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Alright, 4 threads in. This has to be one of the longest-running CRT's I've ever seen. Welp... time to shamelessly copy and paste all the points made so far.
Copied from the beginning of the last thread (https://vsbattles.com/vsbattles/2910304)
Established subjects
If you don't know what "original form" means, the beginning of DMC3 manga explains it.
The world was born of darkness. Unending darkness, a crucible of chaos...
DMC2 guide book also says this...
"She is certain that his (Dante's) skill is necessary to stop the evil (Argosax) and prevent the Demon World from consuming our dimension."
...and this, which prove that the Human World is, in fact, being consumed by the Demon World.
"The power of the demon world can warp the minds of men and stop the hands of time. In the time between seconds, reality is not what it seems. The dark forces can bend passages that once led to real destinations into circles of infinite confusion..."
"...The entire town has been warped by the approach of the demon world into a vicious infinite circle..."
Currently discussed topics
Mundus's feat
Shamelessly copy-pasted from Ogbunabali:
The only feat that is 3-A that's being discussed is the Mundus feat. And by process of elimination it's definitely creation.
Follow Doctor Freeman proposed these 2 options:
Copied from Kepekley's post on the previous thread.
Introductio
My main problems with the opposite side of this debate are the following issues:
Explanatio
First things first, an online debate is, in principle, similar to a real-life debate, the only obvious difference being the subject being debated. In real life, in order to make conclusions about a fact, we apply what we call the scientific method - which is a set of observations based on experimenting with the available evidence. A scientist in real life may conduct numerous experiments to test the shape of the earth among other things. The important part about an experiment is that you need to already have a hypothesis/theory formulated about the outcome of your experiment in order for it to be scientific. For example, one could conduct an experiment to find out the Earth's shape and presuppose that the Earth has the shape of a rectangle - when the data actually supports the conclusion that the Earth has the shape of (roughly) a sphere instead, the previous conclusion is discarded in favor of the one with more evidence. This is called the concept of falsifiability/verifiability, something very important to a debate.
To exemplify when something is NOT verifiable, I will give a very famous example, from Carl Sagan himself. If I were to tell a skeptical person that there was a dragon in my house, and then I led them to my house and there was no dragon in there, they'd probably ask me where it was. If I told them that the dragon was invisible and that only I can see it, they'd probably ask me to locate the dragon and try to bump against it to prove it, or spray paint on the ground and have the dragon step on IT in order to make its footsteps visible, to which I would probably reply that the dragon floated in the air and that it was also intangible/immaterial. Basically, I'd keep giving a host of excuses for why the dragon's existence could not be verified, making its validity completely impossible to prove at all. This is an example of an unverifiable hypothesis. By default there is absolutely no reason to give it any second-thought whatsoever.
"Okay, why is this significant?" you might ask. Keep reading on to find out.
How it translates to a fictional setting
Having explained this, let's look at a videogame setting. When it comes to video-games, experimentation as we perform it in real life is completely impossible, with extremely rare exceptions, due to the fact that video-games follow a linear, pre-rendered path and storyline, which the player can not deviate from, and thus the only experiments that we can make in order to prove a point or a feat in a video-game is the evidence that 'we're allowed access to by the game's pre-programmed storyline. However, if there is not conclusive evidence to support a presupposed point of view, then making a conclusion is, by default, appealing to ignorance and fallacious at best.
So, what we can experiment with and prove in Argosax's case? Well, taking the game as its own enclosed story and universe, we can definitely state that, based on evidence, Argosax is performing a distortion that affects the series's setting in some way. Now, what about the scale of the feat? Let's analyze both of the hypothesis thrown around on this thread for the feat's scale
Worldwide Hypothesis
It has been proposed by some that Argosax's feat was happening on a merely planetary scale. The argument used to support this hypothesis, is that we, as the player, while traveling around, only observe the local effects of the distortion - namely, cities having been distorted out of shape and reorganized, the sky having become bloody red, with the atmosphere also being warped, and clouds swirling around unnaturally.
Right away, sharp-eyed readers who have paid attention to my previous sections may notice that this hypothesis would be taking advantage of the fact that we, as a character on a pre-programmed and nigh-unexaminable video game setting, are naturally simply unable to observe and note anything that happens outside of the main area. And this is the simple, major, untenable problem that completely troubles this hypothesis - it is inherently based on a distorted and flawed source of conclusive evidence for a feat as unorthodox as this - the player character's observations
While the hypothesis that the feat was only planetary is falsifiable - that is, it can be put to test based on available evidence -, the hypothesis can not falsify (debunk) any other hypothesis, because disproving universal scale based off of Dante or Lucia's personal, local observations in DMC2 is completely impossible by default, as they never witness anything that'd contradict universal scale for the feat, they only observe local results of the distortion.
This theory ends up suffering from a major and infamous fallacy in this wiki - the non-sequitur. That is, it draws its conclusions from evidence that does not actually support said conclusions. The whole theory can be resumed with the following basic statement:
This hypothesis right here would only be valid if there was absolutely nothing else to judge the feat off of. With the introduction of any, literally any piece of evidence contradicting it, it immediately falls apart as a conclusive theory for the feat, just like my "star" example above, especially because the only thing that supports this is local visual picking (as opposed to any of the scans singling down the "Earth" or the "Planet" as being affected).
Universal Hypothesis
This was the initially proposed hypothesis for the feat, since when it was first mentioned. Namely, that Argosax's feat is of a universal scale, being a literal fusion of the entirety of the two universes. The main arguments used to support such a thing are the facts that the official Devil May Cry 2 guidebook outright states that Argosax's appearance would result in the Demon World consuming our dimension, and a statement made by Arius, a guy who has researched Argosax and the tales of the Demon World for the larger portion of his life who is also the main villain of the game, who states that the seal on Argosax was weakening, and as a result, the world was already being warped and everything that belonged to the demons would end up reverting back to its original form:
To be straightforward, what Arius is talking about by "everything that belongs to the devils will revert to its original form" is explained in the first few pages of the prologue of the Devil May Cry 3 manga, where it is revealed that, at the dawn of creation, the Human World and the Demon World were once joined on the same dimensional plane/universe ("the original form"), with the Human World having been actually born from the Demon World itself, until the original universe was forcibly split in two, with the smaller half becoming the Human World, our universe, and the larger half becoming the Demon World, the universe of the demons:
So, what is the most logical option here, having pondered the issues side-by-side? One of those arguments actually provides conclusive, falsifiable evidence, while the other side visibly lacks the capability to falsify the universal argument, while being fallacious and untenable itself. Therefore, it's just reasonable and logical to decide that the feat is 3-A, as that is the only option with any leg to stand on here.
Rebuttals
Having made my own judgement and conclusion, I of course have to acknowledge that a few arguments have been put forth against the scans that establish the feat to be 3-A. Here I will analyze those arguments myself to see if they do hold up to scrutinity.
First things first, this argument, put forth by Matthew, is made while simultaneously acknowledging the fact that Argosax was indeed going to warp and distort the world in some form. This interpretation is therefore completely untenable and self-contradictory when you consider that those who believe in it do acknowledge Argosax's distortion and consumption as a physical fact, even if they believe it to be on a lower scale. Very basic usage of Occam's Razor would already dictate that if every single other reference to Argosax distorting and merging the "world", be it universal or not, does indeed refer to Argosax literally causing the world to be consumed by the Demon World, then another reference that specifies that our entire dimension would be consumed, as opposed to merely Earth, would also be logically expected to have the exact same context and meaning as all the others coming before it, instead of a magically new, never-explained "conquering" definition that is never, ever alluded to in the entire campaign of the game, and is based off of a pure false equivalence with Mundus that has nothing to do with what Argosax did. So it already fails at a basic technical level by violating Occam's Razor in this situation, and also contradicting itself to boot.
Second, as I passingly mentioned above, the false equivalence with Mundus is...indeed a massive false equivalence - I can simply not highlight this enough. Remember when I previously mentioned how the supporters of the "planetary" point of view tried to make Mundus and Argosax's situations appear similar to each other by describing both of them together in a bald, extremely basic summary, to make them appear more similar than they actually are (not saying that this is done intentionally or dishonestly)? Well, now to elaborate on that. We currently accept Mundus creating a portal and sending his armies through said portal in order to conquer the Earth - correct. Now imagine Argosax, physically shattering the barrier between both worlds, distorting and forcibly merging both together in some way into a bizarre nightmare realm- which is what is established in the game. Really, sounds extremely similar to Mundus - or not. At all. This comparison could literally not be anymore unwarranted or more of a false equivalence when you actually look at what is happening in both events separately, instead of blending both together because the characters performing the feats are both Demon Kings and God-Tiers of the erse.
Third, the entire comparison does not even have grammatical support to begin with, since the passage is not telling us that they would consume the world, which is what would be required for the interpretation of "conquering the Earth" to be valid. It specifically singles out our entire dimension being consumed. Considering that the demon invasion promoted by Mundus would be entirely focused on conquering the Earth, instead of conquering the whole universe or anything similar, there is absolutely no basis for interpreting the statement as anything other than than what it is ("our universe will be consumed by another universe"), and the statement quickly becomes extremely weird and inefficient if we assumed it was actually meant to convey a mere planetary invasion poetically.
No on all accounts for this one.
In addition, the claim that the guidebooks have no developer backing is completely false, considering all the Bradygames guides ''are'' run through with the developer team itself instead of just being licensed by the producer (the evidence for this being the credits to the scriptwriters for the content in the introduction), so attempting to paint the guidebook as fully third-party is rather faulty. The DMC guides are most definitely the very best next source after a statement or feat coming straight out of the games themselves, being second only to official interviews or streams with the developers.
Conclusion
Amidst the above discussion of the High 6-A or 5-B suggestions, which have exactly zero conclusive/admissible evidence to back them up, aside from being unfalsifiable and unscientific if you want to use real debating as a comparative stick, interpreting the confirmations at face-value and taking all evidence into account to form the whole picture ends up still being the best and more reasonable manner of looking at those feats, as my analysis above indicates, as opposed to simply taking one completely inconclusive aspect of the feat and trying to use that one observation to form a conclusion, while simultaneously ignoring the reasonable body of evidence against it.
Needless to say - my final conclusion is that Argosax's feat being 3-A is much more reasonable.
Copied from the beginning of the last thread (https://vsbattles.com/vsbattles/2910304)
Established subjects
- Argosax's feat's legitimacy.
If you don't know what "original form" means, the beginning of DMC3 manga explains it.
The world was born of darkness. Unending darkness, a crucible of chaos...
DMC2 guide book also says this...
"She is certain that his (Dante's) skill is necessary to stop the evil (Argosax) and prevent the Demon World from consuming our dimension."
...and this, which prove that the Human World is, in fact, being consumed by the Demon World.
"The power of the demon world can warp the minds of men and stop the hands of time. In the time between seconds, reality is not what it seems. The dark forces can bend passages that once led to real destinations into circles of infinite confusion..."
"...The entire town has been warped by the approach of the demon world into a vicious infinite circle..."
Currently discussed topics
- The legitimacy of Mundus's feat in Devil May Cry 1.
- Scaling characters to Argosax's feat.
Mundus's feat
Shamelessly copy-pasted from Ogbunabali:
The only feat that is 3-A that's being discussed is the Mundus feat. And by process of elimination it's definitely creation.
- It's not teleportation because this is teleportation, and even Munuds himself says that in the human world they are weaker, as well as the demon world not having a sky like that, means that it's not teleportation.
- It's also not illusions because the fight can't physically happen in that space they were in, if you've played the game you would know what I mean here is a full fight you can watch it yourself if you haven't already, and not to mention the room they were in doesn't have a scratch on it when we see Dante in the aftermath, which again would be physically impossible if it was an illusion.
- The sky rotating is also just a weird camera spin, not the area itself moving, which you can quite clearly see when Mundus flies up and the sky behind him isn't rotating at all.
- There is also no "air burst" when he jumps, that's blatantly false. If someone sees an "air burst" there feel free to show me a scan of where, because I don't see anything.
- As well as when he creates the dimension both him and Dante float in the air, unlike some people that have claimed they were standing feet flat which is just wrong.
Follow Doctor Freeman proposed these 2 options:
- Everyone who fought Argosax/is comparable to him should scale, from DMC2 Dante upwards. Sparda DT Dante fought Mundus with a 3-A feat & DMC2 Dante fought Argosax with a 3-A feat who is also equal to Mundus. Another thing worth pointing out is that Dante beats Void Mundus (who is stronger than the original one) in the DMC2 novel.
- DMC2 Dante doesn't scale, since Argosax was defeated due to Plot-Induced Stupidity, since Dante hijacked the ritual. However, that is contradicted by Dante being Void Mundus in base. There's also no concrete proof that Argosax was not at his full power there.
Copied from Kepekley's post on the previous thread.
Introductio
My main problems with the opposite side of this debate are the following issues:
- 1. The complete dismissal of secondary evidence from non-game sources, the dismissal stemming from the fact that they're not as unquestionable as in-game evidence instead of them contradicting anything stated or shown in the game itself.
- 2. The constant false equivalences with other franchises and with other events in the series that have absolutely nothing to do with the event on DMC2, unless you distort the very, very basic description and outcome of said event ("Argosax would conquer the Human World/Mundus would also do the same thing") in order to make it appear as if it's remarkably similar.
- 3. The contradictions that come from the confusing structure of the arguments.
Explanatio
First things first, an online debate is, in principle, similar to a real-life debate, the only obvious difference being the subject being debated. In real life, in order to make conclusions about a fact, we apply what we call the scientific method - which is a set of observations based on experimenting with the available evidence. A scientist in real life may conduct numerous experiments to test the shape of the earth among other things. The important part about an experiment is that you need to already have a hypothesis/theory formulated about the outcome of your experiment in order for it to be scientific. For example, one could conduct an experiment to find out the Earth's shape and presuppose that the Earth has the shape of a rectangle - when the data actually supports the conclusion that the Earth has the shape of (roughly) a sphere instead, the previous conclusion is discarded in favor of the one with more evidence. This is called the concept of falsifiability/verifiability, something very important to a debate.
To exemplify when something is NOT verifiable, I will give a very famous example, from Carl Sagan himself. If I were to tell a skeptical person that there was a dragon in my house, and then I led them to my house and there was no dragon in there, they'd probably ask me where it was. If I told them that the dragon was invisible and that only I can see it, they'd probably ask me to locate the dragon and try to bump against it to prove it, or spray paint on the ground and have the dragon step on IT in order to make its footsteps visible, to which I would probably reply that the dragon floated in the air and that it was also intangible/immaterial. Basically, I'd keep giving a host of excuses for why the dragon's existence could not be verified, making its validity completely impossible to prove at all. This is an example of an unverifiable hypothesis. By default there is absolutely no reason to give it any second-thought whatsoever.
"Okay, why is this significant?" you might ask. Keep reading on to find out.
How it translates to a fictional setting
Having explained this, let's look at a videogame setting. When it comes to video-games, experimentation as we perform it in real life is completely impossible, with extremely rare exceptions, due to the fact that video-games follow a linear, pre-rendered path and storyline, which the player can not deviate from, and thus the only experiments that we can make in order to prove a point or a feat in a video-game is the evidence that 'we're allowed access to by the game's pre-programmed storyline. However, if there is not conclusive evidence to support a presupposed point of view, then making a conclusion is, by default, appealing to ignorance and fallacious at best.
So, what we can experiment with and prove in Argosax's case? Well, taking the game as its own enclosed story and universe, we can definitely state that, based on evidence, Argosax is performing a distortion that affects the series's setting in some way. Now, what about the scale of the feat? Let's analyze both of the hypothesis thrown around on this thread for the feat's scale
Worldwide Hypothesis
It has been proposed by some that Argosax's feat was happening on a merely planetary scale. The argument used to support this hypothesis, is that we, as the player, while traveling around, only observe the local effects of the distortion - namely, cities having been distorted out of shape and reorganized, the sky having become bloody red, with the atmosphere also being warped, and clouds swirling around unnaturally.
Right away, sharp-eyed readers who have paid attention to my previous sections may notice that this hypothesis would be taking advantage of the fact that we, as a character on a pre-programmed and nigh-unexaminable video game setting, are naturally simply unable to observe and note anything that happens outside of the main area. And this is the simple, major, untenable problem that completely troubles this hypothesis - it is inherently based on a distorted and flawed source of conclusive evidence for a feat as unorthodox as this - the player character's observations
While the hypothesis that the feat was only planetary is falsifiable - that is, it can be put to test based on available evidence -, the hypothesis can not falsify (debunk) any other hypothesis, because disproving universal scale based off of Dante or Lucia's personal, local observations in DMC2 is completely impossible by default, as they never witness anything that'd contradict universal scale for the feat, they only observe local results of the distortion.
This theory ends up suffering from a major and infamous fallacy in this wiki - the non-sequitur. That is, it draws its conclusions from evidence that does not actually support said conclusions. The whole theory can be resumed with the following basic statement:
- "If the feat is planetary in scale, we would see cities being distorted by it, therefore the feat is planetary."
This hypothesis right here would only be valid if there was absolutely nothing else to judge the feat off of. With the introduction of any, literally any piece of evidence contradicting it, it immediately falls apart as a conclusive theory for the feat, just like my "star" example above, especially because the only thing that supports this is local visual picking (as opposed to any of the scans singling down the "Earth" or the "Planet" as being affected).
Universal Hypothesis
This was the initially proposed hypothesis for the feat, since when it was first mentioned. Namely, that Argosax's feat is of a universal scale, being a literal fusion of the entirety of the two universes. The main arguments used to support such a thing are the facts that the official Devil May Cry 2 guidebook outright states that Argosax's appearance would result in the Demon World consuming our dimension, and a statement made by Arius, a guy who has researched Argosax and the tales of the Demon World for the larger portion of his life who is also the main villain of the game, who states that the seal on Argosax was weakening, and as a result, the world was already being warped and everything that belonged to the demons would end up reverting back to its original form:
- "She is certain that his skill is necessary to stop the evil and prevent the Demon World from consuming our dimension." - Devil May Cry 2 Guidebook
- "The world is already warped. Everything that belongs to the devils will eventually revert to its original form." - Devil May Cry 2, Mission 8
To be straightforward, what Arius is talking about by "everything that belongs to the devils will revert to its original form" is explained in the first few pages of the prologue of the Devil May Cry 3 manga, where it is revealed that, at the dawn of creation, the Human World and the Demon World were once joined on the same dimensional plane/universe ("the original form"), with the Human World having been actually born from the Demon World itself, until the original universe was forcibly split in two, with the smaller half becoming the Human World, our universe, and the larger half becoming the Demon World, the universe of the demons:
- The world was born from darkness. Unending darkness. A crucible of chaos. But even to that primordial existence there came a ray of light. The universe was eventually split in two. The darkness became the realm of demons... and the light became the domain of mortals.
So, what is the most logical option here, having pondered the issues side-by-side? One of those arguments actually provides conclusive, falsifiable evidence, while the other side visibly lacks the capability to falsify the universal argument, while being fallacious and untenable itself. Therefore, it's just reasonable and logical to decide that the feat is 3-A, as that is the only option with any leg to stand on here.
Rebuttals
Having made my own judgement and conclusion, I of course have to acknowledge that a few arguments have been put forth against the scans that establish the feat to be 3-A. Here I will analyze those arguments myself to see if they do hold up to scrutinity.
- Argument 1: The scan referring to the Demon World consuming the dimension can simply refer to the Earth being conquered by the demons and assimilated, instead of actually being consumed in the literal sense, as shown with Mundus."
First things first, this argument, put forth by Matthew, is made while simultaneously acknowledging the fact that Argosax was indeed going to warp and distort the world in some form. This interpretation is therefore completely untenable and self-contradictory when you consider that those who believe in it do acknowledge Argosax's distortion and consumption as a physical fact, even if they believe it to be on a lower scale. Very basic usage of Occam's Razor would already dictate that if every single other reference to Argosax distorting and merging the "world", be it universal or not, does indeed refer to Argosax literally causing the world to be consumed by the Demon World, then another reference that specifies that our entire dimension would be consumed, as opposed to merely Earth, would also be logically expected to have the exact same context and meaning as all the others coming before it, instead of a magically new, never-explained "conquering" definition that is never, ever alluded to in the entire campaign of the game, and is based off of a pure false equivalence with Mundus that has nothing to do with what Argosax did. So it already fails at a basic technical level by violating Occam's Razor in this situation, and also contradicting itself to boot.
Second, as I passingly mentioned above, the false equivalence with Mundus is...indeed a massive false equivalence - I can simply not highlight this enough. Remember when I previously mentioned how the supporters of the "planetary" point of view tried to make Mundus and Argosax's situations appear similar to each other by describing both of them together in a bald, extremely basic summary, to make them appear more similar than they actually are (not saying that this is done intentionally or dishonestly)? Well, now to elaborate on that. We currently accept Mundus creating a portal and sending his armies through said portal in order to conquer the Earth - correct. Now imagine Argosax, physically shattering the barrier between both worlds, distorting and forcibly merging both together in some way into a bizarre nightmare realm- which is what is established in the game. Really, sounds extremely similar to Mundus - or not. At all. This comparison could literally not be anymore unwarranted or more of a false equivalence when you actually look at what is happening in both events separately, instead of blending both together because the characters performing the feats are both Demon Kings and God-Tiers of the erse.
Third, the entire comparison does not even have grammatical support to begin with, since the passage is not telling us that they would consume the world, which is what would be required for the interpretation of "conquering the Earth" to be valid. It specifically singles out our entire dimension being consumed. Considering that the demon invasion promoted by Mundus would be entirely focused on conquering the Earth, instead of conquering the whole universe or anything similar, there is absolutely no basis for interpreting the statement as anything other than than what it is ("our universe will be consumed by another universe"), and the statement quickly becomes extremely weird and inefficient if we assumed it was actually meant to convey a mere planetary invasion poetically.
No on all accounts for this one.
- Argument 2: The Devil May Cry guidebooks are not unquestionable sources, being third-party and not written by the developers, only licensed by Capcom."
In addition, the claim that the guidebooks have no developer backing is completely false, considering all the Bradygames guides ''are'' run through with the developer team itself instead of just being licensed by the producer (the evidence for this being the credits to the scriptwriters for the content in the introduction), so attempting to paint the guidebook as fully third-party is rather faulty. The DMC guides are most definitely the very best next source after a statement or feat coming straight out of the games themselves, being second only to official interviews or streams with the developers.
Conclusion
Amidst the above discussion of the High 6-A or 5-B suggestions, which have exactly zero conclusive/admissible evidence to back them up, aside from being unfalsifiable and unscientific if you want to use real debating as a comparative stick, interpreting the confirmations at face-value and taking all evidence into account to form the whole picture ends up still being the best and more reasonable manner of looking at those feats, as my analysis above indicates, as opposed to simply taking one completely inconclusive aspect of the feat and trying to use that one observation to form a conclusion, while simultaneously ignoring the reasonable body of evidence against it.
Needless to say - my final conclusion is that Argosax's feat being 3-A is much more reasonable.
