Was anyone else disappointed with how the story went for DMC5?

[berto]

Does anyone remember things from when they were four?

I have memories from when I was a baby. I can tell you at least one memory from every year of my life. The big events I remember most clearly.

and have Nero take the spotlight

And like Gohan Nero might not be a hated character but he was never as iconic as Dante. Even Vegeta/Vergil couldn't ever replace him as the lead.

Unless they go the route of the first demon

Or Haven. The issue, however, is always going to be how they insist on having the characters show off on the enemies thus always nullifying any sense of threat of danger. They're just going make up a big threat that gets trivialized when the cutscenes pop up.

 

[ef9dante_oSsshea]

I have loads of memories from age 4 and 5, particularly my birthdays those years. I got a toy cap gun and a bike for 4 and i got a sega megadrive for my 5th birthday which started my life long passion for gaming

Ya that is the problem @berto , no matter what threat they come up with the brothers will get a power up and defeat it in the second half of the game. Likely it will do the same formula of first fight is a loss, second is a draw or they win and the enemy escapes and the third fight they win and then get trapped in the demon world again or somewhere else.

 

[V's patron]

I have loads of memories from age 4 and 5, particularly my birthdays those years. I got a toy cap gun and a bike for 4 and i got a sega megadrive for my 5th birthday which started my life long passion for gaming

Ya that is the problem @berto , no matter what threat they come up with the brothers will get a power up and defeat it in the second half of the game. Likely it will do the same formula of first fight is a loss, second is a draw or they win and the enemy escapes and the third fight they win and then get trapped in the demon world again or somewhere else.

But that's more on Capcom for not deviating from that formula or experimenting with it.

 

[ef9dante_oSsshea]

Ya that goes back to them not knowing how to write a unique story that doesn't need to re-use elements of past games over again

I mean hell u could have left vergil out of 5 as the antagonist and done something entirely different, and instead have vergil show up in the demon world when dante goes there to take care of the tree. In place of urizen have mundus break the seal dante placed on him and eat a second fruit to get a massive power boost.

Nero could fight urizen who could be a powerful knight and the sparda equivalent to mundus's new army. While dante fights beefed up mundus and it is a stalemate until vergil shows up and helps him kill mundus for good. Then they can still have their rivarly and somewhat reconcile in hell until they find a way out for a new game.

That is just an idea i came up with on the fly lol, capcom need to think outside the box

 

[Morgan]

No. That's too negative a word. You don't get false teeth or an glass eye or a prosthetic leg to deceive people. You get those out of need.

You're getting lost in the analogy, IMO. Yeah, people don't get false teeth or a glass eye in order to deceive, but we're not actually talking about people with otherwise impaired quality of life who need medical inventions for their health/comfort and they're all the better for having it. We're talking about a corporation selling you a product because they want your money and they could do better than this but clearly opted not to, hence the customer dissatisfaction.

These characters with their shoddy dialogue and characterizations are the work of "reputable jewelers" trying to sell you a bootleg Rolex by trading on their good name, telling you it's a real one and spinning up a yarn about how it's a classic watch crafted in the finest whatever-the-hell and vetted by whoever-the-F because they want to make profit as cheaply as humanly possible while playing on your emotional attachment to the material (the hypothetical bootleg Rolex makes you think of your dad or something).

As for the character misinterpretation, yeah, that's the same s**t they did in 2. There's this archetype in Japanese media, the hero who says he doesn't care but in truth is just pretending. They have stupid lines like 'I'm not here to save the world, I just came to settle the score for that one time you beat me.' It's silly and rather Dante was far more sincere than that. When they did it in 3 he came off as a right a$$h073 but he eventually got sincere. Well, e says a'hole crap like that but never drops the actual a'hole attitude. If you pull it off it can come off well but that's not the issue. The issue is that Dante was not that type of hero; he was, as pointed above, the same kind of hero Leon was in 2 and 4, the stereotypical kind who goes out of his way to save others.

He "got sincere" in 3 too little too late, and his a-holishness doesn't even hold up. If he "doesn't give a damn" about anything until he met and interacted with Lady, why did he even go to the tower? He shouldn't have cared. The character-consistent act was for him to skip town. The F is Vergil gonna do, get mad and chase him down? We'd actually have a story there instead of "Vergil calmly waits for Dante to make things worse".

I don't give Capcom credit for intentionally making Dante a worse person so they could present the illusion of "development". See the below quote.

He technically doesn't in the anime. The fact is he is such slug in the show who refuses to do anything.

Yeah, that too. Haha, Dante destroys every locale he hunts demons in and causes collateral damage and racks up further debt, because he fights like a toddler that can't control his power at all, and he's willing to let innocent people die or refuse to save them, isn't that cool?
Just ignore the commentary in 3142 from Shigeki Maeshima that "Dante's appeal lies not only in his coolness, but also how caring he is."

Oh, yeah. Or how about the fact that actually read books in 1, which he doesn't do anywhere else. In fact, in the anime they go out of their way to mention how he'd never set foot at a library.

He's an illiterate loser who doesn't care about his own history or parentage! Haha, isn't that cool?

Also, why are those the numbers? Why can't DMC2 take place 3 months after DMC4 (or 1)? Where ever it is that the canon places the order. Why is everything years and years apart? DMC5 doesn't have to be all those years later. How about just one year? 6 months? I know all these big events so close together would be worrisome but I think they space things too far apart.

IDK. They keep changing Dante's design so much they have to plonk some time there for Dante to become an albino instead of possessing reasonably tanned skin but stark-white hair, for his whole jawline to change/square out, or him to get roided out, or him to look like Hank from Detroit: Become Human. But at least there's a refined elegance/classiness to DMC2 Dante's design that could conceivably stem from 1, as opposed to 3-4-5 Dante who are... not that.

In some parallel universe, Kamiya made the exact game he envisioned, that covered Dante's life at three stages. His young self, the version of him in his 20s that we saw in DMC1 who would actually lose to Mundus, and then Future Dante who cleans himself up, grows more powerful from there, and gets the rematch. Everything else is just riffing off of that.

I would buy DMC2 as happening however long in the future he would need to have the power to no-diff the Despair Embodied the way he does given he won that with no Sparda sword and no Trish intervention, plus the DMC2 novel's inclusion of him defeating an alternate-timeline "Void Mundus" who was more powerful than his DMC1 counterpart. I was even okay with 2 happening "far in the future" when Capcom first tried to disown it, because it'd mean Dante has a long lifespan that he could accumulate that level of power and experience with while retaining his looks instead of "aging like a human" and unintuitively getting absurd power anyway.

Instead he goes from "Can't beat Mundus without a Sparda amp" to "BTFO's Abigail (who is Mundus level) by flashing his DT" just a year or two later, to "defeats an even stronger Mundus with no Sparda amp" not that long after, to "slaughters The Despair, who even Sparda had to resort to sealing" not long after that, but then "LOL no, Urizen sitting on a chair is stronger than all the previous opponents. Don't question it".

The way it is now with 31245 solely so all of Dante's major encounters with Vergil-or-related-phenomena happen about once every decade? IDK. IDEC. Whatever they do in the future won't stop me from mentally separating 1-2 from 3-Anime-4-5-etc as separate continuities. What are they going to do about it?

Not anymore, it seems. According to the new light novel (Before the Nightmare) Gilver was, basically, a shadow clone of Vergil.

Welp, another point taken away from Mundus. Makes one shadow clone of Vergil, doesn't send any more of them even though he could theoretically make an infinite number and has their combat data. It's as big a fumble as General Glauca from FFXV.
How would Dante even know that Gilver was just a clone and not his actual twin? It's not like he asked the real Vergil and got the truth out of him. It's not even like Mundus admitted to making a Vergil clone either. He only cops to making Trishes.

I won't go that far. He also wrote Bayonetta 2 and DMC3 so he's got some high points, too. Apparently Kamiya also worked on these titles. In 3 he didn't do any production work. Apparently it was advisory. What he contributed is mentioned in the interviews on the back of 3142.

I would.
Nero has the simple name and simplistic character and design that he has on Bingo's watch even though the team supposedly intended on "making [Nero] more of a smart type" and sophisticated. The female characters became superfluous fanservice in the anime (and later DMC4) on his watch. He admitted to not being able to parse DMC1 Dante's character because "he wasn't a character that I'd originally created" and insinuated that "Kamiya's Dante" was unapproachable. He worked on 2, 3, 4, 5, the anime, and two supplementary novels. He has more misses than hits. This isn't the Chris Nolan of the character action/stylish-action genre.

I couldn't believe it when I read this. I used to watch that movie on HBO when I was a kid. I honestly didn't think anyone else had ever seen or heard of it and there is Shinji Mikami talking about how the movie had influenced Vergil's creation. Crazy, bro.

Compare "Vergil was based off of Sho Kosugi from Blind Fury" with Itsuno's botched Mazinger Z reference in 5. Night and day.

If I remember correctly he also told them to go nuts, not to get overly attached to the DMC1 story. I don't remember any mention of clarifying that it's not the same continuity but it has been years since I read through that book.

Bingo: "There were talks of setting it in a parallel world at first, because Vergil being alive doesn't quite mesh with the events of DMC1. But Itsuno-san said, 'If it's interesting, then do it and don't worry. If it has to be a parallel world, then it's a parallel world.' I agreed, so I went ahead and wrote it that way. I'd actually been discussing the matter with Kamiya-san since DMC2. As far as DMC3 was concerned, he said 'You don't even have to explicitly say it's a parallel world.' I told him that doing that might mess up the continuity, but he didn't care, saying that those kinds of things happen all the time."

Q: So that's how DMC3 wound up as wild as it did?

Bingo: "That's right, and Kamiya-san said it still wasn't enough. Early in development we were discussing how DMC3 would have a shirtless Dante, to contrast with the more refined Dante from DMC1, and Kamiya-san said, 'This Dante is quieter than I expected. And if you're going to change up his image, feel free to give him a weapon that's not a sword.'"

---

"You don't even have to explicitly say it's a parallel world" isn't the same statement as "Yes, it's totally in the same continuity"-- explicitly (say) was put there for a reason. The former statement expects that the game is doing a ton of showing and not telling its differences for the fans to understand.

For instance, did we need to be told in Bayonetta 3 that that Cereza/Bayonetta wasn't the exact one as in B1 and B2, or could we tell because her hairstyle closely resembles her child self, her face is cuter, her voice sounds younger, her dances are different, Luka calls her by her toddler nickname when he never once called the previous Bayonettas "Cerezita", and a Bayonetta we are familiar with teases the third version about being a little crybaby, etc.? Bayonetta 3's story is garbage, and it plays like Kamiya and Miyata did lines of cocaine after an all-nighter in the office, but he still has some faith in letting the game speak for itself.

He merely expressed the same thing for DMC3 with "feel free to give him a weapon that's not a sword", "give him long hair", "give him a sleeveless shirt", "give him two weapons to dual-wield right from the start": it's not Kamiya's Dante anyway, so it's on Bingo to show that and really make it Not Kamiya's Dante. Instead, Bingo opted for not saying it's in a different continuity and not clearly showing it because he didn't want to make the fans mad, so in effect, a parallel world game became a main continuity game even though this was the reboot before DmC, because Bingo is a coward.

I am going to call him that, the same way I can call Itsuno two-faced for copping to a "sassy cigarette-smoking older woman" fetish in TGS 2018 and that being the design for Nico and her dynamic with Nero, even though he could've gotten that sh*t earlier in DMC3 because Lady was concepted as an older, sassy, cigarette-smoking demon-hunter who would boss Dante around a bit and be his mentor, but instead he concern-trolled about appealing to the Japanese fanbase and how they don't want "blonde" or "swarthy" girls. Only to have both things in DMC4 (Trish and Gloria) and 5 (Trish and Nico).

The things they say they wanted could be achieved way more simply if they put in a bit of thought instead of excusing themselves with fake concerns/fears.

 

[ef9dante_oSsshea]

I think the series needs a new director and writers to be honest, i would shake it up with a character death to spice it up too (likely trish for the ptsd it would cause vergil and dante)

Maybe patty being trained by lady to hunt could be cool too

 

[V's patron]

I'm beginning to think it would've been better if they swapped protagonists after 1 rather than trying to continuing Dante's story.

It's not that continuing Dante's story was wrong. It's just that they never figured out how to do it.

Hopefully the upcoming animated series will have better luck.

@ef9dante_oSsshea
Hopefully DMC6 will bring in some new blood.

 

[ef9dante_oSsshea]

I think they will, but in the form of supporting cast who are likely not playable

Will be nero on his own, or nero dante and vergil. I hope v becomes playable in at least bp mode now since i doubt vergil will seperate himself again lore wise

 

[Morgan]

I'm beginning to think it would've been better if they swapped protagonists after 1 rather than trying to continuing Dante's story.

Well, yeah.
An anthology series based on how Sparda's actions shaped the world and history would have worked way better than what we have now.

We have "Star Wars HAS to be about the Skywalkers" level of stagnation here, when every game including and after DMC2 would have probably been better served without Dante in it so that the characters introduced in those games could shine and develop.

Dante is close to self-actualized in the first game, so he gets his vengeance and helps Trish develop into a better person.

Lucia's still a clone abandoned by Arius and adopted by Matier and her self-actualization comes with learning that her ties to her island's culture transcends blood relations and genetics.

Lady retains her connection to the priestess bloodline and has to deal with her father perverting the mythos for his own ends, but without Vergil as a convenient scapegoat. She realizes that familial ties aren't a cure-all to a relationship that's turned toxic and it's for her own health to cut that off for good.

Nero can be distantly related to Sparda or be a normal human that happened on demonic power and he can have some religious identity crisis over whether becoming a demon is his punishment for not believing in God, or whether reliance on God's powers translates to having incredible strength (knowing his limits, not falling to Pride) or having incredible weakness (refusing to do things on his own that he theoretically has the power to do, wasting his existing God-given potential and thus falling to Sloth).

But that requires that the writers have something to say and thus why it won't happen, because without the buffer of "Dante cool bang bang pow pow woohoo cuhrayzee", they wouldn't be able to get away with things like Lady shooting her dad but then flipping to the Vergil Defense Squad to tell Nero not to do that to his dad for the out-of-universe reasons of fanservice and Vergil is too pretty to deserve permanent death so he's gotta be given a redemption he didn't work all that hard to get.

 

[berto]

we're not actually talking about people with otherwise impaired quality of life

Yeah, but the distinction is important because calling it interchangable/painted on, or whatever, versus calling it a counterfeit shows the difference in our attitude towards the whole thing. Clearly you have more negative feelings about this than I do and the distinction must come through on each.

For you they are:

"reputable jewelers" trying to sell you a bootleg Rolex by trading on their good name, and so.

While I see the whole thing as people who are trapped with characters they don't know what to do with and fans who have proven to be potentially rageful if they don't do it right. I do place a good deal of how things are on us, the fandom. Even if it's not evident here DMC fans are not all a cheerful lot. There are some crazy fans who will throw tantrums of psychotic levels when things don't go as they want them to go and Capcom's probably seen the brunt of it. Yeah, they wrote themselves into a corner but I how fans had demands and they were not subtle about it.

If he "doesn't give a damn" about anything until he met and interacted with Lady, why did he even go to the tower? He shouldn't have cared.

That's not how I interpret the whole thing. It's still that whole thing of saying I don't really care while clearly having a vested interest on the whole ordeal. Lady's journey parallels Dante's and it's not one of those hidden details, it's a core theme. That whole thing of him not caring is his attempt at not and, yet, there he is because, as he phrased it, it's what his soul is telling him to do.

Nero has the simple name and simplistic character and design that he has on Bingo's watch even though the team supposedly intended on "making [Nero] more of a smart type" and sophisticated. The female characters became superfluous fanservice in the anime (and later DMC4) on his watch.

Yeah, but you are laying sole responsibility of whole productions on one guy. He, alone, did not make all the decisions and is not the one who made things the way they are. Yeah, he's the scenario writer, but the final story is a collaboration which final product falls on directors, producers, designers, actors and artists, not just the writer.

He admitted to not being able to parse DMC1 Dante's character because "he wasn't a character that I'd originally created" and insinuated that "Kamiya's Dante" was unapproachable.

I read about that. Itsuno mentioned a similar thing, about how he had a hard time interpreting Dante because he had so much respect for Kamiya's creation he was afraid he'd screw it up.

He worked on 2, 3, 4, 5, the anime, and two supplementary novels. He has more misses than hits.

I'll grant you the two novels but, like I said, productions aren't just the writer's fault. The anime I blame more on the direction and production than the scenario writer. The games are much more the work of the production team than the writer.

Mazinger Z reference in 5

Wait... Do you mean this?:

Spoiler

See, I have a very different take on this. I just don't think robot arms belong in a DMC game at all. I don't care where the reference came from, DMC is not a sci fi game. Those things belong in there as much as they do in an RE game.

Q: So that's how DMC3 wound up as wild as it did?

It's funny that Kamiya seems to be the only constant in all my favorite DMC games, including playing as Dante in VJ. Don't know what that says about this whole thing.

am going to call him that, the same way I can call Itsuno two-faced for copping to a "sassy cigarette-smoking older woman" fetish in TGS 2018 and that being the design for Nico and her dynamic with Nero

See? That's why I clarify my words and intentions. I don't hold anywhere near as much contempt at the makers as you do. I don't see it all as malicious as all that.

In a similar point, I think I'm in more agreement with this guy. Again, I find his take to be more far negative than mine but it is closer to how I interpret the whole scenario:

 

[Morgan]

While I see the whole thing as people who are trapped with characters they don't know what to do with and fans who have proven to be potentially rageful if they don't do it right. I do place a good deal of how things are on us, the fandom. Even if it's not evident here DMC fans are not all a cheerful lot. There are some crazy fans who will throw tantrums of psychotic levels when things don't go as they want them to go and Capcom's probably seen the brunt of it. Yeah, they wrote themselves into a corner but I how fans had demands and they were not subtle about it.

You're not wrong that the fandom has a part in it; they're absolutely to blame for being little babies and throwing tantrums.

They sent hate mail to Reuben Langdon just for not being Drew Coombs, hated on Nero just because he wasn't Dante, hated on Reboot Dante just because he wasn't classic Dante, and went on tirades about "Ninja Gayory" and saying Tameem and DmC Dante "looked like f*ggots".

Yeah, but you are laying sole responsibility of whole productions on one guy. He, alone, did not make all the decisions and is not the one who made things the way they are. Yeah, he's the scenario writer, but the final story is a collaboration which final product falls on directors, producers, designers, actors and artists, not just the writer.

What's the material difference between calling it "Bingo's Vergil/Nero/Kyrie/etc" or "Itsuno's Dante/Lady/Trish" that doesn't apply to "Kamiya's Dante"? Kamiya worked with a team as well but we still recognize that character as his character and they do too without trying to itemize each aspect to the artists or scenarists that worked with him at the time, even if Drew is on record saying they based some of Dante on his voice work and mannerisms as he acted out some of the lines.

Thing like Kyrie being designed as a bland/flawless big-sister-type with a sensuous body and a huge rack, and Lady wearing booty shorts because sex appeal is important even if the women don't do anything else in the game came right out of Bingo's mouth as well as Kobayashi's incompetence with trying to market a game to "appeal to women" and then removing blood and gore when the game is already rated M and replacing it with yaoi bait between two genetically-related dudes. They shouldn't admit to things they don't want to be held responsible for; it's not all that fun to know that a character's entire design and characterization will flip based on whatever fetish the people working on it will reveal in an artbook within a year of the game coming out.

Kamiya and his team contributed to a good first impression of Dante, words used to describe 1 Dante involved him being caring or gentlemanly or witty or a fighting man, and he certainly isn't hideous. It would still be out of place to have some artist or scenarist or Kamiya himself go on about making him sexually appealing to them personally and having modeled a husband out of him.

Wait... Do you mean this?:

See, I have a very different take on this. I just don't think robot arms belong in a DMC game at all. I don't care where the reference came from, DMC is not a sci fi game. Those things belong in there as much as they do in an RE game.

No, it was actually some scene Itsuno recalled about a mecha anime he watched when he was little, where "the absent father rescues the son with a mecha that no one had ever seen before", as the basis for Nero coming to the rescue and stopping the fight between Vergil and Dante with a new Devil Trigger:

“His father, who’s been missing for some time, comes out of nowhere with a new robot that no one has ever seen before. It beats up the attackers in one fell swoop.”

Itsuno was four at the time, and he was born in 1971. The popular mecha anime on air when he was four was Great Mazinger, and pretty notably, Tetsuya in the Great Mazinger saves his adoptive brother Koji Kabuto (pilot of the older Mazinger Z) and defeats the enemies in one fell swoop. It wasn't a dad saving a son, it was a brother saving another. And if he wanted to get the emotions of a father saving his son, Vergil was right there with the Sin DT which also hasn't been seen before. It wouldn't have been hard to script for that scenario but they seemed very invested in making Nero feel like the only adult in the room.

In a similar point, I think I'm in more agreement with this guy. Again, I find his take to be more far negative than mine but it is closer to how I interpret the whole scenario:

Honestly I love those reviews. The fans spewed a bunch of hurt feelings about the criticisms but he's not wrong.

 

[berto]

What's the material difference between calling it "Bingo's Vergil/Nero/Kyrie/etc" or "Itsuno's Dante/Lady/Trish" that doesn't apply to "Kamiya's Dante"?

I've made no secret that I credit Dante to more than just Kamiya. I've said that it wasn't just him responsible for what DMC1 is. Shinji Mikami's handprints are all over that thing and Noboru Sugimura is one of the few names that come up in most of the works they put together that have that tone. That being said, if I want more of OG Dante I don't read the LN, I play VJ as Dante. That, even more than said LN, is one of the only places I get that vibe from Dante that 1 had. That part seems to be all Kamiya so it seems like a lot of that came from him. Mikami has never show interest in going back to DMC, either, so at this point we can pretty much call him Kamiya's Dante. Everyone else has gone different ways from Capcom, not just to P+. Hard to pin a group when you don't know where they've all scattered to.

Kamiya and his team contributed to a good first impression of Dante, words used to describe 1 Dante involved him being caring or gentlemanly or witty or a fighting man, and he certainly isn't hideous. It would still be out of place to have some artist or scenarist or Kamiya himself go on about making him sexually appealing to them personally and having modeled a husband out of him.

Have you been watching the DMC videos that preach the whole thing a gay incetuious rub? I saw that one too and I thought it was ridiculous and a little thirsty. I take very little stock from those videos.

Tetsuya in the Great Mazinger saves his adoptive brother Koji Kabuto (pilot of the older Mazinger Z) and defeats the enemies in one fell swoop.

Mazinger Z was popular in Mexico when I was a kid, too. If you hadn't pointed that out to me I'd never made the connection. That just came off as cheese to me.

The fans spewed a bunch of hurt feelings about the criticisms but he's not wrong.

That's fanboy mentality to you. I saw the comments on those videos. People are dilucional men-children. A few years ago I saw a news report at work during my break. They had this kid on site to talk about riots, or something, and they asked him a serious question and he said something to the effect of 'I'm not here to talk, just to say go fck yourselfs' and walked off. That's the same level of intelligence I saw in those comments. Some issult and with nothing real to say or to retort. Bravo. No wonder they made Dante a moron. If they gave him an IQ higher than 2 digits they'd alienate that whole chunk of the fandom.

I've actually had to deal with people like this before. Their entire capacity to argue is basically deny and throw insults. Example: I once said that Dante looks like a hobo on a thread elsewhere and I didn't like his design. There have been memes, jokes and illustrations that show that clearly he looks like he's homeless. Not like I'm the first to say so, yer, suddenly it's 'no he doesn't you're a fkng idiot he looks nothing like that where did you even get that you're too stupid to this and that etc etc' followed by the inevitable string of angry kys responses when you show proof. It's like these people run on angry.

There's also this other weird thing I've encountered where people actually think memes are canon. The most blatant example I can think of was this whole thing about Dante's hypothetical offspring or possible lineage and some weirdos kept insisting that 'Dante's a virgin' so it wasn't possible. You ask where they got this from and you can trace all this brilliant deduction to the old 'if they don't show it it didn't happen.' I actually do remember where this came from. This was thing that DmC fans pushed when they were defending that Dante saying that at least this one's not a virgin and turned that whole thing into a meme. Something weirdly similar happened with the dancing meme. Then, of course, you have the chair. The point is, you have these weirdos who actually think the memes are actually real and part of canon. Imagine someone having a debate about Star Wars and some smooth brain unironically brings up a robot chicken skit as a point of debate. That's what you have here and they will die on that hill.

 

[CaitNíSé_D_Huntress]

My only problem is that dante and vergil seemed to have finally cleared the air, but now they are stuck in hell.

Why capcom i wanted to see some more brotherly banter.

 

[Morgan]

Have you been watching the DMC videos that preach the whole thing a gay incestuous rub? I saw that one too and I thought it was ridiculous and a little thirsty. I take very little stock from those videos.

Yeah those are ridiculous, but they're from the fans. It'd be another thing entirely if someone from the actual dev team admitted to it and they said "Oh, we developed Dante to hint at loving his brother inappropriately by human standards, Coffin of Andy and LeyLey style". I already hate the perception of yaoi bait present in 4 and 5 to attract that type of fandom; they'd be more insufferable yet if the term "incestuous" or "incest-coded" actually made it in an art book.

Mazinger Z was popular in Mexico when I was a kid, too. If you hadn't pointed that out to me I'd never made the connection. That just came off as cheese to me.

This does emphasize a point we can agree on, is that it's not wrong to make homages or references to influential media that made an impression, as long as the homage can stand on its own within the story. If it falls flat then it doesn't matter that it copied off of some other work where the scene made sense and was amazing.

The emotion caused by "Nero stops Dante and Vergil from fighting" shouldn't be "OMG, this is just like Mazinger! I liked that, so I have to like this too!", it's "Holy F*CK, Nero got a new form and stopped the twins in their tracks!”

The Alastor acquisition scene in DMC1 is literally a JoJo reference, namely Kars (as the Ultimate Life Form) getting up from the ground in an inhuman way. The emotion it's supposed to evoke isn't "This is a JoJo reference, I like JoJo so I have to like this too", it's "Did Dante just pull *himself* through a *sword* instead of pulling the sword out of him? He's unstoppable!", when he already started the game shrugging off an impalement and electrocution.

That's fanboy mentality to you. I saw the comments on those videos. People are dilucional men-children. A few years ago I saw a news report at work during my break. They had this kid on site to talk about riots, or something, and they asked him a serious question and he said something to the effect of 'I'm not here to talk, just to say go fck yourselfs' and walked off. That's the same level of intelligence I saw in those comments.

That's funny as f*ck, though. I'm willing to bet the punk kid actually looked like one (if not indistinguishable from a rioter), which makes me wonder why did the news reporter expect something serious out of that type?

I once said that Dante looks like a hobo on a thread elsewhere and I didn't like his design. There have been memes, jokes and illustrations that show that clearly he looks like he's homeless. [...]

Capcom's clever trick to get people who hated DmC to admit that Dante "looking like a methhead" wasn't a problem; make 5 Dante look like he's strung out on a cocktail of other drugs and lost his job/office/house. Genius!

There's also this other weird thing I've encountered where people actually think memes are canon. The most blatant example I can think of was this whole thing about Dante's hypothetical offspring or possible lineage and some weirdos kept insisting that 'Dante's a virgin' so it wasn't possible. You ask where they got this from and you can trace all this brilliant deduction to the old 'if they don't show it it didn't happen.' I actually do remember where this came from. This was thing that DmC fans pushed when they were defending that Dante saying that at least this one's not a virgin and turned that whole thing into a meme.

Trust me, this is the eternal pain of being a DragonBall Z fan. Team Four Star popularizing the idea that Piccolo is Gohan's Real Dad and that Goku Is A Bad Dad was the worst thing to ever come out of the Abridged Series but also serves to expose who actually *watched* the show and understands the characters versus who only got in through the memes and/or Super.

But no, "Dante is a virgin" was a thing before the reboot. It was since DMC3, with Dante saying in Mission 7 that he had "rotten luck with women". Fandom did as fandom does and extrapolates everything about a single character from one trait or popular line. So the same people who write Vergil OOC but think he's in character just because their fanfiction has him drop a "Foolishness, Dante, Foolishness" or "I need more power" are the same who think that Dante saying he has bad luck with women means he's never ever landed a woman *ever* which must mean he's a virgin and his flirtatious quips to Lady are 1000% overcompensating for his lack of accomplishments in the bedroom. And on the other side there are the fans who think everything Wacky Woohoo Pizza Man has ever said is absolutely true so actually he brings in a new woman every week and sleeps around and is a sex god, and the Lucifer cutscene proves it.

 

[Lain]

Trust me, this is the eternal pain of being a DragonBall Z fan. Team Four Star popularizing the idea that Piccolo is Gohan's Real Dad and that Goku Is A Bad Dad was the worst thing to ever come out of the Abridged Series but also serves to expose who actually *watched* the show and understands the characters versus who only got in through the memes and/or Super.

Tangentially related, but I will never forgive Super for what they did to Goku's character. That one manga page of Vegeta saying he can't afford to miss the birth of his daughter with Goku asking why Vegeta cares since Goku claims not to know when Gohan or Goten were born...will forever go down in infamy.

 

[ef9dante_oSsshea]

@Lain you and me both, goku had incredible moments in dbz where he was a leader and had combat and life intelligence

And super turned him into the very thing vegeta calls him all the time

A clown

As for dante's look in 5, i think stubble or a groomed beard would suit him but with the neat hair he had before he went to face urizen

The rough look after his month lomg nap made him look homeless and that always bugged me

 

[V's patron]

My only problem is that dante and vergil seemed to have finally cleared the air, but now they are stuck in hell.

Why capcom i wanted to see some more brotherly banter.

They could just do a game set in the Underworld with Dante and Vergil fighting Jedha Dhoma from Darkstalkers.

MvC laid the groundwork for it.

 

[berto]

@CaitNíSé_D_Huntress Unfortunately I don't think Capcom has any interest in following up with Dante and Vergil. They seem to have wanted them out o' the way so that they could focus on Nero. Then again, that was Itsuno's stance. He also said others would be taking up the franchise so they might go in a different direction from what Itsuno laid out.

they'd be more insufferable yet if the term "incestuous" or "incest-coded" actually made it in an art book.

The idea is not new. The Trish and Dante thing, for example, has had some serious connotations. To this day only Kamiya knows if they are lovers or not and he's not telling which, honestly, pretty much indicates that they are. She might not be his mother. She might not sound, act or remind him of his mother, seeing how she did a Clark Kent when he didn't notice till she took off the shades, but she still looks like her. That's honestly never bothered me because I always interpreted the whole thing as Dante reenacting his father's story.

Side note. Interesting thing I read. Dante's first impression of Trish was that he liked how she carried herself, motorcycle and all. The reason he believed her, despite it all, is because he couldn't believe anyone with that face would try to deceive him. He knows how it sounds but believes her on that basis just the same.

Spoiler

This is from a Japanese Guidebook. THe translation is by blackened-angel.tumblr.com. If you want to see the rest of the translation for that passage. He mostly talks about how much he loves nights with full moons and what an impression Trish left.

"Holy F*CK, Nero got a new form and stopped the twins in their tracks!”

Yeah, and then someone gets yet another new form, and another, and another still!! Oh, I wonder what will happen next! How will they top the new form? I know I'm being overly cynical but 5 really seemed to be enamoured with this theme. The concept itself isn't what bugged me, it's the fact that all things were resolved like this and not through any real form of conflict resolution.

I love the whole 'violence it not the answer' speech Nero gives before he proceeds to get violent on them. Calls them idiots but what right does he have when all he knows how to do is moan and demand things which, if he doesn't get, leads to him throwing a fit and getting violent.

The Alastor acquisition scene in DMC1 is literally a JoJo reference, namely Kars (as the Ultimate Life Form) getting up from the ground in an inhuman way.

Really? From what I saw it all just seemed like an otherworldly way to raise, like a vampire, showing that Dante was just as much a demon as he was human. I never associated this with JoJo. Got a link, by chance?

By the way, this will explain the new canon for Gilver, which is even worse that what I'd said it was:

Capcom's clever trick to get people who hated DmC to admit that Dante "looking like a methhead" wasn't a problem; make 5 Dante look like he's strung out on a cocktail of other drugs and lost his job/office/house. Genius!

Well, there's that but 5 had a lot more of DmC that just that. It had a lot of referenced to 1 & 3 but I think it had even more DmC blood than the rest of the games. I don't know if it was done as an 'bet you like it now, don't ya?' or if it's just Itsuno showing his love for that game.

But no, "Dante is a virgin" was a thing before the reboot. It was since DMC3, with Dante saying in Mission 7 that he had "rotten luck with women".

I think I remember that. I just remember it being quite this overblown till the reboot. Then again, maybe I just don't remember that far back.

andom did as fandom does and extrapolates everything about a single character from one trait or popular line... and the Lucifer cutscene proves it.

Yeah, and that'd be fine. Flanderize the character all you want in your little fan story all you want. But that's for the fans. If the people making the product do it, too, then we have a real issue. They should have a more cohesive grasp of their characters and not let fan reactions lead their decision making. Dante went from having legitimate depth in 3 to really just being that guy that goes 'Wooooo.'

The one thing I always bring up is how Dante's never had the same face in a mainline game twice. This extends to the rest of the elements in those games. The art design in 1 is not like any of the other games, which, fine, different team, same for the reboot, but the art design in 3 and 4 and 5 are not similar. There is no unity amongst these games and it seems to have spilled over to the writing. There are elements that are consistent in those 3 games but neither 4 nor 5 did it as well as 3 did and they get old. Anyway, the point is that by making Dante nothing but a badass, the superficial stuff, he's lost everything that you might consider real and worthwhile about him.

Trust me, this is the eternal pain of being a DragonBall Z fan.

And that's why I watch Dragonball in Spanish. That and we adapted the whole thing much more faithfully.

 

[Morgan]

Tangentially related, but I will never forgive Super for what they did to Goku's character. That one manga page of Vegeta saying he can't afford to miss the birth of his daughter with Goku asking why Vegeta cares since Goku claims not to know when Gohan or Goten were born...will forever go down in infamy.

That and Goku not knowing what a kiss is since he's "never" kissed Chichi.

/clutches chest

Goku literally didn't see his friends for four years since he left to honeymoon with Chichi and surprised them all with Gohan when they reunited, and Goku could've just Skyped himself in during Goten's birth via King Kai or had Baba drop him off for a day for support. My ass, he wasn't present for either of their births.

She might not be his mother. She might not sound, act or remind him of his mother, seeing how she did a Clark Kent when he didn't notice till she took off the shades, but she still looks like her. That's honestly never bothered me because I always interpreted the whole thing as Dante reenacting his father's story.

Dante says as much himself; Trish may superficially "look" like Eva, but she's nowhere close to her—except for sacrificing herself to save Dante from certain death, but now since "Eva risking her life to save Dante" is no longer true as of DMC5, and her role was basically stuffing him in a closet in a burning house and then running to look for Vergil, now it *really* means Trish is unlike Eva, so there's no actual Oedipus shenanigans going on. For all intents and purposes, Trish was never programmed behaviorally to play on Dante's feelings for his mother; the first thing he does in game is tell her to "Slow down, babe!" and make flippant comments about her stopping by just to use the bathroom, thinking she has elsewhere to be. And he still clocked her as a demon on sight, so all of that registered to him long before "she looks like my mom" came in to the picture. Unless DMC6 retcons Eva and says she's a biker babe that dressed like a hooker back in the day.

Yeah, and then someone gets yet another new form, and another, and another still!! Oh, I wonder what will happen next! How will they top the new form? I know I'm being overly cynical but 5 really seemed to be enamoured with this theme. The concept itself isn't what bugged me, it's the fact that all things were resolved like this and not through any real form of conflict resolution.

I love the whole 'violence it not the answer' speech Nero gives before he proceeds to get violent on them. Calls them idiots but what right does he have when all he knows how to do is moan and demand things which, if he doesn't get, leads to him throwing a fit and getting violent.

Well, yeah, this isn't a surprise. The series is not built on anything but the climax of the installment expressing itself via the principal characters fighting and one of them having the bigger dick—er, the better transformation/more power. It's also not built on giving villains second chances unless the villain is Vergil, because the games arbitrarily decide who's capable of changing their morals (who is redeemable) and who isn't, and it's not based at all on actual characterization but instead who can get money for Capcom. The plot for 5 contrived itself to save Vergil long before he had his true self restored.

Otherwise they all end the same way. Justice means the villain dies or gets sealed forever. The lackeys of the villains are also killed even if they express noble qualities.

The voice that echoed in Nero's head in 4 wasn't going on about compassion and diplomacy and proper conflict resolution. He restored the Yamato because he's a violent, power-hungry man like his father, he just has a girlfriend as the main point of difference and all his morals are stored inside of her. Nero was *designed* to be violent, rough, and Hulk-like. He crushed Sanctus and the Savior's head/face at the end of the game. Dante in 1 swore he'd kill Mundus and not reason with him, and reasoning with Griffon was explicitly shown to fail. Lady shot Arkham instead of reasoning with him. Lucia killed Arius instead of reasoning with him. We're multiple games too late for "real form of conflict resolution" on a series built on "batter the mindless enemies left to right and front to back and look good doing it". The storytelling and level design suffers from what the game *is*.

Really? From what I saw it all just seemed like an otherworldly way to raise, like a vampire, showing that Dante was just as much a demon as he was human. I never associated this with JoJo. Got a link, by chance?

It's in the DMC Graphic File, in the description for Alastor:

"A magical sword with a dragon motif. Since it is a pure fantasy sword, a dragon was chosen as a strong enemy type, and it was decorated on the sword's tsuba. In addition, a scenario was created for obtaining the sword, in order to give users a strong impression of Dante's main weapon, the Alastor. The imagery where the sword is stuck and [Dante] rises up was inspired by the scene where the nemesis Kars rises up at the climax of "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Part 2)" (1987, Shueisha)."

Same source has the "Vergil inspired by the villain in Blind Fury" bit.

By the way, this will explain the new canon for Gilver, which is even worse that what I'd said it was:

Thanks, I hate it.

Well, there's that but 5 had a lot more of DmC that just that. It had a lot of referenced to 1 & 3 but I think it had even more DmC blood than the rest of the games. I don't know if it was done as an 'bet you like it now, don't ya?' or if it's just Itsuno showing his love for that game.

No doubt Itsuno loved DmC, but everyone being fans of this game and caping hard for it proves the latter. Like I've said, gamers/fans have no principles. All Itsuno had to do was shout "DMC IS BACK!" into a microphone and all sins were forgiven.

Yeah, and that'd be fine. Flanderize the character all you want in your little fan story all you want. But that's for the fans. If the people making the product do it, too, then we have a real issue. They should have a more cohesive grasp of their characters and not let fan reactions lead their decision making. Dante went from having legitimate depth in 3 to really just being that guy that goes 'Wooooo.'

Sure, but the fans proved they'd be willing to eat anything presented to them as long as it's not explicitly labeled DMC2 (and now the reboot) plus the Capcom banner is on it. Capcom was rewarded with more money for any Not DMC2 decision; the memes and fandom's overinvestment in hating a "black sheep" killed the storyline/character innovation.

DMC2 Dante has "no quips" and is "too serious"? Take his character, give him a katana and call him by his twin's name and people swallow that up and make fan theories; concurrently take "Dante" and make him overblown WOOHOO THIS PARTY'S GETTIN CRAZY and people will be so happy that "it's not DMC2 Dante" that they'll give money hand over fist, it doesn't matter that some of the gameplay iterates on DMC2 and that Rebellion retconned its way into being the sword that Sparda left Dante, when the Force Edge was already that sword.

DMC4 exaggerates Dante's "At least it's not DMC2" personality to an extreme? More money.

People hate the reboot and buy the DMC HD Collection even though the HD Collection is pure garbage quality wise and the customer is better served getting the PC version of each game and updating it with modded textures? More money.

People buy the DMC4 special edition because "it's not the reboot" even though the SE was 8 years too late, didn't improve on the game appreciably, reused content, added microtransactions, and the customer is better served getting DMC4 on PC with mods? More money.

People buy the DMC5 Special Edition even though it left out the PC playerbase and effectively charged $40 for "Playable Vergil", LDK difficulty, and Turbo Mode, but no upgrade option for pre-existing owners of the game, then no change to the mission structure or new costumes, proving the fans love getting shortchanged to get even less features than there were in previous Special Editions and again, the customer is better served getting DMC5 on PC with the StriVe mod? More money.

The “fans” killed this series.

And that's why I watch Dragonball in Spanish. That and we adapted the whole thing much more faithfully.

And on time, too. Dragonball GT was on multiple reruns in just about any Latino country that had it, while the US was still stuck on Namek Saga or Buu or whatever. US dubs don't lag behind like they used to, but that depends on the series popularity.

 

[ef9dante_oSsshea]

Truth be told dante should be more seasoned by now in terms of maturity

Banter and sarcasm with demons is fine, but with few exceptions he is always play acting, he really is the goku of DMC.The worst part is when it counts he can read the situation and has the moral compass to do the right thing, we need more of that and i hope 6 has it if he is involved in the story. That is if they make a 6 of course