DmC: Devil May Cry - What Happened? (ft. Derek from SSFF)

welcome to another dope crazy savage and smoking sick episode of what happened the show were raquan uh called the catastrophes document the disasters and recount the regrettable z' and flora talkin regrets there's a few companies that have made more decisions that would be better off just not happening then capcom therefore this week's subject is gonna take the combined might of two brightly colored bone based mascots to hack and slash their way through it so without further ado let's get crazy I met at muscles and I'm gonna tell you what happened today bet please allow me to interject here and fill your dark soul with lights oh it's Derek from stop skeletons from fighting hey that's me I'm Derek it's me Derek I think it was about time I invaded one of your videos for a change huh besides this story is more than just a story of one game it is the story of a legendary video game company and their struggle with relevancy between two sides of the planet and it's a story that my partner Grace and I have researched a little bit about so allow me to be the Virgil to your daughter Madeline buddy so let's talk about what happened to DMC Devil May Cry ah Capcom remember the mid lots where Kalka I mean cap God could do no wrong yeah they had an absolutely flawless record no I didn't mean those games I meant like like dead rising and and stuff like that there yeah there were some bad ones too but it wasn't entirely their fault this point in time was the middle of a hard decade for japan-based developers and publishers the Japanese markets were shifting and games with a I guess Japanese flavor stopped making sense as the years went on for example in 2002 s estimated that half of all video games sold were bought by the Japanese but by 2010 when DMC was officially announced the Japanese people only bought 10% of all games sold for instance you know Street Fighter 4 yeah that was a mega hit right well in 2008 the first console edition of Street Fighter 4 sold about 200,000 copies in Japan and about 2.3 million overseas the times they were a-changin and this is where our story begins proper with the release of Devil May Cry 4 in 2008 Devil May Cry 4 represented Capcom's first big return to a classic IP in a while building off the critical and commercial success of Devil May Cry 3 Dante's awakening this series had already been brought back from the brink after the mess that was Devil May Cry 2 Capcom was very optimistic for the sales potential of the franchise and they really had every reason to be the God of War series showed no signs of stopping and proved there was a global appeal to character action games not only that it would be the series first time on HD consoles that's right we said consoles this was the first time the demon-killing stylings of Dante would see release on non Sony machines adding the Xbox 360 and PC to the mix at launch HD development as many companies found out saw a dramatic increase in costs and development time all those fancy over-the-top cutscenes aren't cheap so when it was all said and done 2008 Devil May Cry 4 sold a total of 3 million copies worldwide which ain't a number to kick out of bed but wasn't dramatically better than the last game you see Dante's Awakening topped out at around 2.3 million units though wait no things weren't adding up at all DMC 4 was available on three different formats we should have resulted in a way better style reigning what just an a Capcom was hoping for a triple s so it's not like DMC 4 was a flop or something wait did Capcom think DMC 4 was a flop or something it's kind of hard to say but yeah kinda I mean when it comes to the whole saga of DMC Devil May Cry and reboots in general the first thing publishers should do is properly read the room so what is the thought process here well most would say maybe that's just the upper limit of how many people are actually into DMC because wrong says Capcom the problem is that people are just tired with the current style of Devil May Cry no no we're not we're not we're right because game reviewers are complaining about the cheesy dialogue and the silly characters oh no don't don't get rid of that that's what gives a series it's yes and we can make the combat less complicated for newcomers hey can you even hear us hello yes this is brilliant oh my god everyone start picking out your yachts this is gonna be the best-selling Devil May Cry game ever hallway no no oh so wha-ha-ha Devil May Cry is at its core complicated combo based franchise or requires high execution has weird over-the-top storylines and is also merciless to newcomers so you can bet it really stung when god of war did something similar appealing to the West but resulted with godlike sales numbers but regardless Capcom thought there was a problem and felt that Devil May Cry 4 should have done better commercially and Capcom of course had a surefire solution appeal to the West this edict spearheaded by 1kj Inafune a whose career has been documented with stalker like precision over @ss FF oh yes thank you thank you to kind thank you resulted in such other what happened fodder like this that and even more this now despite all those games beam massive mistakes Capcom producers were already acknowledging this in 2009 by the way that there was a problem with Western versus eastern development coalition cooperations but there was still plenty of gas left in the tank and Capcom had their sights turned westward and just couldn't turn the car around in time to stop all this so for a rebooted Devil May Cry they decided to let some action game luminaries handle their precious IP ones that had made some headway in the West kinda now we enter ninja theory now while they're relatively recognized today back in 2010 their name would elicit a hearty boo while their previous efforts included 2007 s Heavenly Sword a game many hardcore action game fans criticized for its somewhat simple combat and the fact that seemingly prioritized elaborate story and facial animation technology instead then there's their 2010 effort enslaved Odyssey to the West a game criticized for its somewhat simple combat but lauded for its elaborate facial animation who could forget kung fu Kombat game criticized for well this so yeah even though their combat chops were arguably spotty at this point in time there weren't many Western options who could really come to grips with the legacy of Devil May cry's combat anyway rumours however of a DMC reboot began circulating in 2010 with the May issue of Game Informer even stating ninja theory was involved this really couldn't have been timed any worse if they tried by this point Capcom's big western campaign was pretty busy being a massive embarrassment both Bionic Commando & spyborgs sold dismal e the previous year and Dark Void released earlier in 2010 was hot on its heels to sell even worse not to mention the original Devil May Cry creator Hideki Kamiya and his new studio Platinum Games at this point had proven themselves to the public with the incredible Bayonetta so by the time this game informer report hit Capcom fans were already starting to push back against the inevitable DMC was basically doomed at least from a PR standpoint before it even had a chance to prove itself so again in a room style moment were not sure what Capcom was expecting when they officially unveiled the debut trailer for DMC Devil May Cry at that September's TGS - a very mixed response and when we say mixed we mean it was colossal II one sided first off you have a trailer that let's be honest here didn't look all that good the character models felt off it showed zero real-time gameplay it wasn't me by Capcom and was yet another attempt to have a product appeal exclusively to the West when all signs pointed to stop doing that this made for a goofy miasma of negativity that always permeated the news whatever DMC Devil May Cry was brought up and would be something that never fully recovered from oh and one last thing the guy that helped launch this whole of westward expansion thing and specifically was heavily involved in DMC's redesigned KJ Japan is over in a foon a he said yep good luck putting out all my fighters peace out and left Capcom literally a month later to start working on his own massive successes even if ninja theory were making the best playing action game ever created and they were not they still had to contend with fans who were very not into the tonal shift of the characters and the world when fans thought of Dante the thought of things like this in the concept art images and designs coming out of DMC we're giving them this this however actually turned out to be Capcom's doing rather than ninja theories I can't emphasize this more Ninja Theory were basically just journeyman developers even Capcom what they wanted conceptualizing the new Dante during development saw the art team coming back with designs that closely mimicked his original look but it was the producers at Capcom Japan including Devil May Cry 3 & 4 director Hideaki eternal and Keiji Inafune a who urged ninja theory to explore more alternative options so while it's easy to blame the new developer at the wheel they were mandated by Capcom to overhaul everything in terms of art and aesthetics but of course the fans didn't know this at the time and we're looking for any and all reasons to tear into the game so Capcom would need to be very cautious from now on so as not to further goddammit so here is the last and maybe the most damaging aspect of DMC's development Tamim and tiana des keep shall we say was not remotely prepared for the backlash against the MCS new direction or you know maybe that's too generous on VentureBeat shortly after the games really hated revealed trailer a question was posed so how do you feel about the fan reaction to DMC to meme took a drag of a cigarette and then without blinking and without pausing to exhale the smoke from his mouth he said I don't care first off I'm suddenly really starting to believe the rumors that the new Dante was based off of you and second of all you know who probably did care about their game selling to me grin Bionic and airtight games I'm just saying that catering to your fans is not always a bad thing especially since the whole point of this reboot was that so that DMC would grow the fanbase and not shrink it but the Tamim train does and here and now it's time for what else did to me say well the essence of Devil May Cry is all about cool smoke don t being cool making you feel cool when you're playing it and so the combat and the style system and everything is integral to that but you know what was cool twelve years ago I think that was when the first game came out isn't cool anymore anyway ii mean what goes on to say if dante dressed as he was walked into any bar outside of tokyo he'd get laughed out while the core of these statements have some merit this is not what you should say to convince Capcom fans that their franchise is safe and when you think of video games as a medium it seems as long as you make great games generally you're fine if you keep doing the same thing over and over okay the next quote I want to treat you to come amid 2012 ps3 Magazine at this point in our story ninja Theory had been receiving death threats so it can't exactly blame him for this but it starts out good kinda usually the worst creative crimes are made when you're trying to make a game for someone else some perceives demographic that in all likelihood doesn't actually exist from my point of view there's only one way to try and make a successful game and that's to make the game that you want to play a game that everyone involved is proud of okay you know that's fine so from that point of view I don't care if it sells a thousand units or two million units oh oh no to me mall baby no now to be fair this article was full of weirdness like the interview really asked the hard-hitting questions like what about the series history with massive tits to which she replied I've got nothing against big tits I'd rather have my head resting on a pear right now okay duly noted um while we applaud to meme for living his devil-may-care gimmick all this was a risky attitude to put forward if you want you know your company to continue to exist anyway it might not surprise you but to meme did less and less interviews as time went on yeah I know and that spanned a good two whole years of solid development during that time we actually saw subtle changes to Dante his voice attitude and other visual aspects were tweaked despite to meme claiming he didn't care about fan feedback one of the more evident changes was Dante's body type he went from being somewhat scrawny and emaciated in his debut to then suddenly pack an absolute beef stuff by the game's launch so at least improvements were happening minor as they were other trailers like the one from e3 2012 seemingly put more emphasis on story and characters and well the story was always kind of viewed as secondary or even tertiary in the Devil May Cry universe with action being the primary focus Dante was just a half to even higher bred that liked killing things and being crazy he was never much deeper than that and he didn't really need to be but then capcom decided that he really needed to be now he's a misunderstood rebel who has a rough exterior but secretly was to find his place in the world but needs the proper motivation to do so to fulfill his destiny and blah blah blah blah blah again this shows a disconnect between Capcom and their fan base Dante's appeal was that he was a goofy [ __ ] and it's unlikely these more serious story focused trailers sold many new fans on the franchise because certainly wasn't pleasing the diehards now while all this was well and good theoretically to appeal to potential new fans of the series on a visual level gameplay obviously required a redesign as well which is a far trickier and some would say pointless endeavor lead combat designer Ronny Tucker said the goal of DMC was to make a system that allowed newcomers to create their own elaborate combos but still offer multiple elements veterans can enjoy however this is like saying you want all your groceries in one bag but don't want the bag to be heavy the black and white of it is that high execution character action games like this are not meant to be friendly to newcomers and designing the system around tackling this problem is basically pointing your pizza and eating it to all these quotes about gameplay system changes we're not going down well with the people who cut their teeth on things like dmc3 okay so now would be a good time to sum up everything so far that was working against DMC success a developer fans were unsure of a very divisive art style and tone combat that was trying to appeal to all ages and constantly being compared to what was seen as the real action games coming down to platinum so things really couldn't get any worse until they did ninja theories last game enslaved Odyssey to the West exclusively ran on the Unreal 3 engine which was you know pretty standard at the time it was not standard however was its inability to handle 60 frames per second because in terms of pure design it was never initially intended to run games at such a frame rate so the fact that ninja theory were using it for DMC was cause for concern Capcom knew there is no sense in hiding it because as soon as they showed real-time gameplay people would use their eyes especially longtime fans of the series who were accustomed to the silky smooth action that all the previous entries featured but not all was lost while 30 frames per second would be the default on consoles and players really needed to double or triple that they could just purchase the Steam version yes with the power afforded by pcs DMC would run in an unlocked frame rate of 60 being very much doable Capcom did put a lot of work into this particular PC port but still wasn't enough for hardcore fans were upset that what was seen as a long-standing DMC tenant 60 frames per second was now locked away on a particular format oh yeah the reaction was not exactly what Capcom was looking for at the end of the day though if Unreal three couldn't do 60 on consoles then there wasn't much else they could do oh right well ok so unreal 3 could get to 60 on consoles but only bite another realm Studios the blowback against DMC wasn't even exclusive to this game it also managed to splash onto other games like PlayStation all-stars battle royale now we're not gonna mince words there is a lot like a lot you can say about the roster of PlayStation all-star battle royale but one of the more unfortunate choices was using DMC Dante or Dino or don't take or whatever fan name you prefer as a playable character in lieu of the classic white-haired look you have a game that was supposed to be at least fans thought celebrating two decades of PlayStation titles and characters so when the older tante that had three exclusive Sony games under his belt was excluded it was it was bad it was bad idea was wrong move this is no one paying attention here especially when classic Devil May Cry 3 Dante found his way into Marvel vs. Capcom in 2011 it just seemed like Capcom made a deal to advertise the upcoming game as PlayStation not so all-stars released at the tail end of 2012 which was not too far off the January release eight of DMC a mere two months later this inclusion / exclusion again kind of robbed a lot of fans a lot of the wrong way when everyone's the skin was already kinda raw and bloody from the previous rub downs now with all of this ill will to meme drive-by comets and the fact that Capcom never truly found their footing throughout the early HD era of gaming would be easy to assume the MCS launch would get a D or less in terms of style but it wound up launching to mostly positive reviews overall and in fact the reviews were pretty much in line with what DMC for initially got whoever critics still found the story predictable and a little on the nose with paper-thin characters instantly plot twists and dialogue so in terms of critical reception nothing really changed here for the better or the worse but the commercial aspect is another story Capcom's initial projections for DMC was to sell two million copies in its first fiscal year which it did not do and then later revised that to 1.2 million furthermore for their sales report that year Packham stayed a few reasons why they felt the releases were languishing behind their projections and while they didn't name DMC directly at least one of the explanations could be applied to the project there was a delayed response to the expanding digital contents market and insufficient coordination between the marketing and the game development divisions in overseas markets and finally there was a decline in quality due to excessive outsourcing so yeah whatever that meant in fact it took about five years for DMC to sell what they were initially hoping for with Capcom reporting back in the summer of 2018 at the game finally crossed the 2.4 million unit threshold placing it far behind the 3 million-plus copies DMC 4 would achieve the main goal of this project was to catapult the series to greater sales and notoriety while it failed to do that DMC at least did not become the dreaded entry that killed the franchise like say the Bionic Commando reboot or Onimusha 4 still Capcom remained quiet on the character action front until they released the definitive edition for the Xbox one ps4 and PC in 2015 this had tons of gameplay improvements that fans had been vocal about featured 60 frames per second on all versions had all the downloadable content and ditional costumes bundled in including that classic DLC costume that was available a few months after the launch of the vanilla version on the million years yeah I guess that million years came faster than you thought anyway sometimes you know definitive versions are not much better than the originals but this is not the case here Capcom listened to a lot of feedback and made some smart changes that truly make this the best version of DMC ever and while that's great it does make you wonder how much better the reboot would have done if all this new content and gameplay changes had been there day one furthermore from what we can tell the two studios are still friendly and its suno has even said he would have loved to make a DMC Devil May Cry two they would deal each to know another hand a hand that would see longtime Devil May Cry fans rejoicing at last III 2018 during Microsoft's conference the announcement of Devil May Cry 5 the sequels of Devil May Cry 4 was made public after several months of rumors within seconds people could see that this was ignoring the continuity of ninja theories world with the return of Dante Nero a bevy of new characters and the cheesy cheekiness the fans have come to admire about the series this then of course also marks the final nail in the coffin for ninja theory because much like gran and airtight gains before them they saw their doors close after working with countless huh what oh no that's right ninja Theory actually survived the DMC debacle in fact they found great success with hell-blade their attempt at what they called a triple-a indie title which sounded risky on paper but their slow rollout of well optimized ports on the ps4 PC Xbox one and the eventual switch version has clearly paid dividends this also happens to be the next directorial effort fire old friend to meme who has seemingly chilled out in the subsequent years Capcom didn't die ninja Theory are doing well and unlike many many many less fortunate IPs devil may cry is still table hopping and devil TruGreen to this day but it's probably safe to assume that the book on the rebooted universe is not gonna reopen anytime soon this is a case where a misguided attempt to broaden the appeal of a series neither destroyed nor caused it to flourish which is exceedingly rare in the video game industry it just goes to show that Devil May Cry fans are absolutely crazy and are strong enough to endure a few bumps in the road for their favorite missile riding pizza-eating guitar plane motorcycle swing in series speaking of a few bumps in the road however maybe you'd like to see what difficulties Capcom had bringing over some of their other famous franchises like Mega Man or devil kings who yeah do you want to hear how devil Kings is kind of but actually not at all a spin-off of Dettol may cry why not check out the video in the link for How the West Was worst capcom Edition and in the next little while we're gonna have a part two and exclusive about the East versus West changes for Street Fighter and final fight o final fight you say well I might have a few morsels of information I could contribute you know I had a feeling you would Matt be on the lookout for that over at stop skeletons from fighting Derrick thank you so much for helping on this episode of what happened and tell grace thanks for her tireless research as well oh I will you're very welcome thanks for having me so for me Matt muscles and Derrick I'm wrong about eternal darkness Alexander they're just not for me thanks for watching everyone yeah whatever come talk to me when you finished ill bleed [Music] oh shut up [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 775,590

Rating: 4.8448181 out of 5

Keywords: Devil May Cry 5, DmC: Devil May Cry, Video Game Disasters, Capcom, Matt McMuscles, Whu Happun, Dante

Id: sfDKhSPSqNA

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/The_Draigg]

It’s always comes back to Inafune, doesn’t it? It’s kinda weird to me how Capcom’s large rough patch can be more or less traced to one person. You’d think it would be more complicated than that.

[u/SailorSenshiDarkSun]

Hey! Devil May Cry is deeper than you think it is buddy!

[u/GizmoKSX]

Minor nitpick: The Definitive Edition was never released on PC. As mentioned, the port has the high fps option, but not the massive 23-page changelog. I've seen stuff about pre-DE fan mods that made similar changes, but I haven't been able to find them.

Even more minor nitpick: The DMC4 footage shows Vergil, but he wasn't playable until the Special Edition re-release in 2015.

[u/delightfuldinosaur]

Wait Giant Bomb gave DMC a perfect score? Wtf?!?

[u/AlwaysDragons]

Ahh a episode I was hoping for.

kinda funny, I did like that original concept art that went back to dmc1 Dante before Capcom told them to scrap it and go further with the emo.

[u/TheCoolerDylan]

Capcom: We want DmC to sell at least 2 million copies, we personally hope ideally for it to reach 5 million

Tameem: Yeah, about that, I'm aiming for 1000 copies

[u/Shrekt115]

Dis gon be gud

[u/[deleted]]

You guys just didn't like it 'cause of the hair.

[u/therealchadius]

Matt you can't tease me with those -BURN- Mega Man X7 screenshots. Make sure that game is on the- BURN TO THE GROUND- list.

I need a dumb excuse to spam Flame Hynard quotes.