Dante's Inferno is a 2010 action-adventure game developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PlayStation Portable in February 2010. The PlayStation Portable version was developed by Artificial Mind and Movement.
The game's story is loosely based on Inferno, the first cantica of Italian poet Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Intended as the first part of a trilogy, it follows Dante, imagined as a Templar knight from The Crusades, who, guided by the spirit of the poet Virgil, must fight through the nine Circles of Hell to rescue his wife Beatrice from the clutches of Lucifer himself. In the game, players control Dante from a third-person perspective. His primary weapon is a scythe that can be used in a series of combination attacks and finishing moves. Many attack combinations and abilities can be unlocked in exchange for souls, an in-game currency that is collected upon defeating enemies.
Before the game's release, Dante's Inferno underwent a prominent, elaborate, and at times controversial marketing campaign led by the game's publisher Electronic Arts. This included the advertisement of a fake religious game called Mass: We Pray, a motion controller-based game supposedly allowing players to engage in an interactive prayer and church sermon. Downloadable content was subsequently released, including Dark Forest, a prequel story, and Trials of St. Lucia, which features St. Lucia as a playable character.
Dante's Inferno received generally positive reviews by critics, with praise for the story, art direction, voice acting, sound design and depiction of Hell, though the gameplay received a mixed response due to repetitiveness in the latter half of the game and comparisons to the God of War series. It sold over one million copies worldwide and spawned a comic book miniseries and an animated movie, Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic, which was released direct-to-DVD simultaneously with the game. Two sequels based on Purgatorio and Paradiso respectively and a mobile spin-off were planned before being all cancelled.
Gameplay
Dante's Inferno is an action-adventure game. The player controls Dante, the game's protagonist, and engages in fast-paced combat, platforming and environment-based puzzles. In the game, Dante's primary weapon is a scythe that can be used in a series of combination attacks and finishing moves. He has a Holy Cross that fires a volley of energy as a projectile attack. In addition, Dante can use numerous magic based attacks and abilities channeled from a mana pool to help in combat, many of which are obtained as the game progresses. A quick time event system is used when attempting to discharge the demon of its master (unbind from host) and during boss fights, where players must press the highlighted button on screen in order to continue the chain of attacks, or be countered and wounded otherwise.
Many attack combinations and abilities can be unlocked in exchange for souls, an in-game currency that is collected upon defeating enemies or locating soul fountains. Each of these skills fall into the Holy (represented by blue orbs) skill tree. At the beginning of the game, the skill tree is equal in power, but as Dante gains more Holy experience, more abilities become available for purchase. Experience is collected through the game's "Absolve" system, where, upon defeating enemies, Dante can absolve and save them with the Holy Cross. Much experience can also be accumulated in absolving the damned souls of many famous figures in history that appear in Dante Alighieri's original The Divine Comedy determining their fate, players enter a mini game where the characters' "sins" move towards the center of the screen, pressing required action symbols once the sin is in place. Players are rewarded with more souls and experience as the number of sins collected increases.
The game involves large sections of platforming, including swinging between ropes and climbing walls, both of which can involve hazards such as fire or swinging blades. There is also a series of environment-based puzzle sequences that can impair the progress of Dante's quest, such as requiring the correct positioning of movable objects or pulling levers at the appropriate time. In addition, there are numerous hidden passages where Biblical relics can be found and equipped to improve Dante's abilities.
Story Setting
Dante's Inferno is set in the year 1191, following the Siege of Acre. Following his participation in the siege, Dante (Graham McTavish), reimagined as a Knight Templar, survives both an assassination attempt by a Saracen Assassin and Death (Dee Bradley Baker) itself, who informs Dante that he is condemned to Hell for his sins. Dante returns to Florence to find his promised love Beatrice Portinari (Vanessa Branch) murdered and her soul taken away to Hell by Lucifer (John Vickery) himself, forcing Dante to give pursuit.
Other characters across Dante's traversal include the famed poet Virgil (Bart McCarthy), who accompanies Dante across the Nine Circles, Dante's father Alighiero (JB Blanc) and mother Bella, Beatrice's brother Francesco and the Archangel Gabriel. Some known historic figures of Inferno take place as bosses Dante must confront before proceeding, such as Queen Cleopatra (Alison Lees-Taylor) and her lover Mark Antony (Lewis Macleod) as well as King Minos (Richard Moll), who oversees Limbo as the Judge of the Damned.
Plot Beginning his traversal to Hell, Dante blesses a holy cross that Beatrice gave him when making their vows to be true to each other, while traversing the Nine Circles in pursuit of Beatrice, who is corrupted and then turned into a succubus by Lucifer due to Dante's infidelities after Beatrice waged her soul with Lucifer concerning Dante's faithfulness in exchange for his safety overseas.
As the pursuit goes on further and further into Hell, memories of Dante's past life and sins are revealed and confronted by him. It is revealed Dante passed by an abusive childhood under Alighiero which ended up prompting Bella to commit suicide by hanging and thus grew up to become an impatient, violent man, who joined the Third Crusade after being promised by a bishop (later revealed to be a 'salesman of salvation') that his sins would be absolved. In Acre, when ordered by King Richard I to keep guard over 3.000 prisoners as ransom for the True Cross taken by King Saladin (among them a captive woman who offered to sleep with Dante in exchange for the life of her 'brother', revealed to be the assassin which was actually her husband), Dante gives in to his violent instincts and gets into a rampage, slaughtering most of the prisoners. When confronted by Richard himself, Francesco takes the fall for Dante's deeds and is thus hanged.
Upon realizing the extent of his sins, especially not confessing to the prisoners' massacre and allowing Francesco to be executed, Dante resigns his pursuit and admits he belongs in Hell, asking forgiveness to Beatrice while giving her the holy cross back, which redeems her soul for Gabriel to take away to Heaven. Gabriel assures Dante his redemption is at hand and he will see Beatrice again, but must confront Lucifer himself at the final Circle, Treachery.
Fighting Lucifer at Lake Cocytus, it is revealed Lucifer took Beatrice to lure Dante into Hell, aware his pursuit would prompt him to sever the Chains of Judecca that kept Lucifer imprisoned. It is also revealed Dante was actually killed by the Saracen Assassin back in Acre and thus cannot leave Hell. While Lucifer gloats that he will now rise to Heaven and lead a second Rebellion to overthrow God, Dante uses the souls he absolved on his journey across Hell to absolve himself and re-imprison Lucifer.
Being shifted away to Mount Purgatory by Beatrice, Dante removes his original skin-stitched cross tapestry now turned black as he starts his pilgrimage to the mountain top, stating he "did not die, and yet did not live". The black tapestry itself transforms into a snake as Lucifer's laugh echoes, implying Dante's confrontation with him is still not finished.
Release
A playable demo was released for PlayStation 3 on December 10, 2009, and for Xbox 360 on December 24, 2009. Dante's Inferno was first released in Australasia on February 4, 2010, and later across Europe on February 5 and in North America on February 9, 2010. In September 2026 developer, nicknamed florinp93, using XenonRecomp, a tool that allows you to recompile the game code from PowerPC to C++, made a native PC port, which allows everyone to play on Windows without using any emulation.
Special editions In addition to the standard retail copy of the game, a second limited special edition of the game for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 was released alongside known as the "Death Edition". Along with the standard copy of the game, the Death Edition was packaged in a fold out card packaging depicting each circle of hell as well as a second bonus disc that featured a making-of documentary, the documentary "Dante in History", the full soundtrack, a documentary on the creation of the music and audio, a digital art book (Barlowe's Inferno) edited by visual designer Wayne Barlowe, over 10 minutes of scenes from Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic, and a digital reprint of the complete original poem in English by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The edition also included a voucher containing an online activated code for an additional skin model for Dante: the space suit of Isaac Clarke, the main character from Visceral's previous game Dead Space. UK retailer Gamestation also gave away miniature figurines of Dante to those who pre-ordered the game. The edition was originally released in Europe, and later also in Australia along with the standard copy on February 15, 2010, exclusive to EB Games.
In North America, unlike the Europe and Australia release, a special version called the "Divine Edition" was released in place of the standard copy for the PlayStation 3 only. Similar to the Death Edition, the Divine Edition includes nearly all the same features except the Isaac Clarke costume and the animated scene but instead includes a code for the Dark Forest downloadable content, to be released later in March.
On May 14, 2010, the "St. Lucia Edition" was released in Italy, containing the Dark Forest and Trials of St Lucia DLCs and St. Lucia as a playable character in the cooperative gameplay.
Downloadable content Upon its release, a series of downloadable content (DLC) game packs were released, each containing a number of souls, used for purchasing new abilities. The first contained 500 souls and was free of charge while the rest contained 1500, 3000 and 5000 souls and cost a relatively small amount and could only be downloaded once.
The first traditional piece of downloadable content was released a month after release on March 4, entitled Dark Forest, a prologue level loosely based on the opening of The Divine Comedy, that sees Dante in a dark forest before meeting Virgil. The content includes two new enemies known as the "Forest Siren" and "Death Knight" and involves a series of puzzles to overcome. In addition to the level, the download also includes an additional "Disco Inferno" costume, a novelty piece in the style of polyester disco fashion wear.
Numerous alternative costumes have also been released, including Florentine Dante based on the real life poet Dante Alighieri released on February 18, 2010 and Animated Film Dante, based on the appearance of the character from Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic, released one week later.