Information on Devil May Cry 2’s development is suspiciously limited. What we do know is that it was moved into production without the knowledge of the original team, and given to an unnamed director. With roughly four months until release, Capcom took this secret director off the project and replaced them with Hideaki Itsuno, the guy who would go on to make Devil May Cry 3 and save the franchise. Having four months to fix the issues with this game would be like having five minutes to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, but he’s still the only name credited as director. His exact changes are unknown, and the only hints we have from interviews at what was originally intended is that it was supposed to be bigger than the original, have fewer puzzles, and use a better camera. So what was this game even supposed to be? What lessons can we pull from this legendary disappointment?
The best method to understand what happened here is probably to lay out all the changes from the first game and draw a line of best fit. So firstly, we have the aforementioned bigger worlds, fewer puzzles, and improved camera. Then, there’s the nearly silent Dante, who speaks fewer words in the first six hours of play than he does in the first game’s intro cutscene, and he only has access to a single melee moveset this time around. Instead, you have a second protagonist, who has an entirely different playstyle than Dante. The difficulty has been significantly lowered, and your orbs will be spent mostly on direct power-ups instead of new moves. The combat focuses more on guns, and even melee attacks now lock onto the nearest enemy automatically. The atmosphere and general tone are a lot darker, taking place in a realistic city and having none of the previous game’s cheesiness.
So, with all those points on the chart, what can we assume happened? To me, it looks like they wanted to accomplish two things: adjust the game to fit recent trends, and remove all the things people complained about in the first game. Devil May Cry 2 was being developed in a post-GTA3 world, so a bigger, more serious setting might have been considered more marketable. Having more guns and fighting modern enemies like helicopters and tanks is a natural development with this perspective in mind, especially after so many people laughed at how Dante’s guns in the original did almost no damage. Some people also didn’t like Dante being so cocky, so that was taken out. The difficulty was a turn off for a lot of people, so it was toned down and simplified. If all this conjecture about the mystery director’s motivation is correct, then I think we can fairly confidently state what went wrong with this game. The fundamental question they were asking was “how can we get more people to buy Devil May Cry”, and not “how can we make a better Devil May Cry”. None of the mechanics from the first game were enhanced and all the personality was sandblasted off, it broke its back trying to change instead of trying to move forward. What’s surprising isn’t that this happened, it’s that it doesn’t happen more often. Trying to improve something by changing its controversial elements instead of enhancing its strengths is a trap anyone could fall into. Listening to critics who might not know what they’re talking about ∗cough∗ isn’t a shortcut to getting things right, you have to recognize that nothing in art will appeal to everyone, and to respect the uniqueness of your creation by forging ahead.
The best method to understand what happened here is probably to lay out all the changes from the first game and draw a line of best fit. So firstly, we have the aforementioned bigger worlds, fewer puzzles, and improved camera. Then, there’s the nearly silent Dante, who speaks fewer words in the first six hours of play than he does in the first game’s intro cutscene, and he only has access to a single melee moveset this time around. Instead, you have a second protagonist, who has an entirely different playstyle than Dante. The difficulty has been significantly lowered, and your orbs will be spent mostly on direct power-ups instead of new moves. The combat focuses more on guns, and even melee attacks now lock onto the nearest enemy automatically. The atmosphere and general tone are a lot darker, taking place in a realistic city and having none of the previous game’s cheesiness.
So, with all those points on the chart, what can we assume happened? To me, it looks like they wanted to accomplish two things: adjust the game to fit recent trends, and remove all the things people complained about in the first game. Devil May Cry 2 was being developed in a post-GTA3 world, so a bigger, more serious setting might have been considered more marketable. Having more guns and fighting modern enemies like helicopters and tanks is a natural development with this perspective in mind, especially after so many people laughed at how Dante’s guns in the original did almost no damage. Some people also didn’t like Dante being so cocky, so that was taken out. The difficulty was a turn off for a lot of people, so it was toned down and simplified. If all this conjecture about the mystery director’s motivation is correct, then I think we can fairly confidently state what went wrong with this game. The fundamental question they were asking was “how can we get more people to buy Devil May Cry”, and not “how can we make a better Devil May Cry”. None of the mechanics from the first game were enhanced and all the personality was sandblasted off, it broke its back trying to change instead of trying to move forward. What’s surprising isn’t that this happened, it’s that it doesn’t happen more often. Trying to improve something by changing its controversial elements instead of enhancing its strengths is a trap anyone could fall into. Listening to critics who might not know what they’re talking about ∗cough∗ isn’t a shortcut to getting things right, you have to recognize that nothing in art will appeal to everyone, and to respect the uniqueness of your creation by forging ahead.
2 Comments
Something I think is worth noting is that, according to various insiders, the people making Devil May Cry 2 as a different team actively disliked the first game in multiple ways (I would need to check and am not going to rn but they even considered not using Dante I think). It seems likely that part of the reason there was no true evolution of the first game's mechanics was an active desire to avoid them.
Snuff
3 years ago