or Why DmC: Devil May Cry would be Shot Dead by Call of Duty
A disclaimer:Â DmC (as it shall be hereupon be referred to) is the first game I have played in the Devil May Cry series, aside from thirty minutes or so with Devil May Cry 4. As such I won’t be comparing it to the preceding series at all because, frankly, for all I know about Devil May Cry I might as well compare the new game to the inside of Sophie Ellis Bextor’s knickers. Besides, that’s not really the point of this piece.
Got it? Good.
Bayonetta was my introduction to Spectacle Fighter games: a backflipping, thigh-flaunting, bullet-riddled masterpiece that sparked a virtually insatiable thirst for the genre – and an itch for new experiences in the genre – that remained unscratched until DMC plopped onto my hallway floor and found its way into my PS3.
DMC and Bayonetta are very similar: both are biblically-themed, both contain cocky, overly sexualised protagonists who never need to reload, and both games alternately assault and delight your senses with insane imagery, mad music and a sense of pace that F-Zero would struggle to keep pace with.
DmC, however, has two things that set it apart from the sainted Bayonetta: the ability to pull enemies towards you and yourself towards enemies as a central part of both combat and travel, and… well, something that probably demands a little more discussion.
DMC is, at least in my interpretation, the most anti-Western game to hit the video game charts in an extremely long time.
The central conceit of the game is that capitalist America is, in fact, the work of a malevolent god who controls the country’s populace in totality; in body through drinks laced with additives and hidden nasties, and in mind through TV and media laced with propaganda and bias. It’s heavy-handed and somewhat obvious as far as satire goes, but it’s the first time I’ve seen such a sentiment expressed this nakedly in a Triple-A game. DmC is a game that hates the grubby grasping of the West, a game that can see capitalism clutching its own stomach as it continues its financial self-disembowelment, and isn’t afraid of expressing its disgust at how we’re all drowning in offal as it bleeds out.
An example: towards the end of the game you find yourself in the finance department of the corporation run by the game’s chief antagonist, and as the tortured souls in that office flail spasmodically around chairs snapshot-frozen in mid air, the very walls are emblazoned with thick block capitals; mantras of demonic greed that have become ingrained in the walls themselves. Debt is Divine. Obfuscate. OBFUSCATE. OBFUSCATE.
DmC doesn’t hide what it thinks of the multinational conglomerates and neoliberal economics that both constitute and sustain the Western world, and for a game that topped the post-Christmas charts that’s really quite surprising. Especially so in a world of pro-MERICUH games like Call of Duty; games that task you with defending the same values and opinions that DmC tasks you with destroying. It may be overly hyperbolic to say so but DmC feels like a terrorist mastermind of a game; its showy graphics and incredible combat serve as a VHS tape sent out to international press to catch the world’s eye, thereby delivering its message to the masses.
Whether this sentiment (or at least, the sentiment I drew from the game) is due to DmC‘s British development team is a question I’m not equipped to answer. However, if DmC does represent the views of Cambridge-based Ninja Theory games I wouldn’t be hugely surprised. As the UK slides into a triple-dip recession (which is absolutely nowhere near as fun as double-dip sherbet lollies) an-ever growing tumour of political discomfort has taken root in the lungs of the UK, and the story team at Ninja Theory could well include of those rogue cells.
I hope that this is a correct reading for two reasons. It’s nice to see a game hit the charts that dares to be a little bit subversive. It’s even better to see that Triple A video games are prepared to do something like this at all.
Yes, it’s done a bit heavy-handedly. Yes, it’s an overdone idea. However, the fact that at least one big development team are wearing subversive politics on their sleeves is excellent news for a medium that seems to have only recently realised it can be used to make a point. This is a huge step forward. Gaming is a medium that is has only relatively recently become mature enough (and whose audience is only now becoming comfortable enough) to realise that it can be more than just a celebration of mechanics; that it can be a blank canvas for political discourse, for artistic expression for… shit, for anything it fucking well wants to be.
For these reasons I believe DmC is important and exciting. It’s a big budget game that comes with all the bells and whistles you’d expect from your standard mega-hits but in at least one context it feels dangerous, new and exciting. Django Unchained is a blockbuster that dared to shove faces into the ugly side of a revered part of America’s history, and DmC is its contemporary video game counterpart: exposing the seedy underbelly of the fat pig at the heart of the American Dream whilst begging you to take a spear and drive it deep into the beast.
Comments
7 responses to “DmC: Devil May Al-Cry-aeda”
I'm offended by your conclusion. I'm not offended by the game insulting capitalism, that just got a laugh out of me. No, I'm offended that you think this will produce a more enlightened peoples. This is no huge step forward!
So biased and non-rational (not to say that it's irrational, just that it doesn't display its logic) an argument as this will only achieve polarization. The people who believe in capitalism will be outraged. The people who already dislike capitalism will have their opinion reinforced. Already, neither side is willing to talk to each other, how would this help anything?
No, if you're looking for a politically themed game that got it right, that'd be Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. It argues first that chaos enables atrocities and brutality. Then, it points out that order stifles all those things that make life worthwhile. It then comes to the conclusion that only a balance between chaos and order will ever engender a worthwhile world. Well, okay, maybe it's philosophical more than it is political, but you get the point.
Not sure I do agree. Michael Moore has been extremely successful at opening middle America's eyes (meaning he gets them to watch films with footage that was on BBC news all the time) and he is one of the biggest brow beaters out there with his extremely non-rational and biased opinion (see his views on Canada).
That said I am not sure how enlightened the people who end up watching his shit really are.
That said his existence and constant bleating did make me aware of Noam Chomsky and eventual Gwynne Dyer, who I think are definitely worth reading. So, I think Spann's argument still sort of stands, having a mainstream game attempt to tackle these sort of issues in any form (ham fistedly or not) is essentially a good thing (They Live by John Carpenter was eye-opening for me as a child).
Sadly, this is probably the first blog post I've read that even mentioned this agenda so I am not sure how many people even noticed this in DmC.
Still, made me want to play Fire Emblem.
I've always regarded Michael Moore as a kind of gateway polemicist most useful to direct potentially receptive people towards better journalists, critics, historians, activists or academics.
That said, I believe his early work on Flint, Michigan was quite groundbreaking, and although I've not seen Capitalism: A Love Story (hey, is he riffing on Christine Love's work?!) I have read that it is the closest Moore has come to openly critiquing capitalism as a system and touching upon alternatives, which is pretty radical for a mainstream American documentarian.
(I know what you mean with the BBC News line… Fahrenheit 9/11 was an amazing film purely on the basis of how little it contained that wasn't already common knowledge in the UK at the time. IMO that made it a better critique of US corporate broadcaster demagoguery than Moore could have deliberately produced. :)
Geez, I'm sorry I didn't respond to you quickly. I've secretly been hoping nobody noticed this comment (I'm 'offended?! Gah!). I really do apologize for that comment; I do.
But the basic point still stands. The critical problem, in the US at least, is the polarization brought on by the internet -confirmation bias and all that. Anything that exacerbates that has an uphill battle justifying its existence. Beyond that, I have to wonder if people regularly go beyond Moore, or watch his movies and assume they know everything about the subject.
I recently checked the prices for Radiant Dawn; it's actually increased in value in only a couple of years! That alone should tell you everything about the quality of that title.
Any mention of John Carpenter makes me happy.
Don't worry about it, the wording was a little strong but the point was clear.
I think the point you made is true of human nature, people don't like being bullied or cajoled into something. It is almost a science (every force has an equal and opposite reaction to paraphrase). I still don't think that it is a bad thing to throw this into a mainstream product. Even if, like Moore, only a small percentage of players give it some thought that is probably more impact than any of the Indie game around the same topic do.
I enjoyed the political subtexts of Resonance of Fate. But then it did not approach any of its themes in a 'let's discuss these themes' sort of a way, it approached them from a 'let's talk about reasons why our agenda is correct' sort of a way. Luckily for me, I already supported its various agendas whole-heartedly, so for me it was just enjoyable reinforcement of the beliefs I already held, which is the exact problem you highlight.
I didn't find it a problem because I'm happy to indulge in some circlejerking from time to time, but judging from your comment I don't suppose you'd appreciate it much.
I doubt that that was aimed at me, but, I tend to enjoy those works that prove me wrong more than anything; as mister satan once said:"There is such amusement in seeing the joy in someone when they think they have just gotten smarter."