Thursday, February 25, 2010

The Ubiquity of Dante's Inferno and Breasts

In the run-up to the release of the new Dante's Inferno game, even before the marketing campaign hit high-gear, I noticed that the pop culture medieval flavor of the month had moved from Beowulf to Dante's Inferno. The culmination of this phenomenon occured earlier this week, when a student showed me his 19th-century edition of The Inferno, and within three minutes of that I ran into two other non-English majors reading Dante for fun. Of course, in the case of the two non-English majors, each was inspired by the game; one said, "my friends said I'd enjoy it more if I read the book first," and the other had already played the game and said, "the book is really different."

For more on the differences and the ubiquity of Beatrice's breasts, see Got Medieval's review of the game.

As a scholarly graybeard, I'm supposed to be immune to mass market commercialization of a classic of medieval literature in console game format, but I have to confess I'm so completely swept into it that I'm actually considering buying a console system just so I can play the game. I mean, look at this trailer:



I mean, how can I resist diving into Hell after Beatrice (and her breasts) to battle demons?

3 comments:

  1. If you're going to buy a console to play a game, there are much better games to plan than this one. If you're in the market for a medieval game, Assassin's Creed II is a much better bet.

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  2. Anonymous1:21 PM

    Teachers love to assign making your own version of hell as a project. This was one kid's school project, Downloaded Inferno. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5B40HDHaY4

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  3. very good thank you admin

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