Dante's Inferno - What Happened?

[Music] let's see [Music] [Applause] [Music] attention ultramarines before we entered the Inferno I'd like to give a shout out to Nikon and Warhammer 40K Inquisitor martyr Ultimate Edition for sponsoring today's chaos filled episode now if you know anything about the Imperium of man you know that chaos needs to be cleaved by the Divine might of the emperor of mankind and there's no better way to do that than clicking the link in the description to check out the newly released Xbox series S Plus X and PS5 versions of this action RPG set within a grim future that knows only War whether you're hacking your way through the kaligari sector solo and local two-player co-op with a friend a console exclusive or four player online this next-gen version features cross gen play native 4K support high resolution textures over four years of added improvements and upgrade paths if you own the previous console editions if you're interested check out the link below and gear up because Harry Mercy isn't going to exterminate itself with the emperor's will now out of the way let's start the show welcome back Sinners to another lust-sating lava bathing soul-saving episode of what happened the show that breaks down the fraud-filled machinations of the video game and movie Industries this week we'll be diving deep into delightfully devilish layers of one of EA's most controversial and mishandled properties it's a title that for a while at least had one of the most talked about marketing campaigns of all time bribe money fake protests human appendages made out of cake and ludicrously expensive commercials so grab your stolen scythe and get those last stitches sewed in because it's time to find out what happened to Dante's Inferno it all starts in the magical year of 2006. Zack Snyder's seminal 300 had just kicked its way into theaters and into the 2000s cultural Zeitgeist this was done through various internet memes but also through the movie's striking visual style which took great efforts to emulate the pages of the graphic novel it was based on one person who took note of this approach was Jonathan Knight a senior producer at Electronic Arts who was working at the Redwood Shores Studio on a little title called The Simpsons Game the sexiest Department in all of video games marketing which means I've already hit my quota now according to an anonymous Dante's Inferno Dev I had spoken to seeing 300 very well could have been the first step on the road to creating Dante's Inferno it is my understanding that Jonathan Knight saw 300 and thought that our Simpsons Game 3D to 2D Graphics pipeline could be repurposed to possibly do a playable graphic novel with a more mature story I believe he settled on Dante's Inferno because one it's a big classic centuries-old story everyone knows two go to hell sort of writes itself and most importantly three nobody owns the IP my source went on to say in the earliest brainstorming sessions for Dante's Inferno they were focusing on making something a bit more slow paced described to me as a cool playable mature graphic novel game that would have had very distinct visuals built with their Tech from The Sims game however once EA's marketing team got their greedy little fingers on the project it very swiftly metamorphed into a fast-paced character action Thrill Ride Now I'm not gonna lie in terms of marketing a mature playable graphical novel horror game from Electronic Arts wasn't going to be the easiest sell in the world so the decision to turn it into something more mainstream was I'm sure to some disappointing but hey this is EA yep that's me now as to what they'd look to for inspiration well in the 2000s there are few things more mainstream in the video game industry than Sony's God of War series obviously the team at EA Redwood Shores took a huge amount of inspiration from kratos's Adventures but to bring the hauntingly detailed world of Dante alighieri's epic The Divine Comedy to life they brought in a ringer to really flesh out the many Motley Monsters of Hell Wayne Barlow a highly esteemed concept artist for various Hollywood Blockbusters and sci-fi fantasy book covers and made waves with his own series of illustrations which reinterpreted the concept of demons and the underworld with an abstract almost beautiful quality he was given the opportunity to help push the team into some unique directions and while only a select few of his designs made it into the final game many did not as they were deemed too out there to be included the source I spoke to said I distinctly remember the moment seeing the concepts that we consulted Wayne Barlow to do for each circle of hell and I recall my reaction being in I don't want to see what this guy has in his basement this was a sentiment shared by Jonathan Knight in an internally produced making of Dante's Inferno documentary his images are just stunning and imaginative and twisted and weird Cleopatra is kind of the monster boss character of lust we had some early Concepts that were just like so weird sex organs all over her body and her fingers and her face and William Barlow took a crack at her and he took that quite literally and that was like a really creative and fun exercise but ultimately not a character that I I think you know would have served the game this leads into a bit of a contrast in the concepts and enemy designs seen in the final game for every enemy encounter with something unique and bizarre like Cerberus the boss representing gluttony you'd then be slashing through dishwater hooved and horned demons straight out of old cartoons part of the reason reason for this was that concept art needed to be outsourced to Barlow and several others who did not directly work for EA as they were trying to reduce working hours for its core teams in the wake of a very specific lawsuit for those that don't remember a disgruntled spouse of an EA employee made a series of blog posts reprimanding the company for overworking its employees which had a snowball effect that did eventually change some of EA's practices the former EA employee I spoke to confirmed that an adjustment period was needed for this new policy saying after the EA spouse lawsuit the internal corporate response was to Outsource as much artwork as possible immediately I had to quickly learn how to communicate across cultural lines different time zones and how to visually represent what I wanted to a team of artists overseas I did not know or meet add to that communication technology at the time was pretty primitive we had at best email and Skype review software for didn't exist and shared builds were damn near impossible due to security risks but aside from that according to my research the core development period of Dante's Inferno went relatively smoothly compared to what would happen later although there was that whole business with Oscar Isaac for those that forgot at one point he was set to play Dante himself but had apparently been fired from the role at the last minute with Isaac remarking to film website birth movie's death I think they just thought I was bad it was such a shitty game though Dante's Inferno which I don't know seems a bit like sour grapes to me I mean what's Oscar Isaac ever been in regardless at this point it seemed like everything was going fine on the development side which is precisely when the EA marketing team the ones apparently behind the shift into not God of War were just vibing in the background and summoning the sinful power of all the layers of Hell to benefit their cause ultimately this would prove to be a mistake as the combined might of all these sins especially greed would envelop the project in its dark clutches [Applause] when Dante's Inferno was announced in December of 2008 hot off the heels of another m-rated Redwood Shore success that being dead space there was um some skepticism as you might expect the substance of the Divine Comedy doesn't naturally lend itself very well to action games as a whole journey to hell part is mostly just walking talking and looking at some messed up stuff so when it was revealed there was going to be something very akin to God of War a certain percentage of Gamers and critics were all like oh well that's pretty unoriginal see the poem was more of a metaphysical tale of finding the true path to Faith and salvation as well as allegari wanting to troll people he hated in life with the character of Dante being a largely undefined philosopher he's guided through Hell by the poet Virgil and his boo Beatrice who offers him support from heaven in EA's Inferno Dante is a muscular Soldier racked with guilt from his time in the Crusades who needs to save his murdered girlfriend's soul from the claws of Lucifer a tale as complicated and is emotionally nuanced as any given entry in the Super Mario franchise it was the freaking gabaloo boiling in the classic poem down to this action movie form drew it a fair bit of early criticism and Jonathan Knight answered these criticisms more than a few times while also trying to deflect the many comparisons to God of War in a post-release are his Technica piece with Jonathan Knight interviewer Ben kuchera posited the following the thing is the game is good and I point out that it must be galling to hear about people saying it's a God of War clone as if that's the simple thing to rip off to which Knight replied I appreciate you're mentioning that there is no God of War checkbox in Maya that makes that all happen or Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden it's very hard and we have combat designers who look at the milliseconds and the frames that are steeped in the genre nonetheless critics and fans alike were quick to point out every overlap they could find including the general control layout which aped God of War very closely right stick to roll one attack button for single enemies and one for groups magic attacks a grab and of course the token action game rage mode the wrath of Jesus or whatever was called any way you slice it in terms of control Dante is fundamentally identical to Kratos when asked what was the most unique element that Inferno is bringing to the table Jonathan had an answer the absolve and punish system a binary choice between saving or killing the denizens of Hell which fed into the dark or light pass which powered Dante's moveset aside from that it consisted of the same familiar set pieces qtes health and Magic upgrades big and small enemy archetypes cinematic boss fights and liberal depictions of violence and nudity now what this did do was make the game incredibly easy to advertise and boy did EA advertise the Everlasting [ __ ] out of it maybe even a little too much in addition to Redwood Shores being renamed to visceral games all throughout 2009 you couldn't open up a Gaming website and not read about the newest cringiest way EA's marketing machine was trying to get the word out there from the blunt go to hell tagline to the wildstorm comic book adaptation to reprinting the original poem with EA branding to the anime movie nothing was off limits oh yeah and then there were the toys hey kids wanna punish Brutus for its epic betrayal of Caesar yeah then you need the official Dante's Inferno action figure he comes locked and loaded with a searing power of Beatrice's crucifix NATO makes Satan eat Holy Dirt or go to hell Dante comes with everything you see here period of Daddy's inferred on your Xbox 360 and PS3 this February as silly as all this seems all this stuff was pretty much in line with what EA had been doing elsewhere Dead Space also got an animated movie merchandise toys and comic books and Dead Space 2 would even go on to repeat some of these same Dante Martin beats with its own asinine mothers hate Dead Space campaign hey if it works why fix it well spoilers sometimes these things simply don't work foreign on fire with the Dante's Inferno circle cycle some madman on the EA marketing team decided the next logical step would be to focus on each transgressional layer of Hell starting off with sending out 200 checks to gaming Publications to represent greed delivering gory cakes in the shape of human limbs to journalists to signify gluttony all right that one's kind of funny and most yikes of all asking fans to commit acts of lust with female Booth workers at 2009 San Diego Comic-Con con goers were intended to take pictures of these vague acts being performed and to submit them to EA with the winner being promised a quote-unquote night of lust as their reward try to act surprised but EA had to publicly apologize for this almost immediately and attempted to clarify several points of this ill-conceived idea to the Press but the damage had already been done the aforementioned 200 checks also didn't go exactly as planned with several applications basically not bothering to play EA's game with a few of them either burning the checks not cashing them or just passing them on to local charities it didn't stop there though EA then started mailing out musical boxes that played Rick astley's Never Gonna Give You Up on Loop and also supplied a hammer any journalist who smashed the box would then read a note confirming they had submitted to wrath yeah okay I get it I guess this isn't as bad as the actually illegal set of brass knuckles they mailed out to the Press earlier that same year for The Godfather too but geez man who is on EA's marketing team back then like a claim can this get any lower E3 2009 prove that it could he hell is a real place you know a religious protest group campaigned outside of the LA Convention Center damning Dante's Inferno as a Blasphemous work and calling out for EA's top brass to cancel the game before the weekend was even over though reporters learned that the protesters were paid actors hired pie EA God damn it oops I mean no God damn it in one of the more pointless marketing debacles EA started promoting a fake game called Mass we pray which allowed players to hold religious ceremonies which always ended with a message to play Dante's Inferno and gadget called Mass we pray the latest move in the Dante's Inferno marketing campaign's fight against good taste all of these stances you can imagine grew more and more tiresome over time though I guess they were effective in the sense that so many websites were basically given it publicity by all pointing and laughing this however was all leading up to EA's last and most expensive gamble being the first video game publisher to pay for a Super Bowl commercial this 30 second spot which ran during 2010 Super Bowl 44 cost a reported 2.9 Million Dollars and if anything was pretty on brand as I really did represent well a number of things gluttony greed take your pick Jonathan Knight was asked Point Blank by RS Technica how he felt about all these marketing stunts and really gave the only answer in EA employee could give as a game developer you'd basically dream of having a marketing push like this the topic of the game and the campaign dealing with sin and Hell locked in gluttony and greed those are big topics that lead to controversial implementation or content at the end of the day we're just thrilled to have this level of support despite this massive push in millions of dollars to just get the game in front of people's eyes it really didn't work Dante's Inferno was Unleashed on February 4th 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PS3 with a super technically impressive PSP Port developed by a2m I mean Behavior Studios was shipped out later that month regardless of the platform it was met with a muted critical response the PS3's 75 on Metacritic is as flattering as it gets with reviewers generally falling into two camps one group felt the game was mechanically sound and well polished while the other felt it offered way less variety replayability and Nuance than the name brand God of War series literary experts also came away quite unimpressed with a Columbia University professor and former president of the Dante Society of America stating quite plainly of all the things that are troubling the sexualization and infantilization of Beatrice are the worst Beatrice is the Hume girl who is dead and is now an agent of the Divine she is not to be saved by him she is saving him that's the whole point here she has become the prototypical Damsel in Distress she's this kind of bizarrely corrupted Barbie doll oh that's a well-deserved oof if I've ever seen one in terms of commercial performance though it did not fare much better with the NPD group ranking the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions at number eight and number nine respectively managing to sell 467 000 units across both consoles that's not an awful start in and of itself but the very next month both versions failed to chart completely you know what was at the top of the charts that month God of War 3 with 1.1 million copies Olympians overestimate themselves Jonathan Knight was asked by CG Mag online if he felt all this criticism was justified and his answer probably won't surprise you we don't feel that the volume and intensity of that criticism was particularly Fair no because it resulted in an overall Metacritic store that doesn't truly represent the quality of the assets that were made and of the experience that was delivered the game is incredibly polished high-end and high performing the production values are amazing and the core combat at controls feel as good as the best game in the genre I agree that 90 plus rated Games should deliver originality but our game is not a 75 and it does stand on its own while obviously being squarely in the melee action genre unfortunately a lot of people decided that the God of War comparison would form the basis of their review and that decision was made a long time ago and carries a great deal of emotion with it but yes there are plenty of examples of games working side by side in the same genre and the irony is that we probably have more in common with Devil May Cry than God of War no you don't I mean how can you oh wait oh Dante and Virgil oh I get it now aside from the release of some DLC costumes a small additional prologue level called Dark Forest and the trials of Saint Lucia expansion which packed an online co-op a second playable character and a pretty novel level editor that's essentially the end of Dante's Inferno this role and EA sandbagged questions about a sequel despite the game's conclusion obviously teasing one complete with a big old to be continued message when asked throughout 2010 and 2011 about where the series could go visceral employees had to deftly navigate around the issue Dante couldn't go back to hell again so the ending of the game placed him at the base of Mount Purgatory which led many to assume the next game would be called Dante's Purgatory or Redemption and then conclude with the third game of Dante's Paradise roughly following alligary's work now a possible problem was that those parts of the poem don't really have anything approaching an antagonistic force that the player could cleave through so even though his sequel was sort of promised it probably took quite a lot of brainstorming to even come up with a viable scenario as they couldn't rely on the crutch of Hell any longer meanwhile visceral were going all in on Dead Space the first game was a surprise head the sequel sold even better when it released in 2011 and Dead Space 3 was well check out this video here the problem was that the budgets for these games were rapidly ballooning but their profits were not so visceral's ability to make EA tons of money was gradually slipping despite that in 2013 a live-action Dante's Inferno movie was announced out of nowhere supposedly being helmed by Evil Dead remake director Fede Alvarez but uh nothing obviously ever came of it the faint glimmer of a sequel still burned though in 2011 Joshua Ruben a writer who had worked on Assassin's Creed 2 updated his LinkedIn profile with a credit for being the sole writer of an unannounced sequel from visceral games and even cheekily linked to the Super Bowl trailer although nothing official was ever announced a few years later in 2016 rumors started to be dredged up once again that a sequel to Dante's Inferno had been in development at visceral and was going to attempt to do something very different knowing that similarities to God of War were its biggest criticism the gameplay had allegedly morphed into an action adventure featuring more exploration in Assassin's Creed like traversal mechanic and a huge boost in graphical Fidelity swapping the original's standard 60fps Target down to 30 which would deliver more complex geometry detail and effects Dante would have fought angels and other creatures throughout purgatory and most likely have another battle with Goodall stars on us Lucifer but it simply wasn't to be it's safe to say that after two Dead Space sequels failed to impress the EA Bean counters coupled with Dante's own soft performance they enthusiastically pumped the brakes on investing any further into any new IP by visceral the studios shipped the third Army of Two game which I have no memory of and two Battlefield projects before getting unceremoniously dumped part way into Amy hennig's canceled Star Wars game EA formally closed the Redwood Shores HQ of visceral for good in 2017 thus ending the career of one of the more promising studios in the video game industry in the years since though there's been a newfound appreciation for Dante's Inferno with more people reevaluating it after it got added to the Xbox backwards compatibility program and through well-produced videos like Ragnar rocks who did a great deep dive on its positives while it's not completely out of the question that EA might return to the concept down the line there is a remake of dead space on the way after all I somehow doubt it's hellish subject matter would make it a prime candidate for a remake or sequel unless there's a level that looks like this hey look I got my own reference in there by the end if you know of any other righteous or damned stories in the video game or movie Industries do let me know in the comments below or enter the wacky layer of hell that is my Twitter see you next time and thanks for watching foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 675,981

Keywords: matt mcmuscles, Dante's Inferno, God of War, Visceral Games, Dead Space, Devil May Cry, What Happened, wha happun, video game documentaries, EA Games

Id: TIX0na2VdT0

Length: 25min 25sec (1525 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 29 2022