After reaching the end of the circle Anger, Dante reaches the River Styx and begins to float across it on what is later to be revealed as the head of the demon Phlegyas, who attacks Dante. Overcoming this gargantuan enemy, Lucifer appears with Beatrice in tow, and drawing here from the myth of Persephone in the Greek mythological canon, offers Beatrice seeds of the forbidden fruit (pomegranate) which she willingly takes as a final act of defiance of Dante and his defilement of his vows to her. Lucifer whisks his new Queen of Hell away (after a rather graphic kiss) and Dante is left to take Phlegyas into the city of Dis and the sixth circle of Heresy. After quite literally smashing through Heresy Dante arrives in Violence, where those violent in life against others or themselves are condemned to one of the segments within to suffer their punishments. Within this circle he meets his mother, a suicide, whom Dante absolves after learning that she took her own life to escape the cruelty of his father, instead of falling afoul to plague as he was told. On entering the next area where those violent against God are entombed in a desert of burning, raging sands, Dante encounters his brother in law Francesco, condemned to this area for his part in the massacre of "heathens" in the Holy Land Dante began. Francesco was sentenced to death by taking full responsibility for the massacre, protecting Dante and condemning himself.
From Adaptations: The Contemporary Dilemmas:"In the quest to find a mode of expression that explains the point of collision between the two media, one alternative angle of investigation might lie in the area of research seeking explanations for the success with audiences (in particular) of classic adaptations, and to speculate on the ways that the interface between a literary text and its film tribute(s) is interpreted and used by its audience." With Dante's Inferno the game, EA took a classic literary text, kept the narrative core of the nine circles of hell and Dante's journey through them and used it as an artistic license to fully explore the depths of human sin and the damning, warping ability it renders on the human soul. The game's developers have fully realised every inch of Hell in its most terrible forms, from the sirenesque temptresses of Lust whose shall we say feminine areas have lives of their own, to the grotesquely obese behemoths of Gluttony who spew forth their body's contents as a method of attack upon the player. Each circle however abbreviated from its literary version (whether that be for pacing issues or the enormous technological feat of rendering every circle of Hell fully in game) feels as different and disgusting as the last. Herein lies the heart of the adaptation and its analogy: EA Games chose to lift the setting of the Inferno and market it en masse to an audience of gamers, who may be unfamiliar with the original text, but with a setting such as Hell itself and a storyline as riveting as the Inferno created a blockbuster. No longer the man lost in the woods, EA and Visceral Games (a rather apt name for the studio's creation) Dante became the sinful crusader whose love was stolen from him by the Devil himself. Thus, the quest changes in nature from a simple journey of exploration and education through Hell into one of redemption through love and the inevitable self sacrifice.
In the game Dante goes on to Fraud to face ten challenges set forth by Beatrice, occurring in game as a series of combat related challenges. Once the player overcomes all ten, Dante reaches the entrance to the final circle, Treachery, where Beatrice appears to berate Dante. Insistent that he has faced all of his sins in coming this far, his sudden realisation that it was he who slaughtered the prisoners of Acre through sheer frustration and helplessness at his position he is damned to the deepest circle of Hell for his treachery to Francesco and Beatrice herself. On acceptance of his damnation, Dante sinks to his knees and Beatrice's cross falls from his person. On seeing it she realises his repentance for his sins and she is returned to her former self. The archangel Gabriel descends from Heaven to retrieve Beatrice now that Dante has sacrificed himself for her, and promises Dante that it is not the last he will see of him. Armed now with nothing to lose, Dante carries on to the centre of Treachery where Lake Cocytus sits frozen with Lucifer's true form imprisoned at the centre; a giant demon imprisoned upon the frozen lake.
After defeating this form, Lucifer reveals that by reaching the final circle, Dante has proved himself worthy of freeing him from that body and will emerging in his true form. Battling Dante, Lucifer gleefully announces that Dante will never leave Hell, as he was killed in Acre by the brother of the woman he committed adultery with. Lucifer monologues that now free, he will rise from Hell, overthrow God and seize Heaven, but through the power given by all the souls he has liberated from Hell, Dante re-imprisons Lucifer in the lake and an archangel appears to carry Dante to purgatory. The End: until the game sequel, recently confirmed as in development appears on shelves. It is currently unknown if the sequel will follow the second poem and head through Purgatory or a new story will be fabricated of another journey through Hell and another attempted escape from Lucifer. Watch this space.
The production of sequels to such a closed story opens the debate of the necessity of such an adaptation in the first place. If the nature of the market is such that a sequel will be produced when the profit made is high enough, will the quality of the adaptation be tainted? "Rather than a tendency to see the film/TV adaptation of a literary text as necessarily lacking some of the force and substance of its original, it might be more fruitful to regard this and subsequent adaptations of a novel in terms of excess rather than lack. Research into fandom in cultural studies documents the way that fan communities constantly produce new narratives about favourite characters or authors, as if what they find in the original text frustrates a quest for wholeness and completeness which can only be satisfied by the creation and dispersal of narratives which somehow fill in the 'gaps'." Thus it is argued that when an audience member invests in a story or character so much, the end as it is given by the author of the text is not enough. Repeated readings or viewings are inadequate and the reader seeks to expand into further mediums in order to fully explore a story. With Dante's Inferno there is the original text (Inferno), its subsequent sequels (Purgatorio and Paradiso) an animated film and Downloadable Content produced on each of the game's platforms to keep the audience captivated. The production of a sequel continues the narrative and undoubtedly a quick search online will produce several further results of fan fictions and expanded narratives within the established universe. Thus, the original text loses importance in the eyes of the audience when modernised versions exist on more accessible wavelengths, such as the animated DVD and this videogame adaptation.
Textbook used in this and the previous article is Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text, various authors and Edited by Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan, first published in 1999 by Routledge.
