Some have argued that Visceral Games’ transformation of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem, The Divine Comedy, into a God of War-esque action game borders on heresy already. What luck; Heresy is the subject of the newest Dante’s Inferno Developer Diary!

The main focus of the Heresy video is fiery city of Dis and the concept of Dante’s ability to judge the souls he finds therein. The player can choose to either absolve them of their sins, which seems earns them a ticket to Heaven and increases the power of Dante’s holy cross, or punish them further, which causes the power of Death’s scythe to grow.

Visceral acknowledges the elephant in the room as well, admitting that significant liberties were taken with the source material. They even go so far as to admit that the original source material would “suck as a game” if adapted literally. It’s at least nice to see them own up to just wanting to make a badass game about slicing your way through Hell.

The team also speaks on the controversy surrounding the game and its rather sensitive subject matter. I mean, you can’t really have a game that draws this closely on modern religion, especially the topics of Hell and damnation, and not expect a little bit of uproar. Still, I’ll bet you that the God of War team didn’t have to deal with modern-day Hellenic pagans getting all up in arms over inaccurate portrayals of the Greek gods. Gotta pick your subject matter carefully, kids.