Here's mine.
I hate what DMC has turned into. I don't like DMC4, I don't like DmC and I don't like DMC5.
It hit me a few after the DMC5 announcement. I was looking at a Spanish translation for the 2nd drama CD and there was this scene where everyone was at the office and Patty sees the photo of Eva, looks at Trish, then turns to Dante and asks him if he has an Oedipus complex. Everyone starts laughing at him and Dante just sits there and sulks, telling everyone to shut up. I don't know why but in that moment something clicked. It was like something I sensed in the back of my mind but was always vague and undefined, but, suddenly, it had become clear to me. I don't want to say denial but that might not be too far off. I just realized it then and there: I hated what DMC had become.
This was just not the Dante I fell in love with. This man was an embarrassment, a pushover. I don't care that people laughed at him but the way he just sat there mopping and basically boohooing because he's getting picked at. The Dante that I admired was energetic, confident, self assured. If someone mocked him he'd either rolled with it or rebuttaled; he wouldn't have sat there and moped about it. This man lacked all the traits I admire about him.
4 was no better, who he was there was no better. Aside from being treated by the woman whose soul he saved and the one whose mother he avenged, like he was some dead beat, which he was, getting him to move was like pulling teeth, he was also just not passionate, or, at least, energetic These women who owe him so much, at best push him around and at worst treat him like he's an embarrassment. Both actually call him as pathetic in the anime. I don't expect them to worship him, that'd be just as bad, but this wasn't the kind of relationship that should've flushed from those persona histories and it reflected on Dante more than them.
It wasn't just Dante, either. I thought about everything I loved about the series and I realized that none of that was there, anymore. That atmosphere was gone, this no longer had anything remotely resembling horror, Nero is the new lead, the whole thing had become very colorful, the whole thing has become ludicrous and the demons all looked like they belonged on a different game, and that's not to mention the gameplay elements or that can of worms that would be DmC.
Over the years I made excuses for it all. Anime, different people, just an interpretation. 4, time and budget constraints. DmC, not the same game. I hoped it'd was all passive and I thought maybe 5 would cure that feeling but when the game came out it was just more of 4 with better graphics and I got pretty dissolution (5 is another long list of issues that could fill an entire page so let's not go there).
I stuck with the series this long because I always hoped to get something much closer to what 1 was but when I played 5 I realized that that's never going to happen. What the series is now is what it will be from now on and that hope for that old thing was never going to happen. The closest thing I got was playing as Dante in Viewtiful Joe for something closer to what he felt like once or that REmake HD for that atmosphere and presence. I haven't liked any DMC release since 3. That was a long time ago.
One thing that struck me in this little epiphany of mine. Another thought I think I ignored and sort of refused to accept even though it was always on the back of my head, vague as it was, was that I think the worst thing to happen to Dante is that they overpowered him. In 1 he was supposed to be incredibly powerful, sure, but he was impaled 3 times, electrocuted 3, drowned, strangled, lit on fire, had his life drained and beat up once or twice. in 3, impaled in 2 locations, sliced, stabbed, shot in the face, soul drained, punched to the ground, and beaten up a few times. That no longer happens, hes untouchable now, completely and effortlessly so, and I think might be my fault and the fault of the fanbase, in general, because we demanded it to be like that and we got what we wanted for it.
Just about everyone else, everywhere else, is completely in love with what 5 is. That one gaming brit guy made a whole hour video drooling on how everything about it was perfect. He isn't the only one. People are ecstatic and because of it this is the route the series will take from now on. Because of that I've all but tapped out. People like it and what right do I have to tell them not to, that's fine, but it seems like for someone like me, there is nothing left. Doesn't really matter, I'm just the one person and the series will thrive quite without me. Very likely won't notice my absence, either.
