It was bound to happen eventually. Dante Alighieri’s three-part epic, La Divina Commedia, is now a video game. Loosely based on the first canto of the poem, the hero of the Dante’s Inferno video game is a soldier who “defies death and fights for love against impossible odds.” In the new digital medium, the Italian mercenary Dante returns home from the Crusades to find that his beloved Beatrice has been murdered, and her soul pulled down into Hell by a dark force. He gives chase, and vows to get her back. For weapons, he wields Death’s soul-reaping scythe, and commands holy powers of the cross, given to him by Beatrice.
Scheduled for release on January 30, 2010, the third-person hack and slash video game will be available on the following platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PlayStation Portable. No word yet on whether Virgilio is in the cast.