Not Sure if Satire or Bad Writing or How (Not) To Reboot – Ninja Theory’s DmC

(Fair Warning: This is a fairly longer post, mostly because of my constant meandering and lack of structure - I just kept seeing more and more problems  in DmC's story as I kept writing. In my defense, the disorientating progression of this critique is intended to parallel the absolutely nonsensical storytelling of DmC and give the reader a sense of playing the game. You know?)

            When I was in elementary school, I convinced my mother to let me play Devil May Cry. By the end of the weekend I was facing a sort of existential crisis – how I could I be having fun with a game I spent most of my time losing in?

           

            Long story short, that little anecdote saves me the trouble of praising the glories of DMC1, 3 and 4, the depths of their combat and establishment of the “Extreme Stylish Action” subgenre (whose masterpiece is still P*’s Bayonetta, in my opinion). Instead, I’d like to suggest something that may seem a bit odd…The Devil May Cry series is the closest we’ve come to a Quentin Tarantino-directed video game. Don’t click that red X, just give me another paragraph.

           

            Tarantino movies are defined by, among other things, a perfect balance of satirical and dramatic tone, over-the-top action and violence, witty writing rich with characterization, and the genuine love of film apparent in them Tarantino makes his games with. The DMC series had all of this, too. The tone of the games constantly flipped between out-right over-the-top foolishness, inviting the player to laugh, fist pump and “woah, dude,” in response to protagonist Dante’s missile-surfing, skyscraper-running, back-flipping, hash-slinging, mash-flinging action. Yet the more dramatic aspects of the story – Dante’s struggle of acceptance for his humanity, his strained relationship with his brother Vergil, the grief he hides for his mother, etc. are told with the proper tone, making them genuine. The action, or gameplay, of DMC1, 3, and 4, are some of the finest to ever grace a video game, beckoning nerds with spare time and quick fingers to plump its unfathomable depths. The characterization is excellent and subtle (take my word on this – I’ll expand when I contrast it with DmC later), the game’s story and gameplay compliments its ludo-narrative well (the story the gameplay mechanics tell), and the games are clearly made by people who love good games; they’re just so god damned (hah) fun.

            DmC is not. It’s none of those things. I highlight the achievements of the DMC series in order to demonstrate how DmC is a reboot of a series/story continuity/whatever phrase you like done in the absolute worst way possible. I won’t comment on the gameplay, beyond the ludo-narrative elements I want to watch on, but I subjectively find them flawed, particularly compared to the high standard upheld by DMC1, 3, 4. But I will argue that DmC’s storytelling is absolutely hopeless, and welcome anyone who would contest that after considering my argument.

            Let’s start with the issue of tone. Like I mentioned in my earlier post on John Green’s Looking for Alaska, tone is perhaps the most impactful element of storytelling. It can completely change how a story is perceived. For example, a story about a baby falling of a swing and dying can be a tragedy or a very funny anti-joke, depending on how I choose to tell it to you. DmC has absolutely no idea what it wants to do with its tone, an idea Adam Sessler mentions in his review of DmC. The opening sequence, where a hungover, naked Dante wakes up from a threesome and has to get dressed mid-flight, his trailer parked tossed into the air by a giant demon (complete with CombiChrist pillaging the player’s ear canals), suggests that the tone will be satirical. Okay, I thought, as I booted up the game. I could deal with this. Most people, particular Occidental gamers, have always had trouble taking DMC stories at face value, so why not have a laugh with DmC? Let the story match the crazy action and just make the game fun.

            But then they start with some weird pseudo V for Vandetta “government evil fight the capitalist bourgeoisie oppression they control our lives” bullshit that is completely mishandled, filled with metaphors that make no sense and just some absolutely HORRIBLE WRITING.

           

            I have to address this first before anything else, even if it’s not in order. Littering your dialogue with “Fuck you” and sex puns does not make you edgy or mature, as convinced as Ninja Theory seems to be. It makes you seem childish – the entire game sounds like it was some 12 year old’s cocoa-puffs-and-chocolate-milk-induced fever dream. What follows is what Ninja Theory’s storyboard meetings must have gone like.

            “Then Dante says fuck you and the Evil Slurm Queen from Futurama says FUCK YOU and they have a totally sweet fight and Dante makes a clingy pun and then he fights some totally hot Witches but they’re evil but you can see their tits and then he argues with Vergil and Vergil makes a joke about how his dick is bigger HAHA HA HA HA HA FUCKING HA!”

            Polluting your dialogue (because that’s all it is, just garbage) with excessive swearing and other taboo “adult” subjects either lends the impression of being an immature teenager, which this game is, or satire, which this game completely fails to capture. The tone is just never consistent. One second Dante’s flying around the room chopping people up with scythes and axes and shit and then the next Vergil explains Mundus’ control of humanity by “debt”. It makes no sense and the cheesy writing makes nothing better. The writing is shallow, replacing characterization with these attempts to be seen as “cool” and “edgy”. It’s the very worst of 90’s comic books in video game form. It’s hopelessly immature, and worse, it tries to be smart, like the obnoxious who blows up your Facebook feed with Tea Party memes and political quotes considers himself an expert on government corruption when he has no idea what he’s talking about.

            That brings me to the game’s major problem. Ninja Theory tries to set-up DmC’s plot as a sort of V for Vendetta tribute. Demons have taken over our government/media/culture, functioning as Big Brother types, and our slowly manipulating us and harvesting us for souls. The demons drag Dante into Limbo to do their fighting, their plane, literally turning the world against DmC’s protagonist, revealing everything’s hidden evil nature. Dante is set up as the typical punk rebel, Vergil the cold and calculating strategist behind the movement, and Kat, is Dante’s love interest (I…think…More on this in a moment…) and damsel-in-distress. All of these characterizations fail.

           

            Let’s start with Dante and Vergil. So they’re supposed to be Nephilim, the crossbreed of Angel and Demon, the only beings with the power to slay the Demon King (because whatever). They’re the son of Sparda, who serves only a sperm donor, and daughter of Eva, an angel. Neither of them is very important, because they accomplish, or have accomplished, absolutely nothing, by the DmC’s story begins. They just happen have Dante and Vergil – they could have been any other demon and angel, and for all storytelling purposes, nothing would have changed. Sparda seems to have held no place in Mundus, the Demon King’s, army, despite being called his second-in-command. The story doesn’t even bother replacing Sparda in Mundus’ army (though, to be fair, you could interpret Bob Barbas, a veiled caricature of Bill O’reilly of the very thinnest veil’d kind, to be Mundus’ second-in-command, but the story never addresses it and fuck this game, they did not think this through at all). Dante’s and Vergil’s parents have no real significance beyond the story telling the player in the early story’s flashbacks sequence, “Hey, Sparda and Eva are pretty important, okay?”

           

            What the hell is going on with the Angels anyway? Where the hell (hah) are they? While Dante is being dragged into Limbo, Mundus has effectively taken over the world, are the Angels too busy being bad plot devices to summon the ennui for a little more dues ex machina? Why don’t they ever bother to help? Limbo itself is so very ill-defined by the game, besides being a place where the art directors masturbated until they ran out of creative ideas. Is it controlled by the Demons – shouldn’t a “limbo” space also be controlled by angels, if we’re going by traditional Judeo-Christian myth? I would shut up if the game could just throw me a bone and establish, “Uh, angels can’t touch Limbo Dante, but you’re Nephilim, a halfie, so you and the Demons can,” or maybe even, “Mundus killed all the angels after he found out his second-in-command slept with one and produced a being that could kill him.” Instead, we have the ill-defined Limbo of DmC, a race of Angels completely MIA. DmC’s story doesn’t even try to explain this – they just left the plot hole gaping wide open!

            Mundus is stupid, while we’re speaking of him. Clearly, while Dante and Vergil were infants, and he was strong enough to kill their parents, he let them live. Okay, sure, if he did that then no story would exist (oh shame), I’ll grant that. But why doesn’t the story try to justify any of Mundus’ actions? Throughout most of the game he has complete control of humanity and access to the best McGuffin ever, the Hellgate, which effectively makes him immortal as long as he stands next to it. What is he waiting for, this motherfucker is the DEMON KING. DmC ITSELF ESTABLISHES HIM AS CRUEL, BLOODTHIRSTY AND SADISTIC ALBEIT IN THE MOST SHALLOW WAYS POSSIBLE BUT STILL GOING BY THE GAME’S BRAINDEAD LOGIC AND PUDDLE-DEEP CHARACTERIZATION HE WOULD HAVE NO REASON TO SPARE DANTE OR VERGIL OR JUST FART AROUND AND LAUGH AT HUMANITY WHILE HE HAS THE POWER TO CONSUME/KILL THEM ALL/WHATEVER THE FUCK HE WANTED TO DO ANYWAY IT’S NOT SO CLEAR EITHER ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS THROW US A FUCKING BONE NINJA THEORY DON’T JUST DO THINGS, EXPLAIN THEM, WE WILL SUSPEND OUR DISBELIEF.

            Sorry, I’ve been holding that in for a while, and I had a Film Critic Hulk impression I’ve been dying to share (whaddya think?).

            So our villains don’t make any sense. How about we try again with our heroes? We’ve already established their “Nephilim” storytelling mechanism is alright in conception, but failed in execution. It’s too vague and filled with holes. The character themselves  are equally as inept. Dante is a prick. He’s always been a prick in past DMC games, but in DmC he’s an unlikeable prick. This is opinion, I am aware – people do like things like Jersey Shore and the Republican Party, after all – but I will argue that he is a badly developed character. We don’t get much in the way of backstory. Perhaps in the only interesting ludo-narrative moment in the game, Demon O’Reilly gives us a news biop on Dante’s paste as Dante fights demons in an overdramatized Fox News parody segment. After Dante’s parents were killed by Mundus, Mundus had him sent off to an orphanage…Because…FUCK YOU! (as DmC’s writers would say)

            In said orphanage, Dante appears to have realized his captors were demons, killed them while still a child, and ran off. How the hell did he survive X amount of years on the run from Mundus? The game claims Mundus is this all-knowing powerful Demon King with eyes and ears everywhere- how did one of the world’s two only Nephilim escape him! Scratching that, how the hell does Dante get around? Part of the problem with Limbo is it’s so ill-defined how much it affects the “real”, physical world. Some scenes we see Dante and demons able to interact with the real world, yet sometimes we can’t, yet some objects are affected while others aren’t…What gives?! It’s okay to have a mysterious plot device, but it needs to be consistent, for the story to play by its own rules and logic. DmC even “rebels” against those. So has Dante been noticed by humans…Has he not been? What does this punk do for a living, and where did he get that deliciously douchey haircut? Why doesn’t Limbo ever just crush him under a bunch of buildings, as it constantly tries to do but just never succeeds…Because…The writers didn’t want it to? Again, again, a-fucking-gain, all Ninja Theory had to do was explain this – maybe Kat’s psychic powers were keeping Limbo at bay, Or Nephilim exert some influence it – but the plot is so badly written they never ever ever ever ever consider this.

            As a character, Dante is this rude and immature punk, who, by the end of the game, has developed into and immature punk...Who wants to bone a human. Seriously, that’s all Ninja Theory’s got. The big motivator for Dante to ‘change” and “develop” as a character is his love interst with Kat, the human psychic/witch/whatever the writers need her to be vaguely recruited by Vergil before the game began. Yet his interactions with her are limited to

            Kat: Please help us!
            Dante: Tcch, whatever. Fine. Fuck you.

            Vergil: It’s gonna get rough.

            Dante: I like it rough *rapeface at Kat*

            Kat: Well, I guess you’re less of a dick than your brother and the only non-Demon with a name in this story, I’m hooking up with you.

            Dante: Woah, the demons are invading your hideout because the writers need them to, I SUDDENLY CARE ABOUT YOU KAAAAT.

            The most we really get is that Dante finds her attractive…Which even by the game’s logic doesn’t make a lot of sense, because he constantly brags about all the women he sleeps with. This is at least partly true, we can gather form the threesome he participates in the hilariously stupid opening sequence (again, tone more confused than in-the-closet eighth grade boy). Why does he feel so attached to Kat? It must be love, but the story never bothers to develop it. Because they both had troubled childhoods, which they discuss for all of ONE SCENE? I’m not buying it, especially since his love for Kat is supposed to be what keeps him from killing his brother (oooh, more on this in a moment).

            So Vergil. The game wants Vergil to be the cold, manipulating, strategist, in the tradition of popular anarchist heroes like V. The closest the writing gives us to this is that he can “hack” things. Which he “taught himself” while on the run from Mundus (I’ve already discussed the plot holes apparent here). Okay, great. So what? That’s all this guy’s got. He even admits, in an exchange, that Dante is stronger than him (though Vergil gets the last word in when he says he has the bigger dick…Mature Themes, Ninja Theory). He’s pathetic and weak. Being physically weaker than Dante is actually an interesting dynamic, I’ll grant them, but they never explore it or utilize it. He doesn’t even come across as smart or manipulative – he sort of begs Dante to join and Dante just happens to want to get it in with Kat, so it works out for him. I’ve read online some critiques of this (I would credit them if I could remember where I read it, but if someone could notify me I will ASAP) that suggest Vergil’s character would improve from being manipulative, colder, withholding secrets from Dante and Kat, forcing them to do what he wants rather than just asking them. But he never does this. He just sort of asks Dante and Kat to do whatever he wants and then, in the final fight with Mundus, needs Dante to constantly save him.

            Another aside – what the hell is a Hellgate (hah)? They never explain this. It’s some sort of well of immortality…that gives Mundus unlimited power…Which he needs to subdue humanity…To use their souls as a farm…To consume and grow in power…which he needs to activate the Hellgate…The Hellgate that grants him unlimited power and immortality…WHAT IS GOING ON HERE NINJA THEORY?!  Our villain has absolutely no motivations, which completely nullifies the plight of our heroes. The Hellgate doesn’t even resonate thematically with DmC’s poor-man’s Marxism. DmC’s punk attitude and themes draw heavily on anti-authority, The Man is everywhere and keeping us down (represented by the demons everywhere). How does the Hellgate into this? When Dante and Vergil destroy it, it drags the Limbo demons into the human world, which I get symbolizes, very obviously, the rebel anarchists throwing off the veil of oppression and opening humanity’s eyes to the corruption all around them. But…So fucking what? Dante and Vergil never discuss this as their purpose. They just want to kill Mundus because…I think because he killed their dad? Revenge is a fine motivation, but the game constantly dresses itself up as this anti-establishment piece when it is just wearing the vestments of that genre and absolutely REEKS of pseudo-intellectualism.

            And believe me, I’m the finest pseudo-intellect around. I know it when I see it. In concept, using DmC’s story as a vehicle for a story on government corruption is interesting. It’s been done before, and clearly much better, but hey, it would have been interesting to see the Devil May Cry franchise’s themes take a new direction…But they were handled without any sense of tone, thematic resonance, logic, or any of that. The game just feels so god damned SOULLESS (hah). The music drones constantly over everything, the dialogue is 50% fuck, 50% drivel, the characters are flat, the plot makes no sense, and the gameplay consists basically of color-coded attacking. It’s boring, mindless, soulless. If the game is  satirical a meta-commentary on media lobotomizing its consumers with the illusions of participating in the very rebellion (hah) the media it feeds the consumers is STOPPING BY ITS VERY CONSUMATION, cool. But it’s obviously not. It’s not smart enough.

Oh, and the child molestation and rape subplots, and the bullet-abortion? Keep it classy, Ninja Theory. (Disclaimer: These are all fair games in storytelling, and if video games are going to evolve as art they should not be afraid to engage darker or taboo subjects...But not just doing it for the absolutely tasteless sake of fucking doing it, because it's dark, broooooo!)

            The most insulting part of the entire story, really, is what it represents. The death of story. Of people accepting garbage in place of what was once genuine art; the original DMC series. Someone, for some reason, decided at some point DMC, despite its consistent sales, was no longer good enough, and DmC would be a better gamble. Blasphemy. Most people make fun of DMC’s story, but I disagree. Yes, it was simple and devoid of many complicated themes or greater commentaries on society DmC pretends to be full of, but that’s all DMC’s story needed to be. As works of art, video games function differently than other mediums, and we must recognize that sometimes a good video game story stays out of the way. DMC always placed its gameplay first; the game feel of being Dante, this ultimate power fantasy where you can just take time out of your day and not give a fuck, you’re flying down a building shooting demons and surfing missiles!

            That said, DMC’s story is still strong. Simple, yet effective. Its themes and tone is consistent. I will use DMC3 as a brief example. (The ideas I am going to discuss here I have also read floating around on the net. I can’t remember where, but if I do find them, or someone points them out to me, I will give credit where credit is due ASAP).

            DMC3’s story climaxed in 3 points; Dante’s 3 fights with Vergil, the first of which taking place at the very beginning of the game. These 3 points serve to highlight critical points in our character’s character development, reflected in the plot development of the game.

            The first fight Dante has with Vergil, he challenges Vergil with his guns. Guns are a symbol of his humanity – human weapons he has adopted as his own. Dante refuses to even acknowledge their father’s existence, Sparda, denying his demonic heritage. He does not talk about him and ignore mention of him. Vergil has already embraced his demonic heritage. Dante loses the fight badly. At this point, we know both brothers share strong familial ties, yet Dante cares about humanity, his adopted culture, and Vergil wants to dominate it, choosing to embrace instead the elitism of his heritage.

            The second fight, Dante challenges Vergil with Rebellion, the sword left to him by their father, Sparda. The sword is emblematic of Dante’s demonic heritage. Dante know acknowledges his heritage, jokingly referring to his father as the “old man”. Vergil is still set in his ways, and the two fight. The fight is a draw. At this point, Dante is beginning to accept his heritage and its evil, yet is not allowing it to define him. He can still fight for good, for the humanity he has learned to love. Vergil is still pissed off and wants to kill people.

The third and final fight, Dante challenges Vergil with his own fists, or himself. His own body, the fusion of human and demon. Dante has fully embraced and come to understood they are part of who he is as a person, but he cannot be defined by the sins of his father. Vergil, however, is defined by the sins of his father; he lets his familial legacy consume him, which ultimately destroys him- Dante wins this fight.

            The themes are simple, yet strong and effective, appropriate to the game. They don’t pretend to be anything they are not. It is a simple story of identity crisis, one anyone can relate to, and the demon metaphors for identity are handled well without any pretention, unlike DmC’s. These subtle story elements are part of Dmc 1, 3, and 4’s stories (though strongest in 3, in my opinion).

            So, long story short, DmC fucked up everything the DMC franchise stood for but took the story’s name anyway. Good job Ninja Theory.

Keep thinking,

Jordan