DmC Devil May Cry

Capcom’s live demo of Devil May Cry at Gamescom 2011 dispelled any doubts I had about the game’s direction. The trailer released yesterday does a great job showing off Dante’s aerial-assault combat style, but the best part of the game isn’t in there: the way the city itself is trying to kill the insouciant hero.

I saw Dante following a slim girl through city streets, chatting about their plans to combat an unnamed force. Suddenly, a CCTV camera spots Dante. A distorted, guttural voice gurgles something unintelligible, and a demonic eye thrusts from the camera as the city shifts disturbingly.

“They’re pulling me into Limbo!” Dante shouts as he draws his sword. The angles of the city change, becoming something out of M.C. Escher’s nightmares. Buildings crowd oppressively over the street. Apartments that looked normal, if disheveled, take on a grim hue as their stonework facades adopt a tinge of corruption. The people walking the streets fade away, replaced by translucent silhouettes that phase in and out of sight. Only the girl’s voice remains. Only she can talk to Dante when he occupies this other world – why? Capcom won’t say just yet, but did admit that the unnamed young woman plays a pivotal role in Devil May Cry’s story.

With his unstoppable sword, two iconic handguns, and the new spectral axe and scythe weapons he has access to in his demon and angel personas, Dante obliterates the skeletons that spontaneously take shape on this monstrous plane. After spreading them in an even layer along a city block, our hero uses his chain to traverse the crumbling balconies that front along a street that no longer offers a path – the pavement has fallen away, leaving only a twisting formlessness calling Dante into the void. The same chain used for traversal (and, naturally, whipping enemies helplessly about during combat) spikes the demonic eyeball and rips it from the camera with a wet slurp. This section of the demo ends as the city reverts to its normal proportions and Dante returns to the mortal sphere.

Another scenario served as an even more impressive indication of the direction Ninja Theory and Capcom are taking DMC. Dante is once again pulled into Limbo as he enters a cathedral, but this time it’s not the undead he has to fear – it’s the city itself. The floor falls away, revealing another glimpse of horribly roiling netherspace. The walls slam in, closer, closer, trying to crush Dante as he sprints toward a sliver of daylight in front of him. Prominently featuring the chain and his angelic-powered air dash, Dante’s mad dash through the possessed cathedral (which keeps elongating in front of him, refusing to let him go and twisting Euclidean space beyond its natural limits to do so) is almost parkour. Finally, he reaches the stained glass window that offers escape, only to have the wall tilt away from him as the cathedral extends its grasp as far as it can. Dante slides down the animated structure and shoots out the window to allow his weight to clumsily crash through the glass, ending that section of the demo.

The element of the demo that makes me so enthusiastic for DMC is the hardest thing to put into words: the sheer sense of physical threat that the city projects. Walls don’t just grind together in their quest to paste Dante; they slam toward one another in fits and starts. The cathedral toys with Dante, flinging the floor in front of him suddenly out of reach as he sprints away from the malevolent architecture and playing games with the player’s perspective as an exit that seemed so close is yanked away at the last second. The techniques used in DMC are part of successful horror cinema canon for good reason; they evoke gut-twisting reactions by turning around our intuitive grasp of spatial reasoning.

I wasn’t on board with this re-envisioned DMC until now; I thought that Dante looked like a whiny teenager and didn’t care for the modern aesthetic in previous teaser trailers. Now that I’ve had a taste of what the final product will be, though, I wholeheartedly support the bold new direction Capcom and Ninja Theory are taking a franchise that I have a lot of love for.

Devil May Cry does not yet have a release date, but it can’t come to Xbox 360 and PS3 soon enough for me. At least we have a fresh trailer and screens from GamesCom for the moment.