Video: Dante’s Inferno Super Bowl commercial

CB Droege 8 Feb, 2010 at 7:10pm ET Article published in Gaming

Icrontic reported several days ago that EA would be making their Super Bowl ad debut with a trailer for Dante’s Inferno, the action adventure game based very loosely on the classic story. The 30 second spot featured an attention-getting dichotomy between music and visuals, and featured no in-game footage, making it more of a teaser than a preview. Also note that the original tagline (seen here) was changed to “Hell Awaits” for the Super Bowl airing.

Comments

8 Feb 2010 ~ 9:09pm Sledgehammer70 Yeah that song just did not fit... especially for the type of game it is. The sad thing is reviewers are pitting as a basic Hack-N-Slash. Overall the game has a good story & plays very well.
8 Feb 2010 ~ 9:11pm ardichoke I can't believe they would choose that song for the ad. It just doesn't mesh with the footage in the least.
8 Feb 2010 ~ 9:56pm chrisWhite This ad was terrible. What the hell happened to the creative, brilliant and super controversial marketing that has characterized Dante's Inferno since E3? Frankly, I was really expecting this to be the edgiest commercial we saw during the game and instead we got this drivel.

For any other action game I think I would have found the juxtaposition of the on-screen violence and that song clever, even compelling maybe. But for Dante's Inferno, it really pulls it's punch. The problem is that this game will live or die based 90% on the shock value. I haven't had a chance to play it yet but being panned as a God of War clone in hell (with some nice new tweaks) but it's the topless demons, dead babies, well, more demon genitalia that is supposed to set the game apart.

Don't get me wrong, that stuff shouldn't be in the ad, but it should have still been pushing it, it should have offended a very large segment of the audience and anything less was disingenuous to the core of the game and it's previous marketing.

Was it a smart marketing move to tone it down? Maybe, but I tend to think that they would have attracted a larger segment of the more extreme crowd watching the super bowl then they did coming off as just another action game no one has heard of and doesn't look particularly interesting.

As someone who thought their marketing was brilliant, even if some of it went too far even for me, I was really disappointed with this ad.
8 Feb 2010 ~ 10:19pm CB

chrisWhite wrote:

This ad was terrible. What the hell happened to the creative, brilliant and super controversial marketing that has characterized Dante's Inferno since E3? Frankly, I was really expecting this to be the edgiest commercial we saw during the game and instead we got this drivel.

For any other action game I think I would have found the juxtaposition of the on-screen violence and that song clever, even compelling maybe. But for Dante's Inferno, it really pulls it's punch. The problem is that this game will live or die based 90% on the shock value. I haven't had a chance to play it yet but being panned as a God of War clone in hell (with some nice new tweaks) but it's the topless demons, dead babies, well, more demon genitalia that is supposed to set the game apart.

Don't get me wrong, that stuff shouldn't be in the ad, but it should have still been pushing it, it should have offended a very large segment of the audience and anything less was disingenuous to the core of the game and it's previous marketing.

Was it a smart marketing move to tone it down? Maybe, but I tend to think that they would have attracted a larger segment of the more extreme crowd watching the super bowl then they did coming off as just another action game no one has heard of and doesn't look particularly interesting.

As someone who thought their marketing was brilliant, even if some of it went too far even for me, I was really disappointed with this ad.

The Super Bowl is the most censor filled event of the year. It's one of the few times that a committee goes over every ad with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that there is nothing that even comes close to tweaking the nose of American Puritanical television. They couldn't even get away with "Go to Hell" as a tagline, despite meaning it literally (and litterarily). It wasn't the word "Hell" that bothered them, it was the asking you to go there.

I don't think that they could have gotten away with anything more than this.
9 Feb 2010 ~ 12:32am chrisWhite I don't know CB, there were plenty of ads that were more edgy then Dante's Inferno, they just happened to not be games. Maybe you're right, maybe they couldn't have gotten away with anything more but it would be a double standard on the censors part.
9 Feb 2010 ~ 3:28am Obsidian They actually couldn't have gotten away with anything more. There is no maybe. They sent several ads before that and CBS rejected them. That was the absolute most they could get away with.

I thought it was a pretty good commercial. Does anyone know who directed it?
9 Feb 2010 ~ 4:05am Sledgehammer70 In all honesty the bulk of the team did not want to buy this ad spot from what I hear...
9 Feb 2010 ~ 10:57am Cliff_Forster I think Pepsi has it figured out. The value of this type of marketing is not what it used to be.

Targeting gamers on the internet just seems to make much more sense to me, when you consider a super bowl add costs upwards of three million dollars.

The add is fine for what it is, but ultimately, if the game is going to sell if the buzz around gamers is positive. If the early adopters play it and love it, it will sell, if not, it won't. Really, the best marketing in gaming is in making a product that the gamers will actually want to play. That three million would have been better spent in development.
10 Feb 2010 ~ 8:38am timuchan I liked the music with the video, I thought it played well against the Beatrice theme of The Game.

You young whipper-snappers just don't appreciate good blues. I think it was a very creative solution to the censoring.
10 Feb 2010 ~ 3:37pm ardichoke I appreciate good blues, and I love Bill Withers - Ain't No Sunshine, but that commercial was trash. It just didn't work, didn't make me want to buy the game at all. They could have spent that money on a lot better things.
10 Feb 2010 ~ 5:24pm jared http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/blogger-dante-s-inferno-super-bowl-ad-not-representative/1388671
10 Feb 2010 ~ 5:33pm chrisWhite I'm not sure how you could watch that and not realize it's not actual gameplay.
10 Feb 2010 ~ 9:28pm jared haha, yes that was my thought as well. I thought it was pretty obvious.

I thought the actual gameplay footage looked impressive as well...
10 Feb 2010 ~ 10:57pm CB The fine-print at the bottom of the ad even says that it's not representative of actual gameplay.