Thief: The Dark Project, Devil May Cry, and Disney all seem to have the same issue – reboots. Now, when fans of a series come in contact with a reboot, particularly a series that is beloved by the fanbase and that fanbase is particular about that series… you get the opinion “This is terrible!” “That’s not what Dante looks/acts like!” “That’s not the Sneak-Thief!” “Booo woman Jedi!” So let’s take a look at some popular reboots and why they aren’t that bad.
What is a reboot, exactly?
Well a “reboot” similar to computer speak, is “turning it off and on again.” In the realm of fiction and fandom a “reboot” when it comes to media is a “new start to an established fictional universe, work, or series. A reboot discards continuity to re-create its characters, plotlines, and backstory from the beginning.”
Why do people hate them? (Devil May Cry)
Nostalgia, mainly. We’re going to take a trip down memory lane because this is the easiest way for me to paint a picture. The year was 2010 and Capcom at their Tokyo Game Show conference that a new Devil May Cry game was in development. There was rejoicing. The last game (Devil May Cry 4) had come out in 2008 – before that Devil May Cry 3 in 2005.
The next big announcement would come at E3 when the announcement trailer was shown. Everyone lost their minds. Because Dante didn’t have white hair and acted like a punk. He wasn’t cheesy and “camp,” but more like a grade-A asshole with an attitude problem. Even the original creator, Hideki Kamiya, seemed disappointed (to be fair, Hideki Kamiya is a bit of an out-of-touch racist asshole – and he hadn’t worked on DMC the original game, so his opinion is moot).
Now, being a fan of the original series – I had played all 4 games at that point and Devil May Cry was the first “Rated M” game I had ever played that I could remember. So I had nostalgia and I was part of the group that hated the game at first because “this Dante sucks.” And I found his shitty attitude off-putting.
Playing DmC: Devil May Cry
The game launched on 15 Jan 2013 and 18-year-old me had just gotten her first payment from her cam site and needed this game. I had not preordered it and this resulted in a run around St. Louis looking for this game, as it was not popular with the fans… not many people preordered, and this meant limited stock. I finally found it and my friend and I played through it all in a night. Yes, we sat down, popped the game in the 360, and played through the entire game.
The verdict? I loved it. Turns out a bunch of critics did too. The storyline was pretty good. The mechanics were great (playing DMC5 in 2019 showed that some of those mechanics were brought over to the “main” franchise and made for really enjoyable gameplay). The writers did a great job in storytelling how this Dante grows from a caustic asshole who just wanted to fuck and didn’t care about the world to someone who cares about the world and risked his life to save the one person he found his humanity in (yes, I ship it – even if it is not expressed, I am a sucker for a story like Kat and Dante’s).
There are still the nostalgic fans who hate the reboot, but you can’t make someone love a thing they are set in thinking they hate – it’s the reason bigotry still exists. But as far as a game goes, it was good. The game had two soundtracks, one by the EDM group Noisia, which was the main soundtrack. It was pretty good. Not my favorite of the two, but made for a good ambiance to a gritty game. My favorite was No Redemption, the Combichrist soundtrack. I like industrial rock music and you hear their songs throughout the games, mainly in boss fights or at the beginning with “Throat Full of Glass” playing while Dante goes to a strip club and eventually, it implies he brings them both home.
Sometimes, going into it blind works. (Thief – 2014)
Another game that got the reboot treatment was Thief. Now, full disclosure, I never played the original games, even though they are on my Steam wishlist. I went into this game looking for something my romantic partner and I could play, at this point, it was 2016, Thief had been out 2 years, and it was on sale.
I pick the game up as I am known to be a bit of a kleptomaniac in games and thought this would be a fun thing to do while my partner was at work as this was me staying for 3 weeks with him while I was between jobs.
Why did Thief work for me when everyone else hated it?
Simple, I was not blinded by the nostalgia of the previous games. I finally finished the game in July 2022 – yes, about 6 years after purchasing the game. I have a bad habit of binging games and setting them down for a long time. It’s actually a problem.
But going through the game, I learned I really enjoyed playing as Garrett and exploring every nook and cranny of the City. I am something of an “achievement”/”trophy” hunter in games and Thief really catered to that side of me. I have some data thanks to my achievement hunting. I finished the game on 14 Jul 2022 – and only about 5% reached the “The Dawn’s Light” achievement, which is the default achievement for completing the game. That tells you that only 5% of the people playing Thief finished.
Reading through the fandom wiki dedicated to Thief, the lore is very rich and in the game, there are several callbacks to the original game. I, personally, love when games do this – like the wig on Dante’s head in the DMC reboot, or Trish in DMC5 telling V she’s “not his mommy.”
I can say, I really enjoyed Thief as someone who was introduced to the series about 16-17 years after the original game. I would absolutely play a sequel to the reboots and I often recommend this game when people ask for a stealth game. If you’re someone who likes grimy cities and has a kleptomaniac streak, Thief is good.
Why is Disney doing reboots?
Because of capitalism. They are riding on the nostalgic millennial masses to hand over their wallets in order to make more money. The millennials and Zoomers are having kids and these generations want to share their sacred Disney memories with their children.
Now, not all these remakes and reboots are bad as I enjoyed the 2010 and 2016 retellings of Alice in Wonderland. But I have always been a Tim Burton fan, so a more gothic look on a Disney classic was up my alley.
I am not what is classified as a “Disney Adult,” as I am not as interested in the newer Disney movies or the theme parks. I still prefer animated films, mostly because of how they were made. The last Disney remake/reboot I watched was 2019’s Aladdin which was near impossible for my friends to get me to watch as I was quite a fan of the original due to my love of Robin Williams. I enjoyed it. It was good. I still prefer the original.
I am interested to see what they will be doing with two of my favorite Disney movies from my favorite era of Disney films (the 60s and 70s) as they are remaking/rebooting Robin Hood (the one where they are all animals) and The Aristocats (I loved this one so much, I learn “Scales and Arpeggios” on the flute in middle school).
Final Thoughts: Eh
I think that you should not base a game or a movie solely on what you may think of something. Reboots and remakes are based on the nostalgia factor. As mentioned above, I am a major Devil May Cry fangirl. I own the series on several platforms (I really want it on Switch). I played every main title.
But, I put aside the disdain I hate for the presented version of a character I loved. And I fell in love with the character again. DmC: Devil May Cry Dante is not a bad representation of who Dante is. In the reboot, he’s a gutter punk. He’s an orphan who was brutalized and he’s roughly 18-23 in this game. He’s had a pretty rough life and often was being sucked into the demon realm. He learned how not all humanity is bad and that not all demons are evil.
With Thief, you have about 300-400 years set between the original game series and the new game. In the 2014 reboot, the City itself is built on the remnants of the original City from the original series. In the chapter The Forsaken (fuck this chapter, by the way – I hate asylums and jumpscares), the Moira Asylum is a direct tie back to Edwina Moira, who founded the asylum after being a victim of “The Sneak-Thief” (Garrett’s original incarnation).
When we look at these games and the ratings they got (using critics and Google ratings) – DmC performed very well, having higher-than-average scores from the 80s to 90s. Thief, however, got pretty mixed reviews ranging from below average to average – mostly performing well in Europe.
The major pitfalls of these games, to me, would be how “linear” the storylines are and DmC suffers from that more than Thief does as it is set up like titles in the DMC franchise – missions laid out in front of you that you are graded and ranked on depending on if you use items, take damage and how much damage is taken. Thief also has missions but you do have the option to explore (and steal) from random houses and places with lots of sidequests.
Should you play a reboot if one presents itself to you? I think so. The worst thing that happens is you spend your time playing a game you may not like so much.