daytime| 2011-06-29 14:38 theme| Video Game Love Part 1 copyright| Public character analysis| busy onomatopoeia| Some Crazy Rock Music

Be Warned Now

THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD


Now Shadow Hearts has always been my favorite. It's a great game. It's got everything. Romance, action, comedy, and above all else, not a teeny-bopper video game. What I mean by "teeny-bopper" is that it is NOT a Final Fantasy game where your main character--at best--is a grand total of twenty. Terra is what? Sixteen or seventeen? Cloud is twenty. Squall eighteen. Zidane (my personal favorite FF main character) is nineteen. Tidus is a grand total of sixteen himself. In Shadow Hearts, the main character Yuri (or Uru) is twenty-three. A staggeringly adult age (especially at the time it came out when it came to RPGs). The game is dark, weird, creepy, chilling, funny, and its got shit that'll make you just die you'd be so stunned. It's super fun and super satisfying. And above all, if you get the bad ending and play the second game which is based off the bad ending, and get the official ending of the second game, you can basically play the first game again to get the good ending.

That probably didn't make any sense. Which isn't a problem. Just play Shadow Hearts. It's worth it. Don't play SH: Covenant, the second game, first. Play the first game. The way it should be.

I could make an entire blog about Shadow Hearts. But I'm not going to. At least. Not yet. That's not what this blog is about.

So. Aside from Shadow Hearts, which is an incredible game, I've come across a few others in the recent half a year that I have come to enjoy almost as much. A couple I haven't completed yet, and another I never played, just watched and enjoyed. I have a lot to say about them. Things that make them great games, that make them interesting and enjoyable and definitely worth it.

The problem, I realize now, is that there is no way I can get through them all without turning this blog into something ridiculously long and epic. So I'm going to have to break this down into parts.

So for this first section of Video Game Love Part 1, I'll discuss the one I didn't actually play.

Devil May Cry is a series of a fabulous set of games. Apparently there's a new one coming out--rebooting the series--that just kind of destroys the image of the first four games, which, by the way, are AWESOME. I know why they're doing it, and what they're trying to do. But I love the character of Dante that the games created (though I will say game one is a little flat and two is a little extreme, but three and four are just fabulous) and a couple of the other characters that get developed through game three and four.

The original Devil May Cry is an action happy silly fest with a Dante that kind of flips between being fun and being serious. Unfortunately, as the first installment of a game that wasn't supposed to have story depth and was just COOL for the sake of being COOL, it became incredibly cheesy and has a couple of...weird moments.

Like Trish.

Trish is a demon created in the likeness of Dante's mother to make him more vulnerable and therefore easier to kill. Ultimately her "love" for Dante and his for her end up saving them both by the end of the game. A little too... Oedipus.

Many people still state that Trish and Dante are, in fact, a couple, but I have a hard time, even with the way it plays out in the first game, dealing with that. One--she looks like his mom. Ew. Two--by the time you go through the other three games, it seems less like that kind of a relationship and more like a brother/sister thing. A brother/sister relationship seems infinitely more appropriate and, ultimately, believable to me. For one--she looks like his MOM. I know I've said that a lot, but you have to understand. She's identical. And, by the time of the fourth game, her interactions with Dante seem very much to be like a big sister to a younger brother. I know because I noticed, watching my own younger brother play it, the similarities in the way she treated Dante in game four to the way I treat him. There even is a mothering big sister aspect to the way Trish lectures Dante on his obsessive pizza eating.

Trish doesn't make an appearance in the second game. In fact, the second game is infinitely darker that the first, giving us an overly angsty Dante, a very destroyed world, and a new character that was about as flat as Trish was in the first game. Mostly depressing and not very compelling.

Now. Devil May Cry 3. Back story. Utter, delicious back story. Dante is young. If you divided the Dante from the original game in half, one half would be the Dante from game two, and the other half would be the Dante from game three. They decided to do a game with each extreme before finally maturing him and building a real, rounded character by game four. So Dante is a snarky smart ass, who is way too cocky and full of himself. The writers touch base on the little bits hinted in the first game that whetted our appetites. We meet Dante's twin. Vergil. Oh ho ho ho! Yay for Alighieri references! Not only do we get insight to their relationship and their family life, and, eventually, to what happens to Vergil (in order to bring about the events of the original game), but this seriousness and character development is interspersed with the UTTER CHEESE that comes out of Dante's mouth.

And, thankfully, aside from Dante and Vergil, there IS another character that we care about. Lady, who was once Mary. This poor bad ass chick. You can tell the writers have improved from the last two games (or the company upgraded their writers), because her character is not only infinitely more sympathetic than Trish, but she is better developed. You can't compare the two, because in the end Trish was the subject of bad writing in a story that really didn't have a story and wasn't really about the story (it was about the cool factor, the gameplay and the graphics at the time) and Lady became the subject of evolved story telling and better writers. Lady's situation with her father has a profound affect on Dante and his situation with his brother. The byplay between them is fun and realistic and makes them fun to watch.

Devil May Cry 3 was when Capcom hit its stride with the series.

Now what came first? The anime or game four? It doesn't matter. Personally, I saw Devil May Cry 4 before I saw the animated series (which, though not being a game will get a bit of time on here as it is from the same franchise). While the fourth game has a different "main character" for about a little more than half the game, Dante's character has clearly grown and developed. He is a character that has game one, game three and the anime behind him. He still has plenty of cheese and snark, but he is not as wild and over the top. Dante, as a character, has hit his own stride and walks it with deserved confidence and casualness. Trish makes her reappearance, and as I said previously, her relationship with Dante seems more like a big sister hassling a younger brother--at least to me it does. Whether or not other fans of the game agree with me or not is moot. Everyone comes in with a different perspective. But having that brother/sister dynamic made the game better for me. Lady has a couple of short cameos (literally like two). Because of that whatever relationship she may have with Dante, there isn't really enough on screen time to go into it. Not that it's important to the game ultimately. He seems to allow both women to push him around plenty, and doesn't complain even with Lady stiffs him the money she owes him. Dante calls them both "babes," take from that what you will.

Devil May Cry 4 also touches a little base with Vergil. Not as much as one would hope, given the third installment. What little there is isn't expanded on and as a viewer and player you're left with more questions than when you came in. Nero isn't a reincarnation. But is he possessed? Is he a distant relation to the twins or a half brother which is why Vergil could possess his arm and Nero wield Yamato? Or is he just another half demon? Why does Yamato chose Nero? Why does Nero echo Vergil's words? Or is it Yamato that retains some semblance of the half-demon that once wielded it?

We may never know.

However, Dante wants to take Yamato from Nero because it was his brother's sword. That warms the cockles of my heart. And, in the end, Dante--from beginning to end in game four--is just incredible. He makes me laugh. I want to hug him. I cheer for him. He is the culmination of three games worth of development to create a GREAT DAMN CHARACTER.

So it saddens me that a) they're going to reboot it and b) they're completely changing the character they finally achieved...

But not talking about that.

The anime, such as it was, is a short stint (thirteen episodes) of stand alone episodes with a handful of reoccurring characters that ultimately are interconnected, though it certainly doesn't seem that way until you get to the bitter end of it. The dubbing is horrible, but at least they got the same voice actor for Dante. The time frame seems to be between game one and game four. Oh, in case I've managed to confuse you, here's a quick rundown.

Chronologically the games and anime run like this: DMC3, DMC1, DMCA, DMC4, DMC2.

So, in the anime, Lady and Trish both make appearances. It is during these episodes where they meet and, in the end, get along FAMOUSLY in their torture of poor Dante. Hence the easy camaraderie of DMC4. You see Trish be more big sisterish (in my personal opinion) and Lady get flustered at implications that she might have a bit of a thing for Dante.

Not that the pizza-eating bum ever notices. I swear, sometimes I think Dante is the missing fifth turtle. He IS a mutant of sorts and he is named after a famous Italian author. An author, by the way, is like a painter. Only with words. Weird how one's brain makes connections.

But I digress.

You get a little more back story in the form that is less family oriented and more every day oriented. How does Dante go about his work? What does he do when he isn't saving the world from some EPIC evil bound on bringing the demon realm into the human realm? What other kinds of job does he do? What other kind of monsters and demons does he come across? Are they rampant about the world? A lot of these questions get answered, and while the anime might seem pretty blasé in comparison to the games... That's the point. The anime ISN'T like the games where the player gets to control Dante and save the world from some EPIC EVIL hellbent on unleashing HELL ON EARTH. The anime is strictly for viewing. By the end when you realize there is still some Epic Evil Hellbent on Unleashing Hell on Earth after all, it comes as a pleasant surprise. Because the anime hasn't been focused on it like you would find in the short intensity of a game. The anime is about Dante's every day. About his relationships--if you can call them that--with Lady and Trish and the other reoccurring and fleeting characters. It's about how he interacts with the world when it's NOT on the verge of utter destruction.

My brother was a little disappointed with the anime. Not too surprising. He's played the games. But as someone who watched him play, the anime was not too much different than watching him play. I've never been involved with the games as a player. I've always been "a viewer." So the anime was a welcome change of pace that allowed me the chance to enjoy what I loved most about the games.

The characters.

Even though most fans would say that I don't have much of a right to my opinions since I haven't played the games, as a writer and a grand lover of story and characters, I think I have not only a right, but perhaps a more accurate perspective than someone who had to battle the demons and gain red orbs and was just trying to survive the games on Dante Must Die mode. I can enjoy the part of the games that I play games for and that many seem to take for granted over the gameplay and the graphics. I'm less likely to miss the little details because I'm not focused on stopping flying swords and freaky-looking monsters. I can focus on that tiny bit of detail in the background, or the way the character collapses onto their knees, or the way Trish smacks Dante on the back of the head.

Devil May Cry is a great series of games. It's original, campy, fun, wild and once it gets going, it becomes even more enjoyable and more profound. You become attached to who Dante is, his personality, his look, his growth, his relationships. As a fan, I want to see that continue and develop. Sadly, it seems unlikely to be as the game changes hands, but whatever happens to Dante in the future of his franchise, I will always be a fan of the character that created and grew through these great games. The platinum-haired, half-demon dork will always be a favorite.

TO BE CONTINUED...


COMING SOON:

-Little Big Planet 1 & 2
-Lost Odyssey
-Fable 2
-Fable 3
-Dragon Age: Origins/Awakening



~~~

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"First I whip it out! Then I thrust it! With great force! Every angle! It penetrates! Until...! With great strength! I... ram it in! In the end... We are all satisfied. And you are set free!" ~Dante

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