Devil May Cry- My Story

I don’t think I have ever seen the amount of hate that the new DMC game has been receiving because of the change of appearance in a single character in my full sixteen years of gaming. OK yes they changed the way the iconic Dante looked, and there has been a subtle shift in his attitude, but this is a game portraying a younger Dante than the ones we know and love.

Now originally, I was a fully fledged, card holding member of the “hate the new Dante” club. I originally played Devil may Cry 2, as I unfortunately missed the original Devil May Cry, but I instantly fell in love with the white haired Dante. His attitude, his persona, everything. I just loved him, hell I wanted to be him. Then I got Devil May Cry 3, and with it a younger and, if possible, an even more bad-ass Dante. I was in Devil May Cry heaven.

My Original Hero

Then Devil May Cry 4 dropped, and my initial thought was “Who the hell is this new guy?” I hated this new guy as he took me away from my Dante fix, but after a while of sitting down with this “new guy” I gradually grew to like him. Yes when I still play 4 I always prefer playing as Dante, but Nero I could live with, and as time went on, I grew to eventually like the guy. I wanted to find out more about him.

Then we get the utter bombshell that is DmC, the reboot that just wasn’t really needed. They could have carried on with Nero and have Dante, along with Trish and Lady play more of a mentor role or separate games for Nero and Dante. But no, we get this unwanted and unneeded reboot. Then just to add salt into an already extremely raw wound we get this scrawny “emo” kid who wants to be Dante? Capcom, Ninja Theory, please. Did you want to alienate all your fans? I remember the first time I saw it, I was sat there watching open mouthed in disgust at this new Dante. As I said, I was a proud, fully fledged member of the “I hate the new Dante” club. I couldn’t stand this little brat and thought that was it. I’m done. No more original Dante, No more Devil May Cry.

More and more trailers came out and I watched them, fully convinced that I was right, this wasn’t the game that I fell in love with. Then I got to play the game at Eurogamer, and I was relatively surprised. It had numerous elements that felt familiar. It has the the same hack n slash combat, it had the same stylish combo meter (with some changes to the names) You still had your Ebony and Ivory. I actually begun to feel like I was beginning to like the game, much to my horror and surprise.

The New Dante

Then I saw the New York Comic Con trailer, and it does seem like Capcom are trying to show that they knew that the change would cause a back-lash. A direct quote from the trailer- “Have I got your attention now?” They knew it would cause a back-lash, and wanted the game to stand on it’s own merits. A distance between this and the predecessors. Also having looked at interviews done with the developers, Capcom wanted Ninja Theory to move away from the original looking Dante.

Ninja Theory, a relatively new developer which has had two titles that haven’t done overly too well. This is a damn shame as Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was one of my favourite games of 2010. They can create beautiful worlds and story-lines, but that’s not all that Devil may Cry is about, it’s about combat. Whilst in Enslaved it was only OK, in the Demo that we got to play, it has been improved upon significantly. As I said before, it retains the hack n slash playability and being able to upgrade your moves. It has retained the stylish combos, then gun play of Ebony and Ivory. Yes there are some slight differences, such as Dante is now half demon half angel instead of half human, but these have added to his move list, and now makes him a more versatile character.

So having played the demo and having gone from completely swearing off DmC to now actively wanting the game to arrive here sooner, Capcom and Ninja Theory have shown that they have the skill to pull of this about-face that I have experienced. There are always going to be fan-boys who will hate the new DmC because it’s not their original Dante, but a lot of people will have a change of heart much like myself. Now we just need the game to arrive to prove all the nay-sayers wrong. That is a day I am much looking forward to.

So to cap it all off- Yes Dante, you do have my attention now. 

You can read our preview of the game here

Google+