It’s billed as Dead Space meets God of War, with controls that feel mighty similar to the latter. Still, Electronic Arts may have quite the gem on their hands with this unique/generic IP (depending on how you want to look at it). Future Publishing’s PSM3 has revealed further details on the legendary lore and gameplay mechanics that may interest initially apathetic gamers in the title.
– The game runs at a solid 60FPS and is brought to life by the excellent animations of its enemies and protagonist.
– Dante Aligheri, the Florentine poet that the game is based upon, has been turned into a “muscular six foot knight with magic powers” to suit the tone of the game. Dante is fighting his way through Hell to save his lost love Beatrice, who has been murdered and wrongly sent to the underworld.
– One of the first boss encounters takes place in “Limbo," an area of lost souls who are agonizingly close to God but can never reach Him due to a life of non-believing. It’s here that Dante fights Death himself and steals his magical scythe before plunging into the underworld.
– The game shares the exact same control scheme as God of War, even down to Circle being used to open chests.
– The game’s artist Wayne Barlowe was chosen because of his work on Barlowe’s Inferno, a collection of images based on Dante’s poem.
– Structurally, the game is designed to take the player through the nine circles of Hell. The first circle, Limbo, is where you will encounter Death and moving through the world areas get more horrific. Circle 5, “The Wrathful," is where violent people are forced to endlessly fight each other. The game will culminate in Circle 9, presumably with a massive boss fight against Beelzebub himself.
While all of this seems promising, it’s hard to judge at this point. It all comes down to execution. In case you may have missed the game’s spine-tingling VGA 2008 trailer, we’ve included it below.