Hey Ninja Theory, We Don’t Care About Dante’s Hair

When Capcom finally announced a new Devil May Cry title most of us refreshed our computer pages waiting for the trailer to drop, well at least I did. When the trailer finally released a horde of DMC fans crawled from beneath their hermit caves and began throwing anything they could at Capcom for giving us what looked like a meth head posing as Dante. It wasn’t until we heard that Ninja Theory was working on the game and that it’s a prequel, but not really a prequel because it’s a reboot, but not really a reboot because it’s a prequel that we realized that this wasn’t a delayed April fool’s joke. Sure, I’ll admit that I jumped on the “HIS HAIR IS BLACK UGH” bandwagon since I was upset we were getting a reboot instead of DMC5, but since then all the raging fans have calmed down and we’ve all decided to wait for more footage/interviews until we come back out of our caves. It’s been a little over a year now and we’ve had time to look at various footage of the game and read the interviews. I can safely say that I’m still not impressed with what I see and the fact that Dante’s hair isn’t white is at the bottom of my list.

It seems that when Capcom was looking around for a team to take on the DMC reboot/prequel, they were looking around for people who knew nothing about the series. The guy Ninja Theory threw out to take the flak is Tameem Antoniades, NT’s Creative Design Boss. Here’s a quote by Tameem on Dante’s look and why it was changed.

“But, you know, what was cool 12 years ago – I think that was when the first game came out (DMC came out in 2001) – isn’t cool anymore. If Dante, dressed as he was, walked into any bar outside of Tokyo, he’d get laughed out.”

It seems that to be ‘cool’ these days you have to be skinny, have a face that has been punched in repeatedly with bruises, wear a red jacket with a Union Jack (I see what you did there Tameem), and smoke. Let’s ignore the fact that Dante basically can’t have bruises since he heals wounds almost instantly and let’s also ignore the fact that somebody actually managed to capture Dante while holding him under physical and psychological torture (first E3 trailer); let’s instead mention the smoking. Kamiya originally created Dante with the full intention of not having him smoke (I’m not saying that was the basis of Dante’s creation, just that he was a non-smoker). He always said how Dante was just ‘too cool’ to bother with smoking. Many people agree that if a writer/artist wants to give a character an edgy look or an attitude, make him a smoker. A smoker in visual media usually means that character is either a tough Rambo badass, or an edgy teenager. Now I don’t mean all characters who smoke do this, I mean the characters who emphasize their smoking whenever they’re on the screen. This new Dante is an incredible unlikable looking person. I doubt anybody could relate to Kamiya’s Dante, but we liked him because he was a likable person. I’ll admit that the game isn’t out yet and we haven’t seen much footage, but I can almost guarantee he’ll be incredibly sarcastic and full of a good helping of angst (that one’s actually true according to NT).

There’s an incorrect notion that fans hate the reboot simply because they got rid of Dante’s white hair which is a terrible argument used by anyone not familiar with the series (or journalists trying to stay on Capcom’s good side). Sure, Dante’s white hair and red coat was a main part of his look, but those were there to add to his character. His personality was what made him an unforgettable character with his cocky confidence and goofy jokes. Dante’s idea of a good time was eating pizza with a strawberry sundae, not brooding around & smoking.

Alright, let’s get back to NT’s clear lack of DMC knowledge with another. Ninja Theory seems to have this idea that DMC was always all about being ‘cool’ when in reality it was all about stylish, fast paced, & over-the-top gameplay. Having Dante look ‘cool’ was just a bonus. Bayonetta doesn’t look cool and yet it’s being hailed as a sort of spiritual spin-off, no surprise considering Kamiya was the lead on Bayonetta. Fans want over-the-top, which unfortunantly seems that we won’t be getting that considering NT completely misses that being over-the-top is the point of DMC.

“Personally, I don’t. I love the game. I think it’s awesome. It’s taken everything – it’s just gone to a total extreme. But in terms of, ‘Do I think it’s cool?’ No, not at all. I think it’s caricatured and over-the-top and very ‘Japanesey,’ and for that absurd style it does that really well, but that’s not what I want.”
-Tameem on Bayonetta

This quote helps cement the fact that this reboot will most likely be closer to the mediocre Dante’s Inferno than Devil May Cry. The trailers already gave off that this game was going for a grim story, but this quote just strengthens it more. Devil May Cry always had a grim and gothic setting, but that was just the backdrop for an otherwise humorous game. They threw comedy and over-the-top characters in a dark castle.

I know most of the hate goes towards Tameem, but this is the guy who’s going around saying these things. He’s also chief designer which means basically anything he says is a good representation of how the game is going to turn out. That’s also besides the fact that he had the audacity to basicaly self-insert himself as the protagonist of the game. It’s one thing putting yourself in as a small cameo as a random NPC (Tameem apparently did this in his previous titles) and it’s another to base the main character off yourself and even change his look when you cut your hair. I know this isn’t the first time an artist based a main character’s look off themselves with the most notable being Adam Jensen looking like JJB, the art director in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The difference here is that it wasn’t JJB who did it, it was another person on the team and everyone else liked it so much it stuck; there’s also no previous look for Adam to be based. Dante had a look and Tameem basically said “That guy doesn’t look very cool, you know what is cool though? Me. Yea I am pretty cool aren’t I?” and then here we are with Tameem May Cry. To be fair, maybe Tameem didn’t base it off himself and another designer on the team did it instead, it still doesn’t help since you can’t argue that the new Dante strikes quite a similar resemblance.. When I play a DMC game I want to play as Dante and when I play DmC I’ll feel like I’m playing as some guy masquerading as Dante instead.

Ok, now that we got that over with let’s move on to the gameplay. The biggest criminal here is that the game is using the Unreal Engine instead of Capcom’s MT Framework engine. This is an engine made primarily for shooters and it shows when certain games of a different genre decide to use it. Two of those being Heavenly Sword and Enslaved, both of NT’s only other titles which, while well received, suffered from some framerate issues. You’d think Capcom would give DMC to a capable hack & slash developer like Team Ninja or Platinum Games, hell even the Dante’s Inferno guys would’ve been a decent choice; instead they opt to give it to the guys who produced two decent titles who preferred story over gameplay since the gameplay in both titles is incredibly boring when looked at its contemporaries who outshine them in every way. Sure, Heavenly Sword might look pretty and cinematic, but that doesn’t stop it from being a beggar’s God of War. When my friends ask me what hack & slash titles they should pick up, Heavenly Sword is at the bottom of my list, if at all. Let’s also mention that (since it’s on Unreal) the game has been confirmed to be locked at 30 frames per second. To anyone who doesn’t understand this, it means that the game will play slower than DMC3, a 7 year old game. Ninja Theory has mentioned that this is necessary since the environments are doing crazy things like moving around. It’s nice to know that my fast-paced game is getting slowed down so I can see a castle sprout some spider legs and walk off. I will stop to say how gorgeous the environments are looking so far, big props to the environmental artists (release an artbook please?). This also means that there will be a lower amount of enemies on screen and many fans are doubting if this new title will be able to play at the tournament level that previous DMC games played at considering the 60fps were necessary for pulling off most of the high score combos. They are also ditching the styles feature in favor of stances; you’ve got your angel stance (light/aerial attacks) and your devil stance (heavy attacks). I suppose only show offs liked the styles since all four offered a different twist on the gameplay and actually added some depth to the combat. Simplifing it to what is basically light/heavy buttons is much better, that way people don’t have to waste their time actually thinking about wanting depth in their game. The ‘finishers’ that are being added aren’t helping the situation either. Each time to pull a finishing blow on an enemy you’re treated to a slowmo shot of it which as you’d expect kills the flow in a game that’s about tight fast-paced combat. Recent trailers also show that the devil trigger ability that allows Dante to turn into a demon has been changed and now turns reboot Dante’s hair white while slowing down time because players need a break. I really hope the gameplay trailers they’ve shown had somebody terrible at the game demoing it because it looked SLOOOOW. This isn’t a good way to advertise a DMC game to DMC fans, we want to see over-the-top crazy action. Oh man, I really wish I could find the interview where they said Ebony & Ivory are not only going to be reloadable, but they might actually put a sort of cool down on using them because (according to Tameem when he played DMC2, the first and only DMC he said he played) they were ‘overpowered’.

Apparently DMC4’s impressive nearly 3 million sales was incredibly disappointing for Capcom. Capcom has stated that they want this new title to hit *at least* the 5 million mark which basically means “We want Call of Duty’s sales”. They said that this was one of the main reasons for the reboot since they wanted to rework the series to appeal to a wider amount of people. It’s a pretty understandable reason, but Capcom basically decided to drop those original fans in favor of trying to get a whole new set of unreliable fans. When you reboot a treasured franchise it’s priority #1 that you don’t try to alienate your original fans. These are the guys who will buy DMC5 without much question and these are the guys who will also drop you if they don’t like any sort of radical change you make. What Capcom is trying to do is pull in people who don’t play hack & slash games or never heard of DMC; the outcome of this is even lower than normal sales because lots of the original fans won’t bother picking this up, and the ‘new audience’ won’t even achknowledge it.

As much as it disappoints me, hack & slash titles will never sell as much as Battlefield or Call of Duty and Capcom needed to realize that. Was $180,000,000 (rounded up a bit) from DMC4 too little for them? Previous DMC fans probably won’t buy this title (I’d bet on them flocking over to Platinum Game’s MGS spin-off releasing later this year) but of course that’s not to say it’s going to bomb. If Bioware barely sold just under 2 million copies of ME3 in their first week, the finale to an incredibly popular trilogy, how the hell is Capcom expecting a reboot of a game that *sadly* doesn’t have the name power as Mass Effect to come close to it in sales? I honestly don’t see what was so wrong with going ahead and putting out DMC5 considering DMC4 did pretty damn well since it introduced a new main character and the campaign was reminicient of Dragon Age 2’s dungeons. Nero ended up being pretty fun to play as with his spin on combat and we still got to play as Dante so it was a win-win for fans. I suppose we’re never going to get answers to Nero’s connection with Virgil if Capcom decides to leave DMC with NT.

I understand that the game still has a few months left until release, but I consider myself to be a very good judge of compatibility and my warning signals are on blast with this game from what I’ve seen and read so far. I don’t doubt that DmC might be an enjoyable game, but I am trying to explain why people are doubting whether it will be an enjoyable Devil May Cry game. I’d like to compare this situation to when Dante’s Inferno came out; sure it was an enjoyable game, but it just wasn’t a Dante’s Inferno game and if you don’t know why go read the book. I also find it funny that the last time Capcom tried to give Dante a total makeover (DMC2) it was so negatively received that Capcom said “We want to pretend that DMC2 never happened”. Who knows, maybe Capcom is just doing this to spark up some interest in the franchise before they surprise us with DMC5 sometime soon.