The image of Dante

There exists very little concept art for Devil May Cry 2. That in of itself is kind of interesting, because it means somewhere on some corporate hard drive is the only record of how the game and the often cited bland-uninspired look it has took shape.

As it presents an interesting conundrum that's worth touching upon albeit briefly. That there's no real "record" of the development of Devil May Cry 2 publicly available tells us we're not yet at a place where videogames are seriously archived in a way that film is. All we really eventually come to care about is the finished product.

So as much as I'd like to break down the art and see what kind of changes took places through development, the art that exists of Devil May Cry 2 is all very closely tied to the finished product and there's very little information on what creatures or characters might have been cut from the game.

There's really no way to follow the game through its development like I've done in the past with Remember Me, or even the first game in this series.
I'll cover and notate how Devil May Cry 2 looks in the actual final review of it, but there's a more important thing that the game plays with I want to talk about: how the player perceives Dante.

The Dante of the first Devil May Cry is this hilarious dude who doesn't take the game seriously or the world he lives in because he doesn't have to. It's not until the end of the game that anything actually challenges him directly. The challenges Dante faces as a character are completely separate from the challenges you face as a player.

This is immediately noticeable if the player picks up that Dante seldom flinches or grunts during combat when attacked. The player is meant to feel like they're sharing some of Dante's power and in exchange a little bit of his devil-may-care attitude.

Who wouldn't want to play a character with so much swagger? We don't get tired of Dante in the first game because we spend little time watching him do anything, and a hell of a lot of time making him do things.

You never get sick of Dante no matter how ridiculous he looks because that swirl of his red trenchcoat when he turns around or the way he raises a single foot off the ground when you use the move Stinger right before sliding across the floor like it's coated in fresh wax and he's wearing socks.

Devil May Cry 2 changes all of this and forces us to re-evaluate how much we like to play as Dante. Sure, the game also introduced concepts like running on walls and more methods of attacking and controlling enemies, but in changing the way not only the character looks but those actions look, it meant Dante was no longer fun to play as.

Dante Sparda post-rock 

I like to use "hollywood" as a good adjective to describe Devil May Cry 2. In many ways, even more then the actual western reboot that the games would later recieve; Devil May Cry 2 seems like the developers trying to force western sensibilities on the game.

Just examine the way he looks in the above  image compared to say, one of the more recent live action adaptations of Superman. The characters palette has become muted and the red is deep. Where once the function of the costume was much like a superhero utility belt Dante's armor is now much more evident and other parts are stylistically downplayed.

This isn't something that comes down to an outfit looking 'practical' versus 'stylish' but it follows a very similar trend as many modern hollywood superhero movies do.
What are the most essential parts of the design? What is unnecessary juvenile fluff?

Let's note too that compared to the first game, Dante's changes are more in the department of how he's actualized. In the promotional art for Devil May Cry 2 (and more importantly the ingame engine) Dante is rendered as being of a darker persona. He grimaces and covers himself in shadow.

What the game did is balance his colors: his boots are more prominent and his coat is tucked underneath a piece of black bodyarmor. The prominence of his guns and gloves are played up more than his sword.

also, he glowers

Just by looking at Dante and not drawing any conclusions to how he's portrayed in the game, we can tell this is a character that is older and more mature then last time we saw him. Players are meant to immediately know that this is not the same character from the first game - he has been deeply changed by something.

This is where we can bring up some of the first noticeable problems with Devil May Cry 2, not just as a videogame but even presented as a story removed from the context of its mechanics.
Whatever happened between Devil May Cry and Devil May Cry 2 is never shown to the player or mentioned - we have no clue if this is simply how Dante evolved as a character or if something is meant to have changed him.

As a character, it removes a great of the characters journey which should be the core to any part of a story.
Devil May Cry 2 depicts a Dante who is at the end of his rope. But we, as players, never take part in the journey that took him there.

This makes the characterization that we're exposed to through what part of the series existed by this point seem like it was meant for two completely separate characters.
At no point is there a moment meant to unify the two characters in our head! This is a huge problem, because it means we have to reconcile the differences between how he's depicted in our own hands with no help from the storytellers.

Our image of Dante goes from one of a somewhat troubled angst ridden young man used to the world being no match for him and covering his woe with humor to one of a still-troubled older man who has let it all consume him.

But this is only an observation we can make from the way he acts in the second game -
If we were to follow only evidence given us in Devil May Cry 2, all we know about Dante is that he's more serious then the events happening around him and that his father is Sparda.

A common (and true) criticism levied at Devil May Cry 2 was that Dante's new characterization was a poor choice for the game and left it with little to no personality. Dante is made simply too serious for the events of the game - catapulting them above the bizarre tone that the first game used to its advantage into outright silliness.

The 'image' of Dante has much more to do with the way the character is depicted by the story then it does the way he looks. Sans his respective outfit, Dante is still expected to be the same character at his core.
The directors of Devil May Cry 2 made a critical misstep - but would later go on to rectify things with the third game in the series.

Devil May Cry 2 exists mainly as a stop in the road we can examine as a definite concrete way a franchise can mishandle representation of a character without having to use a ridiculous extreme as our example.