The iconic nine circles play a key part, forming the primary game levels that players will traverse. And as in the poem, each one is reserved for those who have committed sins successively worse than the condemned suffering in the previous circle. They are, from least to most evil: limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. Treachery or betrayal is considered the worst sin of all in Dante's poem, and is the residence of Satan himself. One can only imagine what the game makers have in mind to bring these levels and characters to life. The infamous Scythe wielded by the Angel of Death has been reimagined as Dante's primary weapon, which he steals from Death's clutches at the game's outset. You'll use the Scythe to destroy the demons of Hell, and use their "souls" as currency for power-ups and combos.
A magical element is added with Beatrice's cross, which Dante utilizes to cast spells of a sort, and to Absolve or Punish those souls being tormented in Hell. Dante himself will also acquire magical abilities he can use on his own, after defeating certain bosses in the game. Obviously, EA Redwood Shores, the crew assembling this game -- the same team behind the recent Dead Space -- is taking some poetic license with this ancient epic, altering the main character and his means of interacting with his surroundings, while keeping the story's core intact. Dante's Inferno will require some puzzle-solving skills, but action fans will get plenty of the carnage they crave as well. EA is keeping mum about the script, which is being written by an Academy Award-winning writer, and that's all they'll say about the mystery scribe. The rich visuals required to bring to life Hell itself -- which in this instance, requires a level of detail and production design never before seen in a game -- calls for some ambitious work to say the least.
Expect to visit endless nightmarish locations that are filled macabre creatures borne out of Dante's (and EA Redwood's) darkest dreams. Probably one of the wisest moves EA made was employing conceptual artist Wayne Barlowe as a designer on the game. Barlowe is known for having painted strikingly demented (in a good way) images of scenes and monsters from Dante's masterwork, and EA put his wild talents to good use in designing the game's many creatures. But despite all of the intense graphics demands the game will make on consoles, EA is determined to have it running fluidly at 60 frames per second. Our hands-on time with the game, even though it’s still very early, was a great sign of the high amount of fun to come. If Dead Space is the benchmark for this studio's work, then fans can expect a highly polished, one-of-a-kind experience when Dante's Inferno ships sometime in 2010. Stay tuned for more on the game right here at PlanetXbox360.com later this year.
