My D.M.C. Dilemma (Warning foul language and spoilerish stuff ahead)

Ok,

So first of all I want to give a big ‘fuck you’ to Capcom as they seem to be on a re-imaging and outsourcing craze of late (but won’t continue the Mega Man X series in any format. I want more command missions damn it!) but that’s not why I’m posting.

First of all, I want to say I am an original Devil May Cry fan from way back. Yes, I will admit, I did like PARTS of DMC 2. Pinnecle of the original series was obviously 3-and yes I will admit a huge selling point of it was youngish, soccer player built Dante shirtless in the begging :P, but I digress. Generally, the stories have been fun, characters endearing in that snarky kind of way that comes out of good banter, and game play is something I can come home from work, pop in the HD collection and go a few rounds with a few demons and blow off some steam and consequently not murdering my co-workers.

But now we come to the newly christened (and instantly retconned as AU) D.M.C. featuring a punk kid named Dante; a masked secret organization leader fighting against the establishment that is controlled by Demons and is revealed to be Virgil: Dante’s twin brother (and for those not familiar, also re-imaged and re-characterized from the original games), and a gritty setting full of corporate (and by extension, Demon) controlled media and mass population as well as a villain who seems a little to much like Bill O’Reily to be a coincidence.

Like many of my fellow Devil May Cry fan compatriots, I was agast at the announcement trailer and article in Game Informer. I have to admit, my disdain for the new game moved to mild disinterest when I saw some game play footage and admitted it might look like fun.

However, recently I saw something that might have swayed me to the, "ah what the hell, I’ll go ahead and pre-order it", side of the fence. It was the game footage shown at E3. Granted it is just a cinematic. I have to admit though, as an advert, it did its job.

Basically what hooked me was when ‘Dante’ walks up to the bouncer at a club (obviously a demon’s den-why else would he be there?) to which the bouncer stops him and informs him, ‘Your name’s not on the list.’ to which ‘Dante’s’ response is to punch him, catch the clipboard and pen the bouncer was holding as it falls from the air, scribbles something on it and drops it on the unconscious man uttering "It is now." in a snarky, if maybe a little emo, tone. As he passes by, its revealed what he wrote on the clipboard was ‘fuck you’.

At that point, I admit, I was kinda drawn in. Yeah, Dante has always been a bit of a dick, but they have taken the cool, smooth egotistical rock star and roughed him up around the edges a bit-and I kinda like it but at the same time, I feel kinda guilty. Like I am looking at a ‘younger model’ while I am still with my tride-and-true Sig-O and saying, "Oh yeah, I’m getting that" lol!

So, finally to my point….Is anyone else out there having this problem? I know it seems like, in the grand scheme of things, something silly to be so worked up about, but in this day when we have films that aren’t even 10-years old yet being re-imaged and re-told, it still kinda bugs me that it might be starting to happen in the VG industry. It bugs me even more that I might be taken in by this new marketing ploy 🙂 Anyway…any thoughts or commiserations are welcome!!

…it still kinda bugs me that it might be starting to happen in the VG industry. It bugs me even more that I might be taken in by this new marketing ploy 🙂 Anyway…any thoughts or commiserations are welcome!!

MIGHT start to happen? Dude, have you been around the last 5-10 years? It’s a common trend. You can say every sequel is a re-imagining of sorts. Take Bionic Commando Rearmed: nice updated gameplay, story, quirks of the original and such; then they do Bionic Commando, the sequel (shouldn’t it be Bionic Commando 2 or something?) and literally SHIT all over the story. Bucket loads of shit. (Heh, Capcom again…). Same with RE 4-5 (CAPCOM AGAIN!). They barely have avoided Rockman/Megaman because everything is Spinoffs, but other companies obviously follow the trend. Latest Mortal Kombat did a reboot of sorts…

BUT, in the grand scheme of things, whether we accept it or not, there’s a reason in some cases: we’re getting old. Behind us, a whole batch of kids are growing up every day. I got used to it, since I grew up with Intellivision, Atari and NES and obviously I’ve been thru a lot of console generations. But think about it: Devil May Cry was released in 2001: that’s eleven years ago. A kid that was 6 or 7 at the time is 18 now. He’s been buying games since not so long ago, he didn’t grow up with DMC and now he’s all for edgy, cool games. Old DMC might not cut it to him, with all the trends nowadays. But a reimagined Dante might. You see? Eventually companies have to rehash/renew their franchises because they need fresh meat. 5-10 years might not seem much, but I think you might see my point now.

And of course, I still hate it! xD