How did Devil May Cry begin as Resident Evil 4?

Resident Evil's loss became action gaming's founding myth.

Directly, and on the record. After Resident Evil 2 shipped in 1998, producer Shinji Mikami put Hideki Kamiya in charge of a fourth Resident Evil for the PlayStation 2. Series writer Noboru Sugimura built a scenario around Kamiya's wish for a stylized action game: its hero was Tony, an invincible man whose superhuman skill and intellect were explained by biotechnology. Kamiya scrapped the series' prerendered backgrounds for a dynamic camera, because a fixed angle could not make his hero look brave, and the team spent eleven days in the United Kingdom and Spain photographing Gothic statues, bricks and stone pavements for textures.

The prototype kept drifting from horror. Mikami, to his lasting credit, did not force it back: he judged a fast, stylish action game inconsistent with survival horror and advised the team to make their work a separate game with its own identity. Kamiya rewrote the story into a world of demons drawn from the Divine Comedy, renamed Tony as Dante, and revealed the new title in November 2000. Devil May Cry released on August 23, 2001. Resident Evil 4 restarted, and arrived in 2005 as a classic of a different kind.

WHAT SURVIVED THE SPLIT

Resident Evil, visible under the paint

The castle

Mallet Island is a survival horror map wearing action clothes: a gothic castle of locked doors, key items and backtracking, because the game was designed in Resident Evil's house before it moved out.

The puzzles

Devil May Cry keeps its parent series' manners between fights: find the key item, solve the room, open the way. Later sequels steadily shrank them; the first game still solves like a Resident Evil between battles.

The juggling bug

Testing Onimusha: Warlords, Kamiya found enemies could be kept airborne by repeated slashes. A bug in a sibling game became Devil May Cry's signature: juggling enemies with sword and gunfire, designed in from the ground up around Dante's acrobatics.

Tony himself

The prototype's hero did not die in the rewrite. Dante's alias in the novels is Tony Redgrave, and the name is inscribed on his pistols: "For Tony Redgrave. By .45 Art Warks," the engraving on Ebony and Ivory reads.

THE OTHER INFLUENCE

Strider, by way of Eurogamer

The arcade root

Eurogamer and Retro Gamer both trace Devil May Cry's over-the-top action to Capcom's 1989 arcade game Strider, which Kamiya's team treated as a vital influence, boss rush structure included. The series' development history agrees: Strider is cited alongside the Divine Comedy in its own record.

Who is Hideki Kamiya?The history of the series The style rank, explained

How did Devil May Cry begin as Resident Evil 4?

WHAT SURVIVED THE SPLIT

THE OTHER INFLUENCE

THE FIRST WORD