There has been much vocal outcry amongst the gaming community after it was announced at the Tokyo Game Show that Capcom and developer Ninja Theory were redesigning and rebooting the Devil May Cry series. And while fanboys will whine and bitch like fanboys always do, even Devil May Cry series creator expressed his dislike for the new franchise direction.
However, Capcom and developer Ninja Theory have their reasons behind the redesign.
While talking with 1UP, Ninja Theory creative design boss Tameem Antoniades said the Dante we were familiar with "isn’t cool any more."
"[It's] all about cool." said Antoniades about the upcoming DmC relaunch. “It’s about Dante being cool and making you feel cool when you’re playing it, and so the combat and the style system and everything is integral to that. But, you know, what was cool 12 years ago – I think that was when the first game came out – isn’t cool any more."
Ouch.
Antoniades continued on, saying, “What Devil May Cry did when it launched was it brought everything that was great about action cinema like the fashion, music – it was like a cultural melting pot – and I feel like now, for Devil May Cry to have that same impact, it needs to draw on new things. New music, new ways of cinematography, new fashion.”
The goal of DmC is to "update and mature" the tone of Devil May Cry. And that's where the comparison between DmC and the James Bond reboot film, Casino Royale, comes into play.
“When you see the Casino Royale remake, you see Bond before he’s actually killed anyone, and it’s a really traumatic event,” said Capcom's Alex Jones while speaking with Eurogamer. “He’s rough-hewn, he’s not polished or debonair, but you can see the essence of what that character will become.
“That’s what we want to do with Dante. The core of him is there, it’s just a rougher version. It’s a becoming. He’s not fully actualised.”
Ninja Theory's Tameem Antoniades added, "“If you think of Rocky 3 versus Raging Bull, it’s that kind of difference. He’s younger, he’s rawer, he’s cool in his own way. But it’s different.”
Finally, in the same interview, Capcom's Hideaki Itsuna, who's worked on all previous Devil May Cry titles, chimed in to add, "Of course long-time fans are worried about us handing over such a big title to another company, another development team. ”But what myself and Eshiro-san [Motohide, producer] want to convey is that people shouldn’t be worried or concerned, it’s nothing like that.
“We’ve worked with Ninja Theory for a long time in pre-development, and we’ve seen that they’re really talented and they have a lot of know-how, and we know that they’re very serious about making this game good.
“One of our goals for this game [DmC] is to create something new and fresh that keeps the old fans but also catches new people, so that we can increase our overall appeal, our sales and our audience.”
Moral of the story, everyone needs to take it down a notch and be patient. Let's wait to judge this relaunch until we've seen more than a few screens and a trailer.
