Dante's Inferno showed me something I'd never seen in a game before

[The Wykydtron]

I'm close to finishing Umineko No Naku Koro Ni Chiru (Episode 8, home stretch baybeeeeee) and the end of Episode 7, fucking hell. Look I know Umineko was always super violent and pulls zero punches but Episode 7's Tea Party. My lord, kick in the teeth to EVERY character and then a kick to the audience from Bern and Lambda by breaking the fourth wall. Man, Bernkastel steps up her game massively over the course of Chiru, she's fucked in the head. Lambda, control your mental girlfriend please.

Spoiler

Basically Ange and Lion get chained into seats in a theatre and have to watch the "best" outcome for the game, the one where everyone finds the gold together. Turns out people will kill the fuck out of their relatives for ten tons of gold + several billion Yen on a card, ladies and gentlemen we yet again present Eva being a total shit and firing the first shot, even if it's an accident.

Then Kyrie and Rudolf go on a murder spree, even calling all the kids out one by one to be shot in the back then Kyrie says she actually hates both her daughter and son in law while said daughter is watching in the stands. She takes it well enough, asking relentlessly as to who set up this particular series of events in the game and who the Game Master was but then Bern just says "what Game Master? There isn't one, this is the truth of the matter" then repeats it in red, red text being 100% truth no matter what. Annnnnnd Ange breaks down completely and then dies in agony because Bernkastel is mental then more people die and Bern laughs. She never stops laughing. Then more die. Then Bern goes to town on the living corpse (don't ask) of the late Clair with a Grim Reaper type scythe and rips all her guts out. Still laughing of course.

Sometimes the voice acting in Umineko is a bit *too* good. Please stop being so good at screams of agony...

[sub][sub]OOOOOHHHHHH BEEEAAATREEEECHHEEEEEE[/sub][/sub]

Granted every witch laughs like a maniac but at least I could always laugh along with Beatrice cuz her games were fun and it was all in good spirit. Bern is just spiteful as hell...

Sometimes I hate how Ange is my favourite character, she gets killed twice and both her meta life off the board as a player and original 1990's life is shit as fuck.

Then Bern denies any "naive dreamers watching" and says "the game will not have a happy ending" in red before cutting to credits.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

If I remember rightly, the devs actually had to write a lot of specific coding for Satan's dick, to the point it delayed the game.

I actually really loved the art direction in Dante's Inferno.

 

[happyninja42]

To your question of "What did you think of Dante's Inferno" I liked it a lot. I found the game premise simplistic, but very enjoyable. I dunno, I just got a big kick out of literally storming Hell to save your lost love, and in the process, basically free and redeem a ton of souls so they can go off to Heaven. Obviously you can go the Damnation route, but I didn't, I went Redemption. I found the Cross combat fun, and I enjoyed the brilliant light effects it had, given the dark locations, you were literally the only point of clean, bright light sometimes, in the dark bowels of Hell.

I'd like to see a sequel to it, because I enjoyed the combat and the mood of it enough to like another. I mean, compared to God of War, at least the protagonist's motivations were more noble, than "Grrr!! I'm angry and upset so ALL OF YOU MUST DIE!!" He knew he was a sinner, and that her fate was partly his fault, he was willing to sacrifice himself to free her, but they never gave him that chance, so instead he had to bust some faces to save her soul. I can think of worse motivations for a hero to go on a killing spree than that.

 

[Islandbuffilo]

Vampire the masquerade: bloodlines was the first game to show me such a convincing case of split personalities. Most other games didn't really have that good of an alibi when it came to things like that, and even the characters in the game would notice something's up around the same time you do.

 

[EHKOS]

Once I saw what you were talking about, the only thing I could think of is the final boss of Postal 2's Apocalypse Weekend DLC. It had a giant cow demon shoving a giant udder in my face through half the battle. I remember it having physics and wiggling, but that may be incorrect.

I didn't think much of Dantes Inferno, so much so I gave up on the game around...I think greed. I remember pushing gold around and getting bored. Pushing gold around gives you time to think about how unappealing the combat was.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I mean, compared to God of War, at least the protagonist's motivations were more noble, than "Grrr!! I'm angry and upset so ALL OF YOU MUST DIE!!" He knew he was a sinner, and that her fate was partly his fault, he was willing to sacrifice himself to free her, but they never gave him that chance, so instead he had to bust some faces to save her soul. I can think of worse motivations for a hero to go on a killing spree than that.

If you thought that, fine, but IMO that's giving the game way too much credit. To me Dante as a character was a complete nonentity. He was completely devoid of charisma or personality, and was so bland I couldn't even hate him. At least with Kratos you can despise him if you want to, and there's at least some humanity to him (well in the first one and Ascension anyway), but Dante's just a walking block of wood whose dialogue consists entirely of grunting and yelling "BEATRIIIIICE!!!" His backstory was entirely one-note (Dante kills innocents! Dante fucks random women! Dante growls and yells "HERETIC!" Dante does more bad shit!) and quite literally cartoonishly over the top. He delivered practically every line of dialogue like he was constipated and had just ran a full marathon. We're never really given context as to why he was so eager to kill, pillage and burn. Saying "Crusades, lol" doesn't cut it for me. Or if you're going to go that way, at least spend some more time with it than 10 seconds to let it sink in.

 

[happyninja42]

Bartholen. The forums aren't letting me quote text again, so this is in response to your response to my response.

1. I never said the voice acting was good, and I fully agree that Dante was pretty one note, but so was Kratos. Yes, he had some empathy to him in the first game, but after that, it was just a pissed off psychopath on a murder spree because that's all he knew. He had no reason for it either in the other GoW games. There were plenty of times he could stop, and was even told "if you keep doing this, you will literally fuck the planet." and he just did it anyway. Why? Because grrr, that's why. They didn't expand on that either.

2. I agree Dante was a non entity, but so was Kratos, hell so are most protagonists in games. They are frequently designed to let the player pour themselves into him/her, so the fewer definitive traits you give them, the more people can identify with them. If you make them make very declarative choices, that might devide the player base, then they are less inclined to feel connected to the protagonist.

3. And Kratos runs around yelling ZUEEES!! or AREEESS!!! or whatever god he's currently aimed at. And he also fucks random women for no reason other than the GoW games seem to require a fuck mission in them. So yeah, I don't see how this is any different than the way Dante was portrayed.

4. As for his motivation, they didn't go into any details with any of it with Kratos either, after the first game. The follow up games, they basically sum it up in the tutorial. One of the gods gives him the shaft, he gets pissed, and decided to go and kill everything in his way, the end. No further development on the nuances of that desire.

So yeah, seems to me that all of your negatives about Dante apply easily to Kratos too, so I don't really see the difference. And like I said, I'm not saying I found Dante himself all that compelling, I liked the premise of the story. A man literally storms the gates of hell to save a lost love. When I played it, it wasn't really Dante in there, it was me. I was enjoying the fantasy of being this paladin-esque badass, kicking the shit out of the minions of hell, and redeeming their souls at the same time with my glowy cross of light. Contrarily, playing as Kratos, I kept wanting to stop playing, because the further I went, the worse things got. It was a railroad of utter destruction, and it sucked to be on it, because I couldn't identify or empathize with anything Kratos did, and why he chose to do it. I felt chained to a psychotic asshole who was just hellbent on burning everything around him because "Lul, fuck the world" And I'll take "Crusades, lol" over "Fuck the world, lol" any day.