Welcome to this week’s article of The Good, Bad, and What The?, where we took a good, long look at characters in movies, video games, anime, and books and put them on the judgement table to see if they are worthy to be in their respective stories. I strongly believe well developed characters are more important than anything else in a good story, so I always judge them hard. At the end of every character’s evaluation I will give them one of four ratings: Good for those characters that are well developed and deserve their place in the story, Bad for those characters that have no place being made or interacting with anyone else in the story, What The for the characters I can’t figure out, and the characters who are as dull as dishwater will get the rating of Sack of Potatoes. Today on the judgement table: Dante, the main character of “DmC: Devil May Cry.”
So just so we are clear, I am referring to the new Dante in the “DmC” reboot, not the original white haired Dante. These two are totally different characters, and I will not be comparing them at all in this article. With that out of the way, let’s get down to the story recap. Dante is a young man who is what’s called a Nephilim, which means that he is a man born from both an angel and a demon. Dante is introduced to his long lost brother, Vergil, who is trying to defeat the demons. After some convincing from his brother Dante agrees to help Vergil and to defeat the demon king Mundus.
Now, as many of you “DmC” fans know, the new Dante was not well received when they revealed what he would look like. People saw him and thought he looked like some kind of weird “emo edgy” version of the old Dante. I did agree with the idea that the new Dante looked pretty dumb, and I still agree with this. The opening scene of the game seems to agree with this idea that the new Dante is “edgy” and basically “a twelve year old’s idea of cool.” The scene shows Dante hanging out in a club with what look like strippers dressed as angels. After some weird camera movement and a really freaky graphics, it ends with Dante back at his trailer home, which is an absolute garbage heap. This definitely formed my opinion on who I thought Dante was. He hears a knock on the door, and answers it naked. Classy, right? This is pretty much what I expected would happen for the rest of the game…or so I figured. Shortly after, Dante is immediately attacked by a demon, and the first level begins.
After the first level is over, you see Vergil and he asks for your help. Dante, being the jerk he is, flat out says no. Eventually, Vergil convinces him. This is where things get confusing. From this point on, Dante acts like a pretty chill dude and stops being the “edgy jerk”. Now, he is fighting to save the world from demons. Normally I would be okay with this type of change, but nothing really caused it. Dante was kinda just like, “Alright bro, I got your back now” for no reason. I was trying to figure out what caused this, but I couldn’t really see anything. The only thing that might have changed Dante’s mind happened in the third level, where he learns about his demon father and angel mother. It doesn’t really make sense that it would change his entire personality; at most this gives him a bit more drive to kill Mundus, because Mundus killed his mother. It’s not a complete transformation, however, because at times Dante reverts back to his old ways. He says some things that make him look like a real jerk and curses out demons, but it doesn’t really last long. It was very frustrating because the whole time I was sitting there wondering what Dante was supposed to be like. At times he acts very heroic, and then he goes back to being a jerk. Now granted, when he acts like his old self it is usually when talking to demons, but it still is kind of confusing. I think the idea was that Dante was a jerk, but because he was fighting to protect family honor, he acted like a hero to show he cared. This is mostly speculation on my part. I can understand wanting to look heroic, fighting to avenge your mother’s death and what not, but that doesn’t mean your personality should take a complete 180.
The last minor thing about Dante was his relation with the female character, Kat. It was clear from the start that Kat was intended to be a love interest, but it seems like it wasn’t done well. First off, there was no kiss or confession of love from either of them, but I think this was because in the old “DMC” there wasn’t any of that either. By the end of the game they did sort of act like they cared about each other, but it was nothing concrete. I would be more okay with this if it wasn’t for the fact that Dante didn’t seem to care for Kat at all for most of the game. His feelings seem to have just kind of popped up out of nowhere. What I’m thinking is they left this relationship building for the next game, cause it made little sense in this one.
Okay, verdict time. As you probably guessed, Dante gets a What The? verdict. His character just confused me; I wasn’t sure if he was a real jerk or a kind of nice guy who wasn’t big on feelings. Dante reminds me of a teenage boy who wants to look cool, but actually has that soft, cute animal loving side. I’m not really sure what the idea was supposed to be, so as it stands Dante is a weirdly composed character. I hope that if they do another game, they flesh Dante out more and improve how he interacts with other characters. Also if you guys are wondering, I didn’t totally hate this game, however I felt that this the reboot was not better than the original “Devil May Cry” games. The only one “Devil May Cry” game you could say this one beats is “Devil May Cry 2” but that’s okay because we don’t talk about that game…ever.
What did you guys think? Did you enjoy our brooding hero or were you just as confused as I was? Leave a comment down below. And if you haven’t played “Devil May Cry“, you can buy it here now.
