I made this post in response to someone else's on tumblr, so I'll just copy/paste it if it's alright ^^.
I’m glad somebody else noticed this. The response to Lilith death had some controversy, although details behind this can sometimes be misleading with some saying Dante heartlessly makes fun of Mundus about the incident, while disregarding certain key factors behind that scene.
The fact of matter is, Dante never wanted Lilith and her unborn baby to die and was forced to mock Mundus about it an attempt to get him away from the Hellgate -which Vergil needed to shut down- after attempts to anger Mundus about doing it all for the freedom of mankind, failed. Meanwhile Vergil shooting Lilith was to prevent any heir getting in the way of his plans for ruling over the humans, since that was the only agenda he had in mind, becoming a ruler.
Another thing to take into account was that Lilith never loved for her child truthfully. She used it as a ticket to power, even allowing her unborn baby to fight Dante so she could prove to Mundus she was worthy of being at his side [even quoting “I’m nothing without this brat”]. She’s not a sweet innocent mother with a sweet innocent baby, she was carrying the next omen, and both were nearly no better than the father. Her shock at realizing she’s been shot, isn’t out of a mother’s loss of her child, it’s out of loss for power. In her dying moments she realizes she is no longer useful to Mundus because his heir is dead and her plans have gone up in smoke.
If anything in fact, The Trade scene actually shows the vast difference between Dante and Vergil, in that:
1. Dante was willing to spare Lilith and baby’s life in a fair trade. Even in the knowledge the baby might one day wind up becoming another Mundus down the line and with Phineas even telling him to kill them, Dante made the choice to let them live. This shows mercy in his character, the same mercy Dante showed to Trish back in DMC1, when he could’ve killed her, but didn’t.
Him warning the other members of The Order to get out when they’re under attack; helping Kat reach Vergil when he’s in Limbo, to him going out of his way to rescue Kat proves he’s got a good heart on him, he’s learnt to care for others in his journey, that by the end, he’s not the selfish rebel he started out as when living in a trailer by the sea, he’s become Dante.
2. For Vergil, that scene shows you how calculative and cold he really is. He wants to kill Mundus, take his place and rule over the humans. He doesn’t care at what cost that takes, if a small number die to save the masses. He wants power as a leader, and he’ll do anything to reach his goal.
So he abandons the members of his Order when they’re under attack, he forces Kat to stay behind to gather his data with time that could’ve been used to help her escape. And then once again, he risks getting her killed when shooting Lilith, causing Mundus’s outburst, which in turn injured and possibly killed thousands of people in the city when a flux in the Hellgate caused entire city blocks to collapse.
If Vergil had let the trade go on peacefully as Dante had planned, likely nobody would’ve been killed, if he hadn’t been so determined with his goals, thousands could’ve been spared. Dante is not the merciless one, Vergil is. But this is no real surprise since after all, Vergil was a villain in previous games.
One thing to remember though from Dante’s boss battle with the Mundus’s Spawn, is that it’s made clear the baby can hatch out of Lilith’s body at anytime. Even if Vergil had shot Lilith in the head on the first shot, that child might’ve still been alive and have broken out of her while she was dead. For Vergil, that was a risk to his plans he couldn’t take. But perhaps what would’ve been more menancing is if Vergil had shot Lilith through the stomach, and then left her to bleed to death. Him at least giving her a head shot afterwards showed he had some decency to put her out of misery rather than leave her suffer a long horrible death that she would’ve done if he hadn’t.
It’s not like this issue hasn’t been brought up before or in other games.
Heather in Silent Hill 3 takes a pill and vomits up a foetus from her mouth, mocks “Looks like god didn’t make it” and proceeds to step on it before Claudia stops her and swallows the foetus whole. It also revolves around the same theme as DmC with that of a character that will give birth to a god-like creature that may possibly be evil.
Fortunately in all these circumstances nobody was killed or injured…
because it’s not real. I think that’s something we need to realize. These are video games we’re talking about. Nobody really got shot, no omen babies died. Yes there are some things you shouldn’t have in a game or even a film, but for me, I didn’t find Lilith’s scene disturbing, offensive or gory. in fact, Raiden ripping out a man’s heart and crushing it in his hands at the end of Metal Gear Rising I found more graphic than this.
If this had been another character, say Kat or another female [human, demon or angel] that was pregnant and got shot, this probably would’ve been a problem, especially if this character had no impure intentions as Lilith did on rising to power and the baby didn’t grow up to be pure evil [which the game pretty much establishes by how eager he was to get out and kill Dante, so there’s a safe bet this kid would’ve grown up to be like his daddy.]
And yet in spite of all that, of this baby being the child of the man that murdered his mother and locked away his father for endless torture and suffering, and being fully aware that another Mundus might rise to take the demon king’s place one day, Dante still showed both the unborn child and Lilith mercy, when most [like Vergil] didn’t wouldn’t have. He didn’t let revenge make him slay the lives of a mother and her baby, and that’s something to really think about.
So it begs to ask the question: Has the line between reality and the virtual world of storytelling begun to blur as graphics become more realistic and video games are no longer blocks of pixels…? Or are people just overreacting? Because I for one was not offended by any terminations of life in DmC or DMC4-
Oh my god! NERO KILLED THAT DEMON’S UNBORN BABIES AND MOCKED HER! Quick, someone get Obama on the phone! Nero’s become like his father! We’re all gonna die! T____T
I think I’ve made my point @_@.
Besides, Lilith's reaction to the succubus with the 'must we talk about her?' or something makes me think he did have other ladies lined up and Lilith just happened to 'strike lucky'. As for having more than one, one would be enough. He'd have too much pride in his own offspring to think it could be killed easily.