Ed Loves Bacon - EA’s Dante’s Inferno” redefines the classic tale”

“Abandon hope, ye who enter here” is the familiar phrase Dante reads as he enters the gates of Hell, but in the Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic and Dante’s Inferno, the video game (Xbox360, PS3), Dante takes a different tact - he abandons nothing.  Based on a lose interpretation of the poem, Dante (voiced by Graham McTavish) is a errant Crusader willing to go to Hell and back to retrieve his betrothed Beatrice (Vanessa Branch) from the clutches of Lucifer (Steve Blum) himself.

(Compiled by Edward Adams and Declan Rabun, Photo courtesy of EA Games)

The DVD:

Dante’s story begins as he painfully stitches the red cross taken from the front of his Crusader’s tunic onto his battered flesh. The cloth is covered with images of various holy campaigns that also provide a clever flashback device throughout the film.  As the battle weary hero struggles to make his way home through the forest, as in the poem, he’s attacked by beasts but fights and manages to make his way home only to discover his home and all its inhabitants including his father and his betrothed Beatrice have been slain. To add insult to injury, as he nears his beloved, Dante glimpses her soul ascending toward heaven only to be snatched up by Lucifer and dragged into the gates of Hell. Her screams of duress and pleas for help fire Dante’s resolve to free her no matter the cost. As our now anti-hero battles his way towards the gates of Hell, he’s met by the spirit of long dead poet Virgil (Peter Jessup) who volunteers to accompany him and guide him along his quest.