33 Immortals Video Game Mocks Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy By Promoting An Anti-Christian Message

33 Immortals is the latest game by Montreal-based studio Thunder Lotus Games. Releasing in early access on March 18th, the game is an unfaithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. Its premise and characters feature a strong anti-Christian message. Here’s why.

33 Immortals is an online co-op action-roguelike for 33 players. According to the official game description on the Epic Games Store you get to ‘play a damned soul, and rebel against God’s final judgment’.

Christianity is centered around the idea of The Holy Trinity. Christians seek redemption and sanctity by believing and acting according to God’s commandments. God is represented by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the case of 33 Immortals, the player is a ‘damned soul’ who must ‘rebel against God’. This is a subversion of everything that Christianity stands for.

The game features characters from Dante Alighieri’s poetic masterpiece, which is considered one of the most distinguished works in Italian Literature, and one of the seminal works of Western Literature. Two of those characters are Virgil and Beatrice. In The Divine Comedy, Virgil initially guides Dante through Inferno or Hell. Virgil is a masculine figure of human reason and classical wisdom, representing what mankind can achieve without divine intervention. On the other hand, Beatrice becomes Dante’s guide since Virgil can’t reach Paradise for being a pagan born before Christ. Beatrice embodies divine grace, love, and spiritual guidance.

33 Immortals, as expected, performs its own twist on both Virgil and Beatrice. The developers not only gender swap, but race swap Virgil as evidenced by some of the promotional artwork published on Instagram:

The dev team behind 33 Immortals thinks it is a good idea to eliminate any trace of the original Virgil by turning him into a mere ‘scholar’.

Beatrice is now the ‘Leader of the Rebellion’. She is the ‘appointed leader by souls of the damned, she empowers and helps them trace their path to eternal life’. In the game, Beatrice is no longer the mediator between Dante and God–she is now the leader of the rebellion against God.

The game even puts players to fight Adam and Eve–the first two humans created by the love of God. This is evidenced by the following YouTube gameplay video:

It’s more than evident that the dev team behind this game is taking creative freedom to the extreme by not only race-gender swapping characters, but corrupting their original intentions. Western studios haven’t learned the lesson yet that Christian themes should be treated with respect and reverence.

Why is this game trying to adulterate not only Dante’s works but Biblical traditions?

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