The kid is alright: Why we're no longer worried about DmC's Dante - E3 2012

Sometimes you can't help but piss people off, especially in this day and age when the internet has made everyone a whiner and given them a soapbox to stand on. Change even a slight detail within an established canon and the internet will come after you; change an entire character – particularly one beloved by fanboys – and you're digging your own grave.

Capcom incurred some genuine, and genuinely-over the top, wrath when they announced plans to "reboot" the Devil May Cry series with a younger, hipper, cooler Dante. And boy, was the internet hacked off when the Japanese giant revealed his new face and immediately made everyone think of a fourth Jonas brother who'd gone off to be in a goth band.

But what none of us had seen was the actual gameplay. Yes, we were all a bit mad about Capcom giving Dante a short back and sides like Wynona Rider in Alien: Resurrection, but any psychologist would tell us that what we were really worried about, deep down, was that the gameplay would have suffered some by-proxy effect of Capcom replacing Dante with the moody one out of One Direction.

But, we needn't have worried. The latest DmC trailer from E3 shows that young Dante might swagger like a pubescent Backstreet Boy, but he kicks ass like The Rock with a sore head. The blink-and-you'll-miss-it gameplay footage shows that he's lost none of his speed and clout despite his regression but, while he's already got the skills at this young age, he's yet to be tempered. His predictable "Japanese version of an American teen" cockiness bothered us in the Captivate trailer a while back, and it looks like it's here to stay. But then, growed-up Dante often suffered the same problem.

While this E3 trailer still doesn't reveal much of the story (which, let's face it, probably won't make much sense anyway), it gives hints towards narrative elements: the mention of Dante's father, for one – and we were excited in ways we can't explain when his hair went white and his coat turned red.

Voice acting sounds predictably shonky, though we don't know for sure that these performances are locked yet and, if we're honest, nothing by Capcom is ever Shakespeare anyway. We shall see.

As always, until more solid details and gameplay footage emerge we can't pass judgement on DmC: Devil May Cry, but for now we can safely say we're not worried anymore.

Words by Mick Fraser (Twitter: @Jedi_Beats_Tank)

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