Devil May Cry 2 - What Happened?

[Music] and now here's little v mills playing the iconic theme from devil may cry 2. wait what iconic song from devil may cry 2. i yeah you know the that's the song the the devil may cry too song dude does does devil may cry to even have songs yeah yeah there is the infested chopper i think listen let me know when you know what the hell you're doing man i'm i'm out of here hey no you come back here we're not done yet and let that be our tone setter now it has been uh six days since we last talked about a capcom game here on what happened but thanks to big boss trey adams at the flophouse vip patreon this week we are table hopping into the story of how capcom almost killed one of its most influential franchises that originally spawned at one of their other most influential franchises this is how devil may cry 2 nearly sealed the fate yet at the same time went on to reignite the sword slashing series with smoking sexy style dmc as some may know originally started as an attempt to craft a new resident evil title the re4 in fact but with the radical changes that windex enthusiast and man who still has me blocked hideki kamia instituted it was decided to spin the game off into its own thing capcom was and still is all about producing sequels for just about everything except for spyborgs and it was much the same here when it came to their newest star the demon hunter dante see they were very confident in dmc's chances at retail for a few reasons with said reasons being it was directed by the person who helmed re2 it was an exclusive for sony's follow-up console which was a pretty popular and lastly they knew that dark souls would go on to be a cultural milestone moment that would define a generation so a team was put together to start working on a sequel but unlike most video game publishers or businesses in general this was done before dante had yet to bust out a single stinger yes a follow-up was greenlit before the original had even been released which was incredibly ballsy of capcom but given the eventual success of dante's first adventure they were right to do so because there wasn't any real reaction to the first game yet no feedback to draw upon the team were given pretty much carte blanche to do whatever which is one of the main problems that plagued devil may cry to lack of any real direction and a team that was incredibly inexperienced now what do i mean by that well in devil may cry 3142 graphic arts various staff that had worked on the series since its inception shown some lights on the dark soul of the project one of these staff members was legendary capcom artist ikeno who detailed just why the team that was put together maybe wasn't the best choice capcom had traditionally been split into two main pillars the arcade division and the console division but with the ps2's increased processing power and a change in the nature of capcom's arcade game market meant a company-wide shift of human resources from arcade to console with the company's big hits at the time like resident evil and dmc many of the arcade fighting game teams were switched over to teams making games for the home consoles these former arcade division employees were put in charge of the dmc sequel this was a problem because with all their design experience coming from arcades quick quarter munching experiences that could be completed in 30 minutes or less it left the team with little knowledge on how to craft a beefier level based action game for context capcom's late era arcade titles for things like power stone and spawn in the demon's hand projects that wouldn't have adequately prepared them for tackling the complexities of creating a sequel for a franchise that they had no hand in creating what's worse is that pretty much every major staff member who contributed to dmc one was absent on the sequel with some not even being aware that dmc2 was the thing that was happening until months after the fact kamiya kobayashi pretty much all the experienced hands within the console division never even touched this thing in their stead capcom put fresh new hire su yoshi tanaka in a producing role with directing duties being handled by a question mark this is one of the still remaining mysteries which clowns devil may cry 2 as the original director to this day has never been publicly named some have speculated it was shinji makami or the windex master himself even though none of that makes any sense for literally all the reasons what we do know is that the initial team makeup was composed of people who had worked on capcom's arcade fighters but beyond that the original director remains an enigma trapped in a riddle trapped in a red coat now earlier i mentioned this new team was given maybe a bit too much freedom in their approach to a sequel and ikeno gave some insight into their thought process at the time which was many of them didn't even understand or like aspects of devil may cry at first the protagonist wasn't even going to be dante but rather some guy with a green jacket looking back at the game's fundamentals like the visuals and the overall design we didn't take the parts of dmc one that players wound up loving into account so the second game felt very artificial i think our attitude was a little too much we're gonna make it how we want to dante's sudden change into a more taciturn or reserved character was the producer's decision because he didn't like the joke i was about to say joke asking wisecrack joke cracking wise ass dante from the first game the team agreed and that was the direction we went in dante's sudden silence almost seemed to imply that something terrible had happened between the events of one and two aside from just changes to characterization the team struggled in another area level design since the original dmc was built off the skeleton of a resident evil game multi-tiered level structure backtracking and puzzle items were prominently featured this new team having zero experience designing in that style simply made large mostly barren stages that had little functionality or detail leading to a very empty game world by comparison things meandered on like this for about a year with the game and team never really coalescing and with only six months left in the proposed deadline this is when capcom higherups took a good hard look at the project and realized it was probably going to get an f ranking in the style department therefore they stepped in to try and course correct now i know what you're thinking oh man this must be the part where things got really [ __ ] and in a nice twist no it's not it is in fact where dmc 2 got unfucked or less [ __ ] i should say with everyone else at capcom kind of busy or maybe when asked if they wanted to take over directing duties and replying with oh was then hired to reorganize the project with the older mystery director being hoofed out in the process now it's true that atsuno also came from an arcade background having worked on both rival schools and power stone among many others but at the end of the day still had a ton of experience leading on big projects there was a lot of drama over my replacing of the old director and i have nothing but bad memories about that part in particular but basically they said that nothing was getting done and had needed to change the scenario hadn't been written the cut scenes had yet to be shot and they hadn't decided what to do about dante's devil trigger they had determined that the stinger attack was essential so at least they had someone who was going to take care of that but none of the other attacks had been worked on at all speaking of attacks and combat it's another aspect of this sequel that the team felt needed to change despite it being an integral part of the first game see when capcom started receiving fan feedback and reaction from dmc one some of it revolved around its difficulty as there was really nothing exactly like it on the market dante's quest challenged you to stylishly kill enemies without ever getting touched which was something not every player was accustomed to so it was decided to lower the overall difficulty and when i say lowered i mean spam your guns seriously 75 of the game can be trivialized by whipping out ebony and ivory and to never stop shoot banging this distinction is what caused some to call dmc 2 the best third-person shooter released in 2003 and unfortunately this was something it suno either didn't or couldn't really change the hardcore fans of dmc one weren't exactly happy but newcomers to the series liked it a lot the people who especially liked it were the ones who had tried dmc 1 but found it too difficult and quit part way through i read a lot of survey responses along the lines of dmc one was awesome but i just wasn't feeling it i felt it in dmc 2 though so thanks i need to meet these fans seriously which part were you feeling there bro this with half a year left there were only so many things that could be addressed and finished and considering the overall quality of dmc2 i'm not gonna lie i would love to have played the original pre-itsuno version just to prove to myself that i could with that said it's actually surprisingly not all bad because under it suno some novel features that started here went on to become dmc mainstays this includes switching weapons mid combat evasive maneuvers like rolling flipping and wall running assigned to a button and finally the introduction of bloody palace mode which is something that's now expected in all future dmcs but as much as it's suno's involvement helped there were plenty of other lamentable decisions that still managed to slip through a big back of the box selling point was the addition of a second playable character something so groundbreaking and bleeding edge that it would need its own dedicated disc to become a reality lucia was a crimson-haired counterpart to dante who he would sometimes suddenly bump into during the course of the game putting the lucia disc into your ps2 would then allow you to play the game as lucia and uh that's it minor differences aside both discs contain almost identical data so it's been rumored that this was simply a marketing tactic to make players believe they were getting tons of bangs for their bucks now while this being the case was never confirmed by a capcom employee i mean yeah it was strange that final fantasy 10 a cut-scene and dialogue filled 40-plus hour rpg released two years earlier was able to fit on a single ps2 disc but dmc 2's five-hour odyssey could not now as for lucia herself while brimming with potential wasn't handled all that well as cutscenes and story were hastily put together leading up to the game's launch this left her designer aikeno lamenting the fact that they were not able to expand upon her character sadly the characters in dmc2 dante included are fairly tight-lipped and never really take any drastic action i feel like if we had included a scene that showed how the standoffish lucia is actually kind at heart she would have been a more appealing character but that sweet side never emerged only the prickly one was ever shown and that kind of thing is hard to show comprehensively in any kind of performance now with all that out of the way let's just get right to it remember that time when dmc2 had diesel brand clothing diesel brand clothing diesel branded clothing seems like something of an odd fit for a capcom game they didn't typically succumb to the allure of product placement in their titles but in this case there was a surprisingly simple but still nevertheless stupid reason it's in there it was because tanaka-san the producer used to work for them it was a collaboration that made good use of his last job people on both sides talked at the time and felt that dmc2 and diesel's visual styles would work well together and would be quite appealing to the casual audience seeing dante and lucia wearing diesel fashion on screen was very cool there's something neat about watching them run through the game's story while wearing those clothes reminds me of re in a way again i i don't know who this appeals to who looks at a shell full of games money clutched in their hands and goes i refuse to buy a game unless it's got some bomb ass diesel jeans oh yeah i got this anyway despite you know everything it suno did the impossible in a mere six months dmc 2 became unplayable to playable albeit a very unexciting action game filled to burst with infested tanks helicopters tanks tanks and more hella tanks and the reviews were uh mixed to say the least with many outlets citing it as the most disappointing game of 2003 with others well not going as far still marked it as a fairly weak follow-up dante even though gaining one of his sharpest designs was criticized for his lack of styling and or profiling with many fans not appreciating his attitude adjustment till next time son of spada a dynamo of charisma complaints were also lobbied against the superfluous second disc boring bosses and inspired level design and especially the brain dead difficulty but especially the overabundance of infested ah god whatever now despite the negative reviews dmc 2 was still a financial success really the only success that matters to most publishers as it wound up posting similar numbers to dmc one at the end of the day it was really this uh thirst for dante which saved the franchise from falling over the edge into obscurityville waltz is down there who is in there oh that yeah who haven't seen you in a while so in a nice twist to the story that's a rarity here on what happened dmc2's reception is what reinvigorated the series to begin with as in suno was determined to right the wrongs when he first wielded rebellion part of me was dissatisfied because i hadn't started with the project from day one as far as i was concerned that didn't amount to a proper level of involvement with dmc so i asked the company if they would give me dmc 3 from the start and they agreed without dmc 3 i would be known as itsuno the director of devil may cry 2 as far as the series is concerned many of the same arcade staff who cut their teeth on console development with itsuno joined him on dante's awakening as well and they all rallied around the idea of going back to his cockier roots infusing the game with a youthful energy and providing deeper combat mechanics making this a prequel to the first game also then logically placed dmc 2 at the end of the series timeline chalking it up to yeah in the future dante he doesn't really talk that's hey look over here he's doing silly things with missiles and [ __ ] so you can say that this unfortunate bumbling step in the franchise is what informed the rest of the series going forward which only got progressively more eccentric every time so in that way dmc 2 is surprisingly important this does of course remind me to remind you all that dmc2 is available in stores on the devil may cry collection as well as a standalone package for 24.99 on the nintendo switch for some reason if you know of any other stylishly troubled video games movies or consoles let me know in the comments below rainstorm down into my twitter or take a motorcycle ride over to the flophouse vip patreon become a big boss and nominate the subject of a future episode of what happened see you next time kids and thanks for watching i can't seem to control this race that's inside me

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 333,593

Rating: 4.9593987 out of 5

Keywords: Devil May Cry 2, Capcom, Matt McMuscles, What Happened?, Wha Happun

Id: 9T9DVqVZcLE

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/bingowashisgameo]

It's weird how I've listened to SBFP/CSB shitting on DMC2 for over a decade yet all that remains in my head when I see any mention of the game now is "BOOTI PLS PLAE DEE EM CEE TOO"

Made me happy when Vinny shouted-out Woolie in his DMC3 finale stream

[u/The_Draigg]

At least the clusterfuck of DMC2 made sure that DMC3 existed. I suppose that justifies the continued existence of DMC2, even if it isn't too hot.

[u/Fugly_Jack]

I'm kinda surprised, I've always wondered if Matt would do a DMC2 Wha Happun, but I didn't think there was enough info known about the game's development for it to happen

[u/ContraryPython]

At least DMC2 introduced things to the series, like the Bloody Palace and the Rebellion. As well as prototypes for Gunslinger and Trickster

[u/Deadeye117]

Hey, is that Little V Mills of Woolie Versus fame? Does that mean Woolie Versus and Matt McMuscles exist in the same canon?

[u/RdmdAnimation]

I remenber this game was one of the first dissapointments in gaming I experienced, it really made me go "whatt he hell happened? why is so bad compared to the first?"

atleast it had some kinda cool visual moments and monster designs

[u/Neil_O_Tip]

DMC2 got FUCKED, maybe it would have been good if given more time and care

[u/timelordoftheimpala]

BOONTI PLEEEEEAS

[u/Bl8k3ii]

I always forget there was a Dmc 2. For me it's Dmc ,dmc3 and the others.