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(Image: CAPCOM)

Devil May Cry has always been known as a stylish franchise - the series actively rewards players for doing ludicrously cool things.

Whether that's swinging your sword at the right time to break an enemy's attack, surfing on the body of a marionette as you pump its friends full of lead, or summoning explosive needles and making them explode with a rose, the series has forever delighted in the absurd.

The new game is no different either. For the first time in the series' history, the cast is made up of three main characters - veteran demon hunters Nero and Dante, and newcomer V.

The returning duo are outfitted with some of their now-traditional arms - Blue Rose and Red Queen for Nero, Ebony and Ivory and Rebellion for Dante - as well as some new toys to boot (Dante even gets to play with a motorcycle weapon this time around!)

The brooding emo of a hero that is V gets something a bit more... out there. The Adam Driver-looking, poetry-reciting protagonist can summon a bird, a panther and a colossus as his familiars and attack with those beasts - all whilst staying a safe distance from the gnashing claws of the demon insects overrunning the world.

You might think that's about as nonsensical as it could get - that Dante hopping on a motorbike and tearing it in half to use as a weapon is peak Devil May Cry.

Well, according to Matt Walker and Hideaki Itsuno (producer and director on Devil May Cry 5 respectively), the game almost had some even more outlandish weapons in there.

"Yeah, there were a few things that even we thought were too 'out there' to put in Devi May Cry 5," laughs Itsuno.

"For Dante, there were a couple of different ideas we had that we didn’t quite find a way to implement. One thing we thought would really be really cool was a weapon that included figure skating somehow!"

Istuno laughs and Walker chimes in with: "You can see how that would work, right? It'd look awesome! But we couldn’t quite make it work in the game."

A little later in the interview, the duo discusses how they wanted to carry on a theme from Devil May Cry 3 and give Dante a more... musical... way of dispatching his enemies.

"One of the things we ask ourselves all the time when we’re making these games is ‘what’s cool to someone who’s in their early teens’," explains Itsuno.

"That’s how you get Cavalier - the motorcycle weapon - right? That’s how you get Nevan, the guitar weapon, in Devil May Cry 3, too: it’s stuff that would be really cool to these young teenagers that we imagine playing the game."

"So that's why we’ve always been keen to include instruments with the Devil May Cry games," explains Walker.

"With that in mind, one of the things we thought about for a weapon in this game, in Devil May Cry 5, was a saxophone… but we couldn’t think of a good way to make that work in the game that would be readable and understandable.

"We were originally thinking that you could attack with the notes… but that would be kinda lame in practice, so..."

It's a shame - we can totally imagine Dante jamming out with a sax in the middle of a demon-infested hellscape, tooting along to Baker Street as each note rips new agony through the encroaching hordes. Hey - the jazz would even suit his improvisational style of combat!

Sadly, that mental image is forever doomed to Capcom's cutting room floor, along with a saxophonic weapon and a pair of deadly Dante ice skates.

At least what's left in Devil May Cry 5 is above and beyond what we were expecting, though: in a substantial hands-on session earlier this month, we got to get through a decent chunk of the game, and let us tell you this: we think it's easily the best Devil May Cry game to date.