My grandmothers funeral was yesterday.
Do you know what the day before that was? Devil May Cry 5 got released. I’ve been playing the Devil May Cry series since I was a teenager: I’ve been dreaming of it since before that. The earliest screenshots captured some part of my imagination. Today I still remember exactly the layout of a magazine where Hideki Kamiya (the director of the first game) talked about how Dante was based on Cobra from Space Adventure Cobra.
Why do we like these things so much? Well, because they represent a part of us. They inform some part of who we are, as much as the people that make them are putting themselves out there for the rest of us to digest. I look at Devil May Cry differently now as an adult than I did as a teenager.
Here’s a theory about why people love things: because we want them to reflect who we are, and we want to reflect what we believe they mean. To me, Devil May Cry is all about style and panache, enjoying the moment and living for everything you can. It’s been influenced by different directors the entire time it’s been around as a franchise, and yet that core message has always gotten through to me.
Devil May Cry 5 is a friend returning after a long time of being gone. They have changed their hair, maybe they’ve changed their body to be the one they wish it’d been since they were born. Now, they’ve got tattoos and a partner they care for. No matter who they were before, this is who they are now. I’m different too: parts of this game no longer appeal to me. Parts, I try to like just because I want to enjoy the rest of the game.
“It’s Devil May Cry.” I’ll tell myself, even as I know I feel shitty that a woman is reduced to eye-candy.
Later, I’ll repeat that to myself when I get stuck playing as a character when I’d rather be playing as someone else. It may not be my vision of how the series should be, but then again I never had control over that anyway. All I can do is try to get as much enjoyment out of it as possible.
The series offered me an escape from the mundane life of growing up in a rural area. Now, the series gives me an escape from dealing with the fact that someone who was around the entire time I grew up is no longer with us, in any material sense. If only yellow orbs worked on real people, I wonder – is that joke too dark? (it’s not!* -editor)
Devil May Cry has outlived a member of my family. One day, if the corporate masters have their way, Devil May Cry will probably be around after I am gone. That’s all I can keep thinking about.
I keep getting older, but Devil May Cry can stay as young and virile as the company that makes it can keep finding directors who share a similar vision to their predecessors. I’m not so lucky, and the only DLC i’m looking forward to is a fucking coffin.
Can something keep appealing to us as it gets older? Now that this series has tattoos and smokes cigarettes (while playfully reminding us it doesn’t want us to share the habit)? I don’t know. I know that we’ll all keep getting older, and the things that we love will too. Maybe we’ll outgrow them, and I kind of hope most of us do. You can’t discover what’s new unless you outgrow the things you grew up with.
As for me and escapism? Well, now I’ve got new things I need to take my mind off of.