Dante's Inferno
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http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gluttony-developer-dantes-inferno/54027
Although it looks like a GOW rip. The game design looks solid, and music sounds like the Omen very spooky. It's really looking better and better every time I see a new trailer.
Although it looks like a GOW rip. The game design looks solid, and music sounds like the Omen very spooky. It's really looking better and better every time I see a new trailer.
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the idea of what waits in the different levels of hell, and all the crazy freakin creatures that you'll meet, and kill along the way. Man, THAT is my kinda game. I have dreams about working on a game like that, making the most bizarre, messed up weirdest creatures and monsters ever put to polygons.... Ah well, now I'm just gushing and sounding like half a tard.
I will own that game when it coems out. Very excited.
It makes sense to put an action game in the vivid imagry of dante's Inferno, sure, but this sint the imagery of dantes inferno.
His idea of gluttony; sinners trapped forever in a freezing torrent of rain, denying them the comfort and warmth they found in their sin, is evocative, intelligent, and an artistic inspiration.
walking on intestines while fleshy hunks made of mouths and tits try to eat you? That's not purile by comparison at all, games industry!
+1 Read the book/poem. The imagery is much different. Its like they took the name and used if for something else entirely using name recognition.
I can give another example of that..
I Robot.
i did not murder him :c
The cerburus was laughable, even at this early stage of dev. Why they felt it necessary to augment such a cool mythological beast so much escapes me.
All that critisism said, it does look like it'll be fun to play. Generic as all this stuff is, it works.
Mass Effect 2 was still the craziest awesome fucking batshit cool game I saw at e3.
I honestly don't understand all the complaints about how much it differs from the poem. [Honest question] Would you have felt better about the game had it been called something else, but with the exact same gameplay, story, environments, etc.? do you think it would have been a better idea to use the idea of the circles of hell, but in a different time, say before or long after the poem's timeline? Hell's not going anywhere, so they could put it at any timeline.
Anyway, I like it, I think it looks fun as hell, and I really like the designs, and art direction.
Yes and no. Yes and it wouldnt bother me. No and then it would have been just a bland generic GoW title, as already stated by others. So the big marketing push to make up for this lack of originality is getting this dante title. Just like I Robot.
Who knows, maybe that's exactly what its supposed to be. I doubt it though. However, from what little I have seen. There is no symbolism. The people speaking in the video where talking about gore and shit and intestines, but they gave no reason WHY it was. Because of gluttony? If I remember correctly. "Cerberus guards the gluttons, forced to lie in a vile slush made by freezing rain, black snow, and hail. This symbolizes the garbage that the gluttons made of their lives on earth, slavering over food." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_%28Dante%29
Any writer or artist worth their value, that a good story has layers of symbolism happening in it. Even if you the viewer don't realize it. It just adds to the overall presentation even if you miss it. You can make all these things because they are "cool" looking, but if you have nothing behind why they are cool, its just popular culture without any originality (Slightly off topic, but thats why I think so many are naive enough to think there is no originality left in the world, they mistake the lack of symbolism that many forms of popular culture promote as the proof of this without seeking further).
None of those designers mentioned anything like this other than glutton=fat. Then spending the rest of the time talking about its one giant stomach... Did any of them bother to read the source material and attempt to understand its symbolism? Its totally generic, and sure yes, they could make a game with nine circles. Hell, many comics do as well. Like Spawn. These other forms though dont use the name of a famous poem however to attempt to make an otherwise possibly generic game something "special". If the game cant stand on its own without the title, that really says something about the game.
As far as games and symbolism. Oddworld series is proof enough of its existence.
Dantes Divine Comedy has much symbolism happening throughout it. Like the suicides being trees to represent them giving up their humanity willingly, so punished by no longer being human form. It also was more than inferno. He goes to purgatory and then heaven to meet his dead wife.
PS: I think your also wrong about it not being a game as it stood. It could not be an action game, but it could be a thriller/rpg type where your goal is to make it through hell without becoming trapped in it as well. Then could continue on to purgatory and heaven. But through dialog and your actions with the damned is where you would end up in hell and escape. Not by pulling a sword or magic n stuff.* Limited audience this way? Yes, but then again, it was a limited audience when it was written as well.
* Violence.. hmm.. How is this player in this game not a damned soul the seventh level of hell for being violent? Talk about hypocrisy. You go through hell fighting, yet one of the sins is violence.
I completely agree with oXYnary. An ounce of symbolism can go a long way and Dante's Inferno is steeped in it. Feels like they are being irresponsible by associating a literary masterpiece with that (and whatever else they have in store for us) instead of just giving it a different name...but this is all based off that one Gluttony clip. Maybe the other circles will be better and more thought out?
Lucifer is shown in the gluttony circle, when he's actually frozen to his waist in the centre of the ninth circle, his wings beating so rythmically and eternally (trying to escape), that the draft causes the entire circle to be frozen solid.
in essence, all this fire bullshit they have through the game is completely backward. not to mention the other obvious misfires they have taken from the reference material, and then turned on its head >_>
One thing that kinda kills it are th uber big demons and monsters.. they'd squash you in a second.
I won't say Dante's Inferno is a bad game, but it has no relation to Dante's Comedy in any way. It's, for a starter, ridiculous to take Inferno as a whole; it's only the start of the story, much like the Fellowship of the Ring can't be filmed without also filming the other two parts. It's also a lot like the Holy Trinity.
I understand that the Comedy wouldn't be a good video game. But there's a difference between artistic liberty and downright using someone else's name for extra sales. There's simply no way that this book could have been translated into a game with justice. Rationality being useless without Faith? Courtly love? Italian politics? Christian theology? That's hardly the kind of thing that 16-year olds today would be interested in.
I can understand the reasoning - we've already seen Greek mythology, so what mythology is left? But it doesn't show a sliver of respect. Heck, I wouldn't even have minded that very much, but that the developers keep claiming that they do respect Dante's work is what gets me worked up.
What's next? Grand Theft Odyssey? Gears of War and Peace? Battlefield 1984? The History of the Decline and Fallout of the Roman Empire? Uncle Tom's Quake? Hamlet, Prince of Doommark? Paradise Half-Lost? The Pok
Battlefield 1984 will be a trip.
It seems kinda like my distaste for a certain artist, and how it drives me nuts that so many people are blinded by his BS, and buy into his excuses for laziness, and love his pathetic attempts at originality. I can see your arguments now, and they make perfect sense to me. I'm still gonna buy the game, and play it, and hopefully enjoy the living shit out of it, but I see why you guys will not be doing the same.
Because Barlowe's version is far more awesome? I don't know to what extent he's concepting for this game, but it's apparent from what I see that his trademark style is being given the bland treatment with the exception of Cerberus, probably to make it more marketable and mainstream. I'd kill to see his work made into a game faithfully. The art he's done of hell is just fantastically weird, and you should check it out if you haven't seen it already.
http://www.waynebarlowe.com/barlowe_pages/index_inferno.htm