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never fails to get my blood boiling! Now this might sound like I hate the
game itself, but that's really not the case: Visceral Games’ 2010 video game adaptation of
the first part of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy has always been one of my
favorite guilty pleasure titles that, while being aware of
its many shortcomings, I unironically enjoy and relish
to revisit quite regularly. The reason it gets my
blood boiling is that it’s (hesitantly inhales) next to impossible to
discuss Dante’s Inferno without being constantly
reminded of two very... aggravating things: Firstly, the history
of Visceral Games: a studio that has repeatedly developed
amazing games that feel great to play and attempted to elevate
genre conventions to new heights, only to be run in the ground
by publishers, repeatedly. And hard. like how Electronic Arts pasteurized
the wonderful Dead Space franchise into a half-baked Call of Duty knock-off and
then canned it when people lost interest; (gunfire)
-[Enemy] Backup! I need backup! - or how EA seriously did Dante’s Inferno
dirty with their juvenile marketing stunts, how the Amy Henning-written-and-directed Star
Wars adventure was smothered in the crib in 2017 by EA as well until Visceral eventually got closed down in 2017 by EA as well of course because Electronic Arts
concluded that people don’t... want single player games anymore... *long sigh* - 's just sad bro! - And secondly, it keeps reminding me
how utterly incapable we used to be, and still are, in so many ways,
of discussing video games. Something that Dante’s Inferno suffered
horribly from, because it’s painfully hard to find any contemporary criticism
of the game that tries to evaluate it... on its own terms- -something that is in no small but not exclusive
part also thanks to Electronic Fucking Arts and their unbelievable tone-deafness
in how they spread the word about it. Of course I don’t want to spend an entire
video focusing on my wrath over the atrocious state of video game discourse
and marketing around the early 2010’s. (If only someone had gathered
an angry mob to protest the problems with video game
journalism back then, aye?) (scoffs) No, if you know me a bit, you
know that I’m here to tell you what I love about the game and
what makes it worth your time! (dramatic music flare-up) Before 2021, the 700th anniversary
of Dante Aligheri’s death, is finished, I want to tell you why I think
this game is, in many ways, an underrated and mistreated
hack and slay horror gem, a highly creative, epic mythological
spectacle that still positively SLAPS. (pure carnage) And also why Dante’s Inferno is actually a
pretty genius adaptation into a Video Game by putting a handful of genuinely clever
twists on the 700 year old text it emulates; twists that certainly got some literary
nerds quite huff and puff about it at the time. Iroically, wonderfully in tune with the
effect the original work had in its time. Alterations and changes
that become sublime, once you look at them not as
inaccuracies, but as deliberate commentary, subtextual statements on the Inferno, realized
in a way only interactive fiction is able to do. If this is you, if you feel like the floor’s
breaking loose beneath your feet, then let me be your Virgil on your journey through
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I hope you enjoy the rest of the video! (dramatic choir, fire crackling) As Dante Aligheri awoke one
morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed by
Visceral Studios into a HORRIBLE crusader. *sniff* Well ok, this is not actually
how the story begins. The tale of Dante’s Inferno - The Video Game,
doesn’t start with a bastardized Kafka quote, but with the famous opening line
of the first of the three chapters of the Divine Comedy
(Longfellow translation). I’ve played this game many times
and probably replayed the first hours more than 20 times by now, and I found the entire opening segment
more fascinating each time I went through it. (frantic fighting sounds) In many ways it’s a microcosm
of what the entire game is about, especially regarding how Visceral
Studios chose to approach the adaptation of the literary
work it’s based on. See, if they would have chosen to adapt
The Inferno as painstakingly close as possible, it would have likely become a- -I hate the term- -walking simulator. Or like a walking-and-talking-simulator. Or like a walking-and-talking-and-
hiding-behind-Virgil-simulator. The protagonist Dante, in the
original work, was a pilgrim, who found himself in a dark forest
at the midway point of his life being called upon by angels
to enter the very Gates of Hell, accompanied at all times by the, at the time,
long-deceased Roman writer and poet Virgil. Dante is basically being
led straight through hell, observing all of its different
vividly drawn out layers and their inventive methods
of eternal torture, rarely actively intervening, sometimes
fainting and skipping to the next layer, and eventually ending up at
the transition to the Purgatory, taking with him the deep epiphany that there
is no pity to be had for the billions of souls who are damned to horrible
eternal suffering down here, since all of this is just and good
and the way the Lord wills it! - Aaaaaaamen! - Dante’s Inferno, the Game, on one hand
goes to great lengths to adapt and draw out passages of the many-and-varied
descriptions of Hell Dante witnesses on his journey with as much
accuracy as humanly possible, sometimes going so far that it even
feels like things have been added solely to boast closeness to the prose. While on the other hand,
in a thousand different ways, the writers took endless liberties by
turning the whole thing inside out, rearranging and
re-interpreting the source material into a funhouse-
mirror reflection of itself. This goes down to how the whole plot unfolds,
its core messages and ideological implications, as well as
the interpretation of central characters including the protagonist
Dante himself. And you know how it is. Adapt any piece of media
into a different medium and anything that’s altered will get
people riled up in no time, often just for the audacity of
changing stuff in the first place. But here I am claiming that if
you adapt a 700-year-old-text that implies that being gay is a worse
sin than committing literal genocide, into a video
game of all things, that re-thinking and changing lots of
things about it can actually a be Good thing. - Your soul is free! Game-Dante and his very journey is in many
ways the complete antithesis to Book-Dante. We start out in the same dark
forest the Divine Comedy begins in, which feels like a dutiful nod to
the original work, but immediately, we’re being torn out of the illusion that this is
going to be a pedantically faithful adaptation. We witness Dante sewing a cross-shaped
linen tapestry directly on his chest, like string through
his skin and all. (long painful scream,
bird wings flapping in the distance) This embroidery bears depictions of, as
we find out over the course of the game, his personal history,
memories, and especially, the sins he carries with
him and has yet to realize. In a vividly hand-drawn
animated flashback we see violent, frenzied battle scenes of Crusaders
clashing with Saladin’s army, prisoners being taken and eventually
culminating in an outbreak in the city of Acre. This is where the sequence seamlessly
transitions into the first active gameplay scene, where we take direct
control of Dante, who... then goes on to slaughter
literal SWATHES of under-fed prisoners in the
middle of a breakout attempt. Which...yeah. If I had to write a 5 word
review for this game it would be “It is a Video Game.” (duh) The medium is really
the message here, and it’s fascinating to me how much of what I
used to find odd to irritating about this game, but which I’ve come to admire more and
more over time for reasons I’m gonna go into across the length of this video,
is wonderfully explained with “it...is a video game.” A very of its time 2010 AAA hi-octane
epic action slasher console game. (slashing and screaming) Because let’s face it, most people at the
time hadn’t bought this game because they expected a pensive, contemplative
narrative walking simulator. But what was promised was epic,
sprawling, mythological hack and slay. Well, here you go. The button prompts tell you
what to do, so slaughter away! (fighting, slashing,
splashing, dramatic music) Does it feel...good...
what you’re doing here? Does it feel right? Not the slightest bit of dissonance over what
you’re doing here without questioning it? Mhh yes, a power-fantasy, chopping down waves of half-
starved brown people while bearing the great cross of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers
of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, aka the Knights Templar. Where the original text was, in broad
strokes, a pilgrimage in the name of god, that consisted of mostly walking,
talking, observing and occasionally asking everyone what’s going
in Dante’s home town of Florence (no, like, really, everytime Dante
and his mentor and companion Virgil face some potential
adversity, he goes - [Jake] Oh yeah? Well me and the lord... ... we got an understanding. - [Elwood] We're on a mission from god. - and the problems just... take
care of themselves on their own!) Video Game Dante bears the weight of many-a-sin
committed in the name of the Holy Roman Church and fights virtually every step of the way
into and down through the entire path of hell. Okay from time to time he also climbs,
platforms in vague Prince of Persia fasion and solves the occasional
puzzle, but you get my meaning. His pilgrimage is a gauntlet
of adversity, and interestingly, also an introspective journey of realizing
the numerous sins he’s committed, without ever understanding he did so. Yeah, the game's story puts a heavy
emphasis on the uncountable evils perpetrated under the supposed impunity imbued
by powerful leaders of the Holy Roman Church, who instrumentalized armies of
faithful warriors into committing the worst atrocities imaginable... in the name of God. And so, after this opening
massacre on the shores of Acre, Dante is met with...
mh...karmic justice, in the form of a
dagger in the spine, which he nonchalantly pulls out,
before he’s immediately greeted by everyone’s favorite
Discworld character. - [Death] Dante, your fate is decided! Everlasting damnation for your sins! - [Dante] But that's not possible!
The bishop assured us! - [Death] Come! Face eternity! Soon you'll be joined by those
whose lives you have ruined, whose souls you have damned! - [Dante] I will not let my
sins damn those dear to me! - The Grim Reaper, himself, has come to take
Dante’s soul, but our crusader won’t have it. And so he answers him
with cold, hard steel. In the first boss battle,
we not only get to tear Death himself in two halves
while they beg for mercy, - No, no, please! (smack) - we even get to snatch
their legendary scythe and make it our new
signature instrument of war. (ripping and tearing and screaming) Okay so this *might* be
considered an early spoiler, but hey, I’m going through
the entire game anyway, so... I always found it so extremely obvious
that, like, Dante of course has died at the point where he’s stabbed
in the back by the assassin, but he is absolutely and
completely unaware of his demise. And his utter cluelessness
about...everything really, is probably my absolute favorite aspect
about Dante in this game, as a character. Just like...uhhh...for instance, I will always
associate Sam with his catchphrase, - You crack me up,
little buddy! (trumpet sting) - Dante, to me, is firmly imprinted with his battery
of bewildered facial expressions when shouting He’s really the perfect embodiment
of someone who meeeaaans well? But he’s so blind and ignorant, firmly
in the grips of a faith-war-machinery that brainwashed him into the perfect
TOOL of dogmatic imperialism. The road to hell is paved
with good intentions. And yeah, his entire redemptive
arc through hell is really about first realizing, understanding,
and eventually accepting the transgressions he’s
committed during his lifetime. But at this point in the story, Dante
still has both feet firmly planted in the conviction that he
successfully defied death. And so he travels back to his hometown
of Florence to find his homestead ravaged and his fiancee Beatrice, in good old Gladiator-
style, slain right in front of his house. But Beatrice’s soul
is not allowed rest. It emerges from her corpse, and
is whisked away into the darkness by none other than
Lucifer himself. It Is a Video Game, and here’s Dante’s Damsel in Distress and
Casus Belli that lends him the determination to slice and dice every
single thing in his path to redeem his lover’s soul from
being punished for *his* transgressions. This is actually one of the
fiercest criticisms I kept reading, especially from academic circles about
Visceral’s adaptation of the Divine Comedy: Quote: And I’m like, I get you,
Teodolinda Barolini. That is the initial setup
of the game’s narrative. This is what it seems like, to the player, and
especially to Dante at this point of the story, but I gotta say for the former president
of the Dante Society of America, you’re either not very
good, or, more likely, surprisingly uninterested in
exploring the game’s subtext or in actually seeing the entire
story play out to the end. You probably don’t even believe that
something like subtext is a consideration for a sub-par medium such
as video games, phhhsh. See, while your interpretation of the
plot is superficially what happens, if you just pay a
little bit of attention, it’s next to impossible, over
the course of the game, to completely miss out on the fact
that Beatrice is way more than just a McGuffin for
Dante to hunt after, because she...really has a plan all along. While Dante, well, he’s- - [Dante] I DON'T UNDERSTAND - But for now, let’s dogear this
page and come back to it later, and instead continue
on Dante’s quest to hell, because, damn, we’re
not even IN hell yet. So let’s do some crime,
to get there faster! (cannon shot) Dante’s Inferno was initially released
on the seventh console generation for the Xbox 360 and the PS3. If you want to
acquire it these days, your only options are to find a
physical copy from a reseller, with prices in recent years rapidly soaring
thanks to increased scalper scum activity. If you own an Xbox 360 copy,
the Xbox One luckily added this game as a backwards compatible
title, so you can play it on an Xbone. It’s also available digitally in the Xbox
Store for around 15 US-Dollars and luckily playable both on the Xbox One as well
as the Series S and X, according to my research. But these versions are really nothing but
expensive emulation, if we're completely honest. So if you already own it, and you’re in
possession of a somewhat capable mid-range PC, there’s really no reason
not to get the most out of it. I don’t really see any “purism” argument
for a 3D game that natively runs in 720p, when amping its rendering
up to 1080p or hey, even up to 8K resolutions if
you have the technical means, and add features like Anisotropic
Filtering and Antialiasing, right? And would you look at that? That’s exactly what the RPSC3
Playstation 3 emulator allows you to do! The footage you see in this video was recorded
with this emulator on 7-year-old PC hardware. It runs smoothly, start to finish,
and is a real treat for the eyes. I truly never get tired of
the leap in visual fidelity, amped-up resolution, a bit of advanced
smoothing, and texture filtering emulators can bring to 3D games
from the PS2-and-upwards eras. So for anyone interested in running their
legally owned copy with an emulator, I’ve provided a document
with how to get it set up and running in the RPSC3
PS3 emulator for yourself. You’ll, as always, find the link
in the description of this video. And if you don’t own the game
but still want to emulate it... Hey, it’s factually not
illegal to go and emulate it. I’ve actually added a paragraph on
the legal status of emulation and quote unquote video game preservation piracy
in the emulation-document if you’re interested, and the money you’d spend buying
it goes either to resellers or to EA, the ones who ran Visceral Games
in the ground in the first place (and who are planning to get big-
time into NFT gaming now *ugh*). So the people who made the game itself
won’t ever see a nickel of it, anyways. - [Wally] You don't know how *empowering*
it is to be able to say to yourself: Yes, I *am* a despicable, filthy,
villainous pirate deserving blame and censure but THAT pirate is who I want to be! - So might think twice if you want
to put your money in their pockets, just saying Iiiiii’m not a cop. (screaming and loud
"being-dragged-to-hell" sounds) Aw crap. (sinister music, fire crackling) So with Beatrice, and now even
myself dragged away to hell, Dante has really no more excuses
not to surge straight after us. He makes his way to the chapel on
the little foothill behind the graveyard, where Beatrice’s soul
appears to him once more, lamenting how Dante
has betrayed her trust by breaking his sacred promise to stay
faithful to her during his time in the Crusades. He though has no fucking
clue what she’s talking about. He believes himself free of guilt
as he always, as it turns out, acted under a blanket absolution passed
on to the crusaders by the Archbishop. At this point in the story, we
don’t find out exactly what he did, but it dawns on him that it really might have
been his actions that condemned her to hell. So, Dante takes up her holy cross and
vows to not give in until her soul is freed. In contrast to the poem, where Beatrice merely appears to
him as an angel before the gates of hell, informing him that he has a holy quest to
traverse the underworld ordained by God, himself, Game-Dante’s journey is
far more Orphean in nature. I’ve always quite enjoyed
this twist to be honest. The game also consciously
acknowledges this a little bit later. Like, that’s it’s a conscious
riff on the Orpheus myth, not that, like, I enjoy it. They couldn’t have known that
ahead of time now, could they? At this moment, the ground
shatters and breaks apart, swallowed up by the fiery pits of hell
unveiling the gates to the underworld beyond. This is one of my favorite
moments in the game, honestly. It’s just breathtakingly
staged and directed, and a perfect example for two of my favorite
aspects of this take on the Divine Comedy: Spectacle and Music! Dante’s Inferno is probably one of the
coolest depictions of hell in a video game, up there with
Bayonetta and Doom 3. Especially in the first half, the
game keeps bombarding players with an abundance of sprawling
creativity and epic setpieces. And it’s accompanied by one of the most impressive
video game soundtracks I’ve come across. Interestingly though,
it’s a score that I rarely feel like listening to outside
of playing the game itself, because it so perfectly works in tandem with
what’s unfolding on screen, moment by moment. Much of this gargantuan pandemonium we
witness on screen is so tightly interwoven with the intense and bombastic
orchestration that it almost makes the music an integral,
diegetic element of the play. An epic opera unfolding before our eyes as
we’re watching and playing it as the audience. This interplay between bombast-
orchestration, epic renditions of Hell, cinematic, interactive
camerawork, and the hyperkinetic, over the top hack and slay
action that still smacks... –it keeps having me coming
back again and again. After fighting our way down, we eventually
arrive at the gates of hell themselves, which... alright let me
be nitpicky here: With all the alibi
“I’ve-done-my-homework" fanservice elements the
developers put all over the game, I was a bit sad that it didn’t feature the iconic
“Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter” quote that’s embossed into the stone
frame of the gates in the poem. But hey, shoganai. Then again this famous expression in essence
embodies the central idea of the book, really: that You Should Not Wish for things to
improve for the people stuck down here, because everything happening in hell is
already in accord with God’s perfect plan, which is righteous and good. We had that. And this notion, as I already hinted at, was
drastically subverted by the game adaptation. Again, more on that later, but when I’m starting to
overthink things like this, I wonder if they might have even
omitted it for that very reason. I wouldn’t put it past Visceral;
this game certainly gets far less credit for clever subtext
than it deserves in many areas. Anyway, the gates themselves are
sealed, but luckily we encounter Virgil. In the Divine Comedy, Virgin is
Dante’s constant companion and guide. He really is essentially
his skeleton-key: completely leading him by the
hand, deflecting nearly all adversity, and at the same time serving
as the main vessel for exposition. Tour-guide and
bodyguard in one. In the game, his role is rather
limited to mostly the latter function. Dante fights his way down
the layers of Hell on his own, while we regularly
encounter Virgil standing in front of new areas to give
us a little sermon on what part of hell we’re about to enter and who’s being
tortured here for what reason most of the time. And I’m definitely not the
only one who finds his rather reserved involvement in the
journey a bit disappointing, given how central of a role
he played in the original text. Like, placing the Roman writer
and poet Virgil in his own poem was definitely a form of wish
fulfilment for Dante Aligheri, himself a great admirer of his work
and fame, and with the, Divine Comedy he basically wrote fanfiction about
Virgil being his sidekick and great admirer. But it makes me think: how could he have been
involved in this sprawling hack and slash type gameplay as
more than just a hotspot-tour-guide? I mean...Dante and
Virgil in Co-Op Mode, Double Dragon’ing their way
through the Nine Circles of Hell? That could have been
pretty awesome...hmmm. Anyway, Virgil agrees to guide us on
our journey in return for the favor to, should we manage to reach our goal, convince
Beatrice to put in a good word for him in Heaven. Because he’s had
the bad luck of... having been born before
Christianity was even invented, so he never had a
chance to be baptized, and according to the God’s
infallibly fair laws of Hell, every unbaptized soul ends
up in the 1st Circle of Hell, Limbo, our first stop after the big
plunge we take beyond the Gates. So yeah, Limbo is the place where
everyone who was not baptized, and even everyone who
could never even possibly have had the chance to be
baptized in their lifetime, ends up. As punishment. For being born in the wrong
time, circumstances or...body. Like, even babies who died before they could
have been baptized, yeah even stillborn babies. They all end up in hell. And incidentally, they’re also one of the
more unnerving enemies we meet down here. Makes sense though; seriously, who can
fault them for being severely pissed off? The first area we make our
way across is the river Acheron, which separates the Underworld
from the World of the Living. All souls destined to go further
down the hellscape than Limbo have to cross on their journey to
their respective destinations on a great ferry captained by the
mythological figure of Charon. To anyone who’s a bit
confused by this, yes, this is completely true
to the original text: Many elements in Aligheri’s depiction of Hell are
a mash-up of various mythological inspirations, predominantly Greek and Roman, interspersed with ideas and concepts
from actual Christian mythology, to form the strange pastiche
of Dante’s 9 Circles of Hell. As I said, this is Christian fanfiction. (Wilhelm Scream) I absolutely love those
panoramic wide angle shots with gaping mouths aggressively
vomiting an endless waterfall of screaming souls
plunging into nothingness. Hordes of lost souls who
have abandoned all hope, waiting in line to board the vessel that brings
them to their final and eternal destination. I distinctly remember how
the book described Dante’s first distinctive acoustic
impression when entering hell, which was the sound of one
shapeless, neverending blend of millions and billions of souls
perpetually screaming in agony. And the wailing walls, as I call them, -the Damned Climb as the game calls them- these scalable webs
made of lattices and constantly screaming souls
writhing in eternal torment; it’s such an astoundingly cool way
of realizing the images those words put in my mind when I read the
Divine Comedy in school for the first time. Never get tired of this. But yeah, in the poem, Charon is an
old ferryman on a rather small boat similar to more classic
depictions from Greek mythology. Though he initially refuses
them passage, when Virgil goes - We're on a mission from god. - he relents and just takes them across. In the GAME... - [Charon the Boat] Through
me the way to everlasting pain! well, in the game as you can see the
ferryman actually is the very ferry itself! (some mumble about
it being "kinda werid") and, since he also denies us access,
albeait in a somewhat more brusk fashion, plus we don’t have Virgil
to solve our problems for us, we have to fight our way
atop to the poop deck (heh) and then capture and take
control of a giant minotaur and fucking TEAR THE BOATMAN’S HEAD
OFF AND TOSS IT IN THE WATER. I don’t think Dante is yet aware
that Violence is its own layer of hell. Later down the line. And after a frenetic hijacking sequence,
we arrive on the shores of the underworld not gently but rather while tearing the
place apart in the process of landing. So yeah technically it is only
now that we truly enter Limbo. Limbo, from the Latin word
Limbus, meaning border, is one of the places where Aligheri
placed a lot of characters that he... was an ardent fan of. Because luckily for his narrative cohesion,
many of his personal historic idols were, of course, unbaptized, like
Homer, Horace, Ovid and Lucan, all esteemed Greek and Roman poets
who rejoice when they spot him and are ecstatic to welcome the great writer
Dante into their esteemed literary company. They basically don’t stop
blowing smoke up his ass for his incredible writing
skills for a good while. This scene has sadly
not been adapted, but Visceral themselves took
the opportunity of Limbo to include characters that underlined their
own take on the Inferno just as well. And that’s a great opportunity to talk
about one of the game’s central and most interesting mechanics,
the Punish-or-Absolve binary branching: On our journey, we regularly encounter
lonely lost souls that the game prompts us to, much in line with the Creed of the Holy Crusaders,
judge, jury and execute in one fell swoop. For instance the first one we encounter before
the gates to the river Acheron is Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who presided over
the trial and execution of Jesus Christ. Or not too long after that, aboard Charon’s
ferry, we find, as I already teased it, Orpheus, the Greek
mythological figure, whose journey into the underworld
to rescue his lover, Euridyce, is in many ways so strikingly
similar to Dante’s in this game. And we are given the
choice to either Absolve or Punish him for his misdeeds of
looking back at the edge of the underworld which accidentally condemned
his lover to eternal damnation. When we chose punish, Dante shoves a
blade into their throats which dissolves them and apparently condemns
them to eternal suffering, while absolving makes us play this
little minigame where we have to press the controller buttons in the right
moments to catch and absolve their sins. The more we get the
higher the bonus XP reward. It’s basically a rhythm-game, but...
without any music for some reason. Seriously, it keeps baffling me with the
constant gorgeous orchestration of the game that these segments are
completely silent all of a sudden. This would have been a perfect opportunity
to turn Hell into a regular Project Diva! ♫ Hatsune Miku - Ai Kotoba ♫ But depending on which option we
choose, we gain different categories of experience points that fill up
either the Holy or the Unholy skill tree. It Is A Video Game. This binary progression system
also extends to the combat: weaker minion enemies and larger opponents
such as the horned Guardian Demons, once their health is low enough, can be executed
with either Punish- or Absolve- Finishing Moves that yields a boost in
their respective skill tree. So depending on how you fare,
this progression shapes Dante’s combat and magic abilities
into different specializations, which can heavily influence your move-
set and your play- and combat style. Generally speaking,
Holy Skills focus more on Protection, Binding and
emphasizing Beatrice’s Cross. The cross is basically
your distance weapon; holding it in front of you like Van Helsing makes
it shoot glowing crucifixes at your opponents. The Unholy Skills on the other hand put a
stronger emphasis on aggressiveness, carnage, the breaking of cover and
stunning enemies in place. Generally a more....
visceral style of combat. I actually really enjoy this
themed progression system, because especially in
higher difficulties, where plain button mashing will have
you dead in a heartbeat, you have to intuitively learn the combos at your
fingertips and use them strategically to persist. Like a good hack and slash
game should make you do. And if you enjoy the combat of the
game enough for it to keep you going, which is the case for me, this really
gives it quite a bit of replay variety. But honestly, I’m quite often a
subtext over gameplay kinda guy, and what I find far more interesting about
this mechanic is what it...narratively implies, especially in light of the game being
an adaptation of the Divine Comedy, in which the protagonist
was given no such powers. But once more, I can only brush on that
here and get back to that at a later point, once we’ve explored the story and
themes of the game a little more in depth. But yeah, initially I kept
wondering why even would Dante, who’s literally going through all nine
circles of hell because it turned out he pretty much committed
all of them in some form, (pretty impressive
actually if you ask me) why would he of all people be granted
the power/privilege to judge over people, deciding the fate of their
immortal souls, in the first place? It felt weirdly uncalled for? But...the more I thought about it the more it
started to make sense in a weird and ironic way: See...technically, this is
precisely what Dante Aligheri, the writer of the
original story himself, did when he placed Dante, the main
character and self-insert, in his story, conjured up his vivid, elaborative
picture of eternal damnation and then... Put. Real. Reople. in there! Like he, for instance, as I’ve said,
came up with all kinds of justifications for historic and mythological people he
personally admired to be down here for the sole sake of telling him
what an amazing writer he is. He also added historic, as well as
mythological figures he personally despised, or ideologically or politically
disagreed with in here, condemning them to various circles of hell
according to his personal judgement of their sins. Yeah, he even wrote actual,
real, at the time, living people that he felt like condemning
for personal reasons in here. Kinda like “nah, this guy
sucks, you’re damned and you’re gonna spend the rest of your
sorry existence in hell, fuck you!” And then, to put the dollop
of cream on top of it all, he possessed the hubris and
audacity to have his protagonist, Dante, reach the peak of religious enlightenment
by coming to the blissful epiphany that, "yep, everything that’s happening
down here until the end of time" –The Very People The Writer Dante
Placed In Here On His Own Whim– "this is all perfect and
fair, just the way it is." Unquestionable Divine Justice. Abandon Hope, Ye
Who I Tossed In Here. So yeah, Aligheri’s Cantons are
not an interactive medium and within the range of his three
part Comedy, the medium he chose, he absolutely ended up playing
the Punish or Absolve game with his choices of which characters
he put in hell, purgatory, and heaven. So if you really
think about it: Video Game Dante is in so many ways
almost the perfect antithesis to this. The game flips the entire central
meaning of the Inferno on its head and says “hey, we’re adapting this
in an Interactive Medium? Well, then it’s not on
Monsignore Alighieri anymore, but on you, the Player, to decide
who shall solder and who exult." (begging and slashing) - [Dante] Another wasted soul! - Plus, you get sick new
battle combos as a reward! What’s not to love? It’s pretty genius
if you ask me. (hellfire burning) At the end of the plane of
Limbo, true to the original text, we encounter Minos, another character
from Greek Mythology, former king of Crete, son of the all-humping Zeus and
Europa, who, after his death, became judge of the
dead in the Underworld. He serves a similar purpose in
Alighieri’s poem as he does in the game. Any soul that arrives here after traversing
Limbo must stand before his gaze (nostrils?) and confess their sins, after which he
wraps his monstrous tail around them and then sends them off to the circle
that best befits their transgressions. When Dante steps before
him though, he’s first like - YOU. SHALL NOT. PAAAASSS! initially wanting to stop
him since he’s a living soul. - Where are you?! Now, as before, where in the poem, this is
again swiftly solved by Virgil stepping in with - [Elwood] Y'see... we're
on a mission from god. - which Minos replies “(mumbling) oh, well, okay
then if it’s like that then I guess you can pass.” In the VIDEO GAME,
Minos is the first major boss battle after the duel with
Death in the very beginning. And, honestly, mechanically it’s the first
time it really feels like a proper boss battle in that it’s a towering behemoth before you whose
attack and behavioral patterns you have to learn, while you use the environment against him
to defeat him in a big, gory violence-galore. Once we’ve defeated Minos, we take
a scenic stroll past a cliff decorated in a way that would make Vlad
Dracul himself feel right at home and then descend into the
second layer of hell, Lust -a.k.a. Horny Jail. The place where souls who, you know, engaged
in lewdity and such in their lifetime end up. The sufferers here are being tossed around
in a gargantuan, perpetually roaring thunderstorm. Kind of symbolic for how we’ve been tossed around
so wildly and uncontrollably by fleshly desires in our mortal days, and now have to experience
that for eternity, but like, turned to eleven. (hiimdaisy's "It's symbooolic" chant) (dude smacking into statue) This is definitely a chapter
where the video game heavily... expanded on the
events of the poem. In the original work, it, uh, climaxes in Dante
being moved by pity for those suffering down here, meeting and talking with the
soul of Francesca da Rimini, the real-life daughter of the lord of the
province of Ravenna during Dante’s lifetime. Another person who Alighieri pretty much
literarily condemned to hell in his work because she had an affair
with her husband’s brother, which resulted in her
husband killing them both. So she deserves to
go to hell, apparently. Anyway, after this
conversation, Dante faints because he’s so moved by her torment
and whoops, wakes up in the third circle. In the game, Francesca
does appear, but only briefly as one of those characters we can
either punish or absolve for their sins. So Absolve it is, of course! But after that, the chapter for our
harcore crusader Dante doesn’t end in gentle swooning, napping, and
teleporting to the next layer, but we have to climb the Carnal
Tower reigned by Cleopatra. Yep, the Cleopatra, anointed mistress
of the Circle of Lust in the game. And you can probably
see where this is going: The Lust layer being
extended like that was definitely a decision that
played into the hands of... the very pubescent marketing
and audience targeting of this game as a true adult game
for real grown-ups, because Visceral really doesn’t hold back
here with over-the-top sexual imagery. Beatrice, with her eternally
exposed mommy milkers, begins a slow transformation
into a succubus, the circle’s architecture is littered
with obviously vaginal and, uh, boobinal shapes all over the place,
and the fight with Cleopatra itself is... just so grotesquely
oversexualized. And don’t get me wrong, nothing
against a tasteful application of horniness in a depiction of the Underworld to
get the, uh, creative(?) juices flowing, but in Dante’s Inferno it often tends to feel like
the cheap, exploitative gonzo-porn idea of lust, clearly and obtusely targeted at a
rather immature straight male audience. Now, I’m gonna try and give a bit of a
lukewarm defense of these choices here, although this is one aspect where I’m
always pretty clear on my stance that anybody who finds especially
this circle of hell just... tasteless and off-putting, something that would keep
them from enjoying the game- –hey, all power to you. As I mentioned before, the
best way I found to enjoy this is like watching a really
corny, overblown bad movie. Something like
Street Fighter - The Movie (which isn't actually a bad movie,
but you know what I mean). To me, the game makes
this possible because it has just the necessary amount of self-
awareness, especially around here: these segments are simply so
ridiculously overblown that I can just enjoy them with a hearty laugh just
for how absurdly grotesque they are. And a thing that I’ve kept
thinking more and more about in regards to the game’s
purposefully provocative nature- -and I’m really completely omitting
the absolutely tasteless and childish marketing stunts performed by EA
around the launch of the game, trying to judge it as good
as I can on its own merit– -you really have to put into perspective
how absolutely and unbelievably provocative and scandalous Alighieri’s
Inferno was when he released it. Like, you know the effect when you read
a horror story that’s like 150 years old, expecting a good spook, and then the
most frightening thing that happens is some dude
hearing weird sounds, and it turns out it was a gorilla
escaped from the zoo or something. Stuff that barely even raises
an eyebrow with modern, overstimulated and completely
desensitized readers? The Inferno was released a whole 700
years ago, but its plentiful display of inventive and highly graphic depictions
of tortures and torments, start to finish, are something that still gives
readers these days pause. Spine-chilling stuff that sticks with
you for long after reading it. So you just have to
extrapolate how incredibly appalling and distressing it
was on its audience at the time. Especially as it was not
written in Latin, but in Italian- -deliberately made to be populistic, read
and spread among the common folk. So if you want to adapt this
work in tone and texture, especially when it comes to the effect
it had on its contemporary audiences, but for a modern, carnally
overstimulated audience, you absolutely
have to go all out. Which is precisely what
Visceral attempted to do. And while it, of course, didn’t manage to have
a comparable cultural impact as the original, at leeeaast they’ve managed to
establish unforgettable impressions, such as Cleopatra’s Unbaptized-
Baby-Secreting Honkers and dangling from Lucifer’s
Giant Interactive Phallus, (censor beep) as frequently mentioned memorable
moments whenever the game is brought up. That is something,
at least, isn't it? (fire swooshing) When Andrei Tarkovsky- -and no, I’m not gonna compare
this game to Stalker here, no worries. Even I’ve got some pride... although, if you think about the
ephemeral nature of The Zone, a place where the laws of nature
are fundamentally rescinded to a quasi-mythological,
preternatural state, the journey the three deuteragonists
undertake to find their true inner selves, in essence, is extremely similar
to the journey Dante undert- (beep) (beep) When Andrei Tarkovsky released his
adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, a lot of viewers and critics showed
disappointment with how arduously slow the first third of the movie felt,
to which Tarkovsky commented that he made the first hour boring
on purpose in order to get the idiots out of the theatre
before getting to the good stuff. Dante’s Inferno suffers a bit
from the opposite problem, and that’s not entirely
the game’s own fault. See, we’ve only made it
through 2 circles of hell so far and there are still 7
left to descend through, but, in many ways, the opening
2-3 hours are so intensely opulent with rich and sensory-
overloading impressions– -in short, the game set the bar
so high in the first quarter that it noticeably struggles to surpass
itself the further we progress. The fact that some of the
conceptually most, um, tantalizing and eye-catching
parts of hell are front... or well, top-loaded if you will, by the
source material itself doesn’t really help. It feels a bit like the game has
unloaded the lion’s share of its creative juices in an
intense sprint up front. Like the game blew its load
at the Lust layer, nyeh, heh. Especially towards the lower
layers, it starts feeling like the creative batteries
were a bit depleted. But we’ll get to that. The fact that this feeling unquestionably arises
here and there when playing through the story is a shame, because most of the
segments we traverse are still awesome. The problem is just that they
now compete with a precedent established by earlier
sequences of the very game itself. The third layer is
a fantastic example. Right here at the entrance
to the Circle of Gluttony, where Cerberus, the three-headed hound of
the Greek Underworld guards the entrance. In the original poem, this road-block
is once again promptly solved by God-Mode-Virgil who tosses
some dirt into its mouths. While in the game Cerberus is more like
a giant, snarling, three-headed worm. Maybe symbolizing
tapeworms who cause endless hunger in the people
subjected to the gluttony layer? Your guess is as good as mine. And of course we’re also on our own, so we have
to fling the dirt into Cerberus’ mouths ourselves and then rodeo each head individually
in a frenetic quick time sequence that culminates in a trinity
of violent decapitations. It’s a pretty cool boss fight that opens
the path to the rest of the layer. Gluttony is comprised of
bubbling lakes filled with screaming souls perpetually
drowning and being digested in bile. Sufferers in this layer are punished for
living in ridiculous abundance and excess, especially at the
expense of others. We’re traversing putridly
organic architecture that makes us feel like we’re passing
through the innards of a vast creature, ridden with worms and constantly
plagued by acid rains, and we fight giant, blobbish glutton creatures with hungrily
chomping mouths for hands and feet. It’s easily one of the most gnarly and
conceptually impressive circles, even if the glutton- enemy-type certainly has a bit of
unnecessary fatphobia baked into its design. It’s... It is what it is. Like Sartre famously said: "Hell is other people being fatphobic." Down here, we learn how Beatrice and
Dante’s father Alighiero passed away, which is revealed to be by the hands of the same
assassin that stabbed Dante back in Acre, who- –dun dun duuun– -turns out to be the husband
of the captive prisoner Dante is also revealed to
have slept with for a favor. It keeps fascinating me how firmly convinced Dante
was of his own righteousness and innocence, despite having repeatedly betrayed
his betrothed and his conviction in so many clear
and obvious ways. But hey, that’s what we’re down
here for, so onwards the road goes. But hey, that’s what we’re down
here for, so onwards the road goes. We eventually reach the
fourth circle of hell, Greed, which harbors spendthrifts
and money-hoarders. This place is guarded by the
Roman god of the Underworld, Pluto, blocking our
path once more. The Greed-layer consists of lakes
and waterfalls of molten gold in which sinners are
being cooked alive. The passages, themselves, contain some
of the most annoying time-critical puzzles, featuring mechanical
contraptions, with demons storming at us while
we try to figure out the solutions. When met with Pluto, once again, in
the book, Virgil simply exclaims that - [Elwood] We're on a mission from god. - and the Underworld-guardian
immediately falls over and makes way, while in the game, we have to solve
another somewhat contrived puzzle that technically spans across
the entire layer and results in a hi-octane Minotaur-hijacking and
climbing session to ultimately... tear the place apart. Yeah, violence is always
the best solution, isn’t it? After overcoming Pluto’s roadblock, the
circle culminates in a plot-twisty boss fight with none other than the deformed
soul of Dante’s own father. He’s down here for his excessive greed,
wealth hoarding and power mongering during his lifetime, and Dante slowly but
surely comes to some fundamental revelations about
his own past and self. This is another place
where the game clearly, not just nudges but firmly
punches in your face that the central notion of Dante’s
introspective journey is understanding that the better man is the man who can
earnestly reflect on his own flaws, accept his mistakes, repent and
become a better person for it. Which is ultimately the very thing that grants
Dante the privilege to absolve his father. Because his motivation for the
crusade through hell is not selfish, but purely
altruistic in nature. (ethereal swooshing) The fifth layer, Anger,
brings some very interesting alterations to the source material that
feel more like extensions to the story to make it work better in this hack
and slay narrative epic format. Both in the poem, as
well as in the game, the first half consists of
ascending the Tower of Wrath. In the poem they meet Phlegyas,
another ferryman who in this case, transports souls
across the River Styx. The two traverse the river
on his boat and at this point, Alighieri included one of those writerly
judgment calls I talked about earlier: He included Filippo Argenti, a contemporary Florentine politician
and rival of the Aligheri family who publicly opposed
Dante’s return from exile. Not hard to guess that the
writer wasn't very fond of him, and so he put him down here in hell among
those drowning in the River Styx for eternity. During their traversal, Filippo boards
the ferry and challenges Dante, to which he responds by pushing him back
into the river while cursing him, which... results in Argenti being torn
into pieces by the other wrathful. Filippo Argenti also appears
in the game as one of the souls we can appropriately
decide to punish or absolve. It’s up to you. - Noooo! - Here in the game as well,
we cross the river Styx, albeit on a floating platform that takes
us to the opposing bank, which, upon landing, is revealed to
be the head of Phlegyas, in this iteration of the story
embodied by a massive fiery demon. Who, of course, have to defeat
and outsmart in a confrontation. And once we’ve defeated
him, we actually hijack him. We take control over him similar to the
how it works with the minotaurs before, just several levels
more colossal, and on his head, we violently
force our entry into the City of Dis, which in the poem is the area that
contains all the three last layers of hell. I’m a bit sad that this segment
was cut somewhat short in the game. A bridge collapses under our feet
and Dante successively “wingsuits” far down into the next layer. This could have culminated in a
grand and amazing Kaiju battle- -alla Godzilla vs. Gigan or something– -all the mechanics for this
were already in place, but the game chose to cut
these segments short instead. Oh well. The encounter in the City of Dis
in the poem is very different, and it’s equally a bit sad that none of those
events have been adapted in the game. As the duo arrives at the city,
the gates are barred to them, and the inhabitants threaten them
with the petrifying gaze of Medusa. Could have also been
a cool boss battle. This is the only
time where a simple - [Elwood] We're on a mission from god. doesn’t immediately Deus-
Ex-Virgila the problem. In this case, it requires the intervention
of an angel to come down from heaven and to dizz the citizens
of Dis into submission, so that Dante can continue
on his divine journey. The strong divergence of
game story and source material continues through the
sixth circle, Heresy, up until the seventh layer of Violence,
where it gets a bit more interesting again. In the poem, heresy is an
ideologically really pivotal layer, because the sin of worshipping other,
quote unquote “false” gods and idols was a much more weighty
transgression back in the times when the Divine Comedy was
conceived, compared to today. These days, almost anyone’s
knee jerk response to “Oh so people down here are
being tortured because they were aware of the Catholic Church existence but
chose a different path or no faith at all?” is gonna be blanket absolution. - SO DELIGHTFUL! - The layer itself, true to the source
material, is a network of burning tombs. Here, they're arranged in the probably most
metroidvania-style level in the entire game. I mean, not really
metroidvania. Mostly in that it involves mechanisms
in dead ends that clear the path in places we’ve been to so far, so like this is not a 3D Symphony
of the Night all of a sudden. But considering that
the game so far has almost exclusively been structured
linearly forward or downward, it is a noticeable shake-up. So much so that you can feel how
QA had to step in during testing and urge the developers to prompt
some pop-ups here and there that indicate that the way forward
for once is to actually go back. (giant metallic cogs and wheels spinning) One of the most common criticisms I hear
pointed out when it comes to Dante’s Inferno, aside from the constant claims that it’s similar
to God of War and therefore somehow bad, which is about as valid
criticism as saying like, Star Wars: Dark Forces is a bad
video game because it’s like Doom- -it’s just an asinine way
of rating video games, especially when we’re considering
how the God of War series was built at least as strongly upon the
foundations laid by Devil May Cry- -ironically another title
inspired by the Divine Comedy. This avenue of criticism can
seriously go fuck right off. Anyway I’m getting horribly
distracted down here. It’s like the further down
I climb the ladder of hell the more my mind starts
wandering into places... Umm, so yeah what
I was saying, right; one of the most common valid
criticisms I hear pointed out when it comes to Dante’s
Inferno is that the last, [thinking noise] I’d say the last quarter
or so of the game is where it starts getting a
bit out of breath, creatively, and I totally get where
people are coming from. There’s really very little I can do to
refute that, especially the 8th layer- –we’ll get there soon– -which absolutely feels
like a creative cop-out. At this point the game’s issues
with pacing in the last circles comes at least in part from the
original poem’s structure and the order in which Alighieri arranged
the circles and their content himself. The 7th Circle of Hell, Violence, is
separated into 3 individual sub-layers, while the 8th layer, Fraud, is split
into no less than 10 different trenches, all dedicated to different
manifestations of the sin of Fraud, which seriously scrambles the so far rather
neatly spaced out one-circle-per-sin rhythm and the audience expectation
that was set up by it. In the game, the 7th Circle,
Violence, still manages to boast some really interesting
interpretations of the source material. The first section is dedicated to those
who committed violence against others, meaning murderers, serial killers and leaders who
made their armies commit atrocities and genocide. In the poem this layer is guarded
by the giant minotaur of Knossos, which the duo evades by Virgil
insulting the half-bull-half-man, which in turn makes it madly thrash around,
giving them the opportunity to sneak past. Oddly enough, in the game, this
section was not turned into a super-epic violent mega-battle with a
skyscraper-sized minotaur that you then, I don't know, disembowel with god-knows-what
hellish device you turned against it or whatever, but it’s rather focused
on dexterity and wit. The minotaur itself only appears as a
giant statue that we have to trick into chopping our path free for us
with its massive battle-axe. After that, we, quite symbolically,
traverse rivers of blood, with inhabitants of this layer drowning
over and over again in it for all eternity, until we reach the second
plateau: The Forest of Suicides, where those who commit violence
against themselves get punished, and just like in the poem, grow into trees
whose leaves then get eaten by harpies, causing them great pain, until
they of course instantly regrow. A positively
Promethean punishment. Down here, Dante is surprised
to encounter his own mother, as he had always believed that
she’d perished from an illness, but, as it turns out, she took her own
life because of his father’s cruelty. (crows cawing) This is once again a complete
deviation from book-Dante’s tale. But hey, luckily, we wield the
power of forgiveness in the form of Beatrice’s cross and
can absolve her post-haste, - [Mom] My soul... belongs to you! - after which we march on towards
the third plateau of Circle 7: The Abominable Sands. Now, the Circle of Violence is one where
it gets ideologically really questionable. See, the hierarchy of the layers
is composed in a way that the worse the sin you’ve committed,
the deeper down in the pit you end up. Which means that Alighieri consciously
placed the circles and their sub-layers in the order of his personal judgment
of the severity of each crime. See, the Circle of Violence is a very
fascinating microcosm for the problems with this, because according to Alighieri,
for instance, murdering, killing, and even committing
large-scale genocide... all of this is less bad
than taking your own life. Because suicide is violence against
yourself, and according to scripture, that’s the gift God in his graceful
infallibility bestowed on you and thereby destroying this is
indirect violence against God himself, and therefore...worse
than the holocaust. And it gets better: the third plateau of
Violence, the Abominable, or Burning Sands, is where people who committed what’s
understood as violence against God himself are condemned to forever
march on scorching hot sands and perpetually get
showered by rains of fire. This includes things like
sodomy, entailing things like... being not heterosexual
and not cisgender. Because that’s supposedly violating
God’s perfect idea of the traditional family yadda yadda and of course deserves
eternal flames. Just...byoootiful. So yeah, according
to The Inferno, being gay is literally a worse
sin than the holocaust itself. Values! But hey, disclaimer: please mind that Aligheri’s
interpretation of scripture in The Inferno was even repeatedly refuted by
the Catholic Church itself being like “hey wait, listen, being queer is
not worse than mass murder, okay. We want to make
that abundantly clear. We do not stand for this! Like, it still deserves hell, but maybe a
higher circle or something I don't know." And it’s here, where I really
appreciate the game at least attempting to “subvert” the ideological rigidness of the
original work and adding this element of “well in the game it’s actually up to you
who actually deserves to be down here.” Dante’s internal development
over the course of the poem starts out with him being initially
appalled and filled with pity at the sight of the cruel punishments inflicted
on people, feeling remorse for their suffering- -empathy!- -but he gradually turns into someone
who vehemently nods along and wholeheartedly agrees with the pain, with
every hellish form of torture perpetrated, because of how incredibly just and fair
this entire sadistic pandemonium really is, firmly convinced that every single
soul down here truly deserves every last iota of the abuse
inflicted on them for the rest of time. Or rather until Judgment
Day, when, it turns out, most tortures just become even
worse and then really for eternity. This whole notion of
divine punishment, often merely for ways in which
people are just different from the norm, branded as “sins” people
have to be punished for, is something I’ve always
abhorred with a passion: punishment as a negative incentive to
prevent people from “doing bad things” to begin with is a practice that’s
been proven again and again to not just be incredibly inefficient
but also to just...make people worse. And many of the alleged “sinful acts,”
like for instance the puritanical notion that Lust in any form corrupts some
kind of heavenly, blessed virginity, blegh; ♫ It's A Sin! ♫ they’re oppressive teachings
through-and-through which lastingly have rendered people and entire cultures
miserable, regressive, and morally tyrannized. It’s horseshit
dogmatic control. I could go on, but the gist is: I find the whole concept of hell and
eternal damnation as a boogeyman tale to scare believers and acolytes into subservience
over what the Catholic Church considers “evil,” not just comically
evil in and of itself, but considering how much palpable
damage it has caused, culturally and, in billions of cases, individually, over
millennia, incredibly sad and disheartening. And these notions are still
painfully pervasive to this day, baked deep into every
facet of our modern Christian-informed culture and
by extension all over the world. *heavy sigh* So in conclusion, I think a religious adherence
to the underlying ideological message of the original work is not just
unnecessary for me to enjoy this adaptation, giving me the option to go
“Waitaminute holmes, what are you in for? Sodomy? Aw fucking hell off to
a better life with you! Be Gay, Do Crimes,
Smoke Weed, Occupy Heaven.” is an incredibly satisfying middle finger to
the toxic ideas purported in the original work. ♫ Yo Rag got somethin' to say:
F*ck the INQUISITION! ♫ Because if we go by the moral
conclusions of the original text, the idea that all and every punishment
inflicted down in these 9 circles of Hell are the epitome of
perfect righteous justice- –that everything happening
here is exactly as it should be... the very act of absolving people,
and thereby denying them the punishment they are supposed
to receive in the eyes of God, is an act of
blasphemous rebellion. And that, my friends, puts
an entirely different twist on the ostensibly shallow
binary game mechanic of “hey let’s have Dante absolve
or punish people to get XP and fill up an Evil
and Good Skill Tree”. (chorus of voices screaming) But ultimately it’s the 8th circle,
Malegbogle, the evil ditches, where the pretense
really starts to fall flat. The problems for Visceral came with
the poem having Dante and Virgil traverse 10 circular trenches
surrounding a deep well in this circle, each of which is dedicated to a different
variation of the, um, Umbrella-sin of Fraud. Panderers and seducers are
being forced to march, single file, around the circumference
of the trench, being constantly lashed by
horned demons in the first Boglia; Flatterers in the second are submerged
in a river of shit and piss, yeah; Simoniacs, meaning those who sell church goods
(or offices) for their own profit, in the third, are hung upside down with
their feet on fire while having to read baptismal texts cut
into the rocks in front of them. Many more different types of Fraud
are being put on display here, like thieves, hypocrites, grafters, deceivers,
promoters of scandal and schism and so on, each receiving a punishment that
Alighieri found befitting for them. There’s also one
of my favorite... unwittingly funny moments
in the entire poem, which takes place in the 4th boglia, dedicated
to “Astrologers, Seers and Sorcerers”; people who attempted to pervert
god’s laws to divine the future. Their punishment is having their heads
twisted around 180 degrees, exorcist style, and having to forever walk in a circle
while not being able to look straight ahead. And it’s here where Dante completely
loses it, which always makes me cackle. He’s witnessed
incomparable suffering, people eternally boiled
alive in pitch or liquid metal, people being burned by acid rain, skin torn
off and decomposed in bile for eternity, and so many more. Yet when he comes across the
sorcerers having to walk with their heads turned around he
feels like he can’t take it anymore, because for some reason
this is beyond cruel to him. Like, tiny mini tangent, I promise, but I distinctly remember how my
literature teacher in school could not stop laughing about this when we
went through the 8th circle; like he literally had tears in his eyes
about Dante just losing it completely here. *incoherent mumble/chuckle* Anyway, you can
see how this circle, even though it felt like we’re
already way way down near the end, would demand easily half the
effort the game took so far in asset creation by the developers if it were
to be realized in the same sprawling splendor as the circles we’ve
encountered before. And the end-result, no matter how
much I twist and turn it, is a cop-out. In this adaptation, the Malebogles have
been replaced with 10 little arena fights with a deep abyss surrounding them,
which is, I suppose, representing the well. Each section starts with a short,
introductory narration by Beatrice, summarizing the corresponding
“sin” in a single sentence with a camera pan of a mere
statue that’s meant to represent it, then we have to platform our
way across to the arena itself, and then face a gameplay
challenge that has absolutely no ludonarrative connection
with the events at hand. This can be something like “Get a
Combo of 100 successive hits” or “kill 5 enemies exclusively
with Air Attacks” or other achievement-like gameplay challenges
in order to beat the plateau and advance. This is followed up by a short
vertical climbing section to the next layer, save point, health and mana pool
and then the next arena awaits. It’s very disjointed and
immersion breaking, if you think that Beatrice now cares about us
getting in a few achievements before the finale. Some of these arenas are
pretty easy and satisfying, like blasting our way through incoming
hordes with an infinite magic bar, while others can be pretty
challenging and frustrating if you’re not yet intimately familiar with the ins
and outs of Dante’s acquired skills and movesets. Like having to stay in the air
for a pretty extensive amount of time without once
touching the ground. Now, personally, I didn’t find this
layer all too off-putting in and of itself, because I really do enjoy
the combat on its own, and, especially upon
my first playthrough, some of these challenges actually forced
me to properly learn some of my abilities with greater finesse and
granularity than I had until then. Like for instance, up until that point,
I still hadn’t properly understood how to grab and toss enemies high up in
the air and how to use this to my advantage. It also really didn’t take all that long, like
around 35 minutes on my first playthrough, and on my second I was already
done with it in around 25 minutes. And to be honest, it was really this
often-detested segment of the game that led me personally to
actually finally grasp some of the mechanics I had just
winged until that point, and I started thinking about
it enough that I actually craved to play through the game all
over again, and on a higher difficulty. Until that point I hadn’t
even considered doing that. It feels a bit like the Mega Man
habit of pitting you against all the bosses you’ve encountered
over the course of the game, in order to hone your skills
before the final confrontation. So you could say that I don’t have
much to complain about it, personally; although I do still understand how much
of a let-down it is in tone and atmosphere compared to the unadulterated spectacle the
game kept bombarding players with up until then. It really does feel like
someone doing a 5 mile run who started out sprinting
like there’s no tomorrow, but totally ran out of stamina somewhere
in the latter half of the distance. I would have loved to see the vivid
descriptions of the poem come to life in the game’s breathtaking
and epic presentation- –not just an alibi-statue per platform to
show that you’ve done your homework (in the most last-minute
fashion possible). After we’ve bested the
Malegbogle challenges, we’re finally met with the long-
desired conclusion of the Beatrice-arc: Dante faces the travestied
hell-version of Beatrice, but instead of answering all
of his worldly misdeeds by projecting his failings onto
higher powers and then slaughtering them as scapegoats
in overbearing bloody carnage, (pointed cough) Dante realizes his responsibility for
all the things that went bad in his life, in how he killed
prisoners out of anger- –the very act we started
the game out with– -which was the direct cause
for her brother Francesco taking the blame for
him and being executed for it. And after all these insights... Dante finally understands. - [Dante] I give up on the journey. My place is here in hell. Yours is in paradise. He understands that he was solely
responsible for sins beyond redemption and that his place
is down here in hell, and he accepts his real duty. And this act of
sacrifice finally undoes the horrible transformation
Beatrice underwent, and she’s subsequently taken
away to heaven by Gibreel Farishta- –I mean the Archangel Gabriel. - [Gabriel] You've done well, Dante. Now, to get back to that dog-ear in
my page from earlier in the video: we talked about how literary
critics hated the notion that it’s Beatrice who’s supposed to save
Dante, not the other way round, and that the game supposedly committed an
act of pure heresy by flipping this one around. See, to me, this whole story was always
about Beatrice saving Dante, all along. The entire time, Dante is absolutely clueless
about what he’s done and what he’s doing. He's a mindless brute,
a pawn that’s easily toyed with, manipulated
and instrumentalized, whose only solution to the
problems he doesn't understand is keep chopping
things to bits. - [Lucifer] Impressive, isn't it?
How violence just begets violence. - Beatrice on the other hand
always saw through things; she clearly had a plan here when she
bet her own soul for Dante’s salvation. To force him to arrive at the self-
realization and acceptance of his own sins- -something he would
never arrived at on his own- -making herself his sole altruistic
incentive for penance and thereby nudging him towards
his only chance of absolution. By fighting for hers, because fighting
is the only thing he knows how to do. To me she always felt like the
subversion of the Damsel in Distress, like Elaine Marley in Monkey Island
who was set up to be the damsel for Guybrush to rescue, because
this is a "boy’s" adventure story, only to realize “What the hell are you doing
Guybrush? We had this under control all along!” Or Elaine Marley in Monkey Island 2
who supposedly gets captured again, so we sail after her
only that it turns out she didn’t need our help again
and had everything under control, and we futzed things up
for her all over again. Or Elaine Marley in
Monkey Island 3 where... oh no wait they really did turn her
into an actual damsel in distress once Ron Gilbert was out. mhhh...anyway! In Beatrice’s case, it should be abundantly
clear that without her deliberate intervention, Dante would have never
had A CHANCE IN HELL to redeem his own soul. She. Saved. Him. - [Gabriel] Your redemption is near. - [Dante] WAIT! (ice creaking) At long last, we finally descend
into the lowest circle of Hell: Treachery, which is comprised of
the frozen Lake Cocytus. The game definitely amps the
spectacle back up towards the finale for the upcoming confrontation with
Lucifer, the Light Bringer, himself. After this deviation
with Beatrice- (Windows 3.11 Tadaa jingle) –who I want to add, was a character based on
nothing but a seriously unhealthy and creepy lifelong infatuation
with Beatrice Portinari, who the writer Dante Alighieri
met when she was 9 years old, and after which he developed a thorough
Madonna-Whore-Complex for her, obsessed with the platonic ideal
of her for the rest of his days, seeing in her the most
divine incarnation of purity. This continued even after she was
married (not to him by the way), and even after her death
at 25 years of age and when Aligheri was long married himself, he
would never stop swooning over perfect Beatrice– - [Thom Yorke] but I'm a creeep! - Anyway, so after the
totally called-for deviation from the original story’s
role of Beatrice is concluded, the game ties the bow and once again reunites
with the events of the poem for the grand finale. Although in The Inferno, Lucifer presents with a
humongously large body that towers over the ice- –which...checks out– -but he also has three mouths, each of
which swallows and chews up Brutus, Cassius, and in their midst, none
other than Judas himself. Virgil and Dante then simply
climb Lucifer’s body to escape hell, while in the game, it of course
culminates with a big and epic boss battle in which we banish and
re-imprison Lucifer deep into the ice for good. AND IT’S A FIGHT IN WHICH WE HAVE
TO GRAPPLE-HOOK AND DANGLE FROM HIS MASSIVE PHALLUS IN ORDER TO
PERFORM THE FINAL FINISHING MOVE. YEAH. (slashing, screaming) (big explosion) (bowling sound) Nice Cook! Perfect! (applause) After this final takedown
of the Lord of the Inferno, just like in the poem, Dante climbs
through an outcropping of rock where he finds himself standing
before the towering city of Purgatorio, which is, uh, Purgatory, the setting of
the second part of the Divine Comedy. Being finally in tune
with himself and his past, he tears the tapestry
of sins off his chest, and we see it disintegrate
into a snake that slithers away, and in the final shot we witness our
protagonist marching towards Purgatory accompanied by Beatrice’s
now liberated soul. And after this...comes the single
saddest moment of the entire game: Yeah, Dante’s Inferno concluded
in the strong implication that Visceral had planned to not end it here, but
take us through the entire Divine Comedy. It was hinted at by writer
Joshua Rubin in 2011, that he had been hired
by Visceral for a game that was heavily implied to
be a sequel to Dante’s Inferno, but there’s never been an official
statement by Visceral themselves, which is rather safe to assume it
was due to an internal gag order by our beloved publisher and
license holder Electronic Arts, but that’s conjecture. In the end, we’re
left with the fact that - [Jonathan Frakes]
It never happened. - This might make a lot of diehard
Divine Comedy professors happy, but hey, I honestly would have loved to
see this sometimes rough-around-the-nose, sometimes
cringe-worthily pubescent, but ultimately unique and very
redeemable guilty-pleasure take on The Inferno be continued
all the way up to heaven. After all, how good is a
video game series really if you don’t get the chance
to fight God at the end? (Nocturne Intensifies) Hey everyone, thank you for watching! If you're new to this channel and
discovered me just with this video hey, I'm Ragnar and I cover old games,
horror games, indie games or combinations thereof
and try bringing attention to games that have fallen into
obscurity as well as outstanding indie titles that I want people to not miss out on! If this video made you want to play
or replay Dante’s Inferno yourself, remember, I’ve added a
document that helps you emulate it on modern systems in
the description of this video! Now, before I leave you to it,
a small but important plug: the work on my channel
is primarily crowdfunded – fan contributions are the main income source,
the bread and butter of these videos with multiple people contributing to writing,
recording, editing, music, art, and things like having full english closed captions reliably ready at launch. If you’d like to help us with that, then I’d
greatly appreciate your support on Patreon. It would make a tremendous difference – So thank you for considering and thank
you to everyone who supports me there! And a special shout
out this time goes out to: patreon.com/RagnarRoxShow Until next time... ta ta!
