In what will go down as the most bizarre news of the year (and it’s only January!) the epic poem Dante’s Inferno is getting a re-release with artwork and packaging from the Dante’s Inferno video game. Considering the game and the poem have almost nothing to do with each other that someone at EA though this was a good idea baffles me. But then again the entire marketing for Dante’s Inferno has been pretty bizarre.

In case you’re not clear on the differences between the book and the poem there’s a comparison after the break.

The poem is heavy on allegory as 35 year old (symbolic as he has passed half his life, the biblical life expectancy being 70) Italian man Dante Alighieri is lost in the woods on Good Friday in the year 1300. After being rescued from some beasts by the Roman poet Virgil the pair have to travel through the nine circles of hell to return to the mortal world. Dante is a meek individual who faints or generally cowers during his trip through hell. What follows is a Lonely Planet like guide to the medieval conception of hell as Dante and Virgil journey through the nine circles, seeing numerous historic figures being punished for their sins, and ruminate on the nature of sin and acceptance of the divine. There’s an uncomfortable amount of nostalgia running through the whole story for the perceived fallen glory of the Roman empire, an empire built on slavery lets not forget.

The game, on the other hand, has you play a character named Dante, a brutal crusader knight who has, for reasons unknown, sewn a cloth red cross onto his chest detailing his life. After chopping up about thirty infidels in the games opening he is stabbed by one of them in the back, at which point death arrives to claim him and take him to hell for all his sins. But Kratos, I mean Dante, being a crazy bad ass knight, rejects his destiny and fights and kills death, taking his scythe as his weapon. He then rides back to Italy to find his extremely hot fiancée Beatrice murdered. During a spectral vision, in which you see her nipples a lot, it’s unveiled Beatrice has made some deal with the devil and her soul is sucked into hell. Taking Deaths scythe and a golden crucifix that shoots flaming bright crucifix blasts Dante descends into hell to rescue his beloved Nipples, I mean Beatrice, and kick the devils hairy goat ass.

Now tell me, can spot the subtle differences between these two interpretations?

After playing the demo of Dante’s Inferno (available right now on Xbox Live and PSN) I couldn’t help but see that, despite being a painfully blatant copy and paste of the superior God of War series (which I should mention is not a negative thing, as Noel Gallagher said if you're going to steal, steal from the best), there were some cool concepts in there. I mean, the game opens with you slaying the Grim Reaper, that’s pretty cool, and your finishing moves can be either ‘forgiveness’ or ‘punishment’ that fill up different skill meters to unlock different abilities.

But the fact they called it Dante’s Inferno and even package the original poem in their box art? Why? With so many myths and legends and fantasy settings why do something so mind bendingly bizarre? Could you not have just called the knight something other than Dante and used the Inferno poem as your setting? Or god forbid come up with something original.