My thoughts on the new DmC. Let me show them to you.
Crossposted from the Capcom Unity boards.
Let's start with that interview. "Old Dante isn't cool." How is that all right? At what point did Capcom ever think that handing over DMC to someone who thinks that is a good idea? Devil May Cry has always been about style, action, je ne sai quois. "Cool"? A side benefit of all of that. Dante wasn't cool because of how he dressed, or how he talked. It was his behavior as a whole that made Dante awesome. The Dante in that trailer... doesn't have any of that. He has generic modern angst, and brutality. There's nothing cool about that, and there's definitely nothing stylish about it.
This new Dante's design is plainly "Punk," with perhaps a hint of "Emo" to it. Neither style is known for being cool. Neither style even has a hold of a significant portion of the population. Punk is a subculture of metal, and Emo is a subculture of hip hop. (That latter statement isn't entirely accurate. Emo has a much wider audience than that, but it's largely the indie audience, which is VERY hard to quantify in any specific terms.)
Next, let's approach the behavior and the setting. Okay, this Dante's been locked up somewhere. That's... generic, but okay, let's roll with that. He doesn't have a smart mouth, he doesn't have any confidence, all he's got is this look of hatred in his eyes. It says NOTHING about the character, other than the fact that he's angry.
Let's move on to the fighting we've seen, next. It's slow. It's clunky. It's... got inexplicably shape-shifting weapons, apparently? (Personally, I hope that those are just different weapons, but somehow, I doubt they're not.) The weapons look a lot alike in coloration, there's no real identity to them, no varying style between them. For as different as the weapons are, they're all the same, he USES them all the same. Slow, deliberate, angry, and cruel.
And that takes me to my next point. The cruelty. Starting with extinguishing a cigarette on the enemy's face... WHAT IS THAT?! That's not cool. That's a sign of a guy who's an unlikeable asshole. That's not a character I can relate to, that's not a character I WANT to relate to. That's a character I want off the screen, as it's just not heroic.
That's not to say it can't be done. Off the top of my head? Jayne from Firefly does that kind of character well. But you know why he pulls it off? Because he's not the main character, and he's got an entire cast of characters that he can play off of, and who know he's like that, but they keep him around because he's got redeeming elements, and he gets the job done.
The cigarette smoking comes next. Why? What possible purpose could it serve? There are characters who do it well, Solid Snake of MGS, the occasional hard-bitten cop, many noir heroes... But this Dante isn't any of those. It's dated, and it's a detraction.
All of this has been done, I suppose, to meet someone's ideal "Western" representation. Well, I'm western. I'm apparently the exact person that this stuff is geared towards.
It's NOT WORKING. It's turning me off. Everything from the art changes to the characterization to the behavior of the developers. It does nothing but show disrespect to everyone who came before it, both developers and fans. It's alienating the very audience Capcom, or more specifically Inafune, wants to reach.
How is that a good thing?
Let's start with that interview. "Old Dante isn't cool." How is that all right? At what point did Capcom ever think that handing over DMC to someone who thinks that is a good idea? Devil May Cry has always been about style, action, je ne sai quois. "Cool"? A side benefit of all of that. Dante wasn't cool because of how he dressed, or how he talked. It was his behavior as a whole that made Dante awesome. The Dante in that trailer... doesn't have any of that. He has generic modern angst, and brutality. There's nothing cool about that, and there's definitely nothing stylish about it.
This new Dante's design is plainly "Punk," with perhaps a hint of "Emo" to it. Neither style is known for being cool. Neither style even has a hold of a significant portion of the population. Punk is a subculture of metal, and Emo is a subculture of hip hop. (That latter statement isn't entirely accurate. Emo has a much wider audience than that, but it's largely the indie audience, which is VERY hard to quantify in any specific terms.)
Next, let's approach the behavior and the setting. Okay, this Dante's been locked up somewhere. That's... generic, but okay, let's roll with that. He doesn't have a smart mouth, he doesn't have any confidence, all he's got is this look of hatred in his eyes. It says NOTHING about the character, other than the fact that he's angry.
Let's move on to the fighting we've seen, next. It's slow. It's clunky. It's... got inexplicably shape-shifting weapons, apparently? (Personally, I hope that those are just different weapons, but somehow, I doubt they're not.) The weapons look a lot alike in coloration, there's no real identity to them, no varying style between them. For as different as the weapons are, they're all the same, he USES them all the same. Slow, deliberate, angry, and cruel.
And that takes me to my next point. The cruelty. Starting with extinguishing a cigarette on the enemy's face... WHAT IS THAT?! That's not cool. That's a sign of a guy who's an unlikeable asshole. That's not a character I can relate to, that's not a character I WANT to relate to. That's a character I want off the screen, as it's just not heroic.
That's not to say it can't be done. Off the top of my head? Jayne from Firefly does that kind of character well. But you know why he pulls it off? Because he's not the main character, and he's got an entire cast of characters that he can play off of, and who know he's like that, but they keep him around because he's got redeeming elements, and he gets the job done.
The cigarette smoking comes next. Why? What possible purpose could it serve? There are characters who do it well, Solid Snake of MGS, the occasional hard-bitten cop, many noir heroes... But this Dante isn't any of those. It's dated, and it's a detraction.
All of this has been done, I suppose, to meet someone's ideal "Western" representation. Well, I'm western. I'm apparently the exact person that this stuff is geared towards.
It's NOT WORKING. It's turning me off. Everything from the art changes to the characterization to the behavior of the developers. It does nothing but show disrespect to everyone who came before it, both developers and fans. It's alienating the very audience Capcom, or more specifically Inafune, wants to reach.
How is that a good thing?