Fiction, Computer Games and Dante’s Inferno

Here’s an article by Tim Martin in The Telegraph about how computer games are having a growing influence on literature.  As the game’s trailer shows, the upcoming computer game, Dante’s Inferno, will be a wild ride into hell.  I’m sure the game is full of levels as most games are and as Dante’s original literary Inferno certainly is.  It will also most likely contain a good sampling of quotations from the original since you’ve got two poets running around in hell making observations and explaining things for all of us.  In the electronic version I’m sure that Dante will get to cut off many limbs and heads and such things.  I don’t know – is gaming influencing literature or the other way around?  Maybe a little.  I think gaming is having more of an effect on film making.  Maybe the answer is in the trailer.  I also think that if you are going to make a game based on Inferno, you should not make it an action game.  You should make it an open-ended exploration of hell.  Just that.  No more required.