Because of his incomplete and fragmented identity, he does not have a real name. When V invokes “Infant Joy,” he is referring to the situation of his own birth. The player discovers early on that V is really the human embodiment of Dante’s brother, Vergil, who forcibly split his human and demon selves to acquire more power, thus creating Urizen. What is presented as an innocent joke is an explicit reference to “Infant Joy” and a subversive admission about V’s own existence. V responds, quite confusingly, with a one-line excerpt from Blake’s “Infant Joy” taken from Songs of Innocence (1789): When he first meets with Dante to propose taking down Urizen, Dante asks him about his name. Once V is introduced, his cryptic recitations of Blake’s poetry lend to the themes of familial ties. Rosenwald Collection, The Library of Congress. When Nero battles Urizen unsuccessfully at the very beginning of the game, Urizen states, “You will regret…being born useless and human.” Based on the quotation, Urizen’s distorted logos in the game sees being human as a reflection of weakness and one’s lack of power, not unlike the way Urizen views humanity in Blake’s mythology.įigure 4: Infant Joy, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Copy Z, Object 25. Urizen represents an existence deprived of human attachment and connection that is possible to translate into other popular mediums. I argue that the decision to make Urizen the core antagonist of the game speaks to the broader concept that he embodies an evil that transcends genre and form. He is “limited” by his lust for power and control. His representation in DMC5 is somewhat similar to Blake’s vision in that this Urizen is equally dispassionate and divorced from human emotions and feelings. In The Book of Urizen(1794) and The Four Zoas (1797), Urizen’s oppression stems from using reason to limit the imagination. In Blake’s mythology, Urizen exists as the embodiment of reason and law – a demigod who seeks to impose his own will to constrain the universe within a web of demarcated limits. In DMC5, the three central protagonists – Dante, V, and a demon hunter protégé named Nero – must work together to infiltrate a demonic tree called the Qliphoth to vanquish Urizen, a Demon King who wishes to impose unilateral authority over the Underworld. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. Screenshot retrieved from Figure 3: The Book of Urizen Copy G, Object 6. By embedding Blake’s poetic mythos into the narrative framework of the game, DMC5 reimagines the Urizen myth in order to tell its story about the importance of familial bonds.įigure 2: “Urizen,” Devil May Cry 5 (2019). The fifth installment of the series, Devil May Cry 5 (2019) is notable for two distinct reasons: a mysterious new character – V – routinely quotes William Blake’s poetry and the game itself features Blake’s Urizen as its core antagonist. The latter is interested only in using brute force to exact control over the human and demon worlds. The former is the main protagonist of the series, and self-proclaimed “Demon Hunter” who uses his power to protect society from rogue demons. 1308-1320), the franchise revolves around the characters Dante and Vergil, twin brothers and archrivals who exist as human-demon hybrids with extraordinary fighting skills. Based loosely around Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (c. Developed by Capcom, the Japanese video game publisher responsible for the Resident Evil series, Devil May Cry (known colloquially as DMC) is no stranger to literary invocation. Screenshot retrieved from 2021 marks the 20 th anniversary of the hack-and-slash video game series, Devil May Cry (2001-Present). But what happens when a video game appropriates certain mythological elements of Romanticism and integrates them into the foundation of its own story? Figure 1: “The Title Screen,” Devil May Cry 5, 2019. These video games incorporate Romantic poetry as a way to contextualize, thematize, and construct the narrative and mechanical aspects of their respective designs. The 2019 post-apocalyptic action game developed by Hideo Kojima, Death Stranding, originated with a 2016 reveal trailer that showcased a short excerpt from William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence.” Likewise, the 2014 side-scrolling exploration game titled Elegy for a Dead World requires its players to write a diary based on their exploration through three worlds inspired by the literature of Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats. Video games have become a popular medium in which to feature excerpts from Romantic poetry.
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