Lead Designer Steve Desilets: Hell is a Real Place




One of the reasons why Dante’s epic poem was so important is that it satisfied a curiosity that tickles most folks imagination…’What does the afterlife look like?’
Dante literally was the Google Map of Hell for his time.  He took people into the gritty nooks and crannies of the afterlife.

Likewise, it’s very important to the Dante’s Inferno team that we make Hell feel like a very real place, one that you literally walk, run, jump, slash, hack, decapitate across every single gorgeously disturbing square foot of Lucifer’s playpen for the wicked.  The team is coming off of E3 with more tools, tricks, and cohesive vision than ever, and has been applying it across the 9 circles with feverish determination.  I’m pretty amped about the progress, and can’t wait for everybody out there to catch a glimpse.  I’m a cynical bastard, and even I have to admit, it’s pretty f-ing cool.

One aspect of creating hell that’s really important to me is that we make Hell feel like it’s teeming with life.  No one wants to go to Hell only to see a couple of columns, a box or two, and 3 enemies every 30 meters.  Games are really about delivering a fantasy, and if going to hell is the fantasy you’re portraying, you really want to see a MASS of humanity, hurled about, stuck in the walls, screaming in agony and pleading for you to help them as you walk by.  See those hills?  Aren’t they lovely?  Oh wait, they’re…moving.  Oh gross.  It’s a pile of bodies, squirming like maggots.  Oh the humanity.  Hell ain’t pretty, but it’s gonna look GOOD, that’s for damn sure.

An important part about building a fantasy world is sustaining disbelief.  Some of the best games I’ve worked on or played have one thing in common;  you feel like the world was there despite you.  It was running along just fine and then you just happened to come along.  If you hadn’t, you believe that it would be business as usual.  In action games, it’s a little harder to deliver this, since really, staging is pretty explicit when it comes to enemies, but the world as a whole will be operating in a very believable fashion otherwise, and I’m psyched about our progress thus far.  

The real trick after you get the world looking alive is how to make the player feel like they’re interacting with it.  That’s our challenge, and we’re working out some features that let you do just that, becoming an active participant in what happens to the poor suckers that found themselves in a very bad place.   

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