“Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch’Intrate,” a level from Bungie’s 1993 video game Pathways into Darkness.
Learn more about Pathways into Darkness here and see a list of its levels here.
Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
By lsanchez
By lsanchez
“Released back in 2010 by Visceral Games – the lovely folks who brought us Dead Space – Dante’s Inferno is a creative adaptation of the classic poem. Through its incredible design, gameplay, and narrative, Dante’s Inferno has come to be one of the most exhilarating action games of the 2010s.
For the sake of presenting a more action-driven story, Visceral went ahead and made a few changes to the source material. Whereas Dante is a poet and Beatrice is a symbol of Divine Love in the poem, the former is a soldier and the latter is his lover in the game.
The story begins with Dante during the Third Crusade (1189–1192). In the midst of combat, he is all of a sudden stabbed; he awakens on another plane having to confront the physical embodiment of death. After defeating death, Dante steals his scythe and returns home – only to find his father and love Beatrice dead. This is when Dante discovers the latter’s soul being dragged to Hell by Lucifer. From there, along with his guide Virgil (just like in the poem), Dante transverses through Hell to save his love (laying waste to every demon in his path).
[. . .]
Ten years later and I’m still amazed by this game. From its fantastic action and creative approach to the source material, Dante’s Inferno is a fascinating title. Inferno proved to be a visual treat to me when I first read it; never could I have ever expected how Visceral Games could take such a classic and elevate its imagery. Dante’s Inferno is not only an amazing action game, but it’s also an excellent journey into one of the most nightmarish representations of Hell ever depicted in art.” –Michael Pementel, Bloody Disgusting, February 4, 2020
“The 2010 video game, Dante’s Inferno, is a modern adaptation of the original Inferno by Dante Alighieri. While it has some similarities, it has some predominant substantial differences. Some of the similarities come with the characters, and the ambience. Most of the emblematic characters of the original text appear in the video game in one way or another. The ambience is also quite accurate since it clearly conveys Dante’s ideas on the various levels of hell. Every single circle of hell shows the punishment addressed to the various sinners. However, the substantial difference resides in the main mission of the story. Unlike the original, in the video game Dante’s main objective is to set Beatrice free from Lucifer. God is barely mentioned throughout the game, or any other phase besides hell. Dante does not consider getting to any places beyond hell.” –Pablo Linares (University of Arkansas, ’23)
By lsanchez
“Remember Dante’s Inferno? No, not the 14th century Italian poem. The 2010 console-exclusive God of War knockoff where you shoot crucifixes made of light at demons and have a boss fight with Cleopatra, who gives birth to monsters via her nipples. It was an odd one.
Dante’s Inferno is the latest game to be declared fully playable and glitch-free in the open-source PS3 emulator RPCS3. “Issues with Physics made it impossible to finish some stages normally” before now, and there were some problems with cutscene audio stuttering and generally stability, but that’s all solved and it’s looking lovely in 4K. I mean, as lovely as Hell is ever going to look.” —Jody Macgregor, PC Gamer, March 8, 2020
Watch footage of the new emulator’s gameplay here.
In 2019, Juniors Jack Batton and Connor Smith of DeMatha High School (Hyattsville, MD) designed a playable Minecraft version of the Mountain of Purgatory as their final project for DeMatha theology instructor Homer Twigg’s unit on the Purgatorio. The mountain is organized by terrace, each labeled with corresponding cantos. The terraces depict figures of the penitents engaged in their purgations; pictured at left is the wall of fire on the terrace of Lust. The project was presented at the Academic Symposium at Catholic University in Spring 2019, and a video walkthrough of the world is accessible on YouTube (last accessed April 24, 2020).
In early 2020, Jonas Long, Chris Allen, Thomas Mesafint, Gray Griffin, Seth Barnes (DeMatha HS) took the original concept developed by Batton and Smith and greatly expanded on it in terms of size, detail and complexity. They also have made their map publicly accessible for other teachers and students of Dante to explore and contribute to in the future. Screenshots (right; below) are of the server, and instructions to access the server can be found here (last accessed April 24, 2020).
We thank the designers and Homer Twigg for their permission to share the documents.
By lsanchez
“Additionally, although it is not clear how these techniques actually work, the Judecca is capable of several devastating arcane attacks that warp its opponents to hostile subdimensions (for all intents and purposes analogous to “Hell”) in order to cause damage.
[. . .]
AGX-14 (AGX-18) Judecca
Learn more about the 1991 video game series Super Robot Wars here.