12/14/2020:
When I was much younger I played DmC Devil may Cry (hereafter DMCDMC) and didn't really get it. Like, I was 14, and I kinda thought it was cool, but I never really
finished it and just kinda forgot about it. I remember liking the city and how all that looked, but not really thinking much of the characters. I didn't really
understand the high praise it got from critics, and I didn't really understand the outrage of the existing fans either. After playing DMC 3 and DMC 5 and going
back to revisit DMCDMC with a friend who had actually played the series, I now properly understand the sins it commits.
DMCDMC seems stridently opposed to everything fun and cool and silly from the original games, like many gritty 2010s reboots intended to "westernize" classic Japanese game franchises. Ninja Theory invisioned DMCDMC as a punk, grimy, rebellious game, meant to tear down the establishment and resonate more with a teenage audience that might otherwise be alienated by camp, an audience that wants to be treated as adults and taken seriously. I think the fundamental concept of a punk, rebellious Devil May Cry game could actually work and be really cool, which spurred on the idea of The Rewrite. This was based on conversations my friend and I had while we were playing through DMCDMC and needed anything to distract us from the utterly dull gameplay (which is a completely separate problem that I'm not even going to address here, plus the definitive edition improves that a lot).
Thus, I present my thesis: the fundamental concept of DMCDMC is not actually bad, but Ninja Theory's execution of the concept is so unbelievably bad that it makes the idea itself look unworkable. The premise of The Rewrite is to reconsider and change aspects of the story without fundamentally changing the concept of a punk, rebellious Devil May Cry game. First, though, I must establish what I mean by punk.
Because DMCDMC certainly isn't. DMCDMC wears the surface level aesthetics of punk, with Dante being rude and cursing and being "rebellious," but the game never actually does anything genuinely subversive. By fighting in limbo, Dante's actions are completely invisible and barely transgress anything at all. Sure, Dante and Vergil and Kat work for "The Order", but The Order never actually does anything meaningful.
Dante and Vergil themselves aren't punk at all, they're completely standard, toxically-masculine gross fratboys in their banter. Vergil is honestly more of a terrorist than a punk, constantly threatening the lives of people close to Mundus instead of like, actually doing anything to inspire others to transgress. Kat is a little bit closer to punk, being a street artist, but once again, in the context of the narrative, she doesn't do anything. She's window-dressing for the presumably straight male target audience to ogle and be an object to be used by the plot when she gets kidnapped.
The story isn't transgressive at all. It's like the republican bro idea of transgressive, with intense violence towards women and shoving tits into the camera and swearing, but it doesn't say anything. The big scene at the end where the public "has awoken" comes so late that it doesn't matter, and it's so out of nowhere and the style is completely incongruous, it feels like it was from an earlier draft of the plot than anything meaningful. The characters are so nothing, with completely stock, dull personalities, and the dialogue is plain, characterless, mundane Hollywood garbage with absolutely no wit, despite really looking like it's trying to be cool and punk.
I think why game journalists keep insisting on defending this game is because it really tries to be meaningful, it feels like it's saying something with its aesthetic and tone, and most game journalists have proven themselves time and time again completely inadequate for evaluating actual themes in writing. Well, that, and because a lot of the hate for DMCDMC comes from gamergate dudebros, but that has the tragic side-effect of getting mixed up with legitimate criticism of how the story treats its women and how bland the dialogue is.
In short, DMCDMC could be a lot better if the plot was actually punk in any way, shape, or form, and actually tried to use its characters. It would be better if the characters weren't insufferable and utterly plain, and had anything to say beyond incredibly obvious and rote social commentary.
Instead of Vergil and Kat and The Order already existing and kind of scooping Dante up, instead the plot would begin with the foundation of the order, of the three of them as separate artists doing their thing and coming together for solidarity and to perform more meaningful, complex operations, together as a group. Instead of demons existing entirely in limbo, artists and performers were able to make normal humans notice the demons, notice what is wrong with their world, what has infested their world, with their art. As such, instead of just being punks/nebulous rebels, the main three characters are different kinds of artists, who inspire people to fight for justice with their works. Instead of Kat being a bland sex object, Kat is a fully-fledged playable character alongside Dante and Vergil.
Mundus and the other demons are mor or less similar, rich oligarchs who hold a grip on the souls of the masses, except maybe having a demonic police force as well. There could be a subplot where high-ranking humans in Mundus's businesses have to literally sacrifice their humanity to pursue their careers further, something specifically to highlight the humanity of the demons. Additionally, the Devil Arms would be granted by demons that the team wins over, bringing them to their side and showing that even the demons can be brought back to justice, even if they need a lot of convincing.
The order would have to build up support from the masses and the demons with their missions, intended to strike at various parts of Mundus's enterprises and expose their truth. Instead of Vergil just sitting in the base and Kat being pure support, the three of them would work in tandem, and each one would contribute to the missions in different ways. Each character would be a different kind of artist, to tie into the theme of transgression. Additionally, each character would be characterized in a totally different way, so as to make them actually punk.
Dante's backstory would be changed completely. Instead of being a drunken wretch in an RV, Dante would be assigned female at birth, raised by a deeply conservative single mother who works a shit job in Mundus's businesses to support them. Dante would practice dance and swordfighting in secret, dissatisfied with their body in a way that they cannot quite place.
Frustrated with themself and the world around them, they would find a coat from their father, and, bearing a mask, set out to fight the demons they had always seen, adopting the name "Dante" as an alias, performing as an over the top, confident character. Doing this, Dante would discover that they were, in fact, male all along, and that Dante was not an alias, but who he was meant to be all along, that they wished they could be cool and confident about who they are. Additionally, Dante would discover that his absent father was Sparda, a demon who rebelled against Mundus's cruel order for the good of humanity, but was gunned down and imprisoned.
Dante's over the top antics with weapons would be grounded in his performance/acrobatics background. DMCDMC already tries to position itself as a sort of prequel to the other games, so I liked the idea of Dante starting out kind of awkward and dysphoric and growing to be comfortable and confident and cool. A story of Dante becoming... who he was always meant to be. Having Dante as a trans man would further emphasize that theme of becoming one's ideal self, even in the face of an oppressive, unaccepting society, transgressing and reshaping that society to be more accepting and just.
I have a lot fewer ideas for Vergil. Vergil would still be relatively serious and level-headed, a martial artist focusing on swordfighting with a katana he inherited from his absent mother. Vergil would also discover that he is half-demon, and uses his sword demonstrations to expose demons and inspire people. Vergil and Dante would have kind of a rivalry with their fighting styles, but are fundamentally on the same side and fighting for the same cause. He would have the concentration bar, and get new devil arms from more serious, level-headed demons, to match his personality.
Additionally, because I cannot help myself, there would be a small arc where Vergil gets stuck with a cursed fedora that he can't take off, that would function as a weapon similar to Faust, where he'd keep trying to throw the infernal thing away, but it'd always come back after he threw it on a demon, which would make them take extra stun or some other mechanic like that. I'm just enamored with the idea of an evil fedora that Vergil can't throw away that keeps coming back to him, also because it's just really, really fun to mock DMCDMC Vergil's stupid hat.
Kat would be a skateboarding, boombox-toting, Jet-Set-Radio-inspired street artist and graffiti punk. Coming from an abusive family, Kat learned that she could escape and become a graffiti artist, speeding along on her skateboard. Kat would be the most experienced member of the team, as she's been a graffiti artist for a few years, far more than either Dante or Vergil have been performing, so she acts more as the level-headed core to Dante's growing enthusiasm and Vergil's motivated ambition.
Kat would be promoted to a full playable character alongside Dante and Vergil, and her gameplay style would be an unholy blend of character action games and skateboarding games, with the fluid, constant movement of a Tony Hawk or Jet Set Radio, with the fighting of a character action game, using the environment to perform tricks and better take out enemies. Kat would still be a painter, able to use her magic paint to place traps and lure enemies into them. She would get style ranks by also doing tricks in the environment, not just defeating enemies. Part of Kat's gameplay could be painting over the demonic text/subliminal messaging that DMCDMC has, actually using something that the original game has but doesn't meaningfully use.
Since this rewrite uses the old rules of devil arms, where the weapons are derived from the demons themselves, I like the idea of Kat's boombox being the devil arm of her demon girlfriend. Like, she specifically changes between humanoid and boombox form and contributes to Kat's performances, and helps the team plan in between missions.
The story would begin with a prologue chapter where you play as each character to learn their playstyle, and each prologue ends with the character finding out about the other two and wanting to meet up. Then, they would become a group and begin to do more elaborate operations, more or less in the same vein of the original game. Stuff like the soda factory raid and the demonic newscaster would still be in, but instead of Dante going in alone, all three characters would be involved in different parts of the operation. Dante's and Vergil's rivalry would lead to them trying to outdo eachother and show off more, but early on, would inevitably get them into trouble and require Kat to bail them out, as she's by far the most experienced member of the team at the start.
I invision a scene near the start of the game, such as after the soda factory operation, where the team is watching the news to see how Bob Barbas twists their exploits, and the news zooms on Dante's face and says something like: "We've discovered that Dante is actually just some lost, delusional girl that dropped out of school." This of course, makes Dante feel incredibly uncomfortable, as the demonic newscaster has just forcibly outed him on TV, but the team immediately jumps to his support and says stuff like: "Ugh, what a piece of shit! That asshole! We gotta get him next," and in general is nothing but supportive about Dante, which helps him build up confidence.
One thing that could be really interesting would be Vergil acting as a double agent for Mundus, secretly sent in to find the people most dangerous to his tyranny and destroy them from the inside. This would be revealed later on in a big scene where it looks like Vergil betrays the team and Dante has to fight him. Truthfully, however, Dante's sincerity and Kat's passion will have won Vergil over by that time, and he uses this staged betrayal to trick Mundus into thinking that he's still on his side, while working from the shadows to still support the team. He'd probably return at the climax and reveal the truth to Dante, that he started out as a mole for Mundus but that the team had completely won him over.
One of the other themes I wanted to cover is found family. In this game, Dante and Vergil are specifically not brothers, but become close over the course of the game and regard eachother as brothers by the end of it. This would acts as a foil to the mainline DMC games' focus on blood ties. I don't really want to focus on any kind of romantic stuff in the plot at all, I invision this incarnation of Vergil as asexual, and Kat already has a girlfriend by the start of the game. Those details are there, but not really a focus of the story.
DMCDMC is the kind of bad game that's endlessly fascinating. It's thoroughly unpleasant and thematically vapid, which isn't helped by the bland, basic gameplay that lacks any of the style or energy of Devil May Cry. It's the kind of bad game that I can't stop thinking about, because the idea has so much unrealized potential. I think that fundamentally, Dante as a counter-cultural rebellious figure could be a really interesting contrast from his usual portrayal, especially framed as an origin story like DMCDMC tries to do. I hope I have been able to convey some of that potential here.