Remasters vs. Sequels Ft. Devil May Cry

Over the recent holidays I enjoyed playing through and finishing Devil May Cry 5, which was a nice change from the previous Devil May Cry game that was a revamp of the series (DMC: Devil May Cry). The interesting thing about DMC5 though, both plot and stage wise, is that it felt like they had sort of wrote themselves in a corner. It felt just, sort of like, a roller coaster ride versus an actual sequel to the series. Nothing much was settled in the game outside of some larger plot points from DMC4 that weren’t fully resolved.

What’s even odder about DMC5 is that to understand the character Nico you have to read the prequel novel which explains why she’s there and what she’s doing. You also kind of have to play DMC4 to know who Nero is and why losing his arm at the very very start of the game is such a big deal. All of that together, I mean didn’t ruin or detract from the game for me, but it was kind of just all odd.

So that got me thinking, what’s better? A remaster or a sequel? What if they went back to say DMC3 and remastered it and rearranged the levels better and added some new levels and bonus content and upgraded the textures? That would have been a pretty good game, considering the PC port was horrible compared to the PS2 port and would have finally done it some justice. A remaster of DMC4 would have been really interesting as well, if they removed a lot of the backtracking and redesigned some of the levels it would have been a really cool thing to play.

DMC5 is good in of itself, from a gameplay standpoint I almost want to say it’s the best DMC yet, but again I wonder if those same gameplay elements could have been placed into a previous game and cleaned up. We might not have gotten a fresh new story, but in a lot of ways maybe that always isn’t a bad thing. As these game series get longer and longer, the story has to keep making reasons for people to get up and do things. In DMC5 Dante is basically just rolling through the entire game going yeah whatever I’m going to win in the end lol been there done that.

Something to think about. Let us know in the comments or on social media if you think remasters or sequels are the way to go. What do you think is the optimal number of sequels while we’re at it. I’m thinking a trilogy is good and then time skip and have new characters in the same world if you’re going to continue from there.