Dante: from text to TV

"Even if they only say a few words, it's going to be based on the poem. So I think a lot of that will come across, and I hope at the end of it that it feels you're fighting your way through this interactive version of the literature, but in a way that doesn't get in the way of having a good time, which is really what it's all about."

That's the stuff EA is keeping; but changes are manifold. The story itself gets the most brutal scything. As Knight notes, "If you've read it you'll know it's not famous for its conflict and drama." So EA has "beefed it up". Out goes Virgil as guide, now reinstalled as the dislocated voice of the poem; in comes Lucifer with a vastly expanded role over his appearance in Inferno in the centre circle of Hell.

Frozen in ice, Dante's devil has three faces, with the great traitors Brutus, Cassius and Judas being tortured in his foul mouths, while three pairs of eyes and wings twitch savagely. Now that's what we call material for an end-of-game boss.

"Yes, Lucifer is kind of the ultimate level boss in the ninth circle," says Knight. "He's a great character and also a challenging one and we're not talking about him a lot today except to say obviously you can expect him in the game.

"We gave him a bigger part that he has in the poem. Virgil talks about him, and it's pretty obvious it's his kingdom, but in terms of his appearance in the poem it's fairly limited and that's definitely a place where we've taken some liberties and given him a much bigger part in the core story of Dante and Beatrice."

But it's Dante's character which undergoes the most controversial transformation. And we're not just talking about dressing him up as a soldier and giving him a magic cross and that hooded guy's razor to play with. In the game, EA is presenting him as a "deeply flawed character" who is "guilty of far worse sins than the poet was". Ooh, he wouldn't like that. Not a jot.

But Dante as double-hard warrior-bloke isn't that big a stretch at least, since it's recorded that he fought in the military in 1289. And there's a menacing, thuggish quality to his statue in the Piazza di Santa Croce in Florence. We wouldn't spill his Peroni.

Would Dante approve of his sinful, rampaging virtual self? Not likely, since he hated materialism; but then he had no qualms about grave-robbing the author of the Aeneid for his own purposes.

Having seen almost nothing of the story in-game, we're not in a position to judge whether EA's hope to tell one of the great love stories through the medium of an intentionally mindless beat-'em-up has a genuine likelihood of success. It's a big ask, to say the least; and EA is, of course, acutely aware of the need to avoid Inferno being dismissed as a mere God of War clone (which in gameplay terms it is; albeit a very promising one).

But if the game does well (and you can read our first impressions, and check out the brand new trailer), you know what's coming next.

"If you don't focus on the first one you'll never make the second one," chips in Redwood Shores studio boss Glen Schofield. "So that's the truth; focus on this one, and yeah obviously we'd love to make all of them."

Whether they get the chance, of course, remains to be seen.