History VideoGame / DantesInferno

* OedipusComplex: Dante and his father [[spoiler:end up duking it out in the Fourth Circle of Hell]].

* RatedMForManly:
** Dante is now a very muscular Crusader who neglects to wear a shirt...so the player can easily see the cloth-tapestry cross that he's ''[[FanDisservice sewn onto his skin]]''.
** Somewhat subverted as this was meant to be a realistic depiction of what hell is said to be like, which would be horrifying and filled with nudity (especially in lust) and violence, not to mention people only go there for one reason.

%% * OffModel: The Anime's animation ranges from gorgeous and/or fluid (Creator/{{Manglobe}}, Creator/FilmRoman[[note]]plus Creator/BigStar and Creator/DigitalEMation[[/note]] and Creator/{{Dong Woo|Animation}}), to sub-par (ProductionIG) to just average (Creator/JMAnimation).

* AdaptationExplanationExtrication: The game changes the setting to the year 1191 as opposed to the presumed 1300 of the original poem, but the developers overlooked that some historical figures who were either still alive in that year (e.g. Saladin who lived 1137-1193 but is found in Limbo (in the animated movie at least) or weren't born yet (e.g. [[UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire Holy Roman Emperor]] Frederick II is found in Heresy, but wasn't born until 1194) and thus shouldn't be in Hell yet.

** The Gates of Hell. The Gate itself was modeled after Auguste Rodin's [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gates_of_Hell Gates of Hell]], which was described in Dante's Inferno to have a sign at the top that read a poem[[note]]''Through me the way to the suffering city; Through me the everlasting pain; Through me the way that runs among the Lost. Justice urged on my exalted Creator: Divine Power made me, The Supreme Wisdom and the Primal Love. Nothing was made before me but eternal things And I endure eternally. Abandon all hope - Ye Who Enter Here.''[[/note]] about Hell. The sign itself was removed from the Door and is instead spoken by Charon (who is also half-demon half-ship and not a boatman demon).

->''"This game would actually make a good recruiting tool for Christianity. Never has saving someone's soul been so hardcore! I'm sitting there on the good play through, and I'm forgiving every enemy I can, and going 'I forgive the shit out of you!' and 'mutha fucka, you just got forgiven' and 'oh, you little bastard, I'm gonna forgive you for that!' and the always good 'go to heaven fucker!' I just wish you could forgive the lust demons. Heaven would be so much better with those sexy bitches in it."''

* TheBaroness: Cleopatra doubles with TheVamp (she is a [[HornyDevils succubus]], after all).

* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: Dante has a long resume of this. Among other things, he punches out [[TheGrimReaper Death]], [[HornyDevils Cleopatra]], [[{{Hellhound}} Cerberus]], [[HumanoidAbomination his own father]], [[FightingYourFriend his fallen comrade templars]], and {{Satan}}.

** Cleopatra is a 30-foot tall [[HornyDevils succubus]] who rules over Lust.

* HornyDevils: The Temptresses and Cleopatra, but instead of being attractive, they're [[FanDisservice extremely disturbing]].

** This would explain why several beings and souls refer to Dante as a, "living," creature, because, in a way, he's still living, but he's also no longer among the living.

* CrusadingWidower: Dante. The whole journey is all about him rescuing his fiancee Beatrice from Hell.

* DyingDream: [[spoiler: The reality of Dante's descent into Hell. There is no psychopomp named Death. He was stabbed in the back and that was the end of it.]]

* AdaptationDistillation: The various sinners Dante encounters in the book are all there, some appear as statues and you get the option of talking to others and you can either forgive them or smite them. They even say a lot of the same things. Virgil's speeches are mostly accurate, if a little altered. Even the original political satire survived mostly intact ("In these popes and cardinals, greed suffered its excess"). The design of the Nine Circles in-game is actually quite accurate with Alighieri's descriptions (except for the level of Greed, and the changes there are understandable as the original version -- people pushing boulders around to symbolize their drive for fortune -- wouldn't make for very interesting gameplay). About the only thing that's really different is Dante himself, and the whole "Famous pagans as lords of hell" thing. Also, a few sources of controversy, like Mohammad in hell, and crusaders in heaven, have been taken out as well.

** Despite the fact that he fought with the Guelph cavalry in the Battle of Campaldino, the historical Dante was more of a poet than a warrior. In the game he is defined by his military background and ability to fight his way through hell.

* AdaptationalEarlyAppearance: In ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'', {{Satan}}, though discussed about intermittently by [[AuthorAvatar the protagonist]] and Creator/{{Virgil}} during their journey through the Nine Circles of Hell, is not seen in person by the poets until they reach last circle at the very center of Hell. In this game, [[BigBad Lucifer plays a far more active role]] and is first seen on Earth taking Beatrice's soul before Dante has gone through the Gate of Hell.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: This game has inaccuracies.

* ArtisticLicenseTraditionalChristianity: This game is not a good way to learn about Christianity, particularly the Catholic faith, as some aspects of the game contradict medieval Catholic theology.

** Also Dante to an extent as well; the Avenger stabbing him and then having conquered Death, Dante seems to be in a state between life and death, which may explain why he's able to pull of feats that would normally be reserved for other protagonists who are explicitly superhuman.

* BubblegloopSwamp: The circle of Anger is as much of dark, gloomy swamp as it was in the game's source material. Some of the hateful souls condemned to this circle can be seen fighting each other in the background while others reach out of the mud to try and pull Dante in with them, though neither has any effect on gameplay as they are purely visual effects. There's also a point where you have to fight off several demons before the platform you're on sinks into the swamp.

** Francesco is straight up OriginalGeneration, as the real Beatrice Portinari never had brothers, only sisters. Though he might have been based off the real Dante's own half-brother, Francesco Alighieri.

* ContinuitySnarl: The Dark Forest DLC, assuming it is even canonical to begin with, is supposed to take place after Dante's time in the Third Crusade and before arriving at his home. However he has in his possession Beatrice's Cross and the ability to perform magic attacks and has some familiarity about Demons which he shouldn't have yet. Beatrice also appears in her ghostly form.

* CrucialCross: Dante fights his way down into the depths of hell to rescue his beloved Beatrice from Lucifer. As the game progresses, Hell's influences begin to corrupt Beatrice, and she loses her faith in Dante's attempts to get her back. Eventually she gives up entirely and tells Dante off. Feeling completely hopeless, Dante tosses to the ground the cross that she gave to him before she died, an instrument he's been using as his primary weapon this whole time. Only when she sees the cross, she realizes what he's been through, and the archangel Michael comes to free her from Hell.

** Every time Dante rides a Beast [[spoiler:or Phlegyas]]. The only enemies that are a threat while Beast riding are the Beast Tamers that try to retake control of the Beast. Everything else ''dies''. The only challenge is deciding on how you want to slaughter your foes. Roast them with firebreath? Turn them into pancakes with your fists? Literally stomp on them? Eat them? [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential It's a tough choice]].

* {{Determinator}}: Dante starts out his quest by killing Death, then proceeds to bring a one man holy war down upon all of the legions of hell that dare to stand in his way, up to and including the Devil himself.

* FireAndBrimstoneHell: As might be expected from a game set in ''[[TropeMakers Hell]]''. Though it to be fair its not true for the entire game: Anger and Heresy are the ones that play this straight, while Limbo and Lust are dark and gloomy realms, Gluttony is a visceral realm and Treachery is a icy land.

** Everytime you descend a level of Hell, you find a series of links and chains in your way that you need to break in order to go forward. [[spoiler:You hear Lucifer's laughing everytime they are broken, because you are getting a step closer in freeing him from his prison]].
** When Dante finds [[spoiler:own his mother in Hell]], she tells him that its too late for them to be saved. [[spoiler:This indicates that Dante is DeadAllAlong]].

** However, there is a brief cutscene where Dante [[spoiler: discovers his mother]] in Violence where Virgil is shown physically walking next to Dante. There fore, the above instance could perhaps be justified due to the setting's more action-oriented redesign.

* GiantWoman: Cleopatra is now a 30 foot tall giantess with mouths for nipples and rules over the Ring of Lust with Marc Antonty as her smaller-but-still-huge enforcer. Why? Because her boss fight would be so cool looking. She shrinks down after Dante beats her fight and attempts to kill him with no success.

* HangingUpOnTheGrimReaper: Death comes to claim Dante's life. Not only does Dante refuse, he ''kills'' Death with his own scythe and claims the scythe. [[spoiler:It turns out Death never came in the first place, Dante himself was DeadAllAlong. This also explains why Death was such a pushover.]]

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: You find famous souls scattered about all over the place, such as Boudica, Attila the Hun, and a couple different Roman emperors, among others. In addition, there are a significant number of people present who were not famous, but whom the real life Dante had a personal beef with and so wrote into the original story to get back at.

** Marc Antony is a 10-foot tall warrior wearing golden armor that looks like it's made out of other shades.
** Another individual worth mentioning is Alighiero. The historical Alighiero di Bellincione, father of Dante Alighieri, was a respected banker and, as far as is known from surviving documents, [[GoodParents a decent parent]]. The character of Alighiero presented here is an avaricious, lecherous, and abusive bastard [[spoiler: who gets worse when he is turned into a demon who really crosses the MoralEventHorizon]].

* HolyHandGrenade: Dante's trusty cross, which provides most of the game's ranged attacks. There's also the holy spells that Dante can learn along the way.

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Whenever Lucifer slips into LargeHam mode, the actor voicing him seems to be channeling Creator/TimCurry. Appropriate, considering Curry once portrayed [[{{Film/Legend 1985}} another version]] of [[{{Satan}} The Devil]].

** Somewhat subverted as this was meant to be a realistic depictions of what hell is said to be like. Which would be horrifying and filled with nudity (especially in lust) and violence, not to mention people only go there for one reason.

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: While the game overall retains its source material's Idealism, however it is deliberately scaled back here. One good example is that whereas Christianity is portrayed as a good influence in the Divine Comedy, here it shows that it did not have a completely beneficial effect on the Human kind by depicting the bloodshed brought about by the Crusades (including having the protagonist take part in an unprovoked killing of slaves). The cynicism is further dialed up in Animated Epic in which Satan gives a monologue in which he proclaims that the physical world is "Another Hell", that "humans are its demons", and that by implication of allowing TheEvilsOfFreeWill that GodIsEvil.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: A weird variant: Dante has the ability to either absolve souls in Hell (after which they presumably go to Heaven) or damn them (meaning they stay in Hell). In the book he certainly has no such power (or any magic powers, really) and all the people he meets in Hell are stuck there.

* VillainProtagonist: Definitely played straight by Dante during his time in the Crusades, as he is a mass-murderer who committed most if not all of the sins of the Nine Circles of Hell. [[BossBanter People remind]] [[WhatTheHellHero him of this frequently.]] However, he [[SubvertedTrope subverts]] this during his actual journey through Hell, as he is there for an unambiguously good cause and [[HeelRealization begins to realize]] [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone how horrible of a person he really was]] in his life the further he goes down.

* AdaptationExplanationExtrication: The game changes the setting to the year 1191 as opposed to the presumed 1300 of the original poem, but the developers overlooked that some historical figures who were either still alive in that year (e.g. Saladin who lived 1137-1193 but is found in Limbo (in the animated movie at least) or weren't born yet (e.g. [[UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire Holy Roman Emperor]] Frederick II is found in Heresy, but wasn't born until 1194) shouldn't be in Hell yet.

* AdaptedOut: As the original poem featured LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, not all of them could be included in the game. Some notable omitted characters from the poem include Geryon (a monster re-invented by Dante into fraud personified, cameoing in the game only as the statue holding [[spoiler: Francesco's]] boss arena), Odysseus/Ulysses (one of the only side characters mentioned in all three canticles), and Caius Cassius, Marcus Brutus, and Judas Iscariot (who are gnawed on by Satan in the poem, though the last is referred to by way of [[PublicDomainArtifact the thirty Silver Coins]] that can be found throughout the game).

* RecycledINSPACE: It's ''VideoGame/GodOfWar'' '''[-IN (Christian) HELL!-]'''

** The Wood of the Suicides is the middle section of the Circle of Violence. In a bit of ValuesDissonance carried over from the original poem, the souls of those who took their own lives are imprisoned in trees that resemble the bodies they left behind. In places, the trees will drop glowing fruits that MindRape Dante and any nearby demons into taking their own lives. The harpies and hellhounds that populate the forest in the source material are [[AdaptedOut nowhere to be seen]].

* CollapsingLair: Lust and Heresy once you beat their bosses.

** Temptresses uses these.
** King Minos has them, as well.
* ContinuitySnarl: The Dark Forest DLC, assuming it is even canonical to begin with, is supposed to take place after Dante's time in the Third Crusade and before arriving at his home. However he has in his possession Beatrice's Cross and the ability to perform magic attacks and has some familiarity about Demons which he shouldn't have yet.

* TheGrimReaper: The first boss; he's sort of weak, actually, compared to the [[EldritchAbomination other things]] to be found in Hell.

* HolyHandGrenade: Dante's trusty cross.

* StuffedIntoTheFridge: The corpse of Dante's father is left for him to discover, a cross rammed into his eye.

* TheGhost: God himself is referenced to occasionally throughout the game, but he is never seen. Justified, since Hell is a realm defined by its distance from God.

** Many individuals are shown in Hell for specific sins, even when the circumstances of those sins would have reduced culpability to the point of making them venial. [[note]]In Catholic theology, a sin is mortal if the person has full knowledge and deliberate consent when committing it AND if the sin itself is of a grave matter.[[/note]] The most egregious example is Beatrice, who is shown being damned for Dante's sins rather than for her own.

** Lucifer also qualifies, despite being an AdaptationalWimp at the same time. In the original poem, he's nothing than a gigantic, helpless idiot trapped in the Ninth Circle who barely interacts with Dante and Virgil. Here he's a much more active threat - he kickstarts the plot of the game by claiming Beatrice, delivers quite a few scornful insults about Dante's wickedness that are [[VillainHasAPoint completely correct]], and [[spoiler: concocts an elaborate BatmanGambit to free himself from the Inferno that nearly succeeds.]]

* CrusadingWidower: Dante. The whole journey is all about him rescuing his beloved Beatrice from Hell.

* AdaptationalVillainy: In the original ''[[Literature/TheDivineComedy Inferno]]'', [[Creator/DanteAlighieri Dante]]'s sins he has to repent of include forgetting his dead [[TheMuse muse]] in favor of living women, being arrogant about his poetry, and being afraid to walk through {{Hell}}. In the game, he's an adulterer who had sex with a slave girl while his wife fought off seducers back home, a mass murderer who kills hundreds of civilians, and a damned so self-righteous that he would let the Devil free of Hell before accepting that God's judgement. To the extent that the poem's Dante is also the author, it doubles as a pretty extreme example of HistoricalVillainUpgrade.
** Some of the damned are said to be there for much more severe sins than in the original poem. For example, Thais The Harlot was originally sent to hell for [[ProfessionalButtKisser flattery]] which most people today would regard as DisproportionateRetribution, so here she is damned for [[TheVamp using her beauty to make men fight eachother.]]

* AdaptationDistillation: The various sinners Dante encounters in the book are all there, some appear as statues and you get the option of talking to others and you can either forgive them or smite them. They even say a lot of the same things. Virgil's speeches are mostly accurate, if a little altered. Even the original political satire survived mostly intact ("In these popes and cardinals, greed suffered its excess"). The design of the Nine Circles in-game is actually quite accurate with Alighieri's descriptions (except for the level of Greed, and the changes there are understandable). About the only thing that's really different is Dante himself, and the whole "Famous pagans as lords of hell" thing. Also, a few sources of controversy, like Mohammad in hell, and crusaders in heaven have been taken out as well.

* CanonForeigner: Bella Abati and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alighiero_di_Bellincione Alighiero di Bellincione]], the historical Dante Aligheri's mother and father respectively, were not featured in the poem.