To everyone saying Yes for the brothers really wanting to kill each other.
What caused the sudden change of heart then ? OR are they still going to fight to the death in the Underworld.
Edit : And why would he care about the roots from spreading. Why would he care if the city is destroyed or w/e.
For me it is the whole vibe the game gives back and forth.
Vergil's whole goal is to get back to health and strength, just to fight Dante. He does it in his own stylish and fair manner after merged, waiting for him at the top, saying Dante to gather his shit first. But he is pretty dead serious from the very beginning.
Dante on the other hand talks about killing Vergil the whole time. That's why he doesn't want to have Nero there. He calls Vergil names, even when no one's there, he would feel the need to act tough in front. He doesn't show too much effort to not go all out on Vergil.
About the sudden change of heart: Flawed writing + rushed ending.
The fruit is gone, so the tree lost its meaing. No need in keeping it, and it would be a nuisance as he says, so Vergil is fine with cutting it. He's never been a blind psychopath. He does, what gets him to his goal and he gains no benefits from the tree further growing. (It is still not sure how much of the original Vergil foresaw the whole tree stuff when splitting.) You could also say, that this shows the little good that's always been in him.
If I were to fanfic rewrite DMC5 in what I think is a relatively low-cost simple way that wouldn't had costed a ton of money, I'd honestly switch Urizen with Mundus.
Make it so that Urizen is Mundus reborn, but in realising that he is weaker than Dante - his rebirth also has him reviving his DMC1 underlings from the dead and absorbing their essence into them. And V ( along with weakened Griffon/Shadow/Nightmare ) were 'ejected' from the reborn Mundus as unnecessary extras.
In this revised storyline, V/Vergil's motivations is solely to get back at Mundus who stole his power ( even if it revived him ) and wanting to restore himself back. And his familiars are begrudging allies along the way. And Urizen/Mundus is basically just wanting to gain more power so that he can get his revenge against Dante once and for all.
In my opinion, this reshuffling of characters reduces the noise of the interlocked identity and motivation of 3 aspects of Vergil/V/Urizen into just one, pushes away the baggage of 'yooo Vergil's demon side just killed off like hundreds of thousands of humans but nevermind he'll still be redeemed or not treated as a monster at the end' to Mundus, and in general - reduces the vibe of Vergil feeling like a pathetic sore loser who can't get over the fact that he's been defeated twice/etc.
Yeah, keep it clean and simple. 4 seemed too cramped for them to handle already, so I was unsure about 5 when more and more surfaced.
Honestly, I only wanted them to bring Vergil back, with what ever stupid reason I shall not mind and then have him fucking redeem himself.
After the first trailer, I hoped he would do his own thing unseen in the back, observing. Let him be the one to cut out Dante of his coma prison, without anyone knowing. And then jump in during the final fight to help and maybe in the end give his life to save Dante or go into hell to seal from that side as sacrifice.
Is that so hard?!
Dante knows v is split from vergil the whole time, right? He makes a comment at one point that indicates he does, I think after the v and Trish scene.
I'm still super torn regarding this matter and Dante's actions in general. :/
What does he really know? What mood does he get from it? There are a tons of possiblities what V could have told him and what not. Dante is not sure enough to not test Urizen with using Jackpot. But it should tell him then, V told him the truth. But how much of it? The whole story of the arm rip off and split in two? Everything of that or only some bits? Does he know i.e. that Vergil's goal is revenge on him?
Dante could know Yamato had this power all along without being told by V. But on the other hand it is quite strange that he drops it at that very place.
Shouldn't Dante be surprised, seeing Nero with one arm less than last time?
Whatever I go by, how much he does or doesn't know – there seems to be something missing; always something feels off and contradicting.
I'm never sure if it is an intentional hint, a mistake by the author or – and I think, that's most likely – it is due to them trying to play hide and seek with us.
It is obvious, that Urizen is Vergil and Dante knows from the start. We all know. But then again they want to keep some mystery. Are you really sure you know it?
And so they start to throw vague stuff in, leading to mysterious dialogues and misleading actions on purpose, which don't match anymore, when the curtain is finally lifted.
V is a bit similar. How much memories does he have? It seems, he knows everything, but he acts like he just remembered he used to live in Red Grave. When they see the Angelos for the first time, he reacts quite strongly, as if it just hit him.
More hints for the player then useful interactions.
I'd say that is one reason why the whole story and the writing doesn't feel too good and misses the payoff quite often.
