Abandon All Hope All Ye Who Enter–EA Releases an Announcement Trailer for Dante’s Inferno

Electronic Arts announced a couple of days ago that the folks who brought you Dead Space are currently at work on a game based off of Dante Alighieri’s classic epic poem The Divine Comedy titled Dante’s Inferno. Today, they have sent us the “announcement” trailer for it, and it honestly looks pretty grim and scary. No release date has been given, but we do know it is heading to the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 upon release.

The game is a third-person action adventure but how this will translate from being one of the greatest works of literature telling the tale of Dante descending into hell to find the love of his life Beatrice into a videogame is anyone’s guess. Surely we can all assume that the famous Roman poet Virgil will guide him through the nine circles of hell–which of course will be fraught with dangers, demons, and deziens of Satan; and surely each circle will be named after each of the sins portrayed in the poem–but I for one am just slightly worried despite Jonathan Knight’s feelings on it.

The executive producer stated that it was time to “Re-introduce Dante to an audience that, until now, may have been unfamiliar with the remarkable details of this great work of art. [This is the] perfect opportunity to fuse great gameplay with a great story.”

For some reason I just cannot see a bunch of teenagers being interested in a game based on a poem written seven hundred years go by a dead spiritual writer and poet.

Especially considering that this is the first of a series of games to be based upon great works of literature, I am even more worried, and while I agree with EA that “reintroducing young people to great literature through the use of modern computer games” is a great idea– I am more worried at how or if they will ruin what made these works of literary classics great in the first place. For instance, say they made a game based upon “Wuthering Heights”. Do you actually think that a teenage boy is going to want to pick up Emily Bronte’s one and only masterpiece after playing the game? Of course not, however, Homer’s The Odyssey had been mentioned and if done right it could be fabulous but then again I can also not see a teenager reading through such a tome unless forced by an English teacher.

According to the website:

“In the Great Books Game’s version, Dante must save the sinners from their demons—demons that have overtaken their bodies and transformed them into monsters. In each level of Hell, Dante battles the ever-more-sinister monsters, and upon defeating them, the original sinner is separated from the demon and allowed to escape to purgatory. Dante must separate the sinners from their sins to descend to the next level, en route to battling Satan.”

Sounds like a game right up an Evangelist’s alley. Let’s just hope that if they are turning classic works into videogames that they are done with not only respect to the gamer, but the literary work as well–nothing pisses someone off more than their favorite book or novel turned into a piece of media trash (The Bonfire of the Vanities, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The House on Haunted Hill, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice (2005) ad nauseum).