The announcements at Spike’s Videogame Awards weren’t exactly shockers. Gears of War 2 downloadable content? That’s like telling someone they’re going to get a pickle with their burger. Then again, a game based on Dante’s Inferno developed by EA Redwood (Dead Space) is a little out of leftfield. Games based on literature are not common. Better examples, like Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text adventure, are even rarer. (It’s actually debatable whether or not Hitchhiker’s should even count as an adaptation considering it was more of cross-medium narrative Adams retold for a decade in the first place.) More often than not, when a work of literature crosses into games, it either becomes something else entirely like the Call of Cthulu games or it’s a tragic mess like Universal Interactive’s Fellowship of the Ring. The linearity of fiction – and epic poetry for that matter – does not suit even the most linear game types. Yes, Signor Alighieri’s poetry is outwardly suited for game adaptation. The man’s vision of Hell is broken into levels, each one filled with, as Cole pointed out, plenty of enemy types. But sociopolitical commentary isn’t something you can convey through bludgeoning demons with blunt crucifixes.
I’m a strong believer, as I’ve mentioned here on 61FPS before, that most everything doesn’t need to be turned into something else. Videogames shouldn’t be adapted into movies and vice versa. Prose and poetry, rigid, intractable forms of expression, are the antithesis of games, especially action games that demand the player have constant agency in the narratives progression, albeit largely implied. Not to mention they convey everything through language instead of through moving images, sound, and digital interaction. But adaptations are an inevitability when a story is good and part of me wonders why we don’t see literature being transformed into games with the same frequency of, if not film, than television.
It would probably be smart to wait and see just what Dante’s Inferno is as a game before claiming it’s the start of a trend. But in the meantime, I’m just going to continue being mystified by its existence.
Related links:
Unknowable Horrors and Spiraling Madness: H.P. Lovecraft and Videogames
Trailer Review: Dante's Inferno
Nintendo: Two Screens of Literature, the E-Book Trojan Horse, and Console Evolution
The Three Stigmata of The Halcyon Company: Philip K. Dick Comes to Games
Along Came a Gamer: James Patterson and Authors in Games
Summon Baphomet With Pokemon