Capcom has admitted to deliberately courting controversy with Dante's much-maligned new look in its recently announced Devil May Cry prequel.

VP of strategic planning and business development Christian Svensson told IGN, "I will argue that any changes will bring about a knee-jerk reaction from fans.

"We know that; we knew that going into it. To be fair, I think some of the strategy here was to create that discussion and dialogue, and I think it drastically raises the visibility of the title versus if we had just done another Dante."

"The original concepts that came back for Dante were actually extremely close to the Dante everyone knows and loves," he added.

"The feedback that came back from [Keiji] Inafune and [Hideaki] Itsuno was, 'No guys, this needs to be completely different, we need you to go much further and be much more creative.'"