Dante's Inferno - From the studio behind Dead Space - February 9 - Demo is Out Now

The fellows at EA have got some significantly-sized cojones. That's what I concluded after seeing EA (via Kim Kardashian at the Spike TV 2008 Video Game Awards) announce a new action game based on Dante Alighieri's epic poem, The Divine Comedy. Both Matt Leone and I went to see a presentation about Dante's Inferno, and to also see how the heck EA is turning a poem about taking a walking tour of Hell into a God of War-style action game.

Scooter: I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of an action game based on The Divine Comedy. I mean, I can see how something like Beowulf easily translates into both a game and a movie, because that was a roughly-3000 line poem about a Dane fighting monsters. The Divine Comedy, on the other hand, is mostly Dante and Virgil doing an Aaron Sorkin style walking-and-talking routine through Hell (or how I remember what little I read of it back in high school). What the hell game can you get from that? Maybe a graphic adventure? Even after creative director and executive producer Jonathan Knight talked at length about the importance of The Divine Com (yes, it's a canonical first person narrative written entirely in Italian as opposed to Latin, but that still doesn't quite explain the "why a game?" question), he then admitted that due to its talky nature, the story had to be "adapted" quite a bit to fit the game. This is most evident when he showed the opening scene, where Dante fights Death in order to nab the iconic scythe for the journey down to Hell (which will be a gameplay scenario, but it wasn't implemented yet, so there was a big "DANTE FIGHTS DEATH HERE" placeholder instead), and then Knight launched into the game demo proper. At that point, I'm like, "OK, I'm overanalyzing things, I guess I'll just take it as it goes." What were your first immediate thoughts/impressions?

Matt: Like much of the Internet, two weeks ago I saw UK magazine PSM3 call Dante's Inferno "Dead Space Meets God of War in Hell." Thinking back now, that line annoys me, because I saw the same demo they did, and I can't think of anything that seems remotely inspired by or similar to Dead Space. It's being made at the same EA Redwood Shores address, but even with that, there's a different team of people in charge. That's not to say that nobody who touched Dead Space will touch Dante's Inferno -- many of them will -- but it's as relevant to compare the game to Dead Space as it is to compare it to The Godfather 2.

So really, it's God of War meets God of War in Hell -- and man, is it. I imagine most previews will make that comparison, because I just went through my notes and found roughly 30 things that are almost exact parallels to the God of War series. To name a few: you fight with a ranged weapon that can shake the ground to knock over enemies, you have a fixed camera, you evade with the right analog stick, you stretch the scythe to grab blue grapple points, you climb walls with the exact same hopping side-to-side animations, you weaken enemies to the point that a button-pressing minigame option shows above their head, you jam on Circle to open doors, you split your time between solving puzzles and fighting enemies, you pull oddly familiar looking levers, you rotate waist-high rods to raise platforms you're standing on, you traverse hand over hand across horizontal vines, you fight "flying demon pests" that look like harpies and "beasts" that look like colossi, and you can even ride on enemies like Sony just showed as a feature for God of War 3.

Oh, and I'll throw in one more: you have a Holy Power in which a blue area-attack surrounds your character while you levitate with your head and shoulders thrown back. And jamming on Circle increases the size/damage of the move. When something gets that similar it moves from inspiration to blueprint, but to EA's credit, the 15 minutes I played of Dante's Inferno felt better than any of the other God of War clones I've played -- like Conan and Heavenly Sword.

Scooter: Yea, that holy power was the Lust Storm, though for the longest time, I thought it said "Just Storm", in the sense that it's a "justifiable storm." Whatever that means. Anyhow, the God of War analogy is pretty head on -- the "cranking the giant circular rod" was the single moment that really finalized the "this is EA's take on God of War." It probably helps that one of the guys on the Dante's Inferno team, Michael Cheng, came from God of War II. I can only relegate myself to making superficial comments about the combat, such as how I just hit Triangle (the game will hit both 360 and PS3, but the developers just randomly chose the PS3 version to show off) a whole lot to pull off some sort of strong attack combo that gets me through most fights. As our God of War guru, what makes Dante's Inferno combat feel better than other GOW clones?

Matt: Mostly the animations and timing. I liked lifting enemies into the air and continuing combos up there, extending the scythe to grab drones from far away and pull them closer, and using the parry system -- which was only half-implemented in the version we played, but had a good feel to it and showed a lot of promise. Unlike the other clones I've played, this one doesn't feel like it's struggling (and failing) to copy God of War. I could note a few imperfections, though, such as how evading seems to have a slight delay compared to God of War, and how enemy reactions seem a bit off at times. But that's getting pretty specific for a game that's roughly a year away from release.

Which actually brings up another point. I was asking one of the developers what makes Dante's Inferno's mechanics different from God of War's, and -- in addition to pointing out the cross and how you'll have moral choices like being able to "absolve" or "punish" certain characters ("absolving" gives you twice the orbs, which you use for upgrades, but puts you into a minigame that you may fail at) -- he suggested that we'll see some features around E3 time that will differentiate the game more.

Scooter: To pick up on the "roughly a year away", Knight repeatedly emphasized how early the version we're looking at is. He also made a comment about how Dante's Inferno is doing a "gameplay first" iteration before making any sort of headway into art, and that there's a lot of polish left to do, on the graphics front. For now, that explains why it doesn't quite have the visual polish of, say, a Dead Space. From what I saw, it seemed like a fair bit of detail and animation is just plain missing. At one point, he showed the most recent revision of the area being demoed (which was Limbo, more on that in a bit), and it did have a few extra fire effects. But it seems implied that we won't get a "real" representation of the game until, say, later this year.

Matt: Yeah, technically Knight mentioned that the game's release is "at least a year off," so given how many times they mentioned that these visuals were early and they were trying something different, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt there. But he also mentioned that the dev team has committed to 60 frames per second performance, which will likely hurt the level of detail a bit.

Scooter: Speaking of what was shown, Knight commented that Dante's description of the nine circles of Hell provided a really good template for how the game is going to progress, and all they showed today were parts in the first circle, Limbo. So if you happen to have a copy of The Divine Comedy that has some sort of illustration of Hell, you basically have a future walkthrough. Besides pointing out that characters like King Minos and Cerberus will be boss ones, Knight showed a sequence where you fight aboard Charon's boat. EA's version of Charon isn't just a guy hanging out in a dinghy, but rather a giant vessel with Charon's giant head as the bow. I found it amusing when you end that sequence by tearing off Charon's head and chucking it into out into the Acheron. That was pretty cool.

Matt: And I like how the team plans on throwing Death at you as a boss right as the game starts, and how the sense of scale looks impressive. These are all God of War tricks, but help show off the story and universe, which is a big part of Dante's appeal. As a famous Bruce Jenner daughter once said, "It's based on a book."

Scooter: Quite loosely based; the only plot elements that Knight talked about include how apparently, the different levels/circles of Hell that Dante goes through will reflect on some shady, "sinful" stuff he's done in the past. He remarked that it turns from a rescue story, where Dante just wants to go down and grab Beatrice, into a redemption story. I'm curious to see more of what the other circles of Hell look like, and how well this rescue-to-redemption story gets pulled off. That, and see what Death looks like, as I'm wondering if he will be as radically redesigned as Charon is.

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The fellows at EA have got some significantly-sized cojones. That's what I concluded after seeing EA (via Kim Kardashian at the Spike TV 2008 Video Game Awards) announce a new action game based on Dante Alighieri's epic poem, The Divine Comedy. Both Matt Leone and I went to see a presentation about Dante's Inferno, and to also see how the heck EA is turning a poem about taking a walking tour of Hell into a God of War-style action game.

Scooter: I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of an action game based on The Divine Comedy. I mean, I can see how something like Beowulf easily translates into both a game and a movie, because that was a roughly-3000 line poem about a Dane fighting monsters. The Divine Comedy, on the other hand, is mostly Dante and Virgil doing an Aaron Sorkin style walking-and-talking routine through Hell (or how I remember what little I read of it back in high school). What the hell game can you get from that? Maybe a graphic adventure? Even after creative director and executive producer Jonathan Knight talked at length about the importance of The Divine Com (yes, it's a canonical first person narrative written entirely in Italian as opposed to Latin, but that still doesn't quite explain the "why a game?" question), he then admitted that due to its talky nature, the story had to be "adapted" quite a bit to fit the game. This is most evident when he showed the opening scene, where Dante fights Death in order to nab the iconic scythe for the journey down to Hell (which will be a gameplay scenario, but it wasn't implemented yet, so there was a big "DANTE FIGHTS DEATH HERE" placeholder instead), and then Knight launched into the game demo proper. At that point, I'm like, "OK, I'm overanalyzing things, I guess I'll just take it as it goes." What were your first immediate thoughts/impressions?

Matt: Like much of the Internet, two weeks ago I saw UK magazine PSM3 call Dante's Inferno "Dead Space Meets God of War in Hell." Thinking back now, that line annoys me, because I saw the same demo they did, and I can't think of anything that seems remotely inspired by or similar to Dead Space. It's being made at the same EA Redwood Shores address, but even with that, there's a different team of people in charge. That's not to say that nobody who touched Dead Space will touch Dante's Inferno -- many of them will -- but it's as relevant to compare the game to Dead Space as it is to compare it to The Godfather 2.

So really, it's God of War meets God of War in Hell -- and man, is it. I imagine most previews will make that comparison, because I just went through my notes and found roughly 30 things that are almost exact parallels to the God of War series. To name a few: you fight with a ranged weapon that can shake the ground to knock over enemies, you have a fixed camera, you evade with the right analog stick, you stretch the scythe to grab blue grapple points, you climb walls with the exact same hopping side-to-side animations, you weaken enemies to the point that a button-pressing minigame option shows above their head, you jam on Circle to open doors, you split your time between solving puzzles and fighting enemies, you pull oddly familiar looking levers, you rotate waist-high rods to raise platforms you're standing on, you traverse hand over hand across horizontal vines, you fight "flying demon pests" that look like harpies and "beasts" that look like colossi, and you can even ride on enemies like Sony just showed as a feature for God of War 3.

Oh, and I'll throw in one more: you have a Holy Power in which a blue area-attack surrounds your character while you levitate with your head and shoulders thrown back. And jamming on Circle increases the size/damage of the move. When something gets that similar it moves from inspiration to blueprint, but to EA's credit, the 15 minutes I played of Dante's Inferno felt better than any of the other God of War clones I've played -- like Conan and Heavenly Sword.

Scooter: Yea, that holy power was the Lust Storm, though for the longest time, I thought it said "Just Storm", in the sense that it's a "justifiable storm." Whatever that means. Anyhow, the God of War analogy is pretty head on -- the "cranking the giant circular rod" was the single moment that really finalized the "this is EA's take on God of War." It probably helps that one of the guys on the Dante's Inferno team, Michael Cheng, came from God of War II. I can only relegate myself to making superficial comments about the combat, such as how I just hit Triangle (the game will hit both 360 and PS3, but the developers just randomly chose the PS3 version to show off) a whole lot to pull off some sort of strong attack combo that gets me through most fights. As our God of War guru, what makes Dante's Inferno combat feel better than other GOW clones?

Matt: Mostly the animations and timing. I liked lifting enemies into the air and continuing combos up there, extending the scythe to grab drones from far away and pull them closer, and using the parry system -- which was only half-implemented in the version we played, but had a good feel to it and showed a lot of promise. Unlike the other clones I've played, this one doesn't feel like it's struggling (and failing) to copy God of War. I could note a few imperfections, though, such as how evading seems to have a slight delay compared to God of War, and how enemy reactions seem a bit off at times. But that's getting pretty specific for a game that's roughly a year away from release.

Which actually brings up another point. I was asking one of the developers what makes Dante's Inferno's mechanics different from God of War's, and -- in addition to pointing out the cross and how you'll have moral choices like being able to "absolve" or "punish" certain characters ("absolving" gives you twice the orbs, which you use for upgrades, but puts you into a minigame that you may fail at) -- he suggested that we'll see some features around E3 time that will differentiate the game more.

Scooter: To pick up on the "roughly a year away", Knight repeatedly emphasized how early the version we're looking at is. He also made a comment about how Dante's Inferno is doing a "gameplay first" iteration before making any sort of headway into art, and that there's a lot of polish left to do, on the graphics front. For now, that explains why it doesn't quite have the visual polish of, say, a Dead Space. From what I saw, it seemed like a fair bit of detail and animation is just plain missing. At one point, he showed the most recent revision of the area being demoed (which was Limbo, more on that in a bit), and it did have a few extra fire effects. But it seems implied that we won't get a "real" representation of the game until, say, later this year.

Matt: Yeah, technically Knight mentioned that the game's release is "at least a year off," so given how many times they mentioned that these visuals were early and they were trying something different, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt there. But he also mentioned that the dev team has committed to 60 frames per second performance, which will likely hurt the level of detail a bit.

Scooter: Speaking of what was shown, Knight commented that Dante's description of the nine circles of Hell provided a really good template for how the game is going to progress, and all they showed today were parts in the first circle, Limbo. So if you happen to have a copy of The Divine Comedy that has some sort of illustration of Hell, you basically have a future walkthrough. Besides pointing out that characters like King Minos and Cerberus will be boss ones, Knight showed a sequence where you fight aboard Charon's boat. EA's version of Charon isn't just a guy hanging out in a dinghy, but rather a giant vessel with Charon's giant head as the bow. I found it amusing when you end that sequence by tearing off Charon's head and chucking it into out into the Acheron. That was pretty cool.

Matt: And I like how the team plans on throwing Death at you as a boss right as the game starts, and how the sense of scale looks impressive. These are all God of War tricks, but help show off the story and universe, which is a big part of Dante's appeal. As a famous Bruce Jenner daughter once said, "It's based on a book."

Scooter: Quite loosely based; the only plot elements that Knight talked about include how apparently, the different levels/circles of Hell that Dante goes through will reflect on some shady, "sinful" stuff he's done in the past. He remarked that it turns from a rescue story, where Dante just wants to go down and grab Beatrice, into a redemption story. I'm curious to see more of what the other circles of Hell look like, and how well this rescue-to-redemption story gets pulled off. That, and see what Death looks like, as I'm wondering if he will be as radically redesigned as Charon is.

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Whatever happened to the supposed Deadspace Trilogy?

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How can you like this game but not like God of War?

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