| AbbathTheGrim said: |
You're mis-remembering about DMC1 I think. The "siren alert" is only for fights with Shadow, the black cat. It's a part of his actual theme, it's not an alert anytime you start combat. 99% of the time you won't hear it in DMC1, it's just really memorable because Shadow is possibly the most annoying and interesting enemy in the game.
Also, I'm a little surprised to see you say that DMC1's atmosphere is "lost" in DMC3, especially when you say that DMC4 is a "return to form" (though maybe you meant in some other way). DMC3 had the closest to DMC1's atmosphere in the series I think and it might be the only one that tried to capture that atmosphere. For example you mention earlier that the games now have you hoping around from location to location, which is true, and I do miss the feeling of just being in one island. But this kind of thing was nearly replicated in DMC3 because most of your time was spent in Temen-ni-gru. The only time you get out of it is when you get back to the city street or hop into the mouth of the great air whale, but even then you could argue you leave the Mansion in DMC1 to go to the fortress. Admittedly, the verticality of the Temen-ni-gru sells it's feeling of being connected short, as it's much harder to make a layout in your mind of the tower and you can't see the physical connection so much. But it's very close to 1, it even has a lot of the same kinds of secrets.
As for Dante losing himself over the years ... it's a bit hard to say. I think that Kamiya and Itsuno have said some very revealing things, but these are the kind of things I've just heard second hand from the fanbase. Kamiya I think said that the Dante after DMC1 no longer feels like "his" Dante (he's the creator of DMC1), and Itsuno has said before he wanted to make something that related to him more, which is why he made a younger Dante in DMC3 and why he eventually made Nero (and in fact while the game was originally teased as a sequel to DMC3 timeline wise with it's TBS 2005 trailer showing a young Dante, I think at some point Itsuno even questioned if Dante should be in DMC4, to which one of the other higher ups on the dev team said he needed to be).
Dante in DMC3 is much younger so it's understandable why he's like that. Dante in DMC4 is barely a character honestly, I love his cutscenes but he's basically just comedic relief in the body of an immortal god.
For what it's worth, and this is just a new fans opinion who binged the games in a span of a month, I think DMC5 Dante is the closet to DMC1's, while retaining the funniness of Itsuno's Dante. For example in DMC1 a lot of Dante's jokes were just to belittle his enemies, and in DMC5 there's that scene in the trailers where instead of making a smart ass remark against his enemy he just uses the enemies razor tail to shave his face. He still makes jokes, but a lot of the time they're relating to what the actual characters are doing, it's a lot more down to earth. He's very serious at points and feels like an actual character this time.
