Dante's Inferno First Look
Punish the damned to save the woman you love.
February 23, 2009 - Close to seven hundred years ago, Dante Alighieri, who is widely thought of as the father of the Italian language, wrote a book that became the definitive medieval view of the afterlife. A mix of Biblical references as well as Italian folklore and mythology of the time, the Divine Comedy encapsulated Dante's quest for his ideal woman, Beatrice. Not only is the Divine Comedy widely considered to be one of the greatest classics of literature, but it influenced artists like Rodin, Blake, Dore and Delacroix. Soon, the Divine Comedy will influence a new kind of media with EA's upcoming release of Dante's Inferno. I managed to go to Florence, Italy (the birthplace of Dante) to get some hands on time with the game and learn about the adaptation of the book into an action experience for the 21st century.
Jonathan Knight, the Executive Producer and Creative Director of Dante's Inferno, mentioned at the start of his presentation that since Dante's work had been interpreted in movies, music and art, the development team would have to determine which elements of the Comedy could be manipulated to fit a video game context and which could remain the same. After a bunch of work, there were four elements he wanted his team to focus on: the setting, the characters, the theme and the story itself. Knight mentioned that the overall setting of the inferno would essentially remain the same. "We start at the gates of hell, on the surface and it finishes in the ninth circle of hell with the ultimate boss, of course," Knight said. Thanks to Dante's vivid descriptions of Hell, Knight said, the concept of the game was essentially created as a level based experience. "Dante has fundamentally mapped Hell," Knight said, and those directions influenced just about every segment of the environmental design for each level.
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Knight specifically pointed out the divisions between the circles of hell, such as the first five levels (which were held for the sins of the flesh). While just about everyone was guilty of these sins, committing these sins only affected you. The lower four levels, which Dante called the city of Dis, were for sins that humans clearly committed against other humans and were stocked with harsher punishments and demons as a result. Apart from this blatant division, Knight mentioned that there will be many major geographical landmarks that Dante mentioned that will be included, such as the river Acheron or the frozen lake that players will witness in the game.
Knight then moved from the setting to the characters, and mentioned that while all the major characters from the poem will be in the game, (such as Dante, Beatrice, Virgil and Lucifer), there would be a bit of creative license taken with all of them to make them fit within the video game context. There would also be some creative context taken with secondary characters as well. For example, characters known as the Shades would be the souls of the damned that Dante spoke to on his journey. Finally, there would also be some newly invented characters as well, but the developers intentionally took inspiration from members of Dante's real family to retain a certain level of plausibility and connection to Dante himself.
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/956/956209/dantes-inferno-20090223110757132-000.jpg)
This...is my holy boomstick!
Again, however, Knight stressed that while there would be some liberties taken with some characters, there were plenty of monsters, guardians and other enemy characters that wouldn't have to be manipulated or made up because it was already established in the poem. Key monsters, like King Minos (the judge of the damned) or Cerberus, would definitely make an appearance in the game, while other enemies would receive an updated look for the game. "We are throwing in a lot more minions and demons -- there are a lot of demons described in the poem, but we want to make sure that the video game is fresh with a lot of variety and enemies, so we're definitely taking a few liberties with the things that bite back in Hell," Knight said.
Of course, with the context of the Divine Comedy, the themes of the game are quite mature and deal with elements like death, sin, damnation and punishment. As players go deeper into Hell, Knight said, players will explore more of these themes within the gameplay. Knight also mentioned that a key element to him was the notion of free will, which he felt was a key point from Dante. "Life is not determined, the afterlife is not predetermined, people have a choice whether to do good or bad in life, and they suffer the consequences of those choices," Knight mentioned, alluding that this kind of dilemma would play out within the gameplay as far as the option of punishing or absolving souls within the game.
Knight finally got to the story, which he said would fundamentally have the most changes made to create a context for the game action. "You've got a couple of guys walking through Hell, trying to get to Beatrice eventually and they're talking…a lot. That's pretty much all that happens in the poem. If you've read it, you know that it's not famous for its conflict and drama," Knight said. As a result, the team decided to fix this in three ways. The first was to add in a lot more action and abridge the narration to focus much more on the onscreen play. As a result, many of the lines of the poem will be spoken in game, but will be significantly scaled back from the 14,000 lines of the Divine Comedy to the key segments that underscore what's going on. The second change was to make a larger antagonistic role for Lucifer. Knight mentioned that while he's a character whose influence is felt across all nine circles of Hell, Lucifer's part in the poem is relatively minor, so having a larger part for him would create an obvious opponent for Dante that would create a lot of conflict.
The final change was in enhancing the role of the hero, making Dante much more of an evolved hero than what is traditionally seen of the poet. "The main quality is that he is defiant of Death. He actually fights with Death's Scythe, and breaks into Hell, and fights his way through to get to Beatrice, and that quality really defines him as a video game hero," Knight said. Along with this, the team physically worked in other elements of Dante's life, such as the laurel wreaths that the poet is frequently depicted wearing as well as the historically accurate moments where he fought as a soldier in the civil war between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. However, the team also wanted to make this game's Dante an anti-hero, a deeply flawed man with lots of sins that also is a holy warrior, bearing a magical cross that has holy power. Finally, Knight said, the character, like the poet, would love Beatrice completely, which would be the lone thing that would keep him going through Hell.
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/956/956209/dantes-inferno-20090223110801913-000.jpg)
Look out Charon -- here I come.
Knight used this to give a few details on the story, which was supplemented by an early storyboarded introduction that highlighted a few segments of the plot of the game. The game, set somewhere in Italy in 1191, starts with Dante deep within a forest at his campsite as he attempts to return to his home from a Crusade. Dante takes a tapestry, a needle and thread, and strangely sews the tapestry into his skin. The tapestry suddenly seems to come to life in a depiction of savagery and brutality, potentially a result of the sins that Dante committed while he was in battle. While the next scene was removed intentionally, a slide was inserted that mentioned that Dante would fight and eventually best Death and earn his scythe. From there, the movie picked back up, showing Dante returning home to what would be a joyous time, where he would marry his fiancée Beatrice. However, as he enters his house, he discovers his servants slaughtered, and as he hacks down the back door, he finds Beatrice half naked and impaled upon the ground. As her soul rises from her body and tries to explain what happened, Lucifer appears and drags her down to Hell. Dante gives chase, and the game begins.
Knight mentioned that Dante would have to face the sins of his past as he went through each circle of Hell as well as facing the demons that sought to prevent him from reaching Beatrice. As he got to each circle, the tapestry sewn into his flesh would present a flashback of the sin that he committed, which would give players a better understanding of this darker, more complex depiction of Dante. The game, according to Knight, would eventually transition from a rescue mission of Beatrice to essentially a redemption tale for Dante.
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/956/956209/dantes-inferno-20090223110806038-000.jpg)
That's one angry looking demon.
From there, a gameplay demo was presented of an early level of the game, one which I and the other press were able to get hands-on time with. Dante dropped into a cavern whose walls were made from compressed skeletons. In the distance, an endless number of souls damned to hell tumbled from a hole into a lake of fire. Dante was able to use the skeletal walls to reach raised platforms, and eventually propel himself across a chasm so he could continue further into Hell. However, as he landed safely on the other side, a large army of skeletons arose from the ground and leapt towards him. Dante was forced to attack, because his exits were immediately blocked with walls of energy that resembled souls being tortured and writhing in pain. Fortunately, the army of skeletons was no match for Dante's scythe, which easily cut them to ribbons.
Attacking with the scythe felt much like that of the Blades of Chaos from God of War, in that the scythe had both light and heavy attacks on the square and triangle buttons and were extremely responsive to the fast action required by the onscreen battles. By turning towards a distant enemy, the scythe would extend out (akin to the blades) and strike distant enemies, and by pressing the circle button, players could grab and perform combos on an enemy. This could be carried out on the ground or in the air, providing a large amount of flexibility for players that wanted to chain together attacks to increase their combo meter. Interestingly, this meter could also be built up when holding the L2 button to block, because Dante gained different retaliatory attacks after a successful block. The more that you wailed on an enemy, the more you weakened them, allowing you to pull off a fatality once a button prompt appeared over their head.
R2 allowed Dante to unleash his cross, but it was a combination of R2 and the triangle button that let him perform a shotgun blast at one specific enemy while R2 and square let him perform an area of effect explosion. R1 allowed Dante to interact with objects or items, while the right analog stick allowed Dante to dodge incoming strikes and the X button allowed him to jump. Apparently, defeating Death provided Dante with impressive jumping skills, because he could actually use the scythe to float in mid-air for a few seconds while attacking, and had gained a double jump that could be used to access higher areas. Finally, the L1 button allowed Dante to cast magic spells. While Dante had to select those spells with the directional pad, there seemed to be a few different kind of spells Dante had available to him, including a large sweeping blast of crosses and a swirling cyclone of spiritual energy.
Once he cleared the skeletons, Dante leapt across a bridge and jumped into a large pit ringed with souls trapped in cages. At the bottom was a large horned demon that leapt towards Dante roaring with anger. While he was more of a challenge than the skeletons, he eventually was bested as Dante lopped his head off. This allowed Dante to reach a crank that was placed in the center of the pit and elevate the floor to a smashed door, which Dante could leap up to and bust through. On the other side of the door was a demonic chest which held health, but wasn't willing to part with its contents without a fight. Dante pulled out his cross, and with a couple of quick taps of the button, forced the chest to open thanks to the power of the artifact. Dante then proceeded on, battling across a large bridge and hacking through some of the destructible items in the environment. In the background, Charon the ferryman bellowed to all the souls of the damned to come aboard his vessel. However, this wasn't the traditional boat that many would expect. Instead, Charon was a massive ship whose giant head was mounted at the bow of the vessel, beckoning to those on the shore.
Before Dante could proceed towards Charon, he found himself before a Shade, who muttered lines from the Divine Comedy. Here, Dante was actually presented with a choice: he could punish the soul, punching him in the gut before throwing it to the ground, grabbing his cross and embedding it deep within its eye socket, or he could attempt to save it. While the mechanism for saving the soul wasn't fully implemented, we were told that players would have to perform a quick time button event to try to redeem the lost individual. The reward for doing either was rated in souls -- Dante would earn 1000 souls for punishing the damned, and 2000 if they successfully saved one. However, if they failed in their attempt, they would earn nothing.
Dante moved through another large room and battled through another squad of demons and skeletons before emerging on a cliff. Here, Dante leapt onto a line and slid towards Charon. The demo promptly fast forwarded to a new section on the boat, which we were told would unfold after battling through Charon's insides to emerge on the deck of the ship. Here, Dante was forced to battle through a few waves of enemies before the largest enemy he'd faced to that point scaled the ship. A giant horned demon emerged with a rider that attempted to smash Dante to pieces while additional monsters spawned in to attack. While it took some quick evasive maneuvers, Dante eventually leapt atop the demon and repeatedly impaled the driver before he took over the beast. From there, Dante was able to use the creature against his enemies, using his light and strong attacks as stomps, the jump button to breathe fire and the grab button to pluck an enemy off the ground and bite through them.
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/956/956209/dantes-inferno-20090223110809288-000.jpg) Demon, extra crispy -- tasty!
Once all of the enemies were cleared, Dante rode the beast over to Charon's head and through a quick time event, proceeded to rip the head off of the boat and toss it into the distance. That was an unfortunate decision, because the sentient boat had no way of knowing what direction it was headed in, and promptly veered towards the stone pillars of a bridge that were in the river. Dante, recognizing the danger, promptly forced the demon he was riding to leap onto a pillar as the boat smashed into the structure, and quickly attempted to climb from one pillar to another as the supports gave way beneath him.
At the end, he had to scramble off the demon as it lost its footing (again, another quick time event) and quickly sprinted along a crumbling walkway to a grapple point, which Dante used his scythe to grab and propel himself into Limbo. From there, he could see King Minos judging the damned in the distance, and as he entered a pavilion, the voice of Charon echoed through the halls. Humorously, when the demon threw Charon's head, it smashed into one of the walls of Limbo, but the ferryman wouldn't die so easily. However, Dante moved away from the taunting words of Charon into a small antechamber, and was quickly attacked by a swarm of demonic babies that had blades for arms. While they threatened to overtake him due to their numbers, area attacks seemed to weaken the creatures and Dante was able to move through the crowd without a lot of trouble. The demo ended soon after that with the voice of who seemed to be Lucifer taunting Dante about causing the downfall of everything that was good. This commentary ran as concept sketches of the deadly sins scrolled across the screen.
While it was still early, it was striking to note how responsive the controls and gameplay were. In fact, Knight stressed that Dante's Inferno is still more than a year away from being completed, but the demo that we played ran at a full sixty frames per second and wasn't in danger of dropping a single frame at any point in the game, regardless of the action onscreen or the large beasts in the background. While he was loathe to mention some of the gameplay elements, such as how the souls that Dante collects will factor into the upgrade system for the warrior and his weapons, Knight stressed that the entire development team had been focused on getting the gameplay and its elements balanced and up to speed. This was key to their process before layering on story and other elements to ensure that the gameplay and the action would be fast paced and engaging to players.
Knight also pointed out his team, which includes an Oscar nominated scriptwriter to help pen the story of the game as well as designers who'd worked on Stranger's Wrath and God of War II. This later fact perhaps influenced some of the similarities between Dante's Inferno and the God of War franchise. But perhaps one of the largest additions was the artwork and influence of Wayne Barlow, the noted artist and author whose creature designs have been utilized for all of the creatures within the game. Many people have remarked on Barlow's unique take on the Inferno and for a while, Barlow pointed out many of the ways in which he'd tried to approach characters. For example, he highlighted multiple iterations of how Charon evolved from his initial concept to the final character. Eventually, the character moved from a boss that was twice the size of Dante that had rudders and tillers for arms and legs to various boat like figures. Eventually, Barlow worked more boatlike features and bones into the design until it turned into its eventual design, a large skin and bone boat with souls on and through it.
It may be more than a year away, but Dante's Inferno could be a surprise franchise for EA. The action and combat system seems strong, and thanks to Barlow's unique take on some of the demons in Hell, players could have an intriguing way of exploring a classical piece of literature when it comes out sometime in 2010.
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