One can tell that the dev is a "Devil may cry" fan. I mean, you got a Dante, a Nero (who pretty much looks like reboot Dante from 2013) and the Silverino family (silver hair, just like Dante, Vergil and Nero).
Really looking forward to the MC's and Nero reactions when they first meet and size each other up. Would be funny if they end up as best friends.
Well, there's whole bunch of stuff Hopes is a fan of, which came into play; the inspiration for the game came from a Turkish Crime series that he loved.
Not to mention..... there's more obvious influences of popularized Crime media like The Godfather, Goodfellas, Scarface etc etc he mentioned also.
He didn't mention DmC but who knows.
Nah, while they may possibly (or not) get friendly, best (male) friend spot will always go to Jalen.
He's known MC the longest since being in school, and considers MC as his brother (as shown in that Kaskar Family event).
Besides, MC & Nero are half-brothers already anyway.
So regardless of whether Nero becomes a friend or foe to MC, there will always be a connection between them.
I am aware of that. And I'm sure that's from where the creators of DMC took inspiration. But other than the reasons that I listed above, the way the characters talk and behave in-game is anime (and manga) inspired so that doesn't rule out that the dev is a DMC fan.
The whole exaggerated movements & extraordinary feats the high ranking soldiers in the Families have, Hopes has stated was influenced by anime in general.
While that doesn't rule out Hopes is a DMC fan, it doesn't necessarily confirm it either.
Guess this can only be answered if someone asks Hopes directly.
As for me, I just thought Hopes used the names of those famous historical figures (and they're Italian too), & didn't even think of DmC until you mentioned it, heh.
But I even won't rule out possibility that Hopes might have just used a Italian random name generator.