The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Related Content

• David Foster Wallace's Last Novel
• Billie Holiday - An Illustrated Life
• There Was No Joy in Mudville -- an interview with local author Kurtis Scaletta
• Don't Quit Your Day Job-Job
• Facts are for Tight-Assed Suck-Ups

At this year's Video Game Awards in Los Angeles, powerhouse production company Electronic Arts (EA) announced its new action adventure title, to be released some time in 2009: Dante's Inferno. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say, "Finally!" Right? Right.

Here is the trailer.

If you don't feel like watching it, which I'll forgive you for - although probably you should watch it, because it's great - here's the run-down (so far as I can tell from the 45-second clip): Dante is an intensely masculine dude who carries a crucifix in his right hand, which he uses to bludgeon and/or impale demons as he wanders through the nine circles of Hell. Just like in the book!

"The time is right for the world of interactive entertainment to adapt this literary masterpiece, and to re-introduce Dante to an audience that, until now, may have been unfamiliar with the remarkable details of this great work of art," said Jonathan Knight, EA's executive producer for game. "It's the perfect opportunity to fuse great gameplay with great story."

Which explains the bald-headed dude who has scimitars instead of hands. Sweet! I am kind of excited to see how they render Charon, Geryon, Antaeus, Minos, Cereberus, Malacoda, and all the rest. Aren't you? This may go down as one of the few instances where the book is actually more accessible than a video game, however, as you have to be eighteen or older to view the website.

Admittedly the game looks kind of badass. Not surprisingly, though, it seems some liberties will be taken with the original text. The official press release states that Dante is romping through Hell on a quest to find Beatrice, his great love. Jenni Lada over at Gamertell blows the whistle, though, explaining in her synopsis of the book and game that, "While reaching Beatrice is one of Dante's goals in the original story, the overall theme of The Divine Comedy is more a journey of revelation and redemption, rather than a quest for a departed love one." [sik]

It seems Virgil has been mostly cut out of the game as well, although one of my speculative sources over at Activision surmises that, "He'll probably show up as a sort of spiritual guide, like Toadstool in Super Mario Bros." Which is fair enough, but as long as they're making the game, I would've hope for a Double Dragon-style Virgil-and-Dante tag team that goes and kicks some demon ass. Nevertheless, at least the nine rings of hell are apparently in tact, so the structure is there - as, no doubt, is Alighieri's self-invented triple rhyme scheme.

Is this game a good thing? A bad thing? Honestly, I don't really care. Maybe it'll open the doors to option more books as video games, and authors can reap the financial benefits, which really is the only conceivable way to offset the staggering amount of layoffs the publishing world has seen in the last two weeks. Realistically, I don't know how likely that is. Given the newfound ubiquity of video games in our society, it seems producers will soon need a lot more content, so it's not exactly implausible...Weird.

Oh but wait - the best part: Before the game was even announced, Universal Studios bought the movie rights. To the game. As opposed to, say, buying the movie rights to the book. Or just making a movie based on the book, whose copyright is probably just a little bit stale. Does anyone else feel like someone over at Universal got totally hoodwinked? Like, some executive had never heard of the Inferno, and some EA dude was all like, "I have this great concept..." I bet that's how it happened.

Meanwhile, I blog about how Universal bought the rights from EA, who ripped the idea from the book, which was written by Dante, who was married to the lady who swallowed the fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly, perhaps she'll die.