The intro to the game sees Dante return to Florence: the city appears in the background, reconstructed rather vaguely. If it weren’t for the sign saying ‘Florence, Italy’ and the narrative context, as well as the characteristic cyprus trees welcoming the player in, the Tuscan locations would be hard to identify. More interesting is the representation of Hell, a place of eternal damnation in which the stories of the damned take shape, each of which accurately references Italian culture. This endeavour by Electronic Arts is not so much a game that promotes the local area, but a sacred piece from the Italian literary universe.
The intro to the game sees Dante return to Florence: the city appears in the background, reconstructed rather vaguely. If it weren’t for the sign saying ‘Florence, Italy’ and the narrative context, as well as the characteristic cyprus trees welcoming the player in, the Tuscan locations would be hard to identify. More interesting is the representation of Hell, a place of eternal damnation in which the stories of the damned take shape, each of which accurately references Italian culture. This endeavour by Electronic Arts is not so much a game that promotes the local area, but a sacred piece from the Italian literary universe.
Visceral Games
The first cantica of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri revisited through the action-adventure genre, along the lines of the famous God of War. Although faithful to the universe of the literary work – the player travels with Virgil through the circles of Hell to get to Lucifer – the game contains much poetic licence. Dante is not the observing poet as in the literary work, but a crusader back from the Holy Land who must save Beatrice, who has been kidnapped by Lucifer and dragged to Hell. The imagination of the Divine Comedy is digitally recreated with visionary taste; along his way Dante meets famous damned souls, such as Paolo and Francesca. It is up to the player to judge them, absolving them or condemning them forever.
Fun fact: there is another game by the name of Dante’s Inferno, which was released in 1986 for the Commodore 64.
