Dante’s Inferno Roundtable Discussion

Last Thursday, I had the privilege of partaking in a roundtable conference call interview with some members of the Dante’s Inferno development team at Visceral Games.  The interviewees were Jordan Knight – Executive Producer, Mike Cheng – Lead Level Designer, and Vincent Napoli – Lead Combat Designer. Conducting the interview were journalists from approximately 8-10 different sites, including myself.  We took turns asking the team questions for an hour.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have any way to record the phone call, so the following is a rough, abridged transcript of the interview.

Q: What was the design process behind Dante’s primary tools of destruction?  How many different iterations did you go through before settling on the Death Scythe and Holy Cross?  Can you tell us any designs that were left by the wayside?

A: Initially, before we committed to any art or specific weapons, we really wanted to make sure that we got the mechanics down.  From here, we tried a bunch of different weapons – swords, maces, a ton of different combos of Medieval weapons.  Ultimately the Death Scythe made the most sense, not to mention it was really badass.  However, we felt that we needed a weapon to represent the ‘Holy’-side, because much of the game focuses on the balance between these conflicting sides of Dante.  It made sense that the Holy Cross should be a range-based weapon and have and have magical abilities.

Q: Any intentions of making a sequel that deals with ‘Purgatorio’ or ‘Paradiso’?

A: As of right now, we don’t have any plans for any sequels, so to speak.  We don’t feel that we’ve earned that right yet.  However, we are working on some DLC for it.  We do plan on supporting the game in a big way post-release.  But, after this is out, Dead Space 2 is the next thing on our mind.

Q: How did you decide on a Hack-and-Slash game, especially considering the slow, suspenseful-paced Dead Space?

A: Really, it came down to the fact that we felt that it would make for the most fun game.  Also, a lot of the team was on the Return of the King team, so we’ve had experience in this genre.  To add to that, Mike came over from the God of War team.  We sort of view Dante’s Inferno as a counterpoint to Dead Space.

Q: What challenges did you experience in modernizing the epic poem for gamers?

A: The Divine Comedy doesn’t have a dramatic narrative.  Much of it is simply Dante the Pilgrim explaining what he sees on his journey in the afterlife in his effort to get to Beatrice.  This is obviously why we had to take a relatively loose interpretation in regards to the story.  On the flip side, Dante Alighieri painted an incredibly epic setting for a video game in his poem.

Q: It’s interesting that Bayonetta came out around the time that Dante’s Inferno will be.  Do other recent releases affect your game?

A: As gamers ourselves, we all try playing as many games as we can, especially ones that are within our genre.  However, where a lot of games borrow subject material from Dante’s works, we’re trying to make a game that entails all of it.

Q: Religion in video games is often quite controversial.  Have you experienced any backlash in regards to the subject matter?

A: Actually, not really.  You’d think that we would, but the only controversy that we’ve really experienced is in regard to how well we will stay true to the poem.  I think we dodged the religious controversy because we don’t take a stand one way or another, we don’t preach a point-of-view.  Some positive feedback that I can speak of is that I’ve had people, such as teachers, excited about the game because it’s getting the youth interested in Dante’s works.

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Q: How did you make the cut from all the 500+ characters that appear in the poem?

A: It certainly wasn’t easy.  We had a spreadsheet with all the characters, and at first it was a daunting task.  However, it helps that in Hell, according to Dante, everyone looks much the same.  On top of that, we tried getting all of the guardians into the game.  Conveniently enough, Dante happened to basically give us a boss for every individual circle right in the poem.  That really worked out in our favor.

Q: How did you decide on the transition from Dante being a relatively tame pilgrim to a blood-thirsty Crusader?

A: We made him a veteran of the Crusades because we felt that Dante needed to be a morally conflicted character with a dark past.  He was involved with the siege on Acre, and committed heinous actions there.  He thought that he was absolved of his actions because he was told that he was.  However, on his journey through Hell, he realizes that this isn’t the case at all.  Ultimately, his quest ends up with two purposes – to save Beatrice and to face his own sins through every circle he ventures to.

Q: How do you feel about the negative backlash from some of the marketing campaigns?  If you could go back, would you change anything?

A: Obviously, we regret the way that the Lust stunt turned out at Comic-Con.  The wording was kind of ambiguous, and a lot of people took it a different way than we had originally intended it.  The campaign was designed to educate people that weren’t familiar with Dante’s Inferno about the nine circles of Hell and how they are structured.  Since Lust is the first circle, so naturally we started with it.  So, when this contest was revealed, people didn’t have the full context of the situation, what we were trying to accomplish.  In retrospect, if it weren’t first, I don’t think that it would have been nearly as big of a deal, but unfortunately it was.

Q: How difficult was it to recreate the circles for modern adaption?

A: We found that although Dante was very descriptive in his narration of his journey, there isn’t much physical visual reference.  Therefore, it actually took quite a bit of imagination on our part.  However, we did reach out to Wayne Barlow, a distinguished concept artist.  He’s done work on Avatar and with Guillermo del Toro.  He’s also spent a lot of time painting fantasy imagery, including a work of his called Barlowe’s Inferno, a series of paintings of Hell.  He was very excited to work with us, and added a lot to the final design of the levels.

Q: How is Dante’s Inferno better than God of War 3?

A: Overall, Dante’s Inferno has much more customization that you see in other action games.  There are two separate progression charts (Holy and Unholy), and while one path might help for certain areas, it may hinder you in another area or boss.  Also, you can have up to four magic abilities, and you can mix and match them from the Holy and Unholy sides.

Q: Are we going to see alternate endings to the game?

A: There’s only one ending to the game.  We felt that it was better to shoot for one absolutely stellar ending rather than two decent ones.

Q: Did any of the circles change dramatically from initial concept to the final version?

A: No, not really.  The only significant change was that, initially, Dante was going to be eaten by Cerberus in the Gluttony circle and he had to fight his way out.  We scrapped this because we wanted his decent into the depths of Hell to be a continuous journey.

Q: Do you have any favorite achievements?

A: Probably Poetry in Motion – achieve a 666 hit combo.  It’s actually much more feasible than it seems at first.  For the casual player, it’ll be a very tough one to get, but the experienced player that puts time into the right character build shouldn’t have too much problem.  Eventually, you can use three magic spells at once, which really ups the combo meter quick.  The highest we got to was a 1,000+ combo, someone on our team did that.  So yeah, 666 is definitely obtainable.

Q: Virgil played a major role in the poem, essentially guiding Dante step-by-step through Hell.  What kind of role will he play in the game?

A: Virgil is somewhat of an optional character in the game.  You can skip his dialogue if you want, and most of his lines are directly from the poem itself.  We used him as a way to engage those that are interested in The Comedy and make it more relatable for them.  However, the casual player won’t be forced to listen to this.  Everyone can sort of forge their own experience to their own liking.