As many people know, Dante's Inferno is among one of the most famous pieces of work we have from the old world. It is used as an allegory to things in other stories and hass even had a whole universe built around it by other authors. Dante's Inferno is part of three books that make up the Divinia Commedia but by far Inferno is heard about more often than its sisters, Purgatorio and Paradisio. The Inferno is also by far the goriest of the three books with alot of detail about punishment for the sinners it holds. As I mentioned before, alot of interpretations have been built off this wonderful collection and I do not feel the need to list them all. But in the videogaming world the only real connection Dante has is Devil May Cry where the main character's name is Dante, there is also another character in the story called Virgil. Story wise there is not a great deal of connection but even if by names alone Dante is still part of the videogaming community.
I was first told about Dante's Inferno by a friend of a friend and as soon as the words 'Dante', 'Soldier' and 'Scythe' came out of their mouths I knew something was wrong. But I beleive that you can never take things at face value so I decided to research the game a little further. Right now it is in the pre-ordering stage but there is a bit of information available online. A mature game for the PS3, xBOX360 and PSP with alot of gore and pretty good graphics were the first things that greeted me on my search. The next was a trailer for the game.
Si it is my belief that if you're going to name a game/film after a book there should be alot of similarities with minor plot changes otherwise it would be like making a Harry Potter film where there is no magic. Kind of pointless.
So my first thoughts after the two minute trailer ended was 'what the hell was that?' I saw absolutely no connection to Dante's much loved book. The main character (Dante) is an Italian mercenary who has gone to hell to retrieve his loved one Beatrice and he currently wields are giant scythe. Lets see, the ACTUAL Dante is a poet, mentions no wepaons and loves Beatrice but cannot be in love with her because she is married as i he. The only similarity in that whole thing is that he is Italian.
Excuse me? Honestly, if you want to go naming a video game after a book you need to have more similarities than that or it would be Videogame: Based of Dante's Inferno. Infact the only similarity story wise is that its set in hell and that there are all the different levels and punishments, thats about it pretty much.
So I am thoroughly dissapointed with this game and am confident in saying I will not be buying and I think that lovers of the Inferno will be thoroughly dissapointed with the game play and story line.