Cthulhu Continues Gaming Heritage From Dark Corners

Thanks to GameSpy for their interview with the creators of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, as the long-in-development survival horror PC FPS, based on the Chaosium RPG, in turn based on HP Lovecraft's 'weird fiction' writings, discusses its setting ("The majority of the action takes place in the sea port of Innsmouth, the setting for the famous Lovecraft story 'The Shadow over Innsmouth'"), and uniquely Lovecraftian gameplay traits: ("The concept of Jack's mental health and its slow degradation is one of the core concepts in Dark Corners of the Earth. This loss in sanity will risk the development of specific mental conditions; these include shaking, blurred vision, hallucinations, dizziness, and panic.") As for its previous videogame heritage, Lovecraftian influences seem particularly noticeable in id's Quake series - but if in doubt, you can always Cthuugle for it.

Comments

A prequel of things to come?

[MMaestro]

First Cthulhu, next Doom 3? PC gaming seems to be getting a lot more horror based games lately, opting for the slower, more tense atmosphere games instead of the fast paced action Quake 3 Arena was or Half-Life (1).

Interresting gameplay element

[JFMulder]

The concept of Jack's mental health and its slow degradation is one of the core concepts in Dark Corners of the Earth. This loss in sanity will risk the development of specific mental conditions; these include shaking, blurred vision, hallucinations, dizziness, and panic

If you like this idea, then I suggest you try Shadowhearts, a PS2 RPG, that has something similar. Basically, each character have sanity points. At the beginning of each round in a fight, each character lose sanity points. When you reach zero, the character starts panicking, goes berzerk, etc. I can't tell more since I never actually played the game, I had a friend show it to me, but it seemed nice at the time. I think there's also a sequel right around the corner.

Re:Interresting gameplay element

[saqq]

Eternal Darkness for the gamecube also has these gameplay elements

Re:Interresting gameplay element

[DAldredge]

The CoC PnP RPG (DTIABOA(DAMN That Is A Bunch Of Acronymns)) has that also.

Hell, if your character stays sane for 2 game sessions you are doing good!

Re:Interresting gameplay element

[TechnoPops]

Or, you can play the game that FIRST implemented "sanity effects" (AFAIK, anyway), the action/adventure/RPG hybrid Eternal Darkness for Gamecube.

Each time you get into an enemy encounter, your sanity level goes down. With only a little bit of your sanity gone, you'll start to hear voices. As your sanity dwindles, your perspective will tilt, your character will start mumbling to himself, and you'll see insects crawling on the screen. At fully bonkers, the game will try to trick you out of your gourd, making you think you enter a room and do something in it, only to find yourself back at the entrance, making your appear to die after taking a restorative potion, having your limbs fall off during a battle, and even a few "real world" plays, such as telling you your controller has lost connection with the console, and making the game go to a solid black with "VIDEO" in green letters at the top of the screen.

Slap onto that the fact that it has an involving story, the presentation is very moody and atmospheric, the voice acting is actually quite good, AND the gameplay is tight, and you have quite the winner on your hands.

Re:Interresting gameplay element

[Anonymous Coward]

or you could go even FURTHER back to Metal Gear Solid, and the fight with Psycho Mantis who does some nifty tricks like the ones described here. On a side note, when Mantis blackens out the screen it says HIDEO in the corner. (Hideo Kojima's shameless self-promotion strikes again.) While the rest of the game does not feature these insanity tricks, I think this is definitely where the ED crew got some of their ideas.

Re:Interresting gameplay element

[Kwil]

Pfah. System Shock came out in 1994, beating Metal Gear Solid by 4 years or so.

Take enough hypos and your vision starts to go wonky -- weird curves, color reversals, etc.

Neat effect. They didn't use it a lot though.. you had to go just apeshit on the hypos to get it going.

Re:Interresting gameplay element

[Luigi30]

Hideo isn't a self-promotion thing... it's the Japanese equivalent of "Please stand by, technical difficulties" or something.

Re:Interresting gameplay element

[Dr. Trevorkian]

It's great to see the sanity element actually injected into a video game, but there is no other inspiration for it than the original Call of Cthulhu role playing game. (For the kids, that's the one with the dead trees, writing utensils, and funny dice.*)

*Optional equipment including tables, chairs, caffeine-laden beverages, greasy potato chips, soap, girls....

Re:Interresting gameplay element

[Dachannien]

Nifty - did that happen in SS2 also? (I suppose I could load it up and try if I really wanted, but I'm lazy and it's late.)

Also, this "sanity" concept - though perhaps not the visual representation of it in game - was lifted directly from the "sanity" rules in Chaosium's pen-and-paper RPG, Call of Cthulhu.

For example, if you actually were to see Cthulhu, you would have to make a sanity check by rolling a 1d100 lower than your current sanity points (if memory serves correctly). If you fail, you go temporarily insane and lose 1d100 sanity points (having a few dozen is healthy). If you succeed, I think you don't go insane immediately but you lose 1d100 sanity anyway. The depletion of sanity points eventually makes you go insane permanently.

Of course, if that weren't bad enough, Cthulhu also eats 1d4 people per round.

Re:Interresting gameplay element

[overbom]

Of course, if that weren't bad enough, Cthulhu also eats 1d4 people per round.

bah, you kids have it lucky. back in my day, cthulhu ate no less than 1d8+2 people per round. and we were happy for it, we felt lucky.

my current cthulhu character is rocksteady at 87 sanity.

cthulhu

[Anonymous Coward]

obligatory "wtf is a cthulhu" ? link

http://www.logicalcreativity.com/jon/plush/01.html

Mandatory Cthulhu Accessory

[fm6]

Available here.

cthuugle

[Anonymous Coward]

cthuggle is great. so much better than nyahoolarthotep or even M___l___crawler! (but I've said too much! IA!)

Wow, this HAS been in the works for awhile

[Black Hitler]

Long enough for Old Man Murray to have done a story on it, even...

Meh

[cpt kangarooski]

That seems okay, I guess, but what's wrong with a good old-fashioned game of Pokethulhu?

De Profundis...

[Robotech_Master]

I'd just like to take a moment to plug De Profundis, a truly interesting recently-published pen-and-paper game based on the Cthulhu mythos. Unlike other games that have that adjective attached to them, with De Profundis it's literal...you use pen and paper to play the game, because it's a guideline for playing by mail. Rather than spend paragraphs duplicating explanation I've already made, here's a link to my in-depth review of it. I don't think I've ever seen another RPG quite like it.

It's out of print now, but you should be able to find it in the usual places if you look.

Re:De Profundis...

[Unknown Kadath]

Ooh! Someone else has heard of De Profundis! Truly the most Lovecraftian game out there. My college graduation present from one of my correspondants was a fountain pen, the better to chronicle my descent into madness. I haven't decided quite how it's going to happen yet.

Also...Eyrie? I know those guys.

-Carolyn