Dante's Inferno (video game)/Headscratchers

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• Near the end of Gluttony, Lucifer implies that the people Dante fought against in the Third Crusade are in a different Hell, suggesting that there's some degree of All Myths Are True going on and each faith has its own afterlife. Normally, I'd consider this an acceptable break from the poem, except that the virtuous pagans and various Greek and Roman mythical beings are still in the Christian Hell. Inconsistency much?
  • Maybe the implication is supposed to be that just all different facets of monotheism are true? Or that geographical divides somehow play in? There doesn't seem to be any Hindu or Buddhist damned, either.
  • It could be that this hell existed before the rise of Christianity/Judaism and God just appropriated it and set the Greek and Roman mythical beings to work there.
  • Or Lucifer is just screwing with him. He's the damned devil, lying is one of the things he does.
  • It's possible the game developers didn't want to feature Dante fighting damned Muslims, considering the current political climate and various controversies surrounding fundamentalist Islam.
  • Lucifer said something along the lines of "This isn't their Hell, it's yours". A lot of people seem to take this to mean that the Christian Hell is different from the Muslim one, but I took it more as "This isn't Random Saracen #20934's Hell, it's Dante's". Lucifer is in control for almost the entire game, and he does make a point of highlighting Dante's sins with what he sees in Hell; Dante runs into way more people from his life than seems likely by random chance, so having him fight a bunch of crusaders is an extension of this, hammering in the point that what he did was evil. Many or even all of the Muslims who died in the crusades are probably in there somewhere, but showing them to Dante would if anything help validate his actions in life, so Lucifer leaves them off the tour.
• Why is there a city in Hell anyway? Is that where all the fallen angels and other resident demons who conduct all the torment to the souls actually live, or does Lucifer offer some souls a place to rest once in a while? What's the going rate on apartments there? Who's the mayor? Does it have a stable economy? For that matter, what does it take for you to actually rise above having to suffer the torments of Hell? Does Cleopatra still have to deal with the stinging winds while she's sending other lustful sinners into that tornado?
  • The city of Dis was in the original poem, and thus was an obvious thing to implement into the game. To get into the other details is pretty futile, as the city is probably only a resting place for the damned and the demons.
  • From a poetic standpoint, the city walls mark the border between the passive sins (sins resulting from inability to control natural urges) of the first five circles and the active sins (sins resulting from malicious intent) of the last four.
• In the beginning of the game, you face enemies covered in hellfire that can only be put out with the cross before they can be attacked with the scythe. But in the rest of the game, hellfire becomes barriers that don't disappear until you kill all of the enemies in a "room". How come you can't just put those barriers out with the cross? It's made of the same fire.
  • Maybe the barrier is simply too much big for being put out with the cross.
• Why you keep finding certain specific demons in other circles of hell, like Temptresses in Greed or Gluttonous in Malebolge? Shouldn't they be restricted to a specific area?
  • Maybe you've been breaking down the barriers that would ordinarily prevent intermingling?
  • My best guess is that in hell the sinners turn into the demon whose sin they did the most of. Therefore extremely lustful... women? get turned into seductresses and the extremely gluttonous can turned into gluttons. This is used to show what sin they were most guilty of. However to give proper punishment to them (since the punishment gets worse the worse the sin) they are found in the circle of hell that they did their worst in. Thus a prostitute who killed one of her clients would be a seductress but be found in either violence or maybe treachery depending on the circumstance.

Or Lucifer might be messing with you.

• • Maybe they are chasing you because you destroyed their specific hell?