Electronic Arts sold Dante’s Inferno as a descent into Hell, and for once the marketing told the truth. Visceral Games built a 2010 action-adventure game that drags Dante Alighieri through the nine Circles, and the trip is nasty, fast and stubbornly memorable. It arrived on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PlayStation Portable in February 2010, with the PlayStation Portable version developed by Artificial Mind and Movement. It is not a great game. It is a game with a great idea and the nerve to commit to it.
Trailer, via Electronic Arts France.
A Templar Knight at the Siege of Acre
The story is loosely based on Inferno, the first cantica of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and it opens in 1191 after the Siege of Acre. Dante, voiced by Graham McTavish, is reimagined as a Knight Templar. He survives an assassination attempt by a Saracen Assassin and then survives Death itself, played by Dee Bradley Baker. Death tells him plainly that he is condemned to Hell for his sins.
He returns to Florence to find Beatrice Portinari, his promised love and voiced by Vanessa Branch, murdered. Lucifer, voiced by John Vickery, drags her soul into Hell. Dante gives chase. Virgil, the poet, voiced by Bart McCarthy, walks with him through the Circles.
A Scythe, a Holy Cross, and Souls for Currency
Combat is the spine of Dante’s Inferno. Players control Dante from a third-person perspective. His primary weapon is a scythe, used in combination attacks and finishing moves. He also carries a Holy Cross that fires a volley of energy as a projectile. Magic attacks channel from a mana pool.
Quick time events drive the boss fights and the unbinding of demons from their hosts. Miss the highlighted button and Dante gets countered and wounded.
Absolving the Damned, Punishing the Rest
Souls are the in-game currency, collected by defeating enemies or finding soul fountains. They buy attack combinations and abilities. Absolving enemies with the Holy Cross earns experience, and the game hands out its best trick here: famous figures from Dante’s original poem appear as damned souls, and the player decides their fate in a mini game. Sins move toward the center of the screen. Press the required symbols as each one lands. More sins collected means more souls and experience.
It is the one mechanic that feels like it belongs to this poem and no other game.
The Marketing Was Its Own Circle of Hell
Before release, Electronic Arts ran an elaborate and at times controversial campaign. It included advertising a fake religious game called Mass: We Pray, a motion controller-based title supposedly letting players take part in interactive prayer and a church sermon. Downloadable content followed, including Dark Forest, a prequel story, and Trials of St. Lucia, which makes St. Lucia a playable character.
What Dante’s Inferno Gets Right
The 60-frames-per-second action is the real argument. Combat moves, the scythe has weight, and the nine Circles give the level design a structure that most hack-and-slash games of its era never found. The choice between punishing and absolving souls is thin, but it gives the violence a moral texture the genre usually skips.
The source poem is doing heavy lifting. Visceral borrows its architecture, its monsters and its famous damned, and the game is better for it.
Where the Descent Stalls
Dante’s Inferno was intended as the first part of a trilogy. The ending is intentionally unresolved, and Dante’s path toward redemption is only just beginning rather than fully achieved. The game leaves that thread open and never closes it.
The quick time events wear out fast. Boss fights reduce to matching symbols on screen, and the counter-punish loop stops being tense long before Lucifer shows up. Combat depth thins once the scythe combos are unlocked.
The most interesting parts of the source material get flattened. Dante’s guilt, his betrayal of Beatrice, the moral confrontation at the bottom of Hell, all of it is present as premise rather than as play. The game tells you the journey is about accepting sin. It rarely makes you feel the weight.
The Verdict on Dante’s Inferno
Ranked against its own ambitions, Dante’s Inferno lands short. Ranked against what it actually is, a fast, grim, well-built action game with one genuinely original idea, it holds up better than its reputation suggests.
- Absolution system — the best original mechanic
- Scythe combat at 60 frames per second — the reason to keep playing
- The nine Circles as level structure — borrowed, but effective
- Quick time events — the reason to put the controller down
- The unresolved ending — a story left open
Key facts
– Release: February 2010
– Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Portable
– Developer: Visceral Games; PlayStation Portable version by Artificial Mind and Movement
– Publisher: Electronic Arts
– Setting: 1191, after the Siege of Acre
– Downloadable content: Dark Forest, Trials of St. Lucia
– Score: 7.4 of 10
Dante’s Inferno is a game that understood its source better than it understood itself. The absolution mechanic and the scythe combat are worth the descent. The open ending is the loss. 7.4 of 10
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
