Tycho at Penny Arcade, on one gaming company's decision to make Dante's Inferno the basis for their new release:
What they are actually doing is reprinting the seven century old poem, appending game assets, and then sheathing the whole thing in game-specific branding.
Maybe it isn't entirely forthright, putting a crusader badass the cover of your medieval allegory - but I don't care. In fact, I support this kind of thing wholeheartedly: fact is, sometimes you got to lie to a motherfucker. If showing a dude holding a giant spine with an aftermarket scythe affixed is what it takes to get young men to read a single page of the classics, than so be it.
You could teach someone anything if you just made it part of a fun-to-play video game. If, for example, there were a RPG that required you to speak a common phrase of Japanese (e.g., "Excuse me young lady, I would like to purchase your underwear") in order to launch your devastating magic orb attack on some level seven druidic elf or some shit, you'd be fluent in no time.
Comments