Dante is now a "sexual deviant"

[croik]

I saw the new DMC trailer the other day, but I was with my male gaming friend and didn't feel like I could properly rant about it at the time, so here it is.

The new trailer has some kind of news announcer declaring Tameem Dante a "terrorist" and a "SEXUAL DEVIANT

Comments

[devikun]

Yeah, I saw that. My first reaction was to lol, after which Not!Dante was, as you say, naked and I lol'd some more and promptly forgot all about the comment in favour of going "Ooooh cooooool!"

And now I'm kind of interested in your reaction, to be honest. I personally didn't think it meant anything. Is there something that makes you think it does, apart from all the focus on it? Isn't that just an extension of Internet Rule #34 at work?

Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much. The original Japanese dialog probably used the word 'hentai' or something, which yeah, has been known to mean 'sexual deviant' but also actually translates as 'weird', 'strange' or 'abnormal'. And yes, it makes you wonder why any decent translator would pick that word when they could have picked one of the others, but sometimes you choose based on impact as much as dictionary definition. Maybe 'wierd' wasn't strong enough in English context so they were forced to pick 'deviant'. That still doesn't mean that's how the original Japanese intended it.

Sorry. Did that crash course in translating Japanese help at all? Not sure why I'm defending it except that I guess I'm more curious than most about this virtually unrecognisable character with Dante's name. I'm thinking - maybe he's a clone or from an alternate reality or he's pretending to be Dante for some reason! Or! Or! But then, I entertain myself with thoughts like that all the time and I'm not entirely sure that's normal...

Ahh wish I had a Dante icon now. Actually, wish I was at home booting up the Playstation for some 'retro' DMC gaming!

[croik]

I'm a Japanese major, so I'm used to seeing translations in games that make me side-eye them (especially in DMC) but the game is being made by England-based Ninja Theory, so I don't know that the dialogue would have ever been written in Japanese to begin with. In context of the scene, "exhibitionist" or even just "pervert" would have fit a lot better.

But having the announcer use a phrase like "sexual deviant" makes it sound like at the core of it, he is attacking an entire group of people. Maybe it is just "people who accidentally expose themselves in public while battling invisible demons" but if it were that obvious I'm not sure so many game journalists would have zeroed in on it like they have. So what does it mean? Either Dante's being kink/slut-shamed (kind of hilarious in a strange way) or the game's antagonists are moralist nutjobs or even homophobes, and I'm not sure what to think of those options.

Then again, if it is just an off-hand comment that means nothing except to get our attention, that makes me think even less of the developers.

When New!Dante was first revealed there were a lot of jackasses calling him out as "looking gay" in an extremely derogatory way. I don't want to think that NT saw that and decided to take the piss out of them by saying, "lol, okay, yeah, he is so sexually deviant!" because that just feels so counter-productive to me. But NT has already made comments about how old!Dante was a loser, and they don't care what the old fans think about their remake, and the only reason people don't like their games is because they're haters, etc. I have zero faith in their maturity as game makers. Or their games in general, come to think of it.

[devikun]

Wow. I had no idea about *any* of that. This is why I pay almost zero attention to game development progress and articles prior to release. When it's released and everyone says "game play sucks", sure, then I pay a bit more attention and will purchase or not depending on how bad it is.

Seriously? They really said that about Dante? Y__Y But he's so awesome!

[croik]

NT's guy Tameem said, "If Dante, dressed as he was, walked into any bar outside of Tokyo, he’d get laughed out." He then went on to say that Dante had outlived his cool and that in order to make him cool today, they would have to draw on modern fashion and cultural influences. Which is why he designed new Dante with a British 70s punk vibe. Because that's so modern, lol.

The new gameplay in the trailer I'll admit looks better, but I've heard something about Devil Trigger that I'm not excited about (such as, it'll last as long as you're able to remain airborne? I am not a good juggler ;_;). I'm just hoping one of my friends will get the game so I can try it out without putting any money down.