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Devil May Cry started as Resident Evil 4

  • Oblivion Knight
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jamesyfx

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I'd like to think most of us know this story, but for those that didn't know; after Resident Evil 3, Capcom wanted the next game in the series (Resident Evil 4) to be faster and have better, stylish combat... as well as the modern accoutrements such as full 3D, 360 degree movement, jumping etc.

From what we can tell, it was meant to be separate from the Jill/Leon stuff, and introduce new characters and locations. The playable character was named Tony Redgrave, a superhero of sorts who had been experimented on with technology to gain powers and super strength. Tony's father was written to be the founder of Umbrella, Lord Spencer.

Fun fact, the default guns in Devil May Cry have the name Tony Redgrave printed on them - this is most likely either a reference or simply an unchanged detail. Also the surname Redgrave is probably a reference to Chris and Claire Redfield. They retained this text on all the other Devil May Cry games, and they also built on the name for DMC5 where it became Dante's alias at some point.

83F2A93D-7975-4446-8896-1DEF801FA498.png

Kiiinda hard to see, but the gun at the front says For Tony Redgrave on it.

Eventually, the game strayed too far from the survival horror of the rest of the series, so instead of simply cancelling the project and starting over, Capcom decided to rework it into a new IP, and separately come up with something new for Resident Evil 4.


Devil May Cry does retain some dna from Resident Evil, such as...

  • - The warning about violence and gore at the beginning.
  • - The "You Are Dead" screen when you... well... die.
  • - Unlockable modes and costumes for beating the game a certain way, with incentives for beating the game fast or multiple times.
  • - Light puzzle-solving, including the ability to inspect or check objects in the game world.
  • - The Blades enemies in the game greatly resemble the Hunter from Resident Evil.
  • - The game uses some Idle animations from Resident Evil 1 and 2.
  • - The Merchant theme from Resident Evil 4 is extremely similar to the Ancient Castle theme from Devil May Cry. It's a tune you hear often in both games.
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Resident Evil 4 Merchant Theme

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Devil May Cry Castle Theme



Also, separately, the van from Devil May Cry 5 curiously has an Umbrella logo on its dashboard. It's really easy to miss as you can only really see it in game in one scene and it's really small. However looking at the dashboard texture directly... it's easy to spot:


B61C5FA0-C1B4-46EB-9763-F8AAF101DA43.jpeg

Riiight near the top.

But yeah, this is how Devil May Cry came to be AND how Resident Evil 4 came to be; two absolutely monumental successes from Capcom developed one after the other. I bet some people out there would have liked to see what Resident Evil would have turned into had they not changed their mind... but I for one wouldn't want to live in a world where you can double jump in a Resident Evil game!


(side note.. it has been murder trying to write this article on an iPad. We definitely still need computers for article creation.. :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:)
 
..and I was today years old when I learned of that fun fact! 🤯

I did always wonder though, many of the sound effects and dialogue felt very much inspired by Resident Evil but I always just put it down to Capcom reusing some of their content.

I'm not a huge fan of the Resident Evil 4 game that came to be (and I've never finished it), but despite that I can't imagine the franchise diverting quite so much from what had been before it.
 

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