Written by Nick Leitzke

I used to be a serious gamer. I had both a PS2 and an Xbox, and I had favorite games on both consoles. I used to watch X-Play on G4 every afternoon, staying abreast of the gaming world and picking out the titles I would acquire from Gamefly. Something I miss doing on a regular basis is playing Sid Meyer’s Pirates on Xbox from the moment I got off work until well past sunrise. I still play Resident Evil 4 more than I should, but that’s the subject of another story.

In the spring of 2006 I sold my Xbox and all of its games, along with most of my PS2 games (I kept the console because I need a DVD player, and I kept Resident Evil 4 because I need to shoot parasitically infected Spaniards). After amassing a nice pile of profit I went to Circuit City and bought a record player, and a new story began. Although I no longer actively seek out and play new games, I try to remain educated. Deep down inside I harbor a hope that one day soon I will have enough money to purchase a PS3 or Xbox 360. I like to know what the new games are, and I stay interested so I have a good idea where to start again.

During the Super Bowl I saw a commercial for a game inspired by Dante’s ‘Inferno,’ called ‘Dante’s Inferno.’

It looks cool. And I have to admit that I have not played the game. So all I can say about the trailer is that it looks cool. Being intensely curious about new games, however, and being an English major, I had to investigate more closely. The commercial did not resemble the poet Dante Alighieri’s allegorical epic about Florentine political corruption in the Middle Ages and his devotion to Beatrice Portinari as a symbol of salvation. I was curious to see whether or not the game designers used the poem as a starting point or if they were merely exploiting the title of one of Western literature’s most classic texts.

Turns out they did a little of both. The main character in the video game is indeed named Dante, and he is on a quest to be reunited with his deceased love Beatrice. The circles of Hell remain the same, and many of the damned souls Dante encounters in the poem turn up throughout the game. I examined a walkthrough of Dante’s Inferno and was pleasantly surprised to find a boss battle against not just Marc Antony, not just Cleopatra, but both Marc Antony and Cleopatra. Who else can boast a boss battle like that? Nobody, that’s who.

Aside from characters and setting, though, little else from the poet Dante’s text shows up. Rather than the result of a midlife crisis brought about by political exile (Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself/In dark woods, the right road lost), Dante’s voyage through Hell is the result of war. The Dante in the game is a soldier of the Third Crusade who returns to Italy to find not only his mortal soul damned for his wartime atrocities but also the soul of his beloved Beatrice, who died while Dante was off killing Palestinians. Now he must hack and slash his way through Hell in order to save his true love from Lucifer Himself. Please note this is not the case in the poem.

Dante is Dante the poet, and Beatrice resides safely in heaven in Alighieri’s epic. What quickly came together the more I read and the more I watched was that the video game version of Dante’s Inferno is an adaptation of classic literature that jumps squarely at the plot points that don’t matter, adding a few in the process. Just watching gameplay, listening to designers talk about their intentions, and knowing pop culture’s obsession with Dante-esque imagery and themes, this game resembles something more akin to the ‘Underworld’ franchise than it does something written by a brilliantly disgruntled Medieval Italian poet.

I suppose I’m a purist at heart. I know for sure that I’m defensive. And I admit once more that I have not actually played Dante’s Inferno. What I do know is that the idea of this game bothers me. Action is action, fun is fun, but literature is literature. A game about Hell would not be fun if there weren’t monsters to kill, and Dante’s Inferno (the epic poem) is full of twisted things.  Most of the damned people Dante encounters in the poem are his political enemies from real life, the same people who exiled him from Florence. It’s more of a middle finger to his contemporaries. “Look what happens to dirty double-crossers. They go straight to the deepest frozen depths Hell!”

Inferno is not an action-packed romp chock full of mid-air scythe combos and topless demon babes. If this is the way we look at literature – if bastardization and quick fixes of violence are all we are capable of anymore when we have rich and vibrant texts at our fingertips – something is wrong. What will the Great Expectations video game be like? What about A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? I can hardly wait for the imps and zombies Kerouac and Cassidy will have to cut in two on their trek back and forth across the nation. These are stories that are dying for video game adaptation. Inferno lent itself nicely. We can think of a way to bastardize everything else.

For more about Dante Alighieri’s doomed devotion to Beatrice Portinari, read ‘La Vita Nuova.’ Heartbreaking stuff, and it will help you further understand the complete Divine Comedy.