A common defence I saw of the Devil May Cry reboot was that the old games were bad or
that their stories were shallow, so rebooting was a good thing. Really, I found that most
defence of the game was actually just a smokescreen for people to shit on the old games out of
nowhere, and this is the prime example. Yes, the series has clearly always emphasised gameplay
over story, but it's not like there was nothing there. Sure, DMC1 was very barebones and 4
was incomplete, but there is a lot going on under the surface of the games, especially
2 and 3, that I think is worth talking about. People keep asking me to make more positive
videos, so let me show you what it was about this series that filled my dark soul with
light. ...What do you mean D-
A central theme of the series is nature vs nurture, a theme that is completely absent
from the reboot. On a surface level, humans are good and demons are bad. However, every
entry provides an exception to the latter, and the sequels provide exceptions to the
former as well. In DMC1, we know that Sparda, a demon, turned against his own kind after
he "woke up to justice" and fought to protect humanity. We also have Trish, a demon created
to manipulate Dante, who later sacrifices herself to save him. DMC3 has Vergil, a half-demon,
who is a villain, but he has sympathetic motives behind his actions, while his human accomplice,
Arkham, murdered his own wife and would gladly do the same to his daughter, so that he can
selfishly acquire the power of Sparda. In 4, we have the quarter-demon, Nero, who fights
to save his lover, Kyrie, while the humans of the Order of the Sword aspire to acquire
demonic power, and are willing to sacrifice the lives of untold innocents to achieve it.
You may notice I didn't discuss DMC2 there. Well, DMC2 is the entry that took this idea
and ran with it as the central theme. The game gave us Lucia, an artificial demon created
by the evil human, Arius. Lucia was defective and abandoned, only to be found later and
taken in by Matier, who raised her as a daughter. During Lucia's first encounter with Arius,
the truth is revealed and Lucia suffers an existential crisis, eventually begging Dante
to kill her before she becomes a monster. Dante reassures her that...
Dante: "Devils never cry."
He then departs, leaving her to face Arius' new demonic form, giving the artificial demon
the chance to prove herself less of a monster than her human creator. Good stuff, right?
A recurring element to these stories is love. Dante and Nero explain this in DMC4.
Dante: "Humans possess something that demons don't."
Nero: "Sparda had a heart. A heart that could love another person. [...] And that is what
you lack!"
Dante always took after his human mother, moreso than his demonic father. Sparda himself
found love for humanity, and later romantic love for Eva. Trish develops a platonic love
for Dante, closer to a sibling love than the incestuous interpretation many people see,
emboldening her to betray her evil master. Lucia develops a daughterly love for Matier
and loves the humans enough to worry she might one day turn on them. Vergil is motivated
by his love for the mother he couldn't save, and most likely, for his brother too. Him
closing off his heart from his brother ultimately leads to his downfall. And Nero is in love
with Kyrie. Her brother, Credo, after acquiring demonic power, turns against the Order when
they capture Kyrie.
Thanks to the compassion and self-sacrifice of Eva, Dante, Matier, Kyrie and the like,
these demons defied their dark heritage and became heroes, while those that are incapable
of love, from a heartless CEO, to a mariticidal fiend, to a cult leader with delusions of
grandeur, are monsters that will ultimately fail in the end.
What, that's not deep enough for you? You still think reboot Dante has more going on
than his classic counterpart? Well, kick up a chair and grab a slice of pizza, because
this next section hits the jackpot.
The player fights Vergil three times in DMC3, and this serves three distinct purposes. First,
it breaks the game up into three acts. Second, it establishes Vergil as Dante's ultimate
rival and provides the blueprint for action game rivals that has been followed by the
likes of Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising and Yakuza ever since. Third, and most importantly,
it marks Dante's development over the course of the story. At the beginning of the game,
Vergil has already awakened his demonic power and is, well, motivated. He has a goal to
achieve: acquire the power of Sparda so that he will never again be defenceless, as he
was when his mother was killed. Dante, conversely, has neither of those things. While Vergil
embraces his demonic power and discards his humanity, which he perceives as a weakness
that stopped him from saving his mother, Dante went to the opposite extreme; denying his
demonic heritage and vowing to kill every demon he comes across until he finds the one
that killed his mother. He's only here for a scrap with Vergil because he doesn't really
like him. Of the four central characters in the story, Dante is the only one who lacks
a real purpose here. The game is about Dante acquiring that purpose.
Vergil has power and a goal to strive towards. Dante has neither. He's an aimless drifter,
so, naturally, when the two clash in Mission 7, Dante gets his arse kicked. But, in defeat,
Dante is forced to embrace his demonic powers to match Vergil, and the loss of his mother's
amulet gives him motivation. When the two fight again in Mission 13, Vergil doesn't
take Dante seriously. He cockily puts away his sword and decides to get some practice
in with his new weapon. But Dante is now Vergil's equal in both power and motivation, forcing
his brother to switch back to the weapon he's more proficient with, putting the two on equal
footing. The fight is interrupted before it concludes, but neither one has the advantage
from what we see.
Before they have their final battle in Mission 20, Dante encounters Lady, who is still determined
to kill Arkham, even with her leg wound and no demonic powers to compensate. The two fight
and Dante feels her conviction. He sees, finally, what his father saw in humanity two millennia
ago - he sees what makes them worth protecting. This is spelled out explicitly for the player
by Dante himself.
Dante: "Quite frankly, at first, I didn't give a damn. But because of you, I know what's
important now. I know what I need to do."
Lady, who until now had seen Dante solely as just another demon, can see this change
in him, which is why she lends him her rocket launcher (which is named after her dead mother)
and leaves the task of ending her father to him. Hell, one could see Lady's story as a
parallel to Dante's. Dante idolises his dead mother, wearing her amulet at all times and
vowing to avenge her murder; but hates his father, saying he doesn't have a father and
rejecting his demonic powers. Likewise, Lady idolises her dead mother, naming her weapon
after her and vowing to avenge her murder; but hates her father, trying to kill him in
revenge. It could be that she sees this parallel and how Dante is stronger for having moved
past his hangups, which she is now trying to do by metaphorically letting go of her
mother and giving up her chance at revenge.
So, when Dante finally faces Vergil again in the game's climax, his arc is complete.
Dante has come to fully embrace both sides of his heritage and find a goal that isn't
steeped in his own inadequacy. Just as Sparda "woke up to justice" two thousand years ago,
this is "Dante's Awakening". Vergil, conversely, has remained static throughout the entire
story, and is unable to move past the death of his mother. Perhaps Vergil realises this
and is unable to accept that their humanity is anything but a weakness, contributing towards
his decision to remain in the demon world to strengthen his demonic power and prove
that his method was right.
And then, you compare this to the reboot, where Vergil is just randomly revealed to
be evil and we're supposed to take this sudden twist and final boss seriously after no build-up
and the game itself admitting that Dante was always stronger than Vergil. Yeah, no.
But this is only the beginning of Dante's progression, as there are three other details
that we can observe when placing the games into chronological order, creating a kind
of retroactive arc. Each game sees Dante following in the footsteps of his father. In DMC3, Sparda
had sealed Temen-ni-gru away beneath the earth. When it rises again, Dante does... nothing
about it and, for all we know, it's still there. In DMC1, Sparda had defeated the demon
king, Mundus, which Dante then replicates by tapping into his father's power through
his sword. In DMC4, Sparda had sealed the Hell Gate in Fortuna. Trish theorises, in
the novelisation by the game's scenario writer, that Sparda couldn't bring himself to destroy
this portal to the demon world, as the demon world is still his original home. Dante has
no such emotional attachment and easily destroys the gate, which one could read as Dante surpassing
his father in emotional strength. And finally, in DMC2, Sparda had sealed Argosax the Chaos
away as he wasn't powerful enough to destroy it. Dante then comes in and wipes the floor
with it, with pretty much no effort, showing that he has far surpassed his father. Unfortunately,
this progression is weakened somewhat by the recent revelation that DMC2 is now set before
DMC4. Yes, overzealous commenter, I did know about that.
However, this revelation does help to strengthen the second detail surrounding Dante's progression
that I'd like to discuss here: his Devil Trigger. Dante's DT is very inconsistent. In 1 and
3, its form and abilities are influenced by the weapon Dante has equipped. In 2, 4 and
5, though, there is one form, with 2 allowing the player to customise the abilities with
an amulet. Placing them in the new chronological order, however, paints this fluctuation, not
as an inconsistency, but as a progression in Dante's power. 3 and 1 come first, with
the form drawing on the element and abilities of the weapon Dante uses. This is him drawing
on their power for his transformation, with the Rebellion form being the only one that
can truly be considered his own. This is supported by the fact that he can't Devil Trigger while
using Force Edge, which is the sealed version of Sparda. And likewise, Vergil's Devil Trigger
changes between Yamato and Beowulf, but the force Edge & Yamato Devil Trigger is just
the Yamato one.
After he uses his father's power to defeat Mundus, Dante's Devil Trigger begins to truly
take shape in DMC2. Its abilities rely somewhat on an amulet, but some base abilities and
the physical form are set in stone. This form is then refined by the time of DMC4, and 5
uses largely the same form. No weapons or amulets affect his form, because he doesn't
need those crutches anymore. He apparently doesn't even use Sparda's Devil Trigger when
wielding that weapon in 5, just to nail the point home. There is a slight hiccup in that
Dante has the much stronger Majin Form in 2 and something similar in 5, but not in 4;
but one could say the events of 4 just didn't challenge him the way 2 and 5 do.
The third detail I'd like to discuss is Dante's role in each story. It's easy to view the
series as being all about Dante, with him taking a backseat for Nero in 4 and 5, but
even 2 had Dante in the mentor role. DMC2 is Lucia's story, but people miss that because
Dante's campaign is longer and is labelled as Disc 1, and the gameplay isn't good enough
for people to revisit and reexamine the game very often. Dante stopped being the main character
after he achieved his life goal. He opened his shop in 3 to find the demon responsible
for his mother's death...
Dante: "And if I kill each one that comes, eventually, I should hit the jackpot sooner
or later."
...and in 1, he achieved this goal.
Dante: "Jackpot!"
So, having achieved his lifelong goal before he hit thirty, Dante doesn't have a purpose
beyond protecting humanity. But every now and then, he comes across another good demon
in need of mentoring, a role he is more than happy to fill. Maybe he wants to help them
in a similar way to how Lady helped him? The first half of the series (the manga, 3, 1
and debatably the anime) is the extent of Dante's role as the main character. For the
second half (2 novel, 2, 4 and 5), he's helping other characters to achieve their goals and
become stronger people. It's a really interesting direction to go with a protagonist, that I
don't think comes up very often. In a way, he's laying the groundwork for the next incarnation
of the Legendary Dark Knight to continue his work after he's gone.
So, you see, Devil May Cry is not just some dumb action series with a barely-considered,
ultimately cobbled together plot. Clearly, about as much thought goes into the story
as into the gameplay.
How ironic is it that the allegedly smarter and more sophisticated reinvention of Devil
May Cry, that so many game journalists touted as a "bold new direction" for the franchise,
has none of the depth or themes to match the original series, instead trading them in for
edgy pretentiousness. So, when you play through Devil May Cry 5, don't just dismiss the game's
plot as shallow or bad. Look a little deeper and you just might find that Devil May Cry
is deeper than you think.
If you liked this video, then check out this similar video by Endless Jess about how God
of War was also deeper than you think.