Strubes said:
Because they can translate it fine depending on the narrative of the story.
The problem with translating any heavily symbolic written work into any visual medium (video games, movies, comics, paintings, sculptures, etc.) is that only one interpretation can be represented. For a good example, take the Ents from the Lord of the Rings. In the actual written version of the Lord of the Rings, Ents are large, anthropomorphic, creatures whose attributes and characteristics are always described as tree-like. Their movements are stiff, their skin is as tough as bark, when they walk their toes touch the ground before their heels do, when they grip the stone used to build the ring around Orthanc it is described as crumbling and disintegrating in their hands the way roots dig into the earth, and so on. But Ents are never described
as trees, they don't actually have roots or leaves or bark, that is simply how to best describe an Ent, and so what they actually look like is a bit of a mystery, up to the imagination of the reader.
In Peter Jackson's version of the Lord of the Rings, there is no interpretation, because one artist's rendering of what an Ent
might look like is chosen and that's all the audience ever sees. Jackson chose to
visually portray
one possible version of an Ent, and in doing so made several assumptions about the interpretation of Tolkien's words. One thing is certain, Ents are not trees, they are simply tree-like, but although that description works for the books it would never have worked for the movie because something finite and explicit has to be seen.
The same problem arises with the Balrog, which again are described as humanoid in the books, but the movie decided to emphasize their characteristics of fire and shadow. Again, many conceptual difficulties occur when trying to visually depict words that are meant to excite a reader's imagination, not provide blueprints for recreation.
This is the type of problem the designers of this game are going to run into
every step of the way, to the point where the game really is going to be more their creation than a representation of what Dante wrote. If they are going to be faithful to the story then the game will literally be like no other before, and the fact that they have described it as Dead Space and God of War clearly shows they were not able to do that. That doesn't mean its going to be a bad game, it just means its going to be very far removed from Dante's Inferno. And the simple fact that the character you control in the game has
weapons, weapons that he presumably uses to
kill or
injure the inhabitants of Hell, shows they have no interest in preserving the original narrative.
So I still question why they'd use this license at all. Its not as though Dante's Inferno is a high profile license. The only people who recognize it are people who are familiar with the written work, and who are going to criticize the game for not being an accurate representation of the book.
