The lines to see Dante’s Inferno were still long this afternoon on this final day of E3. I got in and was impressed with the presentation that took the audience through parts of Limbo and into the Anger circle of Hell.
Make no mistake about it, Dante’s Inferno borrows very generously from God of war, right down to the placement and look of the health meter. Then again, God of War also took some cues from Rygar on PS2. Of course, borrowing ideas between games isn’t anything new nor is their anything wrong with it, but the similarities between Dante’s Inferno and God of War are brutally obvious.
Now that I have that off my chest, I can’t wait to go to Hell, Dante’s Inferno style. The game is based off of The Divine Comedy, an Italian poem created some 700 years ago. The poem is very famous and the writer made it a point to include vivid details in his descriptions of Hell, Limbo, and all of the dark places and things his Dante character encountered along the way.
With Dante’s Inferno, many liberties were taken in the re-telling of this poem. Dante is an intense warrior as opposed to a writer and he’s going into Hell to destroy it and rescue his wife, Beatrice, who is trapped in the bowels of Hell.
The demo we were shown had Dante onboard a ship that was part of the original poem. This ship is a passage way into Limbo, but it is also the back of a very large creature, who’s name I forget. The action was fast paced, combo and deflection based third person combat we’ve all come accustomed to. That isn’t to say it doesn’t look fun as hell or that I am tired of it however. Dante is armed with Death’s scythe and an amulet from another figure from the poem that can blast out this white energy. Together, these make Dante one heck of a badass.
The demo had Dante dispatching various mythological creatures, the biggest of which looked phenomenal on screen. Instead of killing this massive two legged beast, Dante was able to use it to run around with it to defeat the smaller enemies. You get to this point by going through a button matching sequence.
The second portion of the demo we saw had Dante engaging in a boss fight against the Judge of the Dead, who is also written about in the Poem. This monster has a large snake tale, and he is able to spawn enemies with his breath; a really cool looking boss, but I thought Dante was able to dispatch him a little too quickly, but whether that is the case in the final game remains to be seen.
Following that, the presentation skipped to another portion of the game where our hero arrived in one of the nine circles of Hell; Anger. All seven sins will be very distinct areas in the game featuring different enemies and bosses, as well as different locations. In Anger, players begin by riding across the River Styx on the head of another massive monster. This monster remained an integral part of the demo as his fury and pounding fists and breathing were used to help destroy smaller enemies that Dante was fighting. This monster is not a friend of Dante, but his rage was such that it didn’t care if it hurt Dante or other hellions in the area.
The demo ended with Dante on the head of the monster again, marching further into Hell. It’s a gorgeous looking title that has all of the epic sound you would expect from such a game. The entire experience seems to be on track to be one hell of a game, no pun intended.
