LogInDante's Purgatorio would take you through Mount Purgatory.
Visceral
Dante's Inferno is almost 16 years old, and by now, we could have had a sequel to the story, but fate (and EA) had other plans, so it was canceled. However, the next game was not just a vague idea: according to the documents received by IGN, the story has already been written, taking the player through the tiers of Mount Purgatory.
The sequel was called Dante’s Inferno 2: Purgatorio, and IGN got its hands on its concept art, cutscene storyboards, screenshots of rudimentary level geometry, and a 240-page script written by Joshua Rubin, Assassin’s Creed 2's co-writer, which outlines every stage, boss battle, and plot point.
Visceral
The materials suggest that the game would have blended Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy with John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which shows Lucifer not entirely evil but rather morally ambiguous.
The inspiration for the sequel was also different compared to the previous game.
“The first game was heavily influenced by God of War,” one former Visceral employee told IGN. “At the time we were working on the second [game], Uncharted 2 was having a big influence on single player games: cutscenes and quick time events were being replaced with scripted gameplay sequences where the player has full control over the character.”
Visceral
In each level of Mount Purgatory, Dante would have to find Vision Caves, where he revisits the Seven Deadly Sins he had surrendered to in the past.
Rubin imagined the caves as “playable cutscenes” inspired by immersive theater productions like Sleep No More: “Dante – in Spirit Mode – moves through his memories like a ghost, reliving moments of sin that shaped his love story with Beatrice back in Florence.”
Visceral
One of the game's innovations was climbing the mountain: "ascending up to Heaven as opposed to descending down into Hell." Jonathan Knight, the original game’s creative director, wanted it to be "the best climbing game out there, better than Uncharted or Tomb Raider."
"Unlike those games, where pushing the stick glued you to a wall, we wanted to keep you on [your] toes and instill a real sense of vertigo," shared a former Visceral employee.
Visceral
These segments would have been like puzzles, where you'd have to search for graspable ledges, avoiding crumbling rocks and enemy attacks, and helping companions ascend along with you. "Midway through the campaign, Dante would have unlocked an ability that reveals previously unseen 'Angelic Architecture,' structures normally visible only to angels and redeemed souls, opening up new routes through the environment," writes IGN.
Visceral
Visceral also wanted to introduce co-op and multiplayer modes to the sequel: “This was a time when every game needed to have DLC and online play because companies were afraid of people selling their discs back to GameStop.”
The modes would have seen angels fighting demons, but the game never got to it before it was canceled.
Visceral
If you want to see what would have been in every level, read IGN's full description. All I'm going to say is that the final battle would have ended in an epic way: with Dante possessing Lucifer and using the scythe to make him rip out his own guts.
Visceral
But there's more. The documents prove the existence of Dante’s Inferno 3: Paradiso, or some ideas for it. Apparently, God’s plan is to "destroy the Christian afterlife we’ve journeyed through, to tear down the unfair, overly strict system of punishment and redemption administered by Michael and his fellow angels, and establish a new order based purely on love."
“I remember thinking that if Lucifer’s invasion is part of God’s plan, then that plan cannot result in the maintenance of the status quo,” said Rubin. “On the contrary, God saw his system corrupted by his angels, over-administered, overly bureaucratic. He wanted everything torn down, and the only way to do that was to make a man fight his way through it all.”
Visceral
The war between Heaven and Hell would spread to Earth, and Dante would fight together with his daughter in medieval Florence.
Unfortunately, we won't see these plans come to fruition unless EA gets a major nostalgia boost, but it's not news nowadays: “The number of games that don’t get a sequel but should,” Rubin said. “It takes an entire game for a team to gel, to figure out how to work together. Often, it’s only in the second game where things really come to life.”
Would you like to travel with Dante more? Subscribe to our Newsletter, join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.