DmC: Devil May Cry to utilize Unreal Engine

by David Hinkle on Sep 30th 2010 11:20AM

It would seem that DmC: Devil May Cry is really going the distance with the reboot concept -- to the point that Ninja Theory's upcoming stab at the series will employ a completely different game engine than DMC4. The developer confirmed on its forums that Dante's next adventure will be powered by Epic's Unreal Engine (just like it's Enslaved for Namco Bandai) and not Capcom's go-to multiplatform development suite, MT Framework; which has powered many of Capcom's premier titles this console generation, including the last DMC game.

To date, only internal Capcom studios have created games with MT Framework, but the company has said it's willing to share with external studios. Earlier this year, Capcom published its first Unreal Engine 3 game in Airtight Games' Dark Void. Ninja Theory's Enslaved, which will be released next week (published by Namco Bandai), is also an Unreal-powered game.

[Thanks, original fred]

Source: Ninja Theory forums

Tags: capcom, dmc-devil-may-cry, microsoft, mt-framework, ninja-theory, playstation, ps3, unreal-engine, unreal-engine-3, xbox

Reader Comments (77)

even more disappointment

@aray48
Hahah I'm not a dmc fan by any means, but I can tell it's getting worse and worse for you guys every day huh.

@Aguiluz: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

oh wait... your not kidding...wow.

also what happened to capcom's next-gen engine? I always thought it did the job pretty well.

@aray48

I hope it's decent between changing Dante's look to using the Unreal Engine there's a lot of things that have me on the fence. But no one can really judge this game until we see more gameplay...

@aray48 It's good news for PS3 owners that don't want to bother with a mandatory 5GB install.

@Aguiluz That a joke?

@aray48

I wouldn't judge DMC's quality by how badly Dark Void turned out though (though I still enjoy Dark Void even with its weaknesses).

@Andrew Yoon tell me about it! i have a 500 gig and about 150-200 gig used in installs :)

@Aguiluz

You're right, the Unreal engine has some great tech. Not to mention a ton of AAA games use it. It's about time Japanese developers start licensing third party engines and middleware, their games are falling behind. There's no way you can keep up today making everything in-house.

@Aguiluz
The problem is that the Unreal Engine has a problem to deliver a game with the same quality for multi-platform games.
Most PS3 versions which uses the Unreal Engine, have some low-res textures when compared to the 360 verison.

I really think they should make it from scratch.
I think Capcom did a good job for DMC4.
If I remember correctly, there weren't any differences between both platforms. I wonder why they can't use that engine instead...

@mat1cs
Um, I have UTIII on PS3 and it's not worth playing without an install and MODs. :\

Well, that most probably means we'll have the first DMC in years that won't run at steady 60fps.

/frown

@KazamaSogetsu Uhhh... This is the first DMC in years, anyway. At least we're getting a new one.

Why!!!!!!!!! But we don't get Unreal Engine 4 until at least 2012 so that means another UE3 game not that anythings wrong with that... Well if the gameplay looks good I might buy it. Even though they cannibalized Dante...

lol and i thought it couldn't get worse

@vask

I know what you mean... I am now afraid to think of what they can possiblely dick-up next. But seeing that the soundtrack and gameplay are still underwraps...there is still more portions to butcher to make this title completely FUBAR!

@RagingStormX

The soundtrack will be exclusively music by Ke$ha. I'm calling it.

It's the only thing left they can do to dick everything else up even worse.

The comments on this post are going to be interesting. I am not familiar with different game engines but dont different engines dictate the type of game you can make i.e can a DMC type game be made on the Unreal engine cos I dont think there has been one made on it before but I could be completely wrong

@zefur No, the engine dictates the graphics. Tons of different types of games have been made with Unreal 3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games#Unreal_Engine_3

This isn't that surprising. Ninja Theory is using Unreal to power Enslaved so it makes sense that they'd use the same tech/engine for DMC.

Aw, rats! First his HAIR, now the ENGINE... Ninja Theory is really screwing the pooch with this one. This game I've never played sucks.

Dark Void...
*shudders*

@mat1cs Just saw it on sale for 15 bucks at Target... I didn't buy it. I don't even think I would if it was five bucks.

99% of the engine resources will used to make Dante..I mean Tameem Antoniades, as visually "awesome" and "hip" as possible.

Wait a second. It's called DmC(Devil May Cry): Devil May Cry? Isn't that a little redundant?

@mywhitenoise
Well, they could call it Devil Is Crying but the acronym is far less suitable for a video game.

@mywhitenoise They're really trying to get the point across that even the Devil would cry about the changes made to the series.

@mywhitenoise DMC is an initialism, not an acronym.

@koehler83
Exactly correct, but my point was that DIC might instead be considered an unfortunate acronym.

Not a Surprise. MT Framework is Capcom's internal game engine. None of the farmed out games run on it.

@Patz

I love MT Framework. There's just something so cool and... complete... about the way characters animate in it.

This is looking more and more to me like a sort of NewCoke style marketing plan. They've passed development off to another company and told them to go nuts. Ninja Theory will spend their own money developing the game and most likely run it. Then Capcom is going to come back with "Original DMC" and everyone will love it and buy it up, all without any personal loss for Capcom. Capcom obviously has not given up on Dante, he's going to be appearing in his original form in Marvel vs Capcom 3.

@EvoHelix New Dante seems more like a Coke Zero guy to me.

/s

@EvoHelix

"New Coke" was not really a subtle and cunning reverse psychology plan, as some have speculated. It was just a failure that managed to backfire in an ultimately positive way.

Most failures are not so kind. I think in the history of Devil May Cry, you could already point to one such failure with DMC2. I do not think that it helped the series to have produced one of the most notorious disappointments in gaming history, even though DMC3 got the series back on track.

@ComicShaman Yes, obviously New Coke was not intended to be bad. But I can't help but get the feeling that Capcom isn't putting its chips in with this game. If they were I assume like we would have seen this version of Dante in the new Marvel vs Capcom.

@EvoHelix

Hey, no offense meant. I've known a number of people who thought Coke schemed the whole strategy with New Coke in advance, rather than blundering unexpectedly into success.

My guess is that by the end of the Ninja Theory game, "New Dante" is going to morph into something that looks more like "Old Dante," thus allowing Capcom to retain the character look and identity. It's kind of like many comic superheroes who get their origin story re-jiggered but remain ultimately the same character. That's my (not ninja) theory about how this will pan out.

@ComicShaman No offense taken brosef, we're cool. *fist pound*

I think, despite the disappointment, we can all agree the screenshot above is pretty darn cool.

@Shadowbender Sure, if you're into sparkly vampires too.

@Shadowbender A skinny wimp ripped straight out of Twilight, spread out like a fashion model on a gargoyle under the moon... while smoking a cigarette. He's probably thinking, "This pose will teach that Surgeon General and his sound, logical warnings that smoking causes cancer a thing or two...". "Cool" isn't the word that comes to mind.

@aray48
...how can we make DMC not DMC even more?
UE3!
Great!

tough dark haired protagonist in a brown environment! a favorite of western developers everywhere.

@howmuchIcarrot Tough? That emaciated fashion nightmare? I could break him over my knee. I bet if I blow pretty hard he would tumble like a shopping bag in the breeze.

::sigh:: Devil May Cry series is over, no more the son of the dark knight Sparda. This DMC that they are calling it is just completely something different and thats how i will try to look at it, might else well just change all the names while they're at it

Damn, yet another poor port for PS3 on the way again. When will they learn : /

this game is like an abortion dead before it was even born how sad =[

Uhh, guys?

The engine does not dictate how the game looks.

Borderlands, Batman: AA, Bulletstorm, Mass Effect 2, Bioshock Infinite...these games all have very distinctive art styles while still being built on the same graphical engine.

Ninja Theory, having created a game that already uses UE3, are simply more experienced with the Unreal Engine, and probably already have tools and processed developed around that engine. Starting from scratch with a new engine would just cost more time and money, and wouldn't take advantage of any of the experience Ninja Theory gained from prior work on UE3.

@FraGNeM

It's not just about how the game will look. UE3 is terrible for streaming textures (which is awesome considering how the biggest part of that engine is high res textures), the textures are also usually really shiny and it's freaking ANNOYING, and the animation always looks weird coming from UE3 games (Batman AA... Nothing more to be said there).

The UE3 engine is a skid mark on the underpants of our society.

@FraGNeM
They arent listening to you. The brokenhearted slobs are still crying themselves to sleep because they don't like a particular boy's new virtual haircut.

Me, I'm all for the engine. still trying to figure out the UDK myself. Kudos, NT and keep the cup half full

@liquidsoap89

What game engine does a better job streaming textures?

The original Gears had some problems, but texture streaming was pretty new at the time. A lot of engines just reduced the texture sizes or added more frequent load times. You can't have high-res textures without either texture streaming or frequent load times. It's got to fit into memory somehow.

Gears 2, as a more recent example, has smooth texture streaming where the low-res texture is blended with the high-res one instead of jarringly snapping from one to the other.

As for "shiny textures", that is not really an engine problem, and it appears in a lot of games not created with UE3. It's just a challenge to make textures lit properly and yet not appear shiny. Take a look at the first Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, a game praised for its graphics when it was released. It has loads of shiny textures, especially for skin and clothes. Also, does Borderlands have a shiny textures problem?

As for Batman: AA, I only played it on PC, but it had an incredible animation blending system. It's the best I've yet seen, to be honest. The engine was clearly not a hindrance with respect to animation quality.

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DmC: Devil May Cry

DmC: Devil May Cry to utilize Unreal Engine

Reader Comments (77)

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:24AM aray48 said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:39AM mat1cs said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:41AM Swizzler said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:48AM PlatinumSkeet said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:54AM Andrew Yoon said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 12:06PM stafa said

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Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:31AM vask said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 1:16PM RagingStormX said

Posted: Nov 29th 2010 5:25PM Fullmetal Salchemist said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:31AM zefur said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 12:09PM stafa said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:35AM CheesecakeJones said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:39AM Sless said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:40AM mat1cs said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 12:50PM lenandude said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:42AM thisredengine said

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Posted: Sep 30th 2010 12:07PM TC said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 12:08PM Shadowbender said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 12:36PM koehler83 said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 4:49PM TC said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:44AM Patz said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 9:22PM postpwn said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:45AM EvoHelix said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:55AM Shadowbender said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 12:55PM ComicShaman said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 1:02PM EvoHelix said

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Posted: Oct 1st 2010 12:14AM EvoHelix said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 11:53AM Shadowbender said

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Posted: Sep 30th 2010 12:12PM The Joy of Painting w Bob Ross said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 12:01PM rullers said

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