Dante’s Inferno gets a playable PC recomp 16 years after its Xbox 360 release

Dante’s Inferno has become one of the latest Xbox 360 games to make the jump towards native PC play through static recompilation, and it’s already doing rather more than you might expect from something carrying an alpha label. The current build runs the game, handles combat, plays its cutscenes and supports saving and loading. There’s some hitching and plenty of work left to do, but this isn’t just a technical experiment that reaches the menu before falling apart. Dante is already swinging his scythe around Hell on modern PC hardware. That makes this one worth watching.

Dante’s Inferno recomp is already properly playable

First, the obvious bit. It’s an alpha. That means crashes, freezes, graphical problems and compatibility issues are all fair game at this stage. Anyone expecting a polished PC port is looking at the wrong project. What’s interesting is how much already works.

Combat feels responsive, cinematics play and the transition from cutscene to gameplay can be surprisingly smooth. Cutscenes were apparently one of the trickier parts of the recompilation work, so getting them running correctly is more significant than it might sound.

There’s still some hitching while shaders and assets are being prepared. You can notice it when the game moves into certain scenes or loads new effects. Once things settle down, however, the action can look very smooth.

Testing on a Core i9-12900K paired with a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti also avoided the runaway CPU and GPU resource use that can cause problems with some early Xbox 360 recompilation projects. That’s only one hardware setup, of course, so it doesn’t tell us how the game will behave across a typical range of PCs. Still, it’s a useful start.

This isn’t simply Xbox 360 emulation

The interesting part is what’s happening underneath. This project uses static recompilation rather than simply running Dante’s Inferno through a conventional Xbox 360 emulator. The original Xbox 360 used PowerPC-based hardware, while modern Windows gaming PCs overwhelmingly use x86-64 processors.

Static recompilation tackles that problem by translating the game’s original machine code ahead of time so it can run on modern processors. For the player, the distinction may sound academic. In practice, it opens up some interesting possibilities.

The current Dante’s Inferno project uses Rex Glue as part of the recompilation process, with Xenia technology currently helping on the graphics side. The renderer could change later as development continues. And it will continue to change. This is very early software.

Combat already feels like Dante’s Inferno

That matters for this particular game because Dante’s Inferno doesn’t give its controls much room for error. It’s a fast third-person action game built around melee attacks, combos, dodging and crowd control. If inputs feel delayed, the whole thing quickly becomes unpleasant.

So far, input response appears to be one of the stronger parts of the recomp. Attacks and combinations register quickly, without the controls feeling separated from what’s happening on screen. There’s also potential for the PC version to move beyond the limitations of the original console hardware.

Texture scaling has already appeared in newer development builds, while additional options for internal rendering resolution are expected as the project matures. That makes higher-resolution versions of the game an obvious direction for future development. 4K at 60fps would be the tempting target. It isn’t what this alpha promises, though. For now, getting the complete game running reliably matters far more than chasing a specification sheet.

Dante’s Inferno was built for the Xbox 360 era

Released in 2010, Dante’s Inferno was developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It takes its basic setting from the Inferno section of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, but anyone expecting a careful adaptation of medieval literature is going to get quite a surprise. This is an action game first.

Dante becomes a heavily armed warrior descending through the circles of Hell, fighting monsters and large bosses while moving through increasingly elaborate environments. Its combat and fixed-camera presentation drew obvious comparisons with the God of War games, which dominated this particular style of console action during the period.

The game also pushes plenty of effects around the screen. Fire, lighting, particles, large enemies, animated environments and cinematic sequences all play a major part in its presentation. That makes it an interesting target for recompilation. There’s quite a lot going on.

Saving and loading already works

One less glamorous feature may actually be one of the most useful. Saving works. A game can be saved, closed and loaded again successfully in the current build. That doesn’t guarantee somebody can complete the entire campaign without hitting a bug, but it moves the project beyond short technical demonstrations.

You can actually make progress. The remaining problems are exactly the sort you’d expect from an alpha. Shader hitching needs improvement, different sections of the game still need testing and graphics compatibility will need continued work. Changes to the rendering system could also alter performance considerably in future builds.

But Dante’s Inferno is already past the stage where the interesting question is whether it can run. It runs. Now the question is how good the recompilation can become.

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