Hell. It’s not just a children’s soccer game that takes up an entire Saturday morning, but a possibly real place a lot of us might end up if we accidentally choose the wrong religion (I’m putting all my eggs in the snake handling Pentecostal basket). Since Dante wrote that divine comedy, Hell or some variation of it has found itself represented in all forms of media. In film, we’ve seen it in classics like L inferno and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. In literature, it’s the setting for books like Eric of the Discworld series and C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. On television, it’s 9JKL. Rather, I’m in Hell when I’m stuck watching 9JKL.
In video games, we’ll perhaps get our most vivid interpretation of it when Agony launches next month on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. But long before that, my favorite depiction of Hell was created in a little-known game called Bayonetta 2.
Technically called Inferno, we were given slight glimpses of this nightmare realm in the first Bayonetta anytime one of those defeated angels were dragged down to it. In the sequel, Kamiya and company brought their interpretation of the underworld to life in the most skin-crawlingly way possible. Hell here isn't jagged rocks and pits of lava where the souls of the unworthy are tortured for eternity. Inferno is alive, a connectable series of living landmasses crawling with neon-tinged flora and moving, creeping, crawling fauna.
It's grotesque. We run along giant centipedes as they connect the floating landmasses that can change without notice. The land throws a fit and suddenly the path we're on changes. It's alive, and it doesn't want me there. Our journey to save Jeanne is littered with battles against insect-inspired demons that would make entomophobics throw the Wii U tablet to the ground and run out of the room screaming.
But that's just chapter 10. Chapter 11 is an awesome boss battle where Madama Butterfly gets her due and after that is an AMAZING horserace/battle against the Lumen Sage. The entirety is an amazing setpiece in a game made up entirely of amazing setpieces and is easily the best production of Hell the medium has ever seen.
via destructoid https://www.destructoid.com/bayonetta-2-s-depiction-of-hell-is-the-greatest-in-all-of-gaming-487493.phtml