There’s no question about it, Capcom’s decision to give demon-slaying protagonist Dante a facelift in the Devil May Cry reboot caused quite a stir amongst fans. Capcom VP of strategic planning Christian Svensson has chimed in on the radical change in an interview with IGN, explaining that the company went forward expecting fan backlash. In fact, it was part of the plan.

I will argue that any changes will bring about a knee-jerk reaction from fans. We know that; we knew that going into it. To be fair, I think some of the strategy here was to create that discussion and dialogue, and I think it drastically raises the visibility of the title versus if we had just done another Dante.

Svensson prefaced this by stating that the original concepts for Dante were “extremely close to the Dante everyone knows and loves.” However, a creative push from higher-ups, namely executive producer Keiji Inafune and director Hideaki Itsuno, led to a complete revamp.

Capcom: Dante Needed to be ‘Completely Different’ [IGN]

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