An truely amazing post, Kam! Even I could understand what you were talking about, haha
But would you mind elaborating on what you meant by 'things being streamlined and redundancies removed' in DmC? I don't really understand it :<
I'm sorry (;_; )
And, just out of curiosity, what do you think was disrespectful about DmC's story to the originals?
no problem! This could be quite lengthy though, so buckle up.
In classic DMC games (we'll use 4 as the example), you might perform moves like aerial rave by switching to swordmaster and then pressing the style button, or counter an attack by switching to royalguard and pressing forward+style at the correct moment. When you get right down to it, there really wasn't a good reason why dante needed aerial rave to be a swordmaster exclusive, or rainstorm to be a gunslinger exclusive; it was that way because that's how it was in the past, and people were used to it. In DmC a lot of these abilities are available to you (though heavily nerfed ;_; ) without the need to switch to a different style, Dante can aerial rave and do fireworks and rainstorm without needing to switch to a different style.
Redundancies were moves that had either very obscure or limited purposes, moves like like backslide (back + style in gunslinger with the shotgun, most people don't even know that move exists because it's so useless) or nero's dropkick, or having multiple attacks that accomplish very similar roles (DMC3 had a lot of those). Removing the redundancies was both a good and a bad thing, because on the one hand it trimmed a lot of bloat, but on the other, lots of people loved finding ways to incorporate those obscure or useless moves in meaningful ways into combo videos. Make a DMC4 combo video and finish a lengthy combo with a dropkick or kill an enemy by throwing lucifer's rose at him, it's satisfying as hell
As far as not respecting the story material... goddamn, there's really a lot here, so I'll just go over my two biggest nitpicks, one for dante, and one for vergil. In the classic DMC games, dante's defining character trait (even more than his cheeseball attitude) is his humanity, and how he views being human. The classic DMC universe if full of humans ready to trade away their humanity for demonic power, and demons trying to become even more powerful. But dante is unique in that he embraces his humanity, believing it gives him strength. He treats other humans with respect (sometimes in a roundabout way, because he's dante) believing humans are inherently great, but a human that sells their soul for demonic power is treated no differently than a real demon.
Thanks to poor story telling, you wouldn't know this from playing the game unless you did serious digging, but here's a cutscene that does poorly hint at dante's views toward humanity.
(skip to 2:08)
By making dante half human and half demon, he's no longer a character that wrestles with a weakness and then overcomes through sheer faith in humanity; he's a super powerful hybrid that was destined to succeed thanks to the power of his genes, one with absolutely no ties to humanity. The respect for humanity is gone too; he'll just as soon punch out a human and write "**** YOU" on his body just because he works at a place owned by demons.
Next is vergil, or more specifically: vergil + guns.
You'll notice that dante uses guns a lot, which is an odd choice because he's got this crazy super powered demon sword strapped to his back at all times. If you follow the tony redgrave origin story (once again, I would have preferred if this were an in-game backstory, and not one you had to dig up) you'll learn that dante's guns were gifts from a human gunsmith that believed in dante's humanity at a time when he himself was conflicted about his heritage.
Then there's vergil, who refuses to even touch a gun. Why? Guns are human weapons, and vergil views his human side with nothing short of complete contempt. His human half is his weaker half, and using human guns would be a further sign of that weakness. Additionally, vergil is incredibly honor bound, so much so that even brainwashing didn't change his ways much.
In DMC1, most demons that you encounter will ambush you, trying to gain the upper hand with lowly tricks by trapping you in dangerous environments or attacking suddenly from behind. But vergil, even after being enslaved and brainwashed by mundus, reborn as nelo angelo with no memory of himself, refused to use any of these tricks. If you were going to fight, he would come straight out, face to face and challenge you, and then he'd give you time to prepare while he waited for you in an open area. He may have been a powerhungry murderer, but he was always straightforward about his intentions and willing to offer a fair fight.
Even arkham, a "lowly human" who stole sparda's sword, was deserving of a face to face challenge when vergil arrived on the scene. But DmC's version of vergil is willing to shoot a pregnant woman in the back with a long ranged rifle, after lying and promising she's about to go free, and he's not even nice enough to do it cleanly. He shoots out her baby, waiting just long to let it sink in that her baby is dead, and then shoots her in the head.
(skip to 2:40)
does that look straightforward or honorable? Even if it was necessary to kill a woman and her baby, was it necessary to do it in the cruelest way possible?
TL;DR
for the sake of being "cool badasses" the best parts of dante and vergil are taken away, and they're recast as uncaring, backstabbing assholes.
whew, that was a lot of text. Sorry if all of it was a rant, but yeah, I've really never cared for the new story and characters. Gameplay is fun and has loads of redeeming qualities, but I absolutely despise the new characters.
