The game was originally going to use white-haired Dante and the same setting as its predecessors, but Keiji Inafune told Ninja Theory that if they were going to do the same kind of game the Japanese teams had, Capcom shouldn't have bothered outsourcing. Inafune wanted them to Western it up.
He said the same thing to the Maximo dudes when Final Fight was in their hands, causing them to change from a cell-shaded Akiman style to what we saw in Final Fight Streetwise. Reviews in the US then spent all their space blasting its aesthetics, but Streetwise actually had a really good fighting system.
It's probably not deliberate sabotage, but I think Inafune's
growing disgust with Japanese-style games is skewing his perception of how other people will receive them. It's too bad these external studios are the ones that bear the backlash for taking his advice.
Regarding DmC, so far I can say it's a much better wreboot than Lords of Shadow.