Devil May Cry 5: Matt Walker talks Crew Cut, Turbo Mode, inertia and that cowboy dance
Jason Hidalgo, Reno Gazette Journal Jason Hidalgo
Will Crew Cut be playable? How did the Dante cowboy dance come up? We ask Devil May Cry 5 producer Matt Walker about all things DMC5.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
It’s the day before Devil May Cry 5’s worldwide release and Capcom’s Matt Walker can finally let out a sigh of relief.

Just a little over 24 hours ago, the review embargo for the game was officially lifted. Walker says the development staff put their heart and soul into making Devil May Cry 5 as good as it could be. Nevertheless, that sneaky devil known as uncertainty still whispered in his ear.

“A lot of people just worked really hard at making something that they think people are really going to enjoy,” Walker said. “But you just don't know until the game comes out. We were all kind of like, ‘All right, how is this gonna go?’”

Devil triggered: Devil May Cry 5 review

Once the review scores started trickling out, however, Walker and the Devil May Cry 5 team got the validation they were hoping for. After seeing a slew of 9-out-of-10 and even 10-out-of-10 scores, Walker immediately started sending messages to DMC5 director Hideaki Itsuno. Walker also started pulling and translating quotes to send back to the Japanese staff members. Given how much they’ve poured into the game, Walker says he just wanted the team to see that their work was being appreciated.

“They don't read English so they're not going to look through articles in English,” Walker said. “I was forwarding messages (and telling them) ‘People love what you’re doing and I just wanted you to know that.’”

With Devil May Cry 5 hovering in the high 80s in review aggregators Opencritic and Metacritic, the next test for the game is coming up. It's a test that's even more important than review scores.

“Now actual players get a chance to get their hands on it,” Walker said. “We can’t wait to see what players think.”

Devil may resurrect

The road to Devil May Cry 5 is a long one with unexpected twists and turns. Director Itsuno always wanted to make another game in the series. The game he initially wanted to see made, however, likely isn’t the one that fans expect.

In 2013, Capcom released a reboot of the franchise in the form of DMC: Devil May Cry by Ninja Theory. While the game’s grittier re-imagining of Dante and the series’ trademark campy style ended up being polarizing for many longtime fans, it was a game that Itsuno quite liked. When Capcom brought back Devil May Cry 4 via a Special Edition for current consoles and PC, for example, it took some of Vergil’s moves from DMC: Devil May Cry and incorporated it into the character’s move set for the re-release.

“Itsuno-san was working with Ninja Theory directly on DMC: Devil May Cry as he was making Dragon's Dogma,” Walker said. “He was taking all these trips out to London just constantly (to meet with Ninja Theory) and he fully expected that we would make a DMC: Devil May Cry 2 after we made the first one.”

Things didn’t quite pan out internally, however, and the idea was shelved. Walker made sure to point out that the decision had nothing to do with any perceived lack of faith from Capcom on Ninja Theory. Since E3 2018, Walker has stressed that neither he nor Itsuno were putting down DMC: Devil May Cry or Ninja Theory when they indicated that DMC5 was a true sequel to Devil May Cry 4. All they meant was that DMC 5 was a continuation of the original series, according to Walker.

(Video note: The voice actress for Nico is Faye Kingslee.)

“(DMC: Devil May Cry) was a fantastic game,” Walker said. “Ninja Theory has a sense of style that is unrivaled in the game industry &mldr; and we were all hoping that we'd see (a sequel). Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.”

While the franchise was on hiatus, however, Itsuno never forgot about it. Looking back at Capcom’s history, action games were an integral part of its DNA and Itsuno yearned to make the kind of pure action title that the company popularized. After a couple or so years, Itsuno decided to take his thoughts straight to the top. He met with Capcom founder Kenzo Tsujimoto.

“He goes, ‘Look, I want to make a DMC 5 or Dragon’s Dogma 2,’” Walker said. “To Kenzo’s credit, he goes, ‘You know what? Creators should be able to make what they want to make. So you decide. What do you want to do?’”

Itsuno picked Devil May Cry 5.

Devil is in the details

Once Itsuno received the go-ahead to rev up the devilish franchise once again, it was time to decide what kind of game it would be.

One directive that Itsuno received from his boss Jun Takeuchi was for the game to scream quality just by looking at it. Since a decade has passed since Devil May Cry 4, the Takeuchi wanted the game to be relevant for the present and not just rely on its past glory.

It was a good test for the team, which had access to Capcom’s brand new RE Engine. With that in mind, Itsuno decided to go for a more photorealistic style. The new visual approach was especially obvious in the character’s faces, which sported realistic flesh tones and were modeled from actual people. Capcom also contracted with Serbian company 3Lateral to add even more life to the characters by using facial rigs to create realistic facial expressions. Walker did not shy away when talking about Devil May Cry 5’s visual chops.

“I think we have some of the best facial animation in the industry,” Walker said. “The other insane thing is that nothing in the game is pre-rendered. All of this is real time in RE Engine. Whenever I watch a cutscene I’m like, ‘This is insane. It’s not right.’”

Even the clothing was based on real-life items, as well. During an appearance last year on the Japanese YouTube channel Capcom TV by Walker, Itsuno and Senior Producer Michiteru Okabe, the staffers mentioned that Nero’s outfit was made in London, scanned in Serbia then had the data sent to the DMC 5 staff in Osaka.

In addition to the new visual style, the team also added new characters to help freshen things up. This included mechanical genius Nicolette Goldstein, the granddaughter of legendary gunsmith Nell Goldstein — who made Dante’s sidearms, Ebony and Ivory. Nico, whose sassy interactions with Nero add plenty of amusing moments to the narrative, was purposefully designed to be different from the femme fatales Trish and Lady as well as the more passive Kirie.

“In DMC 4, Kirie was kind of the new female protagonist &mldr; but she wasn’t really on the front lines,” Walker said.

“Basically, she is what Nero lives for but she wasn’t a character that was there to fight. In DMC 5, Itsuno-san wanted a protagonist that was going to be out there and his idea for Nico was a character who was integral to Nero fighting. She’s the one making the Devil Breakers and driving the van. Without her, Nero can’t cut it.”

Then there’s the other key new character V. While V might look like the clamato juice-drinking, Hot Topic-shopping parody that South Park likes to make fun of, he ends up playing an important role, not just in the story but Devil May Cry 5’s gameplay diversity as well.

Dante and Nero, despite their differences, can be seen as two sides of the same coin. V, on the other hand, is a totally different kind of currency altogether. While Sparda’s descendants typically love getting close to the action, V is designed to keep his distance and let his summons Griffon and Shadow do most of the dirty work. In that sense, the mysterious human plays almost like a mage.

“Itsuno-san, when he decided that he was going to make DMC 5, had a couple of ideas right off the bat,” Walker said. “We added Nero for DMC for and he said ‘I want to do that again but it’s gotta be a character that’s completely different from Nero and Dante. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

Smokin’, sexy and stylish

Although Dante and Nero’s gameplay mechanics aren’t quite as new as V’s, they also received some key tweaks.

For Nero, the biggest one is the Devil Breaker arm, which is designed to further differentiate him from Dante. Walker still remembers how the idea came about.

“(Itsuno) said, ‘All right, you know, we put all this effort into making this Devil Bringer for Nero (in DMC 4) and we became really attached to it,” Walker said. “‘We think that people who play the game like it a lot. How would they feel if we just took it away?’ That's literally how he thought about it.”

The result was the Devil Breaker.

In addition to giving Nero a collection of mechanical arms with different properties, Itsuno decided to take the concept a step further. This included making the arms not only fragile but forcing you to destroy them if you wanted to switch mid-stage.

“(Itsuno) said, ‘I want to make the first kind of consumable or disposable weapon in a DMC game,’” Walker said. “By doing that, we can create this kind of gameplay where you have to think of it on a macro level. The strategy is different because before you even go to the mission, you want to think about ‘What's my devil breaker loadout going to be?’ So Dante is all about the freedom of being able to have all of these options at any point in time. Nero is about having a limited set of options, but taking full advantage of those.”

Another change involves gameplay physics. In Devil May Cry 4, for example, players were able to use certain moves to gain additional momentum in the air. The concept, known as “inertia,” made it possible to do techniques such as guard flying. Walker acknowledged inertia as part of DMC 4’s meta — something that the game’s more hardcore players picked up on in the course of playing the game.

In some cases, some of the meta moves discovered by the community were not included by the devs on purpose and are born from what has now become a longstanding tradition of the franchise, Walker said. The Devil May Cry series, for example, owes its existence to those very same unintended consequences.

“DMC 1 started out with, you know, (Hideki) Kamiya-san and those guys where there was a bug when they launched a character up in the air,” Walker said. “Then when they started attacking the character, it kind of juggled them. That kind of started from a bug. Now with the games, you have hardcore players finding even more depth from the bugs.”

In the case of DMC 4-style inertia, the developers decided to change that part of the game for DMC 5. Walker chalked it up to the typical design process that every game goes through, including deciding what familiar elements to keep and which ones to remove or change. While it isn’t possible to use inertia the same way anymore, however, DMC 5’s staff made sure to add new mechanics that players can take advantage of in order to give them additional options when airborne. One is a change in a familiar move in the series called “enemy step.”

“When you pull off certain moves that originally had inertia, now they don't (in DMC 5),” Walker said. “But when you do that enemy step, now you can control what direction you're going to step in. The idea is that we want to try and give people more options for that fight.”

“That's really a conscious decision by all the game designers, including Itsuno-san, that every time we make one of these games, they kind of revisit all the moves and there are also new moves that we add,” Walker added.

The devil you know

Players always appreciate an unexpected yet pleasant surprise.

Walker pointed to the scene where Dante dances with a cowboy hat dance as one such surprise. Although players in the west have attributed the dance as an homage to Michael Jackson, its origins are actually different.

“This is a fun fact that I don't think anybody knows yet,” Walker said. “(Players) feel like that's kind of a Michael Jackson thing. Well in Japan, there's a link between that hat and the dancing. There was this pop star in Japan that would wear a hat like that and basically copped Michael Jackson's dance moves. So it's really a reference to that. In the West, we think it's a Michael Jackson reference even though it's not.”

One surprise that players usually don’t appreciate is the dreaded “M” word: microtransactions. Often seen by the player base as a predatory practice that takes advantage of players, microtransactions have developed a bad reputation, especially after the Star Wars Battlefront II loot box debacle.

In the case of Devil May Cry 5, Walker says they were careful to make sure that microtransactions were balanced. This includes making sure that items offered via microtransactions were not considered essential for enjoying the game. The Cavaliere R that can be bought, for example, has weaker super armor than the regular Cavaliere that is acquired in the game. Also, while players can buy Red Orbs with real currency, Walker says the dev team made sure that Red Orbs can be acquired in-game at the same rate as past titles so players aren’t forced to buy them for upgrades.

“We balanced the game with the idea that you'll never have to purchase Red Orbs,” Walker said. “We've basically failed at our jobs if you feel like you have to buy Red Orbs.”

As far as future DLC, the only one that Capcom has planned is the free Bloody Palace update in April. Walker declined to answer whether Bloody Palace will have co-op and whether it will be randomized like DMC 3 or have set floors like DMC 4. Instead, Capcom is saving those details as another of those unexpected surprises for the game. The team actually intended for Bloody Palace to be available at launch but wasn’t able to get it done on time. Part of the reason was that the team was working on a bunch of things close to release date, including bug fixes that ended up being released as part of a day-one patch.

As far as DLC for additional playable characters such as a certain popular person who shall be unnamed for spoiler reasons, as well as Trish, Lady or even Crew Cut, Walker says that will all depend on whether the higher-ups in the company can be convinced that it is something worth doing. Right now, the only playable characters in the game are Nero, Dante and V and there is no additional content planned after the free Bloody Palace DLC, Walker said. Although there are a lot of folks in the staff who would like to create more content for the game, the dev team needs help from players to make a case for that with the company.

“That's why Itsuno-san during interviews said, ‘Look, if you want to see a different playable character, then you should yell at Capcom. This, by no means, would make it a definite thing but, with any luck, that can be fuel for us in presenting within the company and saying, ‘Look this is something that is worth pursuing.’”

In terms of extra content that is already in the game, Walker was a bit more coy. Walker says one reason is that he doesn’t want to spoil the game for folks who have yet to finish it. Asked whether the game has either a Boss Rush or Turbo Mode, for example, Walker hesitated a bit before carefully answering the question.

“There is no Turbo Mode that we've officially confirmed at this point, so there's no Turbo Mode this time around,” Walker said. “But there’s some pretty cool content in the game, so I don't want to spoil anything. Itsuno-san is an old school gamer and he expects certain things, (including a game having a certain amount of unlockable content) after you beat it. He's got some surprises up his sleeve.”

Jason Hidalgo covers business and technology for the Reno Gazette Journal, and also reviews video games as part of his Technobubble features. Follow him on Twitter @jasonhidalgo. Like this content? Support local journalism with an RGJ digital subscription.