By DmC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition producer Rey Jimenez recently answered a few of our questions about the enhanced version of the game. Unfortunately, questions related to the game’s story or the original DmC Devil May Cry were turned down (partly because Jimenez didn’t work on the original), but he did speak to the additions in the Definitive Edition. You can read his replies below.
When you began talking about re-releasing DmC Devil May Cry with added features, what were some of the very first things that you absolutely knew you wanted to add?
Rey Jimenez, producer: Both our team here at Capcom and at Ninja Theory had been listening to what fans had been saying since the original DmC Devil May Cry released. A lot of the items on our initial list of improvements we wanted to make and things we wanted to add came from that fan feedback we were receiving.
For instance, after we released the downloadable campaign “Vergil’s Downfall” where fans could play as Vergil, we saw a lot of positive feedback and desire to play more as him in his own Bloody Palace mode, which is one of the new additions to DmC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition.
In the credits of the original game, we see a test animation of an attack in which Dante impales an enemy on his sword and shoots them in the head. This attack—and some of the other finishers that were teased here and there—weren’t in the final game. How were they going to work before they were taken out?
Not sure if that particular move was a finisher or part of a cutscene, but early versions of the game did have “finishers”. It’s been a while, but I remember that they occurred more often and had more variation. There was one iteration that had a dramatic camera effect at the end of every combo. All of these were taken out as they interrupted the flow of the gameplay and took away from the fun.
Currently, when you clear a room you get a dramatic camera angle with a slow-mo effect. This was suitable since it helped communicate feedback to the player that they’ve killed all the enemies in a certain area, and this only happened when there was going to be a break in the action so as not to interrupt the flow of gameplay.
How involved are [Capcom Japan producer] Hideaki Itsuno and his team with DmC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition?
For this project, Itsuno and team are busy with another project, so this was all in the capable hands of Ninja Theory. The combat designer from the original game is the creative director for Definitive Edition, so it was led by someone very intimate with the title. Since gameplay and combat-focused content are the main additions to Definitive Edition, she was absolutely the best person to have working on the project.
How do you compile feedback for a re-release like this? Obviously, there are things like the budget to keep in mind, so how did you narrow down what you felt the most important features to add to the Definitive Edition were?
Good question. We’ve said that for this project, we did source a lot of feedback from forums and online discussions. A lot of times the feedback can be at odds with one another, with two groups of fans having polar opposite opinions regarding the same subject. Conversely, a lot of times we’ll see a complete consensus on some items. Generally the features we add or tweaks that are made are done to support whatever the overall designer’s goal(s) are.
For instance, for DmC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition, some of the tweaks we wanted to make were tweaks that supported Hardcore mode, which is our mode made to play similarly to the original DMC games. Other tweaks covered the theme of giving the player more feedback during combat so that things don’t happen without communicating why that happened to the player. This helps keep the design changes from seeming random and willy nilly.
Have any of the bosses in the game been retuned in any way?
Oh, absolutely. Every boss has had some tuning done to them. A lot of tweaks were done specifically to get rid of any exploits or cheesy tactics that were discovered in the original release. Tweaks were also done to make the fights a bit less predictable as well. Since design changes aren’t done in a vacuum, and we did so many across the board, some boss retuning had to be done in reaction to changes to how Dante and Vergil fight. We’ll be releasing the complete change list on the Capcom-Unity.com blog one we’re done compiling and adding notes to them.
DmC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition will be released on March 10th for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Capcom would not comment on whether a PC version of the game will be made available at some point or not.
