Although the Devil May Cry series helped invent the spectacle fighter subgenre and laid the foundation for modern hack-and-slash games, it may be best known for its stylish protagonist Dante. Dante's iconic white hair, red coat, and cocky attitude made an impact on fans from the very beginning. His attitude and flashy weapons mixed so well with Devil May Cry's high-octane and risk/reward gameplay that he's become an important part of gaming history. Despite this, Capcom won't stop trying to reinvent the wheel.

At his core, Dante is a simple character: a loud, brash, and secretly compassionate man who rolls with the punches. As the half-demon son of Sparda, who turned on his own kind to save humanity thousands of years ago, Dante often finds himself dealing with power-hungry humans and angry demons alike. Dante rarely goes out of his way to start a fight, but he'll go through hell and back to finish one, especially if the fate of the world - or his estranged brother Vergil - is hanging in the balance. Dante's a pretty straightforward but engaging protagonist who reflects the complexity of his world while adapting to any new situation. However, it seems like every new game puts a different spin on who Dante is supposed to be.

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A Brief History of Dante

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Dante seems to be a different character in almost every game, and this isn't new - the trend has been going since the very first title. The original Devil May Cry presented Dante as a relatively straightforward antihero hired to dispose of the demon Mundus, whom it turns out he has a personal reason to fight. Devil May Cry 2 infamously toned down Dante's attitude, leading to a more stoic character that many fans felt was unrecognizable. In response, Devil May Cry 3 was released as a prequel featuring a younger, more optimistic, and even more sarcastic Dante struggling to save Vergil from a self-destructive quest.

Devil May Cry 4 picked up where its predecessor left off but took Dante a decade or so into the future. The result was an older and wiser Dante who took a mentor role for new protagonist Nero. After that, the series reboot DmC: Devil May Cry tried to reimagine Dante as a down-and-out orphan living on the fringes of society. More recently, Devil May Cry 5 brought Dante back in a shared protagonist role where he acts as the troubled, cynical veteran to Nero's more idealistic hero.

Dante May be Too Cool to Write

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All versions of Dante have one thing in common: they are designed to be cool. Devil May Cry is a series that lives and breathes style, and Dante serves as an extension of that. Dante's character design is bold, bright, and colorful; his fighting style defies physics; and he refuses to take anything too seriously. It's clear he was always intended to be something of an escapist fantasy, encouraging fans to step into his shoes and leave the dull parts of reality behind. However, the problem with writing a character to be cool is that the definition of cool changes.

Gamers originally fell in love with Dante's design and attitude less because red coats and white hair were in vogue in 2001, and more because his positive attitude and colorful get-up contrasted with the dark, horrific world he lived in. This contrast reached its peak in Devil May Cry 3, which serves as a coming-of-age story for Dante. It's also the only game in which Dante unambiguously fails - he may save humanity, but his brother Vergil is lost to the demon world. This arc changed the course of the somewhat scattered series. As a new Devil May Cry anime approaches, Dante's mutable foundations as a character seem to have left Capcom unsure of what to do with him. If recent titles are anything to go by, the company would rather Nero, a character with simpler motivations and personality, take up Dante's torch.

Devil May Cry is currently in development.

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