Gardock said:
Everyone says the tonal update was necessary, that the old Dante looks silly now instead of badass. Especially Ninja Theory.
Here's the thing: that's the point! He was ridiculous and campy and dated-looking in 2001, too. He looked like an anime vampire who had raided Michael Jackson's closet. That was the tone of the games; it was all ridiculous metal album grimdarkery in the setting, cruised through by a guy who's too "cool" to be taken seriously, especially considering how extremely flamboyant he was at the same time. Trying to make Dante less faboo so he can be "legitimately" badass is a horrible case of missing the point, and if anything just makes him seem dumber for trying to be handled with a straight face. The last thing I want from this series is actual attempts to be edgy; I want effeminate men loudly lamenting their cliched tortured pasts in rooms with all the walls covered in ebony skulls that bleed from the eyes.
(P.S. I'm not a DMC fanboy by any stretch of the imagination. The series had big problems that could have benefitted from a reboot, if handled differently. This one has just seemed to me from day one like its approach to reinvention revolved around converting a hyperglamoruzied parody of dumb action games into a genuinely generic dumb action game, and that's always pretty disappointing.)
I don't know, I think it's more a matter of perspective and personal taste. I don't think Old Dante was "supposed" to be flamboyant, that was just how he'd been conceived. Personally, I found I couldn't play five minutes of the old DMC games without cringing. This is obviously a personal assessment, but the character honestly felt like a poser. I wanted to play that series for its game mechanics, not for seeing an nth cinematic where you can feel the animation directors wracking their brains to try and find one more way to make Dante look like a supposed badass.
As there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, I got burned out on the whole "WAHEY, CHECK ME OUT, I'M BREEZY COOL, Y'ALL DEMONS!" thing. Having played through about half of the reboot, I can say I definitely appreciate Ninja Theory's approach to the character. They asked themselves why, exactly, Dante doesn't give a damn. They found an answer and worked with it.
You're left with a more driven character with believable motives in the context of his universe - even if some themes can indeed feel rather adolescent. Dante's never been particularly big on maturity, though. Instead of everything being a "party", he's a guy who can now take things seriously, provided the issue at hand speaks to him. And it works.
As for the more "revolting" aspects of the game - exposed genitalia, shooting unborn babies, etc - you have to remember that this is a game in which said genitalia and said baby are both demonic in nature. They're not meant to be seen as an approval of infanticide or an incentive to it, they're meant to be seen as striking concepts.
The game has plenty of things of that nature. Lilith's reversible relationship with her son? Awesome. That's one direction I hadn't expected, in terms of boss fight design. Bob Barbas' stage essentially looking like you're trapped in a Fox News title screen? That really drove home the idea that Limbo is whatever the demons need it to be. Barbas' natural state involves misinformation and the doctoring and spinning of stories, so Raptor News' broadcast essentially being his domain works perfectly.
Honestly, I'd compare DmC to a judicious dose of spices in an otherwise bland dish. The original franchise was plagued with some of the issues that affect Japanese game design, in that the mechanics came first and the plot was an ancillary concern. They've kept the strong and already refined mechanics, and just given it the kind of better and more polished diegetic frame Western developers are great at producing. This is the first time I've felt like Dante inhabits a world. Prior to that, I felt like he existed for the sole purpose of flipping around in slow-mo, hooting and cheering all the while.
I can finally relate to him. That's something worth celebrating, I'd say.
