If you're one of the book owls who hate Visceral for "ruining" Dante's Inferno, then you might want to find a bit to chomp down on with this new bit of nerd-angering news. Visceral Games has been thinking about other books to wreck, and Macbeth seems a very likely candidate. They've been wanting to do it for years, in fact.
"Macbeth the game is something I've been thinking about for years," says producer Jonathan Knight. "But now, I think the emotional quality that games are achieving and the value level of the acting and the sound work makes it possible."
Don't worry though, English majors, Knight is aware that Macbeth will need some subtlety to it: "Dante's is more of a violent interpretation of the poem for example. Macbeth would be great, though; there are witches and a supernatural experience along with plenty of intrigue and murder."
Okay ... maybe not that much subtlety.
I don't care though. I think it's fun that Visceral is trying to turn books into games. Sure, they might not be the most faithful of interpretations, and the volume of artistic license at play is going through the roof, but if the games are fun and the adaptation is interesting enough, you can shove your faithfulness up your library-humping arse.
Visceral will have to be quick though. Didn't Marc Ecko want to do this exact same thing? Maybe they'll need to collaborate.
Dante's Inferno Studio Thrilled with EA's Marketing Support [Industry Gamers]
Contest:
9:40 AM on 02.03.2010
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The question is: Will he ever let go?
What's next, Catcher in the Rye.
Supernatural experience?
Let's use Silent Hill's engine for this one then.
I'd play that.
Or give me a Phoenix Wright style game based on To Kill a Mockingbird.
I am an avid reader and a huge proponent of reading, and if Dante's Inferno gets just one person who otherwise would have no interest to read the poem to actually read it, I'm all for it.
Stop finding bullshit to complain about, guys. It was inspired by the work, not a direct transliteration.
And for the record, I would play a Moby Dick game, and a Macbeth game. Macbeth is my most favorite play. I own it in three different languages (English, Old English, and Middle High German), and again, if this would get just one person to read the thing, I'm all for it.
Another example is the renaming of of the Horsemen in Darksiders. I saw great umbrage taken at the fact that Conquest/Pestilence, and Famine were disused in favor of the developer coined Fury and Strife. On this site alone I saw no more than three articles where the author mentioned this with outrage in their tone. The fact is, if they'd have read Revelation, the horsemen have no names with the exception of Death, and Hades who follows behind him (but who isn't astride a horse). Their "proper" names are the first rider, the second rider, the third rider, and Death and Hades. This certainly didn't prevent a wrath of shit from the gaming community, though.
Anybody remember 'O'? Man, that sucked...
You can't seem to see the forest through the trees. There's a diffrence to taking artistic licence and just slapping templar mail on Kratos and calling it dante's inferno. It's like someone had a good idea and then before they could flesh it out EA handed it to an accountant so he could make a checklist of features that should be in the game so it sells well:
-Hack and slash seems to be a genre which we don't have our fingers in, best to make this one
-Tough as nails super powered military vetren, hoorah
-slap on some sort of morality system
I've read the divine comedy and it in no way lends itself to a hack and slash gameplay if to a game at all.
I oppose this game for the same reason i'd oppose a movie of MGS being a RomCom where snake is an nervous office drone workering for shadowmoses inc. trying to get a date with his bosses receptionist.
It's not me being an elitist snob it's just i'm offended by bullshit.
I want to see a movie of Snake in an office setting now.
Hilarity would ensue.
Army of Two
Developers could probably learn a lot about their own medium by thinking about ways to translate literature into games. But blithely shoehorning basic plot elements into established, totally unrelated genres is absolutely worthless and a disservice to the source material and gaming as an art form.
"One man
alone
versus Nature."
And even though Visceral's offerings don't seem to be doing the source material any justice, I do think it would be possible to transform the classics into games with style. Maybe Bioware could handle something like that?
Just curious, I get why a German Shakespeare translation would be cool (German theater being what it is) but an Old English version? I'm an advocate for reading as well, but "Macbeth" is pretty standard HS curriculum or at least it was when I was in school. The plays are always in production somewhere and movie adaptations and reinterpretations hit every other year or so. So I don't think this is a matter of exposure to people of what the strength of the play is: it's poetry and language. But Visceral thinks it's successful because of witches, murder, and the supernatural? To me, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material better suited for a blurb on the back of the "Bayonetta" box.
You could argue for the "Inferno" because translation sometimes takes the impact from a poem and makes it hard to breach for those curious, therefore a reimagining of the scenario as an action adventure attracts new readers. Now with "Macbeth" it would be pointless to make it into a game without keeping the dialogue, but that dialogue doesn't lend itself to any interactivity. You see what I'm saying? The art of dramatic literature is the interactions of bodies occupying a specific space and players don't like standing around in the same spot for 45 minutes watching their character deliver a guilty soliloquy.
I'll end with this: What the hell's wrong with a "Gilgamesh" game, huh?
@Fozzy
Gilgamesh would be worthy too, as it has simliarities with some of Homer's work or vice versa, but they can only do one game at a time.
There's nothing wrong with this at all. For another good example in film, Clash of the Titans is due to hit flick palaces soon. No one cares, that its a complete bastardisation of greek mythology, because like God of War, its about having fun and is NOT SUPPOSED to be EXACTLY LIKE THE WORK ITS BASED OFF.
Now sure, I'd love that film to be more about the source material, as awesome as it is, but there's also a place for a lesser version of such stories. I would have liked the same for the debacle that was Troy too, but it wasn't to be. There's a fine line between getting all elitist fanboy and shit, over a work, and giving a person a chance to realise their version of a work, without bad butthurt. If someone's version is flawed like Troy was, we still have the glory of the original work.
Games have a unique advantage over films, when it comes to what Visceral are doing, IMO. For a start, they are using books that half the fuckers on here would have dodged as boring etc. Lets face it, kids at school especially, the majority of them can't stand, or understand the shakespeare, and many other cool works. By having such games revisit such works, gamers will leave the game with a new respect and understanding for such works, hopefully. Most of the time, they'll only undertand these books once they mature, if not earlier.
The other way, is to leave such works to gather dust, so just the pretentious, pompous, elitist few can enjoy them. You will never grow appreciation of such works that way, and that's exactly how much works in all kinds of media end up forgotten. If it can work for Romeo and Juliet in film (I'm sure the same crap was said about Baz Lurman's adaption, when news of it began), with smart thinking, it can also work for the Tragedy of Macbeth as a game. How Visceral do that, time will tell (go speculate to hell and back). I've had faith that Visceral could pull off Dante's inferno into something special, and judging by the online co-op and level creation stuff added, I'll be investing in a copy. It could be one of this years sleeper hits, like Bayonetta or Darksiders, we'll see.
Again, if you don't like these games, you can choose not to buy them.
Damn, if someone picks up The Odyssey for the same treatment, I might well buy them a few pints. What Visceral is doing, is good for literature and games too. Visceral should consider giving away copies of the original work, with the game, just to shut people up, then everyone is happy.
And if you don't believe in the power, of what Visceral are doing can have, playing Bioshock had me do a little digging on objectivism and Ayn Rand, which I would have otherwise not known about. Thank you, Bioshock team and Mr Levine.
Adaptations are time honoured acts in the literary tradition. Baz Lurhman's Romeo and Juliet was, I felt, a really good one. So was West Wide Story. There is a massive different between 'leaving such works to gather dust' and taking the name and changing the essence of the thing. That's what Dante's Inferno did. The essence of the game has nothing in common with the essence of the original poem.
That's debateable in the same way we talk about all kinds of thing. One persons good is another persons bad. However, I honestly think that you should judge a game on its merits, not pick at it, because some part of it you knew about from conception upsets you.
Yes, you mention Romeo and Juliet, but like I said, when news went around of his intentions for his adaption, I bet many said the same negative stuff when they hadn't even seen the film or read a script. Same as has been done with Visceral's game. Look how many people are eating humble pie on both. Feel free to hunt for what was said, when the Romeo and Juliet adaption was announced by many. I bet there was a lot of negative, because heaven forbid we should ever touch the classics for adaption.
If we or Visceral were burning the classics we hold dear, your argument would have great merit. That's not the case. But I say again, anything that gets people interested in stuff they'd otherwise bypass, should be applauded. Open your mind and try to hold your tongue a bit, until the damn game is out, then play and judge it. You mention essence, but you can't judge that without playing it, which seems to be what many here are doing. You wouldn't do the same for films or books would you? Always best to taste the pudding yourself, than rely on second hand info.
Time honoured means nothing, if they aren't read by people to keep them alive. Without readers to appreciate them, they are just dead trees with text.
Regarding the game itself, I downloaded the demo and found it to be nothing special, especially when compared to Bayonetta. I'm far more interested in the debate about the adapatation. I've little to say on the quality of the game itself, beyond my first sentance.
You're probably right that Baz Lurhman's Romeo + Juliet garnered some negative reception when it was first announced. An MTV version of a Shakespeare Classic? But the adapatation proved to be a relatively faithful one, and kept to the main point of Romeo and Juliet. It quite possible succeeded in getting many young people interested in Shakespeare, which can only be a good thing.
That won't happen with Dante's Inferno. The only thing it can get people interested in is the game itself. The game has nothing to do with the plot of the Divine Comedy. It takes little inspiration from it, beyond the vision of Hell defined by Dante. It's a real shame, because they could have done something really interesting with the source material.
I've seen plenty of good adaptations of Macbeth in my time. I saw a Chinese one called the Banquet recently, which I felt worked pretty well. It kept the main plot of Macbeth, but transported it to China. In other words, it kept the essence of the play. That's what I'd call a decent adapation. Visceral's work on Dante's Inferno makes me think that they aren't going to do an adaptation of Macbeth, but rather take the name and turn it into another generic God of War clone.
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