EA working on Dante’s Inferno video game adaptation

Have you ever read a legendary and classic piece of literature and thought, “This would make a fantastic game!” Well guess what? EA obviously has. No, it’s not making a video game adaptation of Little Women. EA is going to be turning the first cantica of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, Inferno, into a video game. Dante’s Inferno is best known for establishing the idea of nine circles of hell.

The Divine Comedy follows Dante after, at the age of 35, he was ready to stray from the moral path and, quite possibly, kill himself. He is rescued by Virgil, who has come to show Dante through the afterlife at the behest of Beatrice, a departed woman Dante had admired from afar. Virgil guides Dante through Hell in Inferno and through Purgatory in Purgatorio, and Beatrice takes Dante through Heaven in Paradiso.

It seems like EA may take some liberties with the story, if the official press release (viewable at MarketWatch) is any indication. In it, it states that Dante is undertaking his journey through hell on a quest to find Beatrice. While reaching Beatrice is one of Dante’s goals in the original story, the overall theme of The Divine Comedy is more a journey of revelation and redemption…