I'm really excited about Visceral Games' upcoming remake of the classic medieval game Dante's Inferno, bringing modern technology to one of the most entertaining games in history. I know some people are claiming that the new game takes some liberties with the source material - but so far, I think Visceral is doing an exemplary job of preserving the old game's mechanics. Translating the original controls for today's input methods is no easy task! I think some people are unclear on just how different video games were, back in Dante Alighieri's day.

Before microprocessors and electronic display technology, games were played on the same stages as theater plays. Actors - often, they were also theater actors - would portray both human and non-human elements (Non-Player Characters) in a game, with the help of extensive prop and costume work by the Game Designer. (Many elements of the old Stage Game served as inspiration for kids' game shows in the 1990s, like Legends of the Hidden Temple and Nick Arcade.) Some more ambitious stage games made use of large banks of abacuses, to calculate the success or failure of a player action.


source image courtesy Ester Inbar/Wikimedia Commons

Stage Games could be single-player, in which a player - who had previously scheduled the game session with the Stage Game company - donned one of the game's costumes and played through the scenario on-stage; multiplayer, which allowed multiple gamers to play co-operatively, or competitively (Hamlet Deathmatch was a very popular multiplayer game); or massively multiplayer, which allowed for a very large set of simultaneous players. Stage Game Directors were attracted to massively multiplayer games so as to maximize their audience, since game productions tended to be outrageously expensive; but these games had a tendency to devolve into chaotic orgies of sex, opium, and careless violence, and so the idea never really caught on.

But I digress. The original Dante's Inferno was a single-player game, designed by the then-up-and-coming game designer Dante Alighieri. The player was tasked with diving into Hell to save his love, Beatrice, from Satan himself. Dante designed several levels of Hell for the game, each with a distinct theme based on popular interpretations of Hell and Sin - nine levels in total (this was very ambitious for the time!).



Dante's vision for the game was to give the player a sense of empowerment, to appeal to the player's ego, making extensive use of stylized weaponry with which he would strike down Hell's inhabitants. Records show that many of Dante's fans felt as if they could "really take on Lucifer himself" after playing Inferno. The game cast costumed animals and slaves for most of the player's enemies, as they were often killed in the act of play. But Inferno could be dangerous for the player, too; though it wasn't unusual for Stage Games to injure their players (River City Ransom was particularly rough), Inferno was notorious among "hard-core" gamers for being extremely challenging, and having a fair likelihood of death.



Combat was a highlight of the game, but Dante designed it to be accessible to players with no combat training or experience. He used what came to be known as an "avatar" system, where a hired actor would take some actions on the player's behalf, based on gestural or other commands. To simplify the input process, Dante crafted a "controller" device - a thin and wide sheet of wood or rock, with several shapes carved into it - which the player would point at, as he showed the controller to his avatar. In Inferno, the player would hold a finger on the 'X' to have his avatar run, and the circle to have him jump, among other control options.



But given the game's ambitious length, Dante didn't want to overplay its combat aspect. He decided to give the player occasional breaks in action, in the form of environmental challenges and puzzles. Much of Inferno's impact was owed to its incredibly elaborate level design, which gamers "[had] to see to believe," per Dante's promotional materials for the game.



Of course, the game concluded in a showdown between the player and Lucifer. Dante wanted to make the Satan encounter genuinely intimidating, more so than traditional Stage Game bosses (which tended to be large, heavily costumed men). Dante's vision of Satan was too big for actors to reasonably portray, so he used his expertise in set design to construct a massive puppet of the demon, and a complicated rigging system above the stage to control it. This was the most dangerous part of the game, famously resulting in several accidental player deaths when trying to climb the puppet, as Dante had made each of Lucifer's eyes a "weak spot."



Dante's Inferno was immensely popular in its early days, but unfortunately was not a very long-lived stage game. Once other game designers saw Dante's controller concept and action-puzzle game structure, many copied them for their own games, but used less levels and less elaborate level designs. Inferno was discontinued only a year or two after its release, when it became apparent that player revenue was not catching up to the game's exorbitant production costs.

Following the commercial failure of Inferno, Dante turned more attention to his writing, and was able to resurrect his game - in a poetic, reflective retelling of one of his own play-throughs - as part of the Divine Comedy. This passive and cerebral interpretation of the game's events upset the original playerbase, which dashed the hopes of other Stage Game companies to do an Inferno re-make or sequel.

The original game was definitely ahead of its time, so I can't wait to try a modern retelling of it for myself. And I'm very pleased that Visceral and EA look to be staying very faithful to Dante's original vision, preserving the integrity and grandeur of an ambitious, powerful game design. January can't come soon enough!