Dante’s Infern-AO
The recently released Dante’s Inferno Developer Diary seems to be sending a lot of gamers running for the hills with its disturbing imagery. For some, like me, this is more of an attraction. I love to see developers pushing the boundaries. By no means do I consider myself sensitive or easily offended, so seeing more mature content in games doesn’t bother me.
The diary featured a look at the second level of Hell, Lust. Here we see several gratuitous and rather gruesome sexual images. Everything can be seen, from deformed reproductive organs to sexual acts frozen in stone. There appears to be almost no censorship, and this worries me.
It doesn’t worry me in that I’m afraid I’ll be offended or disgusted, no; I’m worried it will be slapped with an Adults Only rating. From what has been shown, this looks like it’s shaping up to be a wonderful story-driven and visually fantastic game. If it’s tagged with that AO, one of two things will happen. Either the developers will censor by redoing a lot of the art to fit within the boundaries of an M rating, or EA and Visceral will stick to their art and have their sales take a huge hit.
I would really like to see this game remain uncensored, for it is so rare that we see a developer willing to push the envelope so far as to create a truly realistic and compelling experience for the gamer. Whether or not these things are offensive, how immersive would your gaming experience be if there was a leaf covering every “unacceptable” thing in Hell? Here’s hoping we see Dante and all his disturbing glory fully intact come release!
Really interesting. Certainly EA wouldn’t touch AO with a ten foot stick. I don’t think any game publisher would. So it will be interesting to see what makes the game. I can’t imagine any of those concept art pieces of sex positions making the game – I can see those being included in the video just to get some publicity.
I may have missed something, but I didn’t see anything overly suggestive, outside of the concept art. Well, except breasts. Which actually… may be the first time I’ve seen nudity in a game.
It does remain to be seen if that concept art will make it into the final game, however aside from the breasts I noticed several things that appeared to be somewhat disfigured or mutilated genitalia on some of the monsters. As well as just plain old genitalia.
I would just really like to see that concept art make it in, I have really wondered why decaptitaions and limb removal stays within an M rating, but as soon as nudity or sex is involved it gets an AO. I’d like to see an exception, show us that our culture has advanced enough that we can be accepting of that, and I’ll be impressed.