Capcom planned Dante controversy
Publisher has no plans to tweak design.
Capcom has admitted to deliberately courting controversy with Dante's much-maligned new look in its recently announced Devil May Cry prequel.
VP of strategic planning and business development Christian Svensson told IGN, "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."
"The original concepts that came back for Dante were actually extremely close to the Dante everyone knows and loves," he added.
"The feedback that came back from [Keiji] Inafune and [Hideaki] Itsuno was, 'No guys, this needs to be completely different, we need you to go much further and be much more creative.'"
Svensson went on to explain that Capcom has no plans to make any changes to Dante's design based on fan feedback.
"This is meant to be an origin story, so this is Dante before you knew who Dante was.
"There are going to be some interesting changes and twists to what people think they know about Dante or where he came from. We aren't planning on deviating greatly from the path that is there."
Just in case you'd forgotten what the new Dante looks like, take a look at the trailer below as way of a reminder.
The new Devil May Cry is being developed for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 by Enslaved studio Ninja Theory. No release date has been set as of yet.