And if you’re worried about waiting for the storyline’s other shoe to drop, it doesn’t, maybe thanks to 28 Days Later scribe Alex Garland’s script consulting. In other words, you can enjoy DmC for other things aside from the combat-the Fincher-esque smeared lens camerawork and erratic art direction in the alternate dimension of Limbo in particular never disappoint. It’s the kind of game whose parts feel appropriate for an age of burgeoning intelligence in videogames: quick-cut editing, twisted visual design and vicious satire make for a clever, literal interpretation of Hell-as-consumerism.
Unlike internally-developed entries of the past, DmC expects you to accept it on its developers' terms, and they have something a bit more high-minded in mind than the typically nonsensical and silly storytelling Capcom has honed over the years. With a company like Ninja Theory, which values narrative concepts and ideas as much as it does gameplay, this isn’t too surprising. But whether fanboys like it or not, it’s DmC’s-or Dante’s-new aesthetic that perfectly symbolizes that hated thing called progress.
Externally it comes off like Ninja Theory took a moment just to laugh at (or maybe more appropriately, to give the finger to) the hardest of the hardcore Devil May Cry traditionalists that boycotted and made death threats and otherwise generally went too far in expressing their distaste for Dante’s rebooted look. With his dressed-down industrial club goth wear, junkie-chic physique and Pretty Hate Machine-era Trent Reznor hair, the image of Dante momentarily affecting his previous incarnation's appearance is as incendiary as it is funny. “Huh,” he remarks, smirking almost into the camera. The brash young son of Sparda pauses for a moment to examine his appearance in a dirty reflection. Chasing a simian demon through an infested boardwalk, Dante exits out of a building just as it collapses, which sends a white wig flying to land on top of his head. There’s a great Kojima-esque meta joke in the first ten minutes of DmC.