Dante's Inferno Q&A Feature

Drawing influence from one of the greatest works of world literature, EA Games' adaptation of Dante's Inferno shoehorns the epic poem into an intense action hack 'n' slash, which will undoubtedly prove more accessible amongst PS3, Xbox 360, and PSP owners.

TVG recently took a trip through the nine circles of Hell to discuss the game with executive producer Jonathan Knight.  Following work on The Simpsons Game, Dante's Inferno appears to be more familiar territory for a man specialising in Fine Arts and the works of Shakespeare.

TVG: I assume what we've played, Limbo, is quite early on?

That's right, Limbo is the first circle of Hell, there are eight more circles it ends with King Minos who's in the poem.  Minos is the judge of the dead so he sentences every single damned soul to one of the lower eight circles, so after you kill him you move onto Lust, and then onto Gluttony, Greed, Anger, and so forth.

TVG: And we've seen about half of the level?

It's about half of Limbo yeah.

TVG: So how many levels are we looking at in total; one for each of the circles of Hell?

Well actually we don't ever go back and we don't ever load, so the game is conceived as one continual descent from the surfaces of the earth.  There's some stuff that happens before Limbo on the surface, and then into Limbo through the gates of Hell and then down into the nine circles of Hell and finishing at the bottom.  That's the structure of the game, obviously there's no secret about that if you've read the poem.

TVG: Speaking of the poem, it's Dante Alighieri himself in the poem going after his beloved Beatrice; what motivation is behind the character in this game?

So our version of Dante is like the real Dante, also on a quest for Beatrice.  The way the story is set up is that he comes home from fighting in the wars, the real Dante Alighieri actually fought in the Italian civil wars, so there's some biographical basis for that.  

We've set him as a veteran of the Crusades, and there's a reason for that which you'll find later.  Nevertheless he comes home to find Beatrice has been murdered, brutally murdered, you don't know why and you'll find out as the game unfolds.  Her soul rises up and seduced and tricked by Lucifer and pulled down into Hell. 

Dante refuses to give up, he's kind of a defiant type personality, so he breaks through the gates of Hell chasing them and his motivation is to get her back.  He basically fights for love much like the real Dante Alighieri; he's writing this poem for Beatrice, who for him was a real life figure so it's a fascinating bit of history.

TVG: You've probably heard this question a lot.  The references to God of War are present in the game, is that intentional on your behalf?

Are the comparisons to God of War intentional?

TVG: King Minos appears very similar to the colossus at the beginning of God of War 2, the way the magic and health chests work, the mini-bosses, the chain attacks; it's all very similar, is that purposeful?

(After a pause) Yes to a certain degree, for that game and many other games.  I actually think that the way that the scythe and the cross work together in combination, with the cross having ranged functionality, feels more like Devil May Cry then it does God of War. 

We've been playing a lot of Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, God of War; our own studio made Return of the King a few years back, and we've got people on this team that worked on that, so we like to think that we're also in that range of influences with the Lord of the Rings games.  We play them all, we're not trying to be different, and I don't think people want something from this genre that's different for the sake of being different. 

I think the game has a lot of fresh ideas in it, in terms of the cross and the punishing and absolving of the damned.  Other things you'll be able to do with the cross throughout the game and just the fact that we're basing it on a piece of literature that is very well known, kind of medieval Christian mytho, I think that it's a fresh take on that. 

But I want people to cosy up with the game and have it be familiar, because it's like when you play a first-person-shooter, you don't really want a fundamentally different shooting mechanic, you want it to aim well, the gun to fire well and so forth.

TVG: You mentioned something about the voice over of King Minos?

Yeah sure, it's not a bit secret.  I don't know how popular the show Night Court was over here, it may be more popular over in the States.  Richard Moll is a fantastic voice actor, he played Bull on Night Court, he's about six foot six, wonderful guy.  That was just something we found after we auditioned him, it's not something we kinda went for, we're going for very, very high quality, very, very talented actors across the board.  He fit the bill perfectly, he's got a great voice.

TVG: You've got some Minotaurs in there...

They're demons actually.

TVG: Oh sorry, yeah Minotaurs would be more God of War.

No worries.

TVG: One thing I did notice however was the unbaptised babies, it's not pulling any punches on the mature content?

No, it's a game that's set in Hell.  The medieval version of Hell is pretty dark and the reality is that the poem does talk about children going to Limbo if they're not baptised and then going to Hell.  Which I personally believe is a very bizarre and weird idea but like a lot of other beliefs of the time, if it's in the poem then we're trying to bring it into the game.

TVG: At the beginning of the game you've got a colossus that you can commandeer, tameable creatures...

Yeah it's like a giant demon and it's got a demon rider on it, so you've got to wear the demon down until it's down on its knee and you're able to climb up and kill the rider and actually take full control of the demon.  It's pretty fun and pretty satisfying, the scale sort of shifts and you become very, very powerful very, very quickly. 

There's actually a lot you can do with him, he's got a number of moves.  We've worked very hard to make him as responsive as you can be at that scale.  That was important to us; that he wasn't just this lumbering ride, that he is himself responsive and fun to play, he's got multiple attacks, he's got fire breath and can pick guys up and bite their heads off.  There will be more stuff to do with him later in the game that we're not showing today, but we think that's a pretty fresh addition.

TVG: He's a recurring character or will there be varying tameable creatures throughout the game?

I can't really comment on that, sorry.

TVG: We're not playing with the full extent of the combo system in this build, is that true?

Absolutely not, there's a fair amount unlocked for Limbo, certainly more then there will be in the final game just to showcase a bit.  By no means is that the extent of it, there's a really good open ended upgrade system.  One of the things we hope is fresh about the upgrade system is just how open it is.  It's creating a lot of tuning challenges for the designers, so we've really got to make sure we plan it well, but we want people to have a big range of choices, fun from the get go. 

TVG: With that system are you going for the traditional mechanic behind the combos?

I think it's fairly traditional, we wanted it to be intuitive.  There's a light attack chain, a heavy attack chain, and then you can use them together in combination.  With the circle button on PlayStation and B on Xbox you can use the cross, which has more ranged functionality.  Those are the primary attacks and then you can obviously jump, I think people really enjoy being able to get in the air, and once you're in the air there's a whole other suite of things you can do and then there's a block, and lots of other moves that come of from that.   

The cool thing about the game is if you memorise combos that's going to be an advantage, but if you mash like mad you're still going to see pretty cool stuff happen and probably do pretty well.  The game has a pretty steep difficulty setting feature, from easy up to very hard across four settings, so there's going to be plenty of range in there for different types of gamers.  I think if you put it on very hard then it's going to be incredibly challenging and you're probably going to need to know a lot about the combat system to beat it. 

There's stuff like a boost system and style, a hit counter which feeds into a boost meter which you can use to power up your characters.  The soul return, how many souls you get from enemies when you defeat them, is variable based on how you're fighting.  So I would say there's advanced features in there for optimising your soul return and the more souls you get sooner, the faster you'll be able to upgrade your character.  I think it will scale quite nicely for somebody that really wants to enjoy the story who isn't super advanced on the fighting, they can play it on easy or normal and all the way up to hard, so it should be pretty good.

TVG: The artwork is very impressive, such as the wall of souls you have to walk through before the boss battle...

Yeah, that's not final it's a prototype of where we're going with the damned and the tormented built into the environments.  You'll see a lot more of that.

TVG: It goes through concept art into design in the development cycle; it much be a real challenge in depicting Hell in that way, so what sort of walls have you faced?

You've kinda nailed it right.  I mean nobody's been to Hell and lived to tell the tale.  It immediately seemed like a great idea, and then as soon as we began to design the environments the first few drawings I got I was kinda like "hmm that's not quite bold enough, or weird enough, or twisted enough." 

What you're seeing with Limbo today and the first circle of Hell, by its nature it's the tamest, most structured, most organised.  In the poem Limbo is actually super-nice with grass, so we tweaked that a little so it's a bit more hellish, but it will continue to get darker and more twisted as you go through. 

So to answer your question, it's challenging and the answer is very, very creative and talented artists; lots of research into what previous artists have done going all the way back to the Bosch's of the world and then all the way up to Wayne Barlowe's who's a 20th century artist who's been working in Hell for quite some time.  So we hired him to do a lot of concept work for us very early on in the game.  You've just got to pull together a very talented team of artists, who get the material and then you do a lot of iteration, you draw, you maker notes and push boundaries.  I think we've hit a really good clip and people will be blown away by the uniqueness and creativity of the circles.

TVG: Multiplayer is obviously not a factor...

No it's a single player only game, cosy up turn down the lights and go on a ride.

TVG: Not even co-op in the back of your mind...

No it just didn't seem right.  I know a couple of people have said maybe Dante and Virgil should have been co-op, but it just didn't seem right.  The concept of the game is fundamentally linear; you're going from the surface through the gates of the Hell, funnelling down to the very centre of the earth. 

There's an inevitably to the story and so we didn't shy away from the linear nature of it.  It's one man's personal trip through Hell really, this guy is having to face his own past which is coming back to haunt him in Hell and we felt that's best told through a single-player experience.  It opens up a lot of doors for us to really craft a highly polished and cinematic experience.

TVG: With regards to release, first or second half of 2010?

We're not saying, it's definitely next year, it's not this Christmas.  We'll announce a release date at some point but we just don't have one now.

TVG would like to thank Jonathan Knight for taking the time to answer our questions...