Recently I have gotten into the Devil May Cry series and have started to play through all the games. After finishing the reboot I see the bones of a good stand alone story that missed a lot of its potential. I am to lazy to do a full fanfic rewrite of it right now so I am just going to explain the story parts that I would change and why. Spoilers for the DMC reboot ahead.
When both Vergil and Dante were children, they should have had the same brown hair color. Mundus did not know that Sparda had more than one child. Mundus was there during the attack on their home. If he had caught sight of another child with a different hair color or a demon reported seeing another child with different hair color, Mundus would have been suspicious of Sparda having more children. It would be better during this to have the twins be fully identical to give a plausible reason as to why Mundus thinks there is only one nephilim.
Vergil would get his white hair after the attack. During it, he was injured and his devil trigger activated to save his life. This would give both backstory on how Vergil has a DT before it is just suddenly used in his fight with Dante.
One of the things that bothered me while playing the game was Mundus's motive. Why does he need to control the world through debt? Like, I know that the game was inspired by Fight Club and the message they were trying to go for, but why does Mundus have to control the world that way? They establish that outside of the nephilim, humanity doesn't have anything that could oppose demons. So why is a powerful demon doing a subtle takeover and not just conquering everything? Why go through the extra effort unless he had to? This brings me to another part of Mundus's actions that does not make sense. Why is he having a child? Why is a nearly immortal demon, who holds no love for his partner, trying to have a child? Demons don't need heirs, their lives are much longer than humans and don't need someone to take over after them. The only thing that having a child might cause is a future potential power grab as the child might try to overthrow him. So why again go through all this extra effort for something that is not needed?
This brings us to a major change with Sparda in the storyline. Instead of just throwing him into bdsm prison, have Sparda be the reason for Mundus’s actions. Eva had just died, Vergil nearly did, and now Dante is on Mundus’s radar and being actively hunted. Sparda had already failed his family once and would not again. He hides Dante and Vergil somewhere safe and challenges Mundus. Sparda knows this is not a fight he will win, but he has a plan. He seals a large portion of Mundus's power before dying.
Mundus, now weakened, has to keep up a facade of strength. If other demons found out he was weakened, they would challenge him, and he does not have the strength anymore to win all the fights that would come his way. So he makes up a lie about how they need to slowly take over the human world to keep better control. This seal is also the reason he would be having a child. He needs a new body to take over so he will no longer be affected by the seal.
Demons in the reboot aren't as well-known in the general population as in the original. They are viewed as a myth, and when people who can see them point it out, they are called crazy. So what was Dante doing before the start of the game? We know he was quietly still hunting Demons on his own, but he wouldn't have been getting paid for it. What was he doing for a living? Where was he getting food? Rent money? The basic living needs? This is where I would introduce Enzo. We see that Dante hangs around a lot of bars and knows their dancers. Instead of having him be a playboy, this would be a good place to set him up as a demon hunter for hire. The sex workers around bars would be easy targets for demons and would be attacked more frequently in a place like Limbo City. Enzo would still be his first broker and would set him out on jobs in the area. The reason Dante would always be seen with a different person on his arm or a horde of people around him is that he is a bodyguard for them. I think the playboy thing should just be a persona.
While these question may not have a major effect on the story as whole it would give Dante more personality then just angry boy who swears. If he is food insecure show moments of him hoarding food when he doesn't need to. Let that be a bonding moment for him and Kat as she understands what it is like and helps him get things he needs from the order and shows him around.
The Order itself is also something that needs to be fleshed out more. I needed some characters that we could interact with. Have a tech person who gives out the goal for the start of a mission. Someone who you could buy items and upgrade weapons from. A few characters that show up and help you with minor parts of missions, and maybe give a few secret missions around their stories. Have anything about them, so when the order is destroyed, it is more impactful than just the same faceless NPC dying over and over again. It would give more weight and understanding to Kat's grief. It would also give Dante an experience with other people filled with kindness for the first time in his life, which makes sense for why he goes from the start of the game, of not caring about other people, to the end, where he is willing to fight his own brother to keep the world safe.
The same needs to be done for Vergil. Why does he think the only way to ensure a future for humanity is to rule them? What led him to have so little faith in people? He is obviously well off financially since he is bankrolling the whole of the order, so where does that money come from? Where was he before the start of the game? The way I would do this is to have Vergil be adopted by a rich family. Let him see firsthand humans who interacted with demons, who did cruel things to their fellow man, all in the name of money. Mundus did not just walk into the banking world and take everything over. He would have bought and killed his way to the top. Vergil, being disgusted with the fact that his own so-called family would be willing to do the bidding of a monster in the name of money, becomes disillusioned with humanity as a whole. He comes to believe that humanity can't be left on its own, otherwise things would just repeat themselves. They need a firm hand to guide them, and he can be that hand.
Dante only enforces this belief for Vergil. He looked into Dante's past and saw a picture of cruelties after cruelties. Now that Dante has experienced kindness, and is willing to actually fight for something more than himself. All because the people under his command were not falling to demonic influence because he was guiding them. This thought process would give Vergil somewhere deeper reason to fight. Not only is he trying to save the world, but he is also trying to save his brother.
blakekathryn
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