

I've seen it joked that "Devil Trigger" in-universe was a single released by Kyrie to celebrate how new found freedom from the Order of the Sword's social mores. Jokes aside, maybe we could get more insight into what singing means to her.

You could even incorporate into game play. Have her record her voice and Nico builds grenades containing those recordings. When they detonate, they release a tone that kills/banishes demons.