Monster's Ball Writer Works on Dante's Inferno

Electronic Arts, as the publisher, and Visceral Games, as the developer, have announced that they have hired Will Rokos as the writer who will shape the narrative of the upcoming Dante's Inferno. Rokos is an Academy Award nominee for the original screenplay of Monster's Ball in 2001 and his main task in the Dante's Inferno team will be to take the most important elements of the poem the Divine Comedy and translate them so that the modern gamer picks up on them in the videogame.

Will Rokos said that “Taking such a naturally rich and deep universe and adapting for the video game has been one of the most interesting and challenging projects I’ve worked on. I really got into re-imagining Dante as a flawed hero with a dark past, and his determination to save the love of his life from a terrible fate. It was a truly unique experience to re-create one man’s hell, one circle at a time.”

The nine circles depicted in The Divine Comedy, limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud and treachery, are all stages to be completed by the player who takes on the role of Dante. The gamer will need to battle through demons, supernatural monsters, damned souls while also navigating the complex architecture of Hell in order to reach his loved Beatrice.

EA is saying that it is keeping the structure and the overall themes of the classic poem while updating them in order to make sure that the modern gamer understands the internal conflict of the main character and gets a kick out of fighting the creatures inhabiting Hell.

Dante's Inferno is set to be launched for the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the PlayStation Portable handheld. The release date is set for February 9, 2010 in North America and for three days later on the European market.