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I fail to see how any of that contributes to him being whiny. Keep in mind, the first picture is from an incident in Dante's adolescence where he was stabbed in a street fight, and was first accommodating to his Nephilim anatomy, through some extremely painful means. That just shows that he has the ability to feel pain.
With the Old Dante, there's almost no way of knowing how his nervous system or ability to feel pain works. Some scenes, he gets impaled and just walks it off....others, he screams in pain, like in numerous instances in
DMC1.
I think it's down to one team of writers having some grasp of consistency, and one team completely disregarding it. Neither example showcases any whiny aspects of a character...unless vocally expressing physical trauma is now the mark of a whiny character. I don't think most of us would argue that
Guts from Berserk, is a whiny little fart just because of all the
howling and
screaming in response to pain that
he does, instead of simply walking off the pain off as inhumanly and superficially as Dante does.
Also, DmC Dante relied a lot more on others to get the job done. He needed Kat to guide him through Limbo. He had to follow through with Vergil's plans. It's like he was a puppet on everybody's strings.
Isn't that just him being depicted as young and inexperienced? If anything, he'd be the world's biggest Gary Stu if he
didn't depend on other people in SOME regard. That doesn't make him a puppet, that's just him leaving planning and strategy--two skill sets that neither he nor Old Dante have ever shown proficiency in--to people more capable of doing both. How is any of that whiny? I don't see your point at all.
I'm not saying that other Dante doesn't rely on Trish to make a plan work, but he's a lot more vocal about working on his own (or being the one in charge). Remember when Trish asked if he'd like some company? He basically said no.
He wasn't assuming charge or the lead role in this scene whatsoever. That entire scene was just Dante and Trish bickering about what parts of the job each wanted to do---closing the Hellgates, or rounding up civilians. Trish picks the easier job, and gives the harder one to Dante, knowing full well he's not going to argue with her.
Still don't see how any of this is relevant to either character being whiny.
DmC Dante turns to Kat in the end for guidance and reassurance because he 'almost' killed his brother.
Other Dante probably would have chop-suey Vergil if he hadn't decided to go to hell, but he didn't go running to Lady for clarity or hugs either.
...you mean like how he ends up crying in front of Lady only moments later? And no, he
wouldn't have chopped Vergil in half...he likely would've spared him, which was the whole reason he reached out for him when Vergil opted to let himself fall into Hell's coils at the end of the battle. Did you and I even play the same game?
Also,
DmC Dante getting shaken up after fighting Vergil isn't down to him almost killing him, it's losing control and nearly sinking into the clutches of his demonic nature. He starts losing himself to the sadism and pleasure of slowly killing Vergil until Kat stops him. It's not
that he's killing Vergil...it's
how. If that's something he
didn't question or get conflicted about, it would defeat the whole point of him being the one of Sparda's sons who's still human enough to form moral parameters, the one thing Vergil is shown to be incapable of doing, and the entire game was written to establish. I'm sorry, but how is that in any way whiny? What, contemplating the lengths one goes before going too far in combat is
whiny, now? For Christ's sake, Batman has that conflict literally every five minutes.
Not a single thing you brought up constitutes as whiny in the slightest, or even comes within an inch of the single whiniest moment in the history of the franchise....that being the sound barrier being shattered by
the ear-splitting crack of Dante's voice as he weeps crocodile tears over a demon he literally met a few
hours prior to the game's start, just because "she looks like Mommy."
That is the condensed essence of cringey anime whining that has reared its ugly head in
countless, ungodly moments in gaming. And
DmC, for all of its narrative faults, has never once come close to making its characters that revoltingly-melodramatic.