Dante's Inferno

[Malacite]

Just wondering if anyone else picked this up (friend got me the Divine Edition as an X-mas gift, had to wait for it to actually come out though LOL) and what their take on it is.

It's late so I'll post my thoughts later, mainly just wanted to get the ball going and also if anyone else has the Divine Edition, WTF is up with the poem? It scrolls too damned fast for me to read it and the left stick won't do anything even though it says "Scroll" on the bottom of the screen

[Jei]

Re: Dante's Inferno

My bro's girlfriend really loves the demo of this game. She was having so much fun when all the guys in my family (myself included) thought it was too bloody.....

[Malacite]

Re: Dante's Inferno

My bro's girlfriend really loves the demo of this game. She was having so much fun when all the guys in my family (myself included) thought it was too bloody.....

o.O LOL the Demo is nothing. The real game gets much, much worse (though I've seen games with far more gore, DI is incredibly disturbing in many other ways)

[Satori]

Re: Dante's Inferno

I recently put it on my Hd for my dad to try with a few others. I had no idea about it. my 3yr old brother was happily sitting there playing with blocks whille my dad played it and I made a coffee in another room. I heard a "dodgy" noise coming from the lounge so poked my head through the door and I saw the woman on the altar. little aflie "my brother" told me she was crying so I decided he could come help me in the kitchen instead lol

[Malacite]

Re: Dante's Inferno

>_> it says Mature 17+ right on the box dude.

[Feba]

Re: Dante's Inferno

my 3yr old brother was happily sitting there playing with blocks whille my dad played it and I made a coffee in another room.

I'm amazed Nannyland hasn't taken the child already.

[Satori]

Re: Dante's Inferno

lol.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Dante's Inferno

Next up for Video Game Adaptations: The Illiad!

[Feba]

Re: Dante's Inferno

Next up for Video Game Adaptations: The Illiad!

Actually, I'm amazed how many epic tales have been largely untouched by video games. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, The Odyssey, pretty much anything in the Bible. More games rip off D&D than works of antiquity. I'm really surprised there haven't been more biblical-times games than the kinda-sorta-related (Assassin's Creed), and the out and out religious-game-company-made. There's a lot of room for video games with Biblical stories without being insulting or evangelical. Plus, it would be fairly cheap; most of the environments could just be sand upon sand!

[Malacite]

Re: Dante's Inferno

Okay so, aside from the stupid poem not being legible (hopefully they'll patch that so I can actually scroll through it instead of having to read it as quickly as possible...) my major concerns with the game were;

- Clunky combat. Despite being able to learn quite a variety of attacks, the majority of them do not chain together very well. In addition, unless you find and level up the Coins of Plutus (for an extra 3 seconds at level 3) keeping the combo meter going can be a pain in the ass. Particularly when the fallen angels use that stupid shove attack on you. I'd have to say that the flying fallen and the temptresses of Lust were the two most aggravating enemies in the game. It's pretty BS that an enemy can suddenly block or evade and then counter midway into a combo.

- The last two circles. They were actually fairly disappointing. Fraud was just a 10-part asinine gauntlet of trials that just seemed so out of place, and as I think IGN (someone anyway) noted in their review, would have been better split up among the previous circles. Like the part where you have to kill all enemies while your health is steadily draining (this is again from the review, I just happen to agree 100%) that should have been in Gluttony, where according to the Poem it literally rains shit from the sky. It would have been thematically cool and more believable for Dante's constitution to fail him in the most disgusting part of Hell.

As for Treachery, it was short, you never did get to see Judas (I was looking forward to seeing Lucifer munching on his head damn it) or Mohammed (my friend and I were very curious if they had the stones to show him either in Limbo, Heresy or Treachery) but neither were shown. The level was also the shortest by far, with the single most annoying fight segment in the game followed by an icy trek of falling platforms and then Lucifer himself. The final boss fight itself was ridiculous as well since it's pretty much a Cross-only fight, which left me utterly screwed since I took the Unholy path and was (sadly) forced to lower the difficulty setting because it was literally impossible for me to win. It's completely retarded how skewed the game is in general towards using the Cross over the Scythe.


Other than that, I thought the game was great. It's really over the top, but considering the intent of this game it's perfectly fine. Unlike say something silly like Conker's Bad Fur Day, which was just nothing but scat comedy, DI was going for a very serious portrayal of Dante Alighieri's vision of what Hell is like. I've heard a lot of complaints from various people about how graphic or disturbing it is, and all I have to say to them is - It's f'ing HELL! What did you expect?! Quite frankly I was expecting it to be even more outrageous than it was, but then I'm probably fairly decensitized

It's by no means a AAA title, the above issues more or less prevent it from being so but over all for Visceral's second game I'd say they did a pretty good job. As an action game, it's not the greatest (and I want to smash anyone's face into a wall who compares it/calls it a GoW rip off because it's NOT) but just as an artistic work of level design it is epic win. The Lust Circle was especially well done.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Dante's Inferno

Actually, I'm amazed how many epic tales have been largely untouched by video games. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, The Odyssey, pretty much anything in the Bible. More games rip off D&D than works of antiquity. I'm really surprised there haven't been more biblical-times games than the kinda-sorta-related (Assassin's Creed), and the out and out religious-game-company-made. There's a lot of room for video games with Biblical stories without being insulting or evangelical. Plus, it would be fairly cheap; most of the environments could just be sand upon sand!

I think I just prefer the use of such things as thematic devices a bit more than a straight-up game adaptation, plus its always fun to find or figure out the parallels on your own rather have that parallel presented as its own game.

I mean, that's kinda why I don't understand why people froth at the mouth over Final Fantasy VII - it IS Dante's Inferno.

Cloud is the mentally ill crusader
Aerith is Beatrice
Sephiroth is the devil.

And while Cloud tries to overcome his issues and descend futher to confront his enemy and redeem himself, Sephiroth picks up a reference of his own - the Jewish Kabbalah. Rather than embrace each of the ten "sephiroths" to achieve a genuine relationship with God (or in this case, the Lifestream), he instead does what the devil would do and corrupt each sephiroth in a bid to become God.

Sephiroth's fall is different, but he does fall from being the best of the best, which isn't too much different from Lucifer's fall from being the top angel in heaven.

I will give EA credit for the fact they did try to maintain the themes without political correctness - even going so far to keep Muhammad's appearance in. The held the line, much like they did for the WWII Pacific campaign of Medal of Honor - I mean, we can't dance around the fact Japan attacked the US or that we nuked them later. I don't think either side is historically proud of those particular actions, but we can't lie about it. Dante's Inferno is also a piece of history on top of being a literary work.

[Malacite]

Re: Dante's Inferno

Actually, I'm amazed how many epic tales have been largely untouched by video games. Gilgamesh and Enkidu, The Odyssey, pretty much anything in the Bible. More games rip off D&D than works of antiquity. I'm really surprised there haven't been more biblical-times games than the kinda-sorta-related (Assassin's Creed), and the out and out religious-game-company-made. There's a lot of room for video games with Biblical stories without being insulting or evangelical. Plus, it would be fairly cheap; most of the environments could just be sand upon sand!

Go play Xenogears again.


And as I said above, I was really disappointed at the lack of them showing Mohammed or Judas... the only reference to Judas was in the 30 silver pieces you could collect (his payment for betraying Jesus). He was supposed to be in the 9th circle getting his head chewed on by Lucifer (there are two others with him being chewed on as well, though not their heads and I forget just whom exactly)

One interesting point they made was about Christianity not being "proper" until the time of Jesus. That is, Abel, Noah etc. were all actually residing in hell until a "Mighty One" as Virgil put it (I think he says it was actually Adam but I forget how he worded it exactly. Wasn't sure if he meant Adam was trapped as well or was their savior) came and took them out (it was another Mortal soul like Dante). Honestly the game has some of the most artistic and creative level design I've ever seen (if incredibly disturbing). The unbaptized babies were a bit much but then so was everything else in the bloody game lol. They're going to do the other two parts as well, as hinted at by the ending (it actually says to be continued lol) so that should be interesting, though I really don't see how exactly that's going to work.

It would help if I'd read the entire Divine Comedy, but I still can't really see them making two more games out of Purgatory and Heaven... for one thing at the end Dante's naked, having left all his gear (most importantly Death's Scythe and Beatrice's Cross) behind in Hell, so what's he going to fight with? And I SERIOUSLY doubt God would put up with the kind of epic bullshit that went down in Hell in Purgatory, much less Heaven. What are you even going to fight? Purgatory is more or less the waiting room/lobby for people awaiting their entrance to Heaven after repenting, where as at least Limbo technically still housed the damned (even if they were without sin) so yeah. Unless Lucifer somehow manages to transport demons from hell there, I don't see them having much of a game.

Finally (because it's freaking 4:30 am and I'm tired) even if they make it work somehow, the combat is bad need of refinement. Clunky combos + bad camera angles = bad experience. While I enjoyed the game over all the combat honestly was pretty poorly implemented in too many places.

[Feba]

Re: Dante's Inferno

Go play Xenogears again.

When did robots show up in the bible, Deuteronomy?

Yes, themes from the bible are fairly common in pretty much the entirety of pop culture. That's nothing close to an adaptation.

[Malacite]

Re: Dante's Inferno

Yes, themes from the bible are fairly common in pretty much the entirety of pop culture. That's nothing close to an adaptation.

Hmm, perhaps, but that game was loaded to the brim with Christian themes and bible references. Not being Christian myself I can't really name them all but I definitely remember there being a lot of it.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Dante's Inferno

When did robots show up in the bible, Deuteronomy?

Yes, themes from the bible are fairly common in pretty much the entirety of pop culture. That's nothing close to an adaptation.

That's because whenever there is an adaptation its either, "OMG nuuuuu stop pushing your beliefs on me" or "its too violent."

See: The Passion of the Christ

Yeah, the violence was a little over-the-top and the Judas angle had some artistic liberties taken, but otherwise I thought it was a good adaptation, especially for keeping things story in the language of that time. Yet people whined anyway because the violence and natural language used to tell the story made them uncomfortable.

So another, dumbed down version was made.

I preferred the original version.

There was a fantastic film on the Christmas story that came out a few years back, but it never went mainstream. It wasn't top-tier movie talent, but there were a lot of great TV actors there. The wise men have always been my favorite part of the story, so a big focus on the astronomers and scientists of the time made it interesting.

We could have more adaptations like this, but our own culture tries to constantly downplay just about any religion for fear of offending other people. And not matter how hard you try, someone will be offended.

I think that's why religion always get the thematic device treatment. Keeps people from being whiny little brats and makes them go "oooooooh." I will admit it actually does work. I can't tell you how much time I've spent on Wikipedia just because I was curious about anything I saw in the Shin Megami Tensei series or even FFXI.

The four heavenly kings we fight in sky are a big part of chinese mythology and have other cultural interpretation. The story of Izanagi and Inzanagi is practically another version of the legend of Adam and Lilith (well, one of the versions of that anyway), which also serves for the backstory to the Lilim and Succubi origins in European myth and demonology.

In fact, Lilith is a fun example. Too much to list here, but here's a little sample.

In Shin Megami Tensei, Kazuma Kaneko drew her to resemble Gozer from Ghostbusters. There's a reason for that - her origins date back further in history to that of the early Sumarian Kings. Ghostbusters made a big point to draw upon that region for Gozer.

Gozer was totally made up by Harold Ramis and Dan Ackroyd, but even so, Gozer has sexual elements of Lilith's male and female versions from that period of history, as show. by Zuul "The Gate Keeper" and Vinz Clortho "The Key Master" (hur hur, "key" and "keyhole"). Zuul is a Succubus and Vinz an Incubus (being aspects of Lilith) are supposed to help create more demons, so the union of Zuul and Vinz allows Gozer (Lilth) to manifest.

So Lilth looking like Gozer is a cute pop culture reference, but even the reference is relevant.

I guess that's why I find the use of reference more fun than an outright adaptation.

I'm sure something more alien to everyone - such as the stories of Gilgamesh - could be adapted and still be fun - but even in digging around the Lilith story, you could find connections to Gilgamesh and Ishtar.