Let's quickly run through the plot of Devil May Cry 4. The main character, Nero, has a girlfriend named Kyrie. This girl is kidnapped. In his desperation to save her, he unlocks his nascent demonic power. She turns out to have been kidnapped to serve as the core of a godlike being called the Savior. Nero stylishly and furiously hacks, slashes, and rips apart everything in his way to get to her, removes her from the Savior, and then destroys the savior once they are both outside. What's interesting is that while this is going on, demons are rampaging through the country, killing people, destroying cities, the whole nine yards. Nero is not interested in this. Remember, he unlocked his powers to protect her. But he ends up saving the world as an ancillary, accidental bonus to saving his girlfriend. So, for someone who drove literally the entire plot of this game, care to guess how actually involved she was? I'll answer that by listing all of her lines in the game (not including the song she sings in the beginning)
-"Nero, what's wrong?"
-"But it's not over yet."
-"Nero!"
-"Credo requested. She yearns for your touch."
-"Please be careful, you still haven't recovered."
-"Nero!"
-"AAAA!! Why? Why did you do this?"
-"Nero, thank you"
-"So, is this the end?"
-"The city's a wreck. I am still alive, right?"
-"Nero, you're you. And it's you I want to be with. I don't know anyone who is as human as you are."
To give you perspective, this game has roughly an hour and fifty three minutes of cutscenes, and this is the contribution she makes to it. What does this leave the impressionable gamer with? That women are creatures to be coddled and protected from a world too strong for them to handle? That it is a man's responsibility to be that protector?
The damsel in distress role is displayed here in all its putrescent glory, as the lazy developer's tool for progressing a plot at the expense of the image of women in this community.
-"Nero, what's wrong?"
-"But it's not over yet."
-"Nero!"
-"Credo requested. She yearns for your touch."
-"Please be careful, you still haven't recovered."
-"Nero!"
-"AAAA!! Why? Why did you do this?"
-"Nero, thank you"
-"So, is this the end?"
-"The city's a wreck. I am still alive, right?"
-"Nero, you're you. And it's you I want to be with. I don't know anyone who is as human as you are."
To give you perspective, this game has roughly an hour and fifty three minutes of cutscenes, and this is the contribution she makes to it. What does this leave the impressionable gamer with? That women are creatures to be coddled and protected from a world too strong for them to handle? That it is a man's responsibility to be that protector?
The damsel in distress role is displayed here in all its putrescent glory, as the lazy developer's tool for progressing a plot at the expense of the image of women in this community.