After a year in which EA have suffered more than even the usual number of curses by beleaguered gamers, it is perhaps only fitting that they’ve announced a game set in that disagreeably toasty place o’punishment that Bible-lovin’ folk reckon the rest of us will spend our final vacation in. There were rumours of a Dante’s Inferno game earlier in the year, and now we get the official announcement, website and trailer.
Things to know:
– it’s by EA Redwood Shores, the folk who made Dead Space, which reportedly was one of the big-name games that didn’t do so well out of the Chrimbo frenzy.
- It involves hitting stuff
- Er
- Demons?
Here’s the trailer, which suggests the structure will be levels themed to the deadly sins:
Very id-y, no? Dead Space drew a few “this is what Doom 3 should have been” comments, so Redwood Shores picking a hellbound setting only increases the comparisons. The press release talks up introducing a literary masterpiece to a new generation, but the video seems more concerned with smacking demons with crosses. Poor old Mister Alighieri.
It’s also abundantly clear this is coming from the Dead Space studio. The palette seems murky, there’s much emphasis on visceral bio-horror and the apparent protagonist is wearing a stupid hat. I’ve had a few conversations in recent weeks in which there’s a vague feeling that Dead Space Dude’s tri-slitted welding mask thing, the vanguard of the game’s marketing effort, was part of its problem: it’s just not a terribly interesting image, despite a clear (or desperate) intention to be iconic. Step away from the dumb hats, Redwood Shores. They bring only ill fortune.
Oh – it’s currently down as PS3 and Xbox 360 only, but there’s a tendency of late to simply not mention the PC release. This is, of course, because publishers are dicks. Given most EA games turn on PC either concurrently or soon after their console releases, it’s worth keeping a weather eye on this fearsome little number.
And here’s a press release, albeit a fairly useless one:
REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.* An abducted soul, a lifetime of sins, a journey to the depths of despair. Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) announced today that EA Redwood Shores, the studio behind the hit horror game Dead Space™, is now working on another original property — this one based on the medieval epic poem The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. The dark fiction gave birth to the Tuscan Italian dialect and is widely considered the work that has defined the western world’s contemporary conception of hell and purgatory. The poem tells the tale of Dante who journeys through the twisted, menacing nine circles of hell in pursuit of his beloved Beatrice. Dante’s tortured and tormented world is an ideal setting for this 3rd person action and adventure of a video game, Dante’s Inferno™.
Written in the 14th Century, The Divine Comedy was published and read aloud in Italian (unlike the Bible), thereby making the poem accessible to the mass public. The poem delivers a striking and allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife and the punishments of hell. In part one, known as Dante’s Inferno, Dante traverses all nine circles of hell; limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, heresy, violence, fraud and treachery.
“The time is right for the world of interactive entertainment to adapt this literary masterpiece, and to re-introduce Dante to an audience who, until now, may have been unfamiliar with the remarkable details of this great work of art,” said Jonathan Knight, Executive Producer for Dante’s Inferno. “It’s the perfect opportunity to fuse great gameplay with great story.”
For more information on Dante’s Inferno, please visit www.dantesinferno.com and sign up for the newsletter and bookmark for news, features and upcoming events.
* Translation: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
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If this game features a man with a giant strawberry up his buttocks, I will buy it.
I’m also sort of with Ben in this one, I think. It occurs to me that a survival horror-ish game in the vein of of Dead Space that has you fighting your way out of Hell wouldn’t really center around you beating up on lost souls.
Unless they’re just ditching the horror thing, and making a straight beat-em-up. Which is a little unclear. And after all, the funny-hatted fellow at the end was the only character really featured prominently in the trailer at all . . . but that still doesn’t rule out him being a trademark antagonist. Or the lost-soul-y fellow being a demon, for that matter. Hmm.
Anyways, until I hear more about this I’m going to assume that it’s Planescape: Torment 2 – Kicking Ass and Taking Names.
Dead Space was a very good game, so I’ll keep my eye on this one.
EA, always with the sequels.
I am old enough to remember that. :-(
I guest this is nothing like the original book. We need a name for poor translations… …”extersemiotic defacement” ?
God, I hope this game was made by an atheist. That would actually explain why a lost soul, a prisoner condemned for nothing more than being born too early, is getting beaten up by the protagonist.
Actually what I meant was someone opposing organized religion, not an atheist. I can believe they might view it as a critique against the Church.
I’m feeling sorry for EA for the first time ever after their attempts at originality failed (apparently in the case of Dead Space and Mirrors Edge but deservedly so in the case of Face Breaker) on release.
But goddammit putting their damn name as “Electronic Arts Inc” tells a lot. I can’t help but picture like a dinosaur in an Armani suit stamping through Jurassic earth and being a dick. Eff off EA.
Reply to Solario
You mean anti-thesist then.
Ah thanks Ben and Noc thats the one. It would be a game worth playing once, if they had a scene like one of those, which you could walk through and interact with in some way.
And I think they need more twisted artwork, giger esque like stuff, with meaning.
Thomas Hobbes’ ‘Leviathan’ – God game where everyone ignores your orders because civil law takes precedence over divine law as no one person can ascertain infallibly whether another has truly heard the word of God.
i would totally break my “screw rts games” rule to play this!
It’ll be a real shame if the ‘long dead tribal dickfights’ get left off the design document – just like Milton gave us a heroically Cromwellian Satan, half the fun of the Divine Comedy is spotting bad tempered Papal politics super imposed on hell.
in a perfect world all games would be filled with historically nerdy in-jokes that don’t revolve around douglas adams novels; but in that perfect world we would most likely not be talking about EA, at least not in this particular…incarnation.
speaking of classics, you know what would be a particularly decent jumping off point? an (j)rpg-ish adventure game based on don quixote. take the whole lonely hero trope and kick it in the ass. games are a few hundred years late to that party but you get the idea.
I would prefer the version by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle featuring sci-fi author who drunkenly falls out of a window during a convention and whose guide through Hell is Mussolini.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/12/15/
This just out and relevant to this topic.
I really love the idea that someone at EA thinks they can play this off as “introducing a a classic to a new generation.” They should make that a series. Next, we’ll have a Grapes of wrath game where you play a family of wizards with laser-shooting cyborg arms that must battle an invading army of wrathful grapes on their way to California.
Ahh, now I have that ‘King Of Limbo’ song stuck in my head!
I’m rather hoping that the man stabbing the crucifix into the creature at the end of the trailer is not actually Dante, but rather a demon of some kind torturing a human soul, or something. It probably won’t happen, but it seems more apropos for you to be witnessing scenes of violence and such rather than participating in them. Also, I’m curious what role Virgil will play: if the character in the trailer is Dante, then it doesn’t seem like there’s much need for Virgil.
Also, sudden flash that could make this an action game while still being intelligent: perhaps the story has been tweaked so that Dante himself is being punished for something, and the only way to atone is to punish other beings in hell?
EA to gamers: “Go to hell.”
Gamers to EA: “Eff off.”
Sounds about right.
After watching this, I also viewed the new Brutal Legend and Watchmen trailers. So I can definitely say: EA’s ‘world premiere’ thing is lame as hell! (oops – no pun intended)
I hate the “bam….bam….bam….bam..bam..bam.bam.bam.bambambambambam” structure of every second trailer for both movies and games that has become so popular. It is disgustingly unoriginal.
Also, I hate them for doing this to Dante.
I hope they leave out the parts about there being special places in hell for jews and homosexuals… :\
This is great, NOW IS THE TIME. Indie game pirate developers should jump from their seats hearing this. They are trying to make an IP out of non-copyrighted material, THE IP IS FREE. The whole concept can be ninja-ed, all their marketing and PR piggybacked.
Damn how I would love to suddenly see 615 Dante’s Inferno games, some mediocre, some great, and EA’s drifting along in the shitstream because indie shows it wins.
They painted a football field on their balls.
I don’t see how there can be a decent hell-themed action video game without it being banned everywhere (dead babies, rape scenes, extreme violence, etc.), so I’m prepared to be disappointed.
Of course, they could also go with a more cutesy interpretation, but just I don’t think it’s going to happen in an action game.
I liked Painkiller, those guys know how to make a game and oh man, were the secret areas hard to find, some required super juggling skills to reach and huge physics abuse.
As to this… well, ewwwwww!
Also to add, I am not sure saying that Bible-lovin folk think people will end up in hell. I sure don’t, and I reckon I can make a pretty good case against saying that it’s mentioned anywhere in fact, in the Bible at all. :p
People didn’t like the slitted helmet? I thought it was a fantastic image…
So if dead space was what doom 3 was supposed to be, than is this what dead space was supposed to be?
Does that make this what doom 1 might be?
“I hope they leave out the parts about there being special places in hell for jews and homosexuals… :\”
personally i think it would be amazing if EA did, and maybe had Jesus as a unlockable character, and gave you the option to beat up Plato and the learned by throwing holy water on them or something.
Maybe have the twist be the pope is a zombie nazi ghost, the possibilities are limitless.
Oh no, I’m terrified of the Heresy level. You’ll have to mash quick-time events to avoid being sucked into Scientology discussions.
Then horror of horrors… fraud! Watch impotently as a shopkeeper offers you a big sword for 400 gold and then it turns out to be smaller than it looked in the picture.
It’s also at this point we find out that the semi-nekkid princess can only be freed by paying off some officials with gold, but it doesn’t matter because the princess is good for FORTY MILLION GOLD.
Hm, this really isn’t a new idea http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnsWceYWNpQ
Anyway, the game will probably be a hunk of shit, reminds me of devil may cry for some reason, yeah, the flying whale level reason methinks…
It could be interesting if that squirming lost soul in the end is YOU, actually.
What are the chances of that, though.
Fuck Dante; I want a game adaptation of Twain’s Letters from the Earth! Lucifer, saving humanity by beating up the first blameless smallpox bacterium!
(Read ‘Letters from the Earth’. It’s awesome.)
See, if they left it in, they could address it in interesting ways, but… yeah, right. Even if they did have the inclination, and I can’t imagine them possessing that much creativity, the tabloids would easily put paid to it with the usual smears (before returning to their own bigotries the next week).
The Brutal Legend trailer rather underwhelmed me, which is sad, ‘cos I’m totally on Double Fine’s side. Of course, it’s not showing much, but is that a great idea on the eve of your biggest publicity opportunity? Hope it works out, anyway.
…Actually, I think Double Fine could make a much better Inferno game. The eighth circle would be like the Milkman level! Untruths everywhere!
I just clicked this article blindly thinking it was about a remake of Day of the Tentacle.
Damn ambiguous image of tentacle mummies…
Top secret EA project for 2012 release….
THE BIBLE MMO
Work your way up from lowly carpenter to level 80 Messiah. (Extra content to include Epic Mule Mount)
Be a Roman soldier and grind 10,000,000 sheckels for that +10 spear of destiny for the Big Boss Showdown on Golgotha.
God, i was only joking but you know something, i think this could actually work!!!
I don’t know where you got your [mis[information from but EA’s Dead Space did very well (maybe not on the PC but the horror genre never faired commercially well on the PC to begin with) & a sequel is already in the works.
http://weblogs.variety.com/the_cut_scene/2008/12/ea-sports-escap.html
um, wasn’t the novel a satire? Makes a horror spin of the story ridiculous…
@ James T
“I am the devil. My sins are delicious.
My sins are fortified with what the world wants! What the world DESERVES!
“So Jesus, ready to be crucified yet?”
[Not yet.]
[SLAP]
“How ’bout now?”
Reading about Dante’s Inferno on the Wiki reveals he’s being shown hell, rather than suffering it, and ends up in heaven. I don’t see the link between that and ramming crucifixes into demon’s heads. Especially since he was considering suicide (a sin).
I expect this game will begin with the warning “This game was made by members of a wide variety of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Except Catholics.“
@Rei
“…And scholars. As a matter of fact, if you are either, turn around now. We don’t want you having a rage induced heart attack.
You might sue us!”
In my opinion making this game would be a sin. Come on, how can you ever expect to make a game that does justice the themes and content of any book let alone a well known master work like Dante’s Inferno? I could definitely understand a game that’s based on it but to use the title “Dante’s Inferno: the game” strikes me as arrogant and wrong.
(while Deadspace was fun I thought it lacked a compelling story, it was mainly: aliens, kill them all, OMG wife.)
I wonder if this will turn out to be an odd cross between American McGees Alice and, erm, Doom 3?
So iffy gameplay, and crap weapons?
for what it’s worth, my dear wife – a scholar of literature – laughed her ass off at the trailer.
you have to admit that stabbing a dude in the head with a cross and then flashing “GO TO HELL” on the screen is pretty awesome, all told.
I can’t wait to see how they deal with all of the controversial aspects of The Inferno. I mean, most of the people that are in Hell in his comedy are people he personally hates. Such as Popes! Yes some Popes certainly should go to hell but they could get in trouble with tight knit Christians.
So, what other classics can we pervert through video games?
I heard Paradise Lost. Eugene Onegin might be good. Death of a Salesman, anybody?
This is hideous. I spent the summer teaching Dante. I don’t think I will ever be done reading The Comedy. There is simply so much there. And in a trailer of about one minute’s duration, they manage to completely corrupt what we have for good reason dubbed Divine.
note: Dante never called it the Divine Comedy. It was simply “The Comedy” until the rennaisance happened. And it happened because Dante wrote this Poem.