Soundtrack: something creating a suspended atmosphere, like a combination of those two pieces:
I imagined this scene while listening to them both simultaneously.
It's night. We are shown empty streets of a destroyed city, as if we were running through them. We can hear rapid footsteps and a breath of someone running. The street seems completely empty, and we see can see abandoned cars, signs of little explosions, cracked doors and windows, even some corpses littering the street. Not all of them are humans, some have strange shapes and body parts. Dark stains are covering the walls and the street, we understand that it is probably blood.
The running person we are "following" (although we can't see them still) takes a sudden turn in a crossing large street, and the screen goes black for a moment.
The music turns down a bit, and we hear now calm footsteps. A voice starts reciting slowly, accompaining the images.
Midway upon the journey of our life
The camera moves up slowly to show a wooden pavement of what we can understand is a library. On a far corner of it, we see an old armchair, and, resting against it, a katana in a black sheath. An elegantly dressed man is walking towards it (since he is placed just over the camera, for now we can only see the back of his feet and his lower legs, and the lower part of his black coat). From the voice and the clothes we can clearly recognize him as Vergil.
I found myself within a forest dark
As Vergil slowly walks towards the armchair a falling sheet covers the camera, and once again we have a change of scene.
The same effect of a sheet flying thorugh the air is used again, but this time it is a newspaper sheet flying through the street of the city of before, but this time the street seems to be leading outside the town, and in the distance, after an open field, we can see a forest of dark trees whose leaves are shaking in the wind.
For the straightforward path had been lost
Now we are seeing things from the eyes of the person who is running through the field in the direction of the forest. For a moment, we catch a glimpse of a rapid momevement on the grass to our left, and the person tries to speed up. The breath now comes out even more strained.
When we pass the first trunk of the forest, the scene changes again to the library.
The camera now is showing a table covered in ancient books of balck magic, then slowly moves again to Vergil, who is standing near the armchair, reading a small book with a red-brownish hard cover. The camera moves to a close-up of the cover of the book, and we can briefly read that it is Dante Alighieri's Inferno before we are brought back to the scene in the forest, as Vergil's voice continues reading.
Ah! how hard a thing it is to say
We are now seeing the silhouette of a young man running through the woods, sometimes tripping, and casting rapid and frightened glances backwards and on his sides.
Now Vergil's voice is a little more concitated and hard in reciting the poem.
What this forest savage, rough, and stern
As the boy continues his sprint through the forest (we are seeing him from a certain distance and from his right side now), a large beastly shadow quickly passes in front of the camera, and we are sent back to the library.
The last line is once again recited in a calmer voice.
Which in the very thought renews the fear
We see Vergil picking up Yamato from the armchair, and solemnly exiting the library, closing the door behind himself.
As the music rises in volume again, we are back in the forest, seeing things from the boy's eyes. He is desperately running, but continuously trips over roots and hurts braches, his breath more and more erratic. Shadows are everywhere around him, appearing and disappearing between the woods.
The boy trips once again, and this time falls. He quickly turns to look at the sky, and between the branches of the trees sees a large full moon. The music rises louder, reaching a peak, and the monstrous shadows of three beast-shaped demons jump on him. The boy covers his face with his hand, and the screen goes black again. The music abruptly stops, replaced by the high-pitched scream of the boy. Then there is silence.
After a few seconds of silence and black screen, we are given a last image of the book Vergil was reading, laying open on the armchair of the library, while Vergil's voice, now more cavernous, declaims
All hope abandon, ye who enter in.
The screen fades to black once again, and the game title appears....
