This project had the chance to match the impact of Assassin’s Creed 2. Dante's Purgatorio was to show the war of hell and heaven

If someone were to make a list of the most missed game development studios that shut down in the 2010s, Visceral Games would definitely rank high on it. While the Dead Space series is the standout title from this team, Dante’s Inferno, a slasher game based on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy that came out in 2010, also managed to gather a bunch of dedicated fans. Unfortunately, it didn't do well enough for Electronic Arts, the publisher, to fund a sequel.

However, the sequel to Dante's Inferno was in the works, and the team behind it had already done a ton of pre-production work (they had about 240 pages of documentation) before it got the axe. Although details about it remained a mystery for a long time, an article published in early November by IGN provides us with a very detailed insight into what this title was supposed to offer. While the author tried to summarize the whole game, I'm going to take a different approach and highlight some other aspects.

Climbing through purgatory

Let's start with the fact that Dante’s Purgatorio (or Dante’s Inferno 2: Purgatorio, as it's unclear which title EA would have chosen) was meant to be a direct sequel to Dante’s Inferno. This time, the story was supposed to move to Purgatory, with the main character, Dante Alighieri himself (portrayed here as a fearless crusader), getting caught right in the middle of a war between heavenly angels and hellish creatures.

Dante’s Purgatorio wasn't meant to be a simple continuation. The devs wanted their work to be what Assassin’s Creed II was to its predecessor. What's interesting, the script for this game was co-written by Joshua Rubin, who was also a co-writer for Ezio Auditore's adventure. The tried-and-true formula was to be improved with new features, with an expanded climbing system taking center stage. In an interview with IGN, Jonathan Knight, the creative director, revealed:

The creators were aiming high, and to achieve their goal, they wanted to give us a system that wouldn't just automate the whole process by sticking the character to the wall. Instead, each climbing section would be like a puzzle, where we'd have to figure out the best path through narrow ledges and crumbling rocks. The devs also wanted to abandon the arena-tunnel-arena scheme that the first installment of the series relied on, replacing it with new, less conventional level designs.

Dante’s Purgatorio. Source: IGN.

A bloody journey

Nevertheless, exploring the locations and battling enemies would be the main focus here. On our path, we would encounter both hellish creatures and hostile angels. Among the opponents, the bosses were definitely worth mentioning – their battles were supposed to be epic, partly because they were huge. We would be up against some serious foes like Lilith with her scythe, the great vicar of St. Peter, Archangel Gabriel, Beatrice (as the queen of hell), the giant Phlegyas, Archangel Uriel, and finally Lucifer, whom we would face in the ultimate showdown.

Just like in the first game of the series, the battles would be fast-paced, keeping you on your toes. You'd need to stay on the move, smoothly chain attacks into combos, and juggle all the weapons and skills available. We'd have a new scythe (which Dante would take from Lilith), a cross (as the main ranged weapon), and some spiritual abilities (Spirit Powers) at our disposal. The latter would include a leap that allows covering big distances in the air, taking control of enemies' bodies, dodging and sprinting, or angelic wings that enable Dante to fly. Over time, the main character would also gain the ability to see angelic structures, which would affect the appearance of the locations visited.

Speaking of locations, purgatory was to take the form of a mountain, being somewhat the opposite of hell. Similar to Dante’s Inferno, the game world would be divided into seven circles. In some of them, Dante would visit so-called Vision Caves, which let creators add flashbacks from the character's life. This way, he could confront his past mistakes and face the personifications of his sins.

Dante’s Purgatorio. Source: IGN.

Alone against the forces of hell and heaven

Why would Dante have to face off against both demons and angels? Well, you could say his situation in purgatory is "complicated." Even though he has allies like Virgil, his patron saint Lucy, and Beatrice (in her human form, not as the queen of hell), angels like Gabriel and Uriel see him as an enemy of paradise and would do anything to take him down. At least that's how it would start, because eventually Gabriel would become Dante's ally. Uriel, on the other hand, would turn out to be another traitor of the heavens after Lucifer, switching to the side of evil during the game.

But is it really the side of evil? The devs wanted to portray Lucifer as a morally ambiguous character, citing John Milton's Paradise Lost as one of their sources of inspiration, which might allow players to see him from a slightly different perspective.

Even though the end of the adventure might make it seem like Dante messed up and let hellish forces into heaven instead of saving purgatory, it turns out that it was all part of a bigger divine plan. Its culmination would be in the third part of the series, called Dante’s Paradiso (or Dante’s Inferno 3: Paradiso), which would show a heavenly war mostly taking place on Earth. The third installment was supposed to take us to places like medieval Florence. This divine plan was intended to involve a complete overhaul of the afterlife, abandoning the existing harsh system of rewards and punishments in favor of a system entirely based on love.

Dante’s Purgatorio. Source: IGN.

Multiplayer

Even though Dante’s Purgatorio would mainly be a single-player game, it would still reflect its time, when publishers often pushed developers to include multiplayer modes. The reason for this was to keep the product around longer and delay the time when players would start selling their discs in droves. In the sequel to Dante's Inferno, there was supposed to be a co-op and competitive mode where you could jump into battles between angels and demons.

What happened next?

In the end, Dante’s Inferno never got a sequel. After this release, the creators shifted their focus to developing the Dead Space series, and later, they were assigned to work on Battlefield Hardline. Their last released game was Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel, which launched in March 2013. Although the creators later worked on the Ragtag project (developed under the supervision of Amy Hennig), it was canceled in October 2017, and the studio was subsequently closed. But that's a topic for another story...

Dante’s Purgatorio. Source: IGN.

Dante's Purgatorio

cancelled

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• Overview

• Visceral Games / EA Redwood Shores
• slasher (games)
• cancelled games
• Necro Gaming