We recently had the opportunity to play Devil May Cry 5 at TGS. The demo shown behind closed doors featured Dante, the original star of the series who is now considered a secondary character to Nero in the new sequel. During our demo we encountered the Divinity Statue, which acts as a shop where you can trade in orbs collected during combat and exploration, and in that menu we discovered that players will have the option to spend real money to accrue more orbs if they wish to expedite the upgrade process and beef up Dante earlier than usual.

Speaking to Hideaki Itsuno, director on the game from Capcom, we asked why this system is necessary in a game like Devil May Cry 5, and the reason given was a familiar one: it's about giving players options to play the game as they wish. "With giving people the ability to purchase Red Orbs, it’s something we want to give people as an option. If they want to save time and just want to get all the stuff at once, those people can do that. But on the other hand I don’t feel you have to get all the moves, " said Itsuno. "You should be able to play it the way you want to play it."

It was a bit surprising to discover that such a feature exists in Devil May Cry 5, but it's not the first game in the series to feature them--they were also a part of Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition.

We also asked Itsuno about how presence of microtransactions will impact the learning process of playing the next Devil May Cry as our experience with these types of action games has taught us that gradually unlocking and learning new abilities is a far more natural means of developing your skills and earning higher performance ranks in battle.

"It’s interesting because from a game design point of view there’s two different things we think about when we set the prices of the moves, skills, and abilities [which can be purchased with Red Orbs]," he explained. "The first thing is the stuff that we feel people should want to get first is made cheaper. So people will think, ‘Oh this is cheap so I’m just going to buy this.’ But then for the stuff that’s going to be harder to use and master, we make that more expensive. Partly because of you save up for that you’re not going to be able to buy as many skills, so you’re going to have the time to learn it. So you have to make the decision between going for the cheaper stuff or saving up, getting the thing that has a lot of application but you’ll have to spend time learning and perfecting."

Asked about how giving players the ability to purchase Red Orbs and acquire weapons and items with real money impacts game balance, Itsuno said series veterans shouldn't see any difference from previous entries.

"We've balance this the way we always have. And we've balanced this very much with the idea that you don't have to [spend money on Red Orbs] and you shouldn't have to spend money. That's not what it's there for. It's really there to give people the option. The people that are used to the series can play through the way they always have [because] it should be balanced the way that it has always been balanced. But for people that want to buy that Air Hike [move] and say, 'Do I want to keep going through the game and get enough Orbs or do I want to just go ahead and get that now?,' you have that option.

To really get a grasp of how microtransactions impact Devil May Cry 5 we'll have to wait until Spring 2019, when the games is released and we can get our hands on it. For more in depth impressions of our time with Dante check out our Devil May Cry 5 video preview. You can also see some new Devil May Cry 5 Dante gameplay here.