So first things first, why are these series comparable and why do I care? Well, to answer the second question, this is just something fun I'd like to do since I'm currently waiting on a lot of things to happen before my free time can be used on other things. As for the first question, let's get into that:
Both series tackle a variety of characters but the first installments of each series were far more serious than later entries. Drakengard was always bleak and dark and though Devil May Cry was never the most serious story ever, it was far more grounded than 3 and 4 turned out to be, whether that's a good or bad thing is ultimately up to you. Both of these games feature some aspect of religion behind them both thematically and in relation to the plot and characters: thematically, Devil May Cry took some inspiration from The Divine Comedy, though outside the names of Dante and Vergil, the comparisons are pretty sparse; the main villain, Mundus, is a demon king comprised of a marble statue not unlike many classical interpretations of the christian god, though his visage is much more similar to statues of this character rather than the character himself. Likewise, the story of Drakengard is very heavily focused on maintaining order through the use of 4 seals used to keep out a calamity, which is rather similar to some outcomes of the christian apocalypse. There's also imagery of demonic cherubs and a goddess in name only, Furiae. Both of these stories put a certain amount of emphasis on the main character's family, with the goddess Furiae being Caim's sister and Trish being a demonic doppelganger of Dante's deceased mother Eva.
Both are action games with elements or sections within them that branch outside their particular genre. Both are primarily action games, with Devil May Cry being primarily a Character Action game and Drakengard being a mixture of Ace Combat with Dragons and some Musou combat. As for the outlier sections, DMC1 has a section that is a bullet hell while Drakengard's final boss in Ending E is a Rhythm game.
Both have a very small number of entries, with the second being handled by a completely different director and the third being a prequel in both cases. Both also have spin-off or related series that don't initially have anything to do with each other, with NieR branching off from Drakengard's Ending E, and Devil May Cry having some hidden connections with Bayonetta. It's also worth noting that each of the separates are handled by the same director as the guy who spawned them, Yoko Taro and Hideki Kamiya respectively. Both of those spin-off series have sequels in the form of NieR: Automata and Bayonetta 2 respectively, and each of those sequels are far more exclusive than the previous entry, with NieR being on PS3 and XBox 360 but NieR: Automata being slated for a PS4 release until Steam got announced, and Bayo 1 being on PS3, 360, and PC, but then Bayo 2 being exclusive to Wii U.
Now that that's out of the way, let's start talking comparisons. Now, ordinarily one would start at the beginning but in this case, we actually have two options: we can either start at the sequential start DMC1 and Drakengard, or we can start at the beginning of the chronology, DMC3 and Drakengard 3. Both will yield similar results in terms of their impact on this post, though tackling one set before the other changes how this is initially phrased. That said, I think I'm going to start at the release beginning, then go to the prequels, then go to the remaining games in each franchise.
DMC 1 is a bit of a revenge story surrounding Dante and his quest to kill Mundus for revenge for the death of his mother. Mundus wanted this battle as well, as he sent Trish to bring Dante over to the island, on the anniversary of her death, with her appearance, so he likely incited that rage intentionally.
Caim starts off his story as a soldier intent on protecting the seals that hold off the apocalypse, the seals of the Sky, Earth, Sea, and Furiae, who I already explained is the goddess of the world and who is also his sister. This right here also gave some personal stakes to Caim as Caim wants to protect his sister more than anything else. So far, so good. Toward the beginning of the game Caim is mortally wounded and fights his way into a castle where the red dragon is being pinned down. She tells him that they have to form a pact if either of them are going to survive and Caim accepts because he doesn't want to die before saving Furiae's life. The two combine their souls and become a single being, metaphorically anyway, as Caim and the red dragon can still act autonomously from each other even if they now share a soul and can read each other's thoughts.
After this point, we are introduced to Furiae's love interest and Caim's childhood best friend Inuart, who serves a purpose far more similar to Vergil in DMC3 than to anything in DMC1. Though you could still argue that Nero Angelo is Vergil while corrupted, the rival battles between Caim and Inuart really are not as comparable in this way.
Here, we can start to make some character comparisons.
- In Devil May Cry, Dante, the main character, has a clash of ideologies with his brother Vergil, due to their drastically different reactions to the death of their mother. Dante, wanting to uphold her memory, ignores his demonic side and doesn't truly come to terms with it until the end of DMC3, while Vergil abandons his humanity to gain strength so he can never be harmed like that again. In this way, Inuart and Caim are similar to Dante and Vergil but are mixtures of each other. Caim, much like Dante, has to use the power of another species in order to overcome challenges that he can't as an ordinary human, and though Dante was born with it, Caim accepts it far more quickly than Dante does making him more like Vergil. Inuart, on the other hand, is a much kinder individual who treasures his humanity and the joy it brings others. However, Inuart abandons his humanity thanks to the Watchers when he decides to make a pact with the black dragon in order to break Furiae of her duty as a goddess and so they can be together, seemingly a mixture of Dante's acceptance of humanity and Vergil's corruption at the hands of Mundus.
- Likewise, Dante and Caim were both made with very different intentions. While both are protagonists, Dante is designed to be a heroic figure from the ground up designed to inspire you to be the best and to show that humanity can be a good thing. Caim, on the other hand, was designed to be a psychopath who will kill basically anything for what he believes in, a much more cynical interpretation of an action game protagonist.
- The color schemes also seem to be a bit different though still similar. Dante is a character built with a lot of red in mind, which Caim lacks in his overall design but his dragon, Angelus, is red. Meanwhile, Vergil is much darker covered in blues, and though Inuart does not have any blue on him, the darker thing is still present in his dragon, Legna, who is black.
However, in terms of the actual gameplay, there are some very stark differences, both in mechanics and in overall quality. Devil May Cry, for the most part, is built with gameplay and style at the center, so it makes sense that the gameplay is the priority. Drakengard, however, was built with the story as the focus, especially given that it has five total endings that you can receive depending on what you do throughout the game. For most games with this kind of dynamic story writing, like many visual novels or even some RPG's, the input is restricted heavily so that combining story with gameplay is not all that hard. Drakengard could've easily mitigated the problems with the gameplay by having it be turn based like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, although it's not entirely Taro's fault. Initially, during development, he wanted to make it a game that takes place entirely in the sky on the back of the dragon. The Musou elements were added later in development due to the popularity of Dynasty Warriors 2, which make it feel clunky at times.
That said, a narrative that changes heavily depending on what you do is not an easy task to begin with. Drakengard is not the only game ever to have multiple endings but the thing with many games with multiple endings is that the ending is decided toward the end of the game with a critical choice you make that impacts the ending but not the rest of the story. Even many visual novels, like Fate/Stay Night or School Days have multiple endings but only a handful of endings that are actually correct, with Fate/Stay Night having one correct ending for each of the three storylines, and School Days' correct ending being the one where no one dies.
Drakengard's narrative is different in two ways: the first is that the ending you get is determined as you progress through the game. Each ending can only be unlocked as you gain more completion progress throughout the story and it's entirely possible that if you fail to do some things early on you'll lock yourself out of a particular ending, which will in turn prevent you from seeing all of what the game has to offer. The second difference is that Drakengard has no correct ending. Although Ending A leads into Drakengard 2 and Ending E leads into NieR, every ending is just as valid as the others and the only thing that changes in the story is what the characters learn and what they do with that information. Most of the endings are bleak and rather screwed up and none of them are happy, no matter what you do. Ending A is the happiest, by which I mean least painful for the characters, but it still results in Angelus becoming the next Goddess and being sealed away for however long it takes to get to Drakengard 2.
Devil May Cry's narrative is a lot more normal in that regard: there are a lot of options within gameplay and a lot of choices to make with your available mechanics but there's no alternate cutscenes or dialogue in any of the games. At best, if you complete a goal at the end of DMC3, you'll unlock an extended secret ending which gives context to the next game. Something more likely to be seen though a lot less interesting is the fact that, in DMC3, Cerberus' appearance will change in his defeat cutscene depending on how you damaged the body.
Obviously, Devil May Cry was never built with the story in mind. That said, there are still two notable things about DMC1 in terms of shortcuts or cutting down on replay time. Firstly, in the final battle with the Phantom, if you get him to hop and land on the glass ceiling three times, he'll fall through it and die instantly. The other is, if you have the Ifrit Gauntlets on repeat playthroughs, you can light the flame blocking your path before the first fight with Griffon, allowing you to skip the fight entirely. These aren't really commented on in the story and the story doesn't change no matter what you do.
The respective third installments also had different priorities, even in relation to the same stuff. DMC3's story was about answering questions while Drakengard 3's story was about adding lore. The question DMC3 is trying to answer is "What was Vergil like before he was corrupted?" Drakengard 3 implements Intoners and adds a layer of history to the world of Midgard.
That said, both games have a small amount of similarities as well:
- Both star a white haired protagonist that is primarily about close range fighting. Zero has white hair, has a lot of cheeky quips, uses four total weapons at any given time, has a lock-on ability and battles her siblings for the plot. Most of these things were already completely present in DMC but they're noteworthy enough that I'm calling attention to them.
And yeah, that's about it. In terms of weapons, Dante has more overall if we include firearms but Zero has more melee weapons equipped at a time. Both use swords, obviously, but Zero has Fists, Chakrams, and Spears, whereas Dante has a three pronged Nunchaku, Dual Broad Swords, an Electric Guitar, and Gauntlets and Greaves. All of these are relatively equal but Zero's chakrams are the only ones that have long range, which means she has more melee weapons on her at a time, something that isn't resolved until DMC4.
While Vergil's character was definitely a good inclusion, it's not as big on the lore as Drakengard 3 is. The caveat to that is that, while Yoko Taro is better at adding lore, he's not as good at answering questions. For example, in the true ending of Drakengard 3, we find out that Zero is of a species that seems to be the same as the queen beast from Drakengard 1. Now, this does raise the question of what is the queen beast and, though I have a small theory, it doesn't answer anywhere near enough questions to completely solve the mystery.
Okay, so the first thing to note is that, while Zero is an intoner, her appearance overall seems to be completely human. If we looks at the visuals of the final boss fight in Drakengard 3 and compare it to the queen beast, we see that the Queen Beast is entirely human in shape, save for the stone-looking skin and giant stature. However, Zero in her final form has the lower half resemble the flower that was growing out of her eye throughout the game. What this says to me is that the queen beast is not a natural entity, at least not entirely. Though the components of the beast seem to be naturally occurring in the world of Midgard, there seems to be a catalyst that's required to trigger the transformation, which seems to be an immense amount of power.
In Drakengard 3, it's revealed that the flower cannot transform into the giant beast form until it acquires the power lost from the five intoner sisters, so that's the answer there. As for the Queen Beast, well, we're not given a whole lot of indication but the four seals that were used to contain its power were likely preventing the transformation.
Now, one thing to note is that the Queen Beast fights you with a song in Ending E, suggesting that it is in fact an intoner. However, what an Intoner actually is is dubious. Although Drakengard 3 describes Intoners as divine beings that channel their power through song, one thing to note is that the antagonist Intoners, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are not naturally occurring beings, they were created by the Flower's power to prevent Zero from destroying it. Zero herself is a corpse and though clearly capable of fighting as we see in a flashback, her Intoner powers seem to come from the flower, indicating that Zero herself might have been human prior to the flower's infection. This would also explain why she would be so adamant about killing herself to save the world and humanity. If she wasn't human in any way, what reason would she have to care? None that was presented in the game, clearly.
This suggests to me that Intoners, as they are, are not naturally occurring entities but rather are a result of a parasitic being absorbing power and transforming into an intoner. The seals on the queen beast mean that that one probably already had all the power it needed but that power was suppressed by the four seals until Drakengard 1, suggesting that the Queen Beast is an intoner that appears sometime after Drakengard 3's True Ending and, because of the prior experience with Zero, whoever saw it happen, had a vague idea of how to stop it.
Now all of this is nice but it doesn't necessarily explain who or what the queen beast is. It's possible the queen beast came out of nowhere after the seals were broken because it was sealed outside of space time but an equal possibility is that the Queen Beast was still around with the seals, it just happened to be powerless because of them.
Something else to consider are the Eggs of Rebirth, or the Seeds of Destruction. In one particular ending in Drakengard the seeds are empty shells that require biomass in order to create a demonic creature. In Ending B or C Inuart intends to get Furiae's corpse to one of these seeds so she can be revived, which results in her corpse being mutated into a demonic creature with Furiae's face but not her consciousness. And, though I've yet to talk about this, Drakengard 2 introduces an enormous seed of destruction called the Bone Casket.
What does this have to do with the Queen Beast? Well, it's worth noting that, in Drakengard the Queen Beast emerges from the ground, not the sky, like the demonic cherubs, suggesting that the Queen was around in the human world and simply grew as its power did. It's possible that the Queen Beast is comprised of whoever's corpse was put into the bone casket and it remained dormant while the seals were in place, which is also the reason why Legna brings up in Drakengard 2 that the calamity from the first game will occur if you do not destroy it.
One thing to note here is that the bone casket is in a castle in the sky in Drakengard 2. What this possibly means is that it was moved somewhere where it was less likely to cause harm after the events of Ending A. Or, it could be a plot hole. Or I could be talking out of my ass right now. Who can say for sure?
The differences in the story and gameplay between DMC and Drakengard exemplify what I've been proving without saying it: DMC has a lot you can do with the gameplay in terms of style, substance, and your mechanics but, in terms of story, there's not much to theorize or speculate about. While the idea that Bayonetta and DMC are in the same universe is cool, the only real internal mystery DMC has is who Nero's father is. I say it's a mystery because there's no real evidence backing it up and what little there is that supports the theory is lacking substance and is more fan winkering than actually substantive. That said, even with this mystery, it's universally accepted that Vergil is Nero's father. Why or how that's even possible is not detailed at all in the current mythos but, even if you deny the evidence as being too weak, you're still likely to lean toward Vergil as the best candidate because, who else could it be?
On the other hand, this Queen Beast mystery in the Drakengard series is far more interesting and I had a lot more to say about it. The difference is that while Drakengard has more to discuss after having digested the story and the characters, on a moment-to-moment basis, there's not as much to enjoy as DMC has.
The final issue I want to talk about is the occurrence of sequels. Drakengard has 3 games, DMC has 4. If we include NieR and Bayonetta, it's five and six. However, one thing to note is that sequels work drastically differently in each series.
Though Drakengard's only direct sequel is Drakengard 2, NieR takes place on Earth after Ending E, and NieR: Automata also takes place after NieR. NieR: Automata's ending is pretty definitive, which is to say that the ending has everything dead and Earth no longer being inhabited by anything. Drakengard 2 could possibly have a sequel but I doubt it would have one just because between Ending A and Drakengard 2, we've covered everything that timeline can cover and another would just be retreading old ground.
Likewise, NieR is a spin-off of Ending E because it's really the only ending that could possibly have a sequel, even if not in the Drakengard series. Endings B, C, and D are all basically "The world's over, everything's dead" even if they present it in different ways. Ending A still had a world to work with for a sequel and though Midgard would not have a certain fate that could be worked off of for a sequel, Japan and Earth clearly did during Ending E. So, at this point, I think Drakengard has tapped all of its potential.
Devil May Cry's canon is a bit weirder in the sense that it doesn't have as many avenues for sequels but more of them are actually open. The current game chronology is DMC3, DMC1, Devil May Cry Anime, DMC4, then DMC2.
As screwed up as this canon looks, the reason DMC4 could be fit into the canon where it is is because DMC2 takes place so many years after the events of DMC1 and has so little to do with it in general outside of Dante himself that there are a lot of years left uncovered, a lot of stories left untold, and a lot of characters left unknown. And, after introducing Nero, it's possible that a new DMC game could be told with Dante and Nero's early adventures where they deal with each other, or it's possible that a game that takes place after DMC2 with Nero rescuing Dante from the Demon world could also happen. They could even do a complete rewrite of DMC2 to make it more tolerable from a gameplay, story, and characterization perspective, making a definitive edition, so to speak.
The DMC universe currently has no defined endpoint. While you could argue that DMC2 is at the end of the chronology for now, there's nothing stopping a game from being made after it. With Drakengard though, most of the endings are too definitive to have sequels and the ones that aren't already do.
That's all for now, see you guys next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment