I remember watching the Super Bowl in 2010 and an advertisement came on that showed a desperate man, dressed vaguely like a crusader, throwing himself into the bowels of hell, in pursuit of his lady. His furious, pleading voice screaming "Beatrice!" as he launched into the abyss after her and hurtled through the several layers of Hell. The ever-charming, smooth voice of Bill Withers sings in the background "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone." The man, shown to be the titular Dante, lands in the deepest pit of Hades, wielding a wicked looking scythe and begins to lay into the horde of demons and ghouls that are crowding around him. This trailer has been stuck in my head for fourteen years, and it was certainly playing in my head the day that I first picked up the game, Dante's Inferno, later that very same year.
Very loosely based on the famous 14th-century poem of the same name, by Italian renaissance writer Dante Alighieri, this video game adaptation reinterprets the story as a riveting and gory, action-adventure, drama of the highest order. Dante is a Christian crusader in the Holy Land who has a mile-long list of sins that he has committed while participating in the Crusades. While engaged in yet another brutal act, murdering innocent prisoners, he is stabbed in the back by an assassin and his charade of being a holy, godly warrior is brought to an abrupt ending. Or I should say, it would have been an abrupt ending to his life, if not for the most over-the-top, absurdly hardcore sequence of events. Death comes to take Dante, and tells him that that list of sins will damn Dante to Hell, but Dante isn't ready for his end yet. So what does he do? That's right, about 5 minutes into Dante's Inferno, you battle Death to the death and steal his iconic scythe. Then in a ridiculously awesome scene, in an act of penitence, Dante sews a red cross tapestry into his chest and abdomen. I can't get enough of this aesthetic. A crusader with Death's scythe and a giant cross literally sewn into his skin; it's so metal. After these events, Dante returns to Italy to be with his beloved, Beatrice, only to find that she has been horrifically murdered. He encounters her spirit, which is quickly dragged into Hell by Satan, only for our penitent hero to dive in after her. If this all doesn't sound like the coolest series of events that you've ever read, then I don't know what to tell you.
What I've detailed so far is merely the intro to the game, as unbelievable as that may seem. Once Dante gets into Hell, he must battle through the iconic nine circles that increase in wickedness with each descending layer. The nine circles of Hell, and all of their inhabitants and demons, make up the course of the game. Some of the demon and creature designs are wild. I actually remember the game getting in some serious hot water for numerous issues, prior to its release. One such issue was an Xbox achievement called "Bad Nanny," that involved Dante killing "small creatures" that were definitely supposed to be the souls of unbaptized children, given the achievement's name. With Visceral Games being the developer behind both Dante's Inferno and Dead Space, it seems that someone on that team enjoyed the idea of brutalizing small children/babies, since there was that infamous sequence in Dead Space 2 where you have to kill Necromorph children in a nursery and an elementary school.
One of the coolest things about Dante's vision of Hell, is that you often encounter real historical people and mythological characters that are damned to whichever circle most fits their sins. Like the boss of the Lust circle is a very nude, demonic Cleopatra. Cerberus, from Greek mythology, also makes an appearance as a giant worm-like beast. You also come across people like Attila the Hun, Boudica, Pontius Pilate, and various rulers from antiquity. These myriad souls that you come across factor into a major component of the game's core systems. Dante's Inferno features a morality meter, which was a very common gameplay element in 2010, when this game came out. Dante can use his blessed cross to absolve souls and let them move on from damnation, or use Death's scythe to punish them further. These two methods of judgment tilt Dante's morality one way or the other, and depending on how holy or unholy you choose to make Dante, he will unlock magic spells that are unique to the light or darkness.
One of the most notable things about Dante's Inferno, and perhaps the albatross around its neck, at least in the eyes of the public, was that the gameplay seemed too similar to the God of War series. The camera angle was similar. The fast-paced, brutal, gory combat was certainly familiar to Kratos' bloody approach to eradicating gods and creatures from Greek myth. There were also plenty of environmental puzzles and platforming sequences. Trust me, I can see the similarities and I'd be lying if I said that they're not comparable games. But, ultimately I feel that this comparison being the prevailing sentiment regarding Dante's Inferno was a disservice to the game. If you like how God of War played, why wouldn't it be a positive that this game was similar in approach? Also, the overall visual aesthetic of Dante's Inferno is completely different from God of War, as the former attempts to create a horrific, Christian (specifically Renaissance-era Catholic) vision of Hell. The ideas that we had of Good and Evil, God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, Angels and Demons, and everything comprising the religion had a somewhat cohesive, almost mythological interpretation in that era of history, and the game did a wonderful job translating some of those ideas, while also creating wholly fresh and unique visions of Hell's denizens and various domains.
We were lucky that Dante's Inferno came out in an era where lots of publishing companies were trying to cast a wide net of appeal with multimedia adaptations of the property they were marketing, as well as crossovers with other video games, which you rarely see in games nowadays, if they're anything other than Fortnite. You saw this with games like Dead Space, that received spin-off novels, comic books, animated movies, etc. This game got to benefit from that same marketing style. Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic was a feature length, animated film based on the game. The movie had some wild variations in art style, depending on what circle of Hell the story was currently set in. Dante himself differed greatly along with each art style change, where some artists depicted him with long hair, or having a taller and leaner build, while others pictured him as a hulking brute. An Animated Epic was an intriguing stab at telling Dante's story in a completely different medium. And on that same note, the game also received a six-part comic book run from Wildstorm. The art for the comic also looks phenomenal. It was really cool to see the iconic aesthetic created for the game shown off in some other mediums and art styles.
Dante's Inferno also had some cool crossover features. For instance, Isaac Clarke, protagonist of Dead Space, is a playable skin for Dante in the game. It's not an adaptation of Isaac's famed armor, a la Dragon Age II, it's just straight up Isaac's very sci-fi styled gear, but with Death's scythe strapped to his back. Perhaps the wildest bit of crossover promotion that Dante saw was being featured as a playable character in the PSP version of Army of Two: The 40th Day, if you choose morally bad decisions throughout your playthrough. At one point, Fede Alvarez, director of Alien: Romulus, was set to direct a live-action version of Dante's Inferno, which I'm sure would've been a fascinating adaptation, especially with Fede's proven horror chops. Lastly, a senior cinematic animator at Naughty Dog, named Tal Peleg, created two phenomenal fan-made CGI short movies heavily inspired by the visual style of the game. These fan movies are called Dante's Redemption and Dante's Redemption ACT1, and I linked them below.
Dante's Inferno is a wonderful game with a bold vision, solid gameplay and a satisfying story of a man who despite being a wretched hypocrite, manages to course correct his afterlife and save his beloved, innocent wife from the clutches of Satan. It is currently unavailable on any modern platform. I hope EA decides to remaster it someday soon, so the game can be made available. It doesn't deserve to fade away like it has. For now, you would have to find a copy for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or the PlayStation Portable, and if you can, I highly recommend it.
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