Wow! Lot's of questions, so I'll try my best.
TWOxACROSS, that's a lot to read! I'll try to read it in the next couple of days.
berto,
No idea about Tony Redgrave being the original name, sorry!
It was a mix of everything, to be honest. I don't want to speak for anyone else, of course, but personally I wasn't happy with some of the decisions. Fortunately I was in a position where I could voice my opinions and sometimes they made a difference. Sometimes they didn't, but hey, you can't have everything your way, right? That's how you work in a team, I guess.
Fan reaction was brutal, but a lot of people who didn't care about DMC before were also riding the negativity wave. It was tough but you have to focus on the end goal and keep going, trust you are doing your very best.
Of course if we had another year of polish the game would've been a lot smoother, that's the same for any game out there, but especially true for a game that's as mechanically complex as DmC is. You can do a lot with Dante!! A situation that was personally very frustrating was when the game demo was playable at E3. Poison hadn't been tested to a great extent and lot's of people found glitches where she would stop working or get stuck in a certain behaviour. People were also finding a lot of exploits and yes, this was frustrating. I watched many youtube videos of the E3 demo playthroughs and also the official demo and fixed all the ones I could. A few things I couldn't fix, like making her move faster between platforms, as that would require a totally new animation. I also wanted to fix the back of the arena exploit, but that would require a new unblockable attack for that. I tried to balance it as best as I could so the exploit wouldn't be very fun to do or watch.
VD's team was fairly small compared to the main game. I don't have numbers for you, sorry.
Angels, I don't think so. I think it was always going to be a fight against Mundus and his demons.
We used Unreal Engine 3 and the old DMCs use MT Framework, so no code was shared. All Dante animations were made from scratch.
I can't speak for the artists that worked on Dante, but I think the white hair version was a lot easier because the base was already there.
What would I change? Wow, we could stay here for a long, long time.
Try to be more specific.
Can't talk about sequels plans or anything like that, sorry. I have no idea.
No, we were encouraged to play all DMCs. They are amazing games, cleverly designed.
Vergil'Bitch,
I hear you!! I died many many times while testing that mission.
I am independent now, I left Ninja Theory a month ago. I'm now a writer/director and I'm writing my first short film.
Yeah, I always thought Eva and Sparda must have had their own families that turned their backs on them when their relationship came out. How cool would that story be? Anyway, I imagine Sparda's family must be in the demon world while Eva's were in the angel world and that's why Dante and Vergil don't know who they are.
Dante'sStalker,
What's AU? It would be a reboot if CAPCOM wanted to wipe the slate clean and not return to the old DMC, but as they said previously, they don't want that so the old series can return at some point. This came out in the press a while ago. So I guess DmC can be classified as a western interpretation of the series that coexists alongside the main series.
That's how I see it, at least.
Mocap was done in LA, Giant Studios, same studio where they did Avatar.
I never met Reuben, unfortunately, as I think he's an awesome stunt man.
I remember reading his tweet about enjoying the new DmC, but you would have to ask him.
Was I contracted by? I was part of Ninja Theory while working on DmC.
AcidX_Y,
Yes, there were a few mechanics and weapons scrapped during development. Just look at the reveal trailer, the weapons and, to a certain extent, the moves were planned to be part of the gameplay. The spear weapon was dropped as it didn't work well and replaced with another one. Dante could run while shooting and also aim each gun independently. He could also grapple and kick objects in the environment (the car in the trailer was an example of this).
Combat mechanics evolved greatly during production! You can see this evolution from the first TGS trailer to the first gameplay trailer, and all the other gameplay trailers that followed that. I can't talk specifically about combat development as I wasn't part of that.
Writing changed multiple times to fit gameplay and vice versa. After the cutscenes were shot this became a bit harder but we always managed to tweak and move cutscenes where they made more sense.
Loopy,
I wouldn't know about Mundus and his child, sorry.
That's how I imagined it, but I don't know if that was the main game writer's intention. For me personally, the Angels did not want to disturb the balance, unlike the demons who wanted to take full control of the human world. I thought that after the demon world collapsed and merged with the human world, rifts would start to open to the angel world and it will too become unstable. The angel world could collapse as well.
Homie,
Yes, there were many many aspects of Vergil that I thought weren't clear or portrayed well. He just acts a certain way and you never really understand why. And his secret was never going to be a secret for the fans, was it? I think this was the opportunity to CHANGE that character and force him to choose that path, as opposed to "Im like this". For me, I would like to see Dante and Vergil become genuine brothers in DmC, without Vergil's secret agenda, and then Dante is forced to make an impossible choice that betrays Vergil, and creates a rift between the two. As it is, they were never genuine brothers as Vergil was using Dante all the way.
Mission 20 was not an easy task. Can you imagine doing the boss fight that everyone remembers from DMC 3? At the same time, we knew Vergil was going to be playable so we wanted to retain as much as possible of his boss attacks for the playable version. This was hard to do in many instances and we added a lot more attacks to the playable version. Regarding strategies and stuff you would have to ask the designer that made it.
Railazel,
Sorry I cannot go into detail about Limbo as I didn't come up with it. Some of it confuses me as well.
DmC being a positive ending... I can't really speak for NT, but I never thought it was a positive thing. Merging the two worlds to show the demons was probably the worst possible outcome.
Vergil chose his own path in Vergil's Downfall. That's why the first mission is called Personal Hell. This is HIS hell, all the different parts of who he is are in conflict and dragging him down. He focuses and becomes stronger and determined.
I think there's something about Kat in a Vergil comic - some sort of prequel to the game - maybe they explained it a bit more there?
YamatoWielder,
The difference is that in the main game I was following a creative direction while in VD I was responsible for that creative direction. I guess you see things you would do differently and then you have the chance to do that.
No idea about that.
Classic Vergil knows who he is and his place in the world. I think this is the result of many years of experience fighting the demons, etc. DmC Vergil is a bit more troubled, especially after his defeat against Dante. This particular event changed everything for him and made him question who he is. Both are interesting in their own way, but I think DmC Vergil is a bit more humanised because of this.
Already talked about fan reaction before, read above.
Specify alternate route?
I would love to be part of a DMC movie! Now that would be awesome.
I already wrote about Vergil's character development above, have a look!
No idea why that track was chosen specifically for the boss fight, sorry.
BLACKSWIPE,
Wow, massive question. I can't really speak for the team of the studio, just my own experience. When designing bosses I wanted to capture the classic idea that these bosses are very powerful but you can break them by applying skill. This was important from day one and part of the reason people love classic DMC bosses, I think. I also wanted to make sure every mechanic would have a particular effect on the bosses. This was very hard to do given the extent of Dante's abilities, but we tried to cover as much as possible. Level design wise, when I designed the Mansion level, because it's a mission about remembering the past, I wanted it to be closer to classic DMC level design. More crossed paths, less linear (even though it's fairly linear), and I think I managed that, not sure anyone noticed though!
Yes, the game was a bit different. Check my answer above regarding mechanics that changed, etc.
Not really, he was always meant to have one DT, as far as I remember. The concepts with Dante's angel and demon forms simply show what would happen when you held the Demon or Angel triggers on the controller. It was a way to show the player which mode was selected. But because people switched triggers very quickly during combat, the effect wasn't as cool as first thought and this was simplified and toned down.
I actually think there are a lot of classic DMC elements in the combat! I would've liked for it to have innovated a bit more and go crazy!
I have no idea about sequels, so don't ask. Like I said, I would love to work on a DMC movie.
Thank you for your comments!!
DarkSlayerZero,
I think they were all meant to be teenagers, so yes, very young. Maybe late teens? I'm just guessing now.
Dante'sStalker,
Hey, did I say that?
I don't think they could tie in, no. The DMC universe is crazy and you could come up with a way to justify it, but I think that would be too convoluted. What I said was that Vergil's Downfall was INSPIRED by what happened at the end of DMC3, when Dante defeats Vergil, and Vergil is left in the underworld.
Wow, that was a lot of writing!