We had an icky feeling when we first watched the Mass: We Pray teaser. Not because of the toll excessive devotional gameplay might take on our souls, but because we were pretty sure we were being virally marketed to in some way or another. It turns out, our unease (also felt by a few others, including The Escapist) was spot on, as We Pray has been revealed as the latest move in the Dante’s Inferno marketing campaign’s fight against good taste.
Clicking to pre-order the game on the website or to get a better look at the controllers, now triggers a message about heresy, along with a trailer for Dante’s Inferno and a link to the Facebook app, “Go to Hell.” Sorry if you were looking forward to We Pray!
“The denizens of Hell stole the woman he loved … but they didn’t realize they were messing with the wrong 14th century Italian poet. In a world where the damned scream out for absolution, one man will fight for justice. It’s time for some serious payback, and the Devil just wrote a check he can’t cash. Electronic Arts presents … Dante’s Inferno. Next Spring, there’s going to be Hell to pay.” (Alternate closer: “Next Spring, it’s damned if you do, damned if you die.”)
It’s official: Visceral Games staffers Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey (best known for Dead Space) have taken positions at a new Activision studio in Foster City, California, called Sledgehammer Games. This tidily clears up two rumors we’ve been hearing. Yes, Schofield and Condrey went to Activision. Yes, the trademark for “Sledgehammer Games” is for their new studio!
As for the small matter of what the studio is doing … all Activision says is that it’s an “as-yet-unannounced new videogame.” It might be called Bloodhunt. It might be an “innovative” action game. Kotaku posits that it might even be Activision’s new James Bond game, given that Schofield worked on From Russia with Love back at EA. Whatever it is, we’re sure it will be totally visceral … you know, like a hit from a sledgehammer.
As a service to those of you thinking about it anyway (i.e. all of us), we’ve got the Peter Gabriel video after the break.
If an Electronic Arts job listing is any indication, Dead Space 2 is set to receive a gameplay feature that none of us saw coming — online multiplayer support. The listing, which calls for the aid of a “Senior Online Level Designer,” mentions that the new hire should “be able to work collaboratively with Creative Director and Online Producer to create extremely fun, satisfying and polished multiplayer levels.” Those who desire to create droll, unsatisfying and shoddy multiplayer levels should probably look for employment elsewhere.
We’d call this move surprising based on the fact that we have no idea how it would work out. Given the first game’s heavy focus on “strategic dismemberment,” we can only imagine that multiplayer matches will quickly devolve into hilarious, appendage-removing duels. Kind of like Bushido Blade meets the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (Actually, that sounds pretty awesome!)
The Dante’s Inferno game concept — a totally brutal action-adventure based on Dante Alighieri’s epic poem — seems like a hard sell to us, but it was no problem getting EA on board. As it turns out, EA was all in from the very beginning, according to Visceral creative director Jonathan Knight’s recollection during a PlayStation Blog interview (that you can watch after the break). He got the go-ahead “pretty much right away,” as EA executives apparently saw “the potential in the mythology” glowing green before their very eyes.
“Nobody’s really taken on that kind of medieval Christian notion of the afterlife as a very real place that you go to, you know, just under the ground, and there’s monsters and demons and rivers,” Knight said. “It’s just a crazy, fantastical, incredible vision that Dante Alighieri had for Hell, and my execs immediately saw the potential there for a real game.”
In addition to the appeal of Hell — a concept that “everybody has some knowledge of” — we can imagine that EA appreciated what is basically a licensed game based on a public domain property, especially these days.
Pre-order ‘Mass: We Pray’ for free Dante’s Inferno trailer originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
