Lovecraft and Video Games

[Zitterberg]

I have had a quick glance at your post and one game appears not to be have mentioned at all.

Dark Corners of the Earth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfQ-Xqt-d0A

I have added the trailer as it was a great game but developed a game breaking bug with windows 7.

There is a workaround, since I doubt that the developers have ever fixed it.

Just as a side note, if I remember correctly the game starts with you in an insane asylum and things go downhill from that very quickly as the game is played as a flashback.

Maybe I was writing too much so people don't read some of the things I write:

Or have you seen a horror video game with the name of one of Lovecraft's Creations in it (e.g. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth)?

I'm sorry if this is the case.

Also, that game breaking bug known as the "blue lights" bug is awful. I got so far in the game and nothing happened. One of the few situations in which you actually hope to be attacked by Dagon.

 

[Zitterberg]

Oh and here's a lovely article on Lovecraft and.... Pokemon!
http://www.destructoid.com/using-post-modernism-to-reinvent-the-horror-genre-167237.phtml

Fun fact: I actually intended to write about Lovecraft as an author whose works exhibited traits best described as some kind of an intermediary stage in the progression from modernism to postmodernism. He was neither completely modernist nor postmodernist, but he could be interpreted as the bridge towards postmodernism with the incomprehensibility of the cosmos instead of the modernist narrative to look elsewhere (e.g. the "Shantih, Shantih, Shantih" line in T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"). Lovecraft's oeuvre tells us that there are other narratives, but they amount to nothing more but subjective and inferior labels human beings subject on the vast and utterly alien mechanics of the cosmos. The things we take for granted are demolished and subjected to total deconstruction with the appearance of these creatures we cannot ever hope to comprehend. Cthulhu, for instance, is described as walking through dimensions that we cannot perceive. This can be interpreted as the collapse of the grand narratives and the loss of meaning found in postmodernism as forces of the cosmos emphasises this fact through the most simplistic of concepts: the way they walk, the way the function and the way they simply are.

Then I was reminded of the fact that there's barely any academic research in the medium of video games. Well, there's both a lack of scholarship in both Lovecraft and video games? Why not combine the two?

 

[Frozengale]

The game "They Bleed Pixels" is supposedly inspired by Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. He can be seen in the title screen here

Spoiler

or at least I assume it's him. You can also see his bones in the bottom left corner. I believe that's from the underwater levels.

The story mostly revolves around a youth sent to a boarding school, she finds a strange book and each night she has a dream about transforming into a purple skinned version of herself with claws for hands. Every morning she wakes up screaming, and can see that she is becoming more and more transformed like her dream self, and the book is always there on her bedside table. She tries to destroy the book in various ways, but each night it returns. Each stage is based on how she tries to destroy/get rid of the book (Burying it, Drowning it, Burning it, etc.) There aren't many cephalopodic creatures, the only real ones of note are these

Spoiler

I haven't finished it so there might be more to do with Cthulhu, but I can't see much. It might also be more about themes and style then anything else when they say it's inspired by the mythos.

 

[Zitterberg]

Stop being me, you're scaring me with how much our arguments align!

And don't forget that the possible creators of the Xenomorphs, the Space Jockeys, have been established as our creators, too, in Prometheus. Apart from being a complete rehash of the novella At the Mountains of Madness, it also shares the idea that we are, as you said, not the creation of an anthropomorphic (white male) and centralised deity who is also responsible for the creation of everything. In that logic humans, specifically, serve a special role in the personal plan of this weird, omnipresent, patriarchal figure. Instead, we're the experiment of an ancient and incomprehensibly intelligent alien species.

Moreover, this lovelessness is reflected in the role of the Space Jockeys in Prometheus, here dubbed the Engineers, as the reunion with the creator and its creation results in a rather lukewarm reception. I say lukewarm because the body temperature of everyone inside the room unfortunate enough to get within the grasp of the estranged father figure is lowered to room temperature (and Weyland makes his inevitable slip into the great nothing - the "merciful embrace of oblivion").

However, it has some rather un-Lovecraftian elements in that we're most likely the project of an abandoned experiment or project rather than the random side-effect of a failed experiment. I am, of course, talking about the origins of our species: the protoplasmic ooze left behind by the shoggoths. Yes, we are all part shoggoth.

Furthermore, Weyland-Yutani is more an example of a world in which rampant utilitarianism and neoliberal capitalism has reached an uncontested dominion that is close to totality. Though amorality is most certainly found in the multinational companies of our contemporary neoliberal capitalist age, it is not a trait of Cosmicism. The most important argument against the reading of Weyland-Yutani as an example of "Yog-Sothothery" is that our species' notions and concepts of society, culture and government are simply that: notions and concepts that are, as Nietzsche said, "all too human." Every aspect of Homo Homo Sapiens is soon rendered meaningless once we witness these beings from Beyond and learn that everything we considered stable and certain turns out to be an untruth we taught ourselves. The alien causes irrevocable and detrimental realisations of humanity's own alienation and estrangement to the cosmos; life no longer has any meaning and all sanity and hope is lost as we are, according to Castro, taught "new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."

Freedom, however, should be translated as our inevitable extinction upon learning the forbidden knowledge of these otherworldly beings their existence. Would you teach an ant to be like you? Would you mourn the destruction of stability if you were to unwittingly step on an anthill? Most people compare the relationship of the Old Ones and humanity with humans and ants, but I think microscopic bacteria or fungi collecting in the dark and barely perceptible corners of your kitchen room would come closer to our inferiority on a cosmic scale in the amorphous and bubbling "eyes" of these entities.

On a side note: there might be factions of opposition within the Alien and Predator universe challenging this form of a multinational and capitalist power structure that Weyland-Yutani Corporation embodies; as Foucault theorised, power is always productive because it always produces resistance. It would be very interesting to see someone expanding on this idea seeing as it being a rather one-dimensional representation of this fictional world.

 

[Zitterberg]

Also, did you see that thing that came out of Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus? They really pulled out the gelatinous, tentacled mass resembling the inky-black void of space with that thing. Then again, H. R. Giger, the Swiss surrealist artist who is also responsible for the character design of the Xenomorph back in the days of the original Alien film (he also worked together with Ridley Scott on Prometheus again), has noted Lovecraft as one of his major inspirations.

 

[DioWallachia]

Here's one I guarantee nobody else would have ever mentioned: here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eversion_%28video_game%29].

Ready...

Spoiler

..to die

DAT ENDING

Didn't the original Alone in the Dark game have Lovecraftian elements in it?

I can also remember hearing about a Lovecraft inspired point and click adventure game from the '90s, but can't remember its name off the top of my head; will repost if I remember.

Edit: Hmm... I think that the game was Dark Seed.

Holy shit, i forgot about it. Those were REALLY inspired by Lovecraft, they even added the Necronomicon that kills you when you read it:


I believe there are 2 more games before it was rebooted and became so dumb that its almost painful.

 

[Zitterberg]

snip

Thank you for this awesome list of video games. Also, the same thing applies to you, too. If you might need some advice or want to talk about Lovecraft in general you can always ask. I'd be more than happy to help.

 

[sebashepin]

XCOM: Terror from the Deep

Damnit! You beat me!

Also, consider the Vasari from Sins of a Solar Empire (or rather the thing they are single-mindedly running from).

http://sinsofasolarempire.wikia.com/wiki/Vasari#History

 

[Clura]

Somehow I cannot share enthusiasm for Alien or Prometheus...
Both are fundamentally flawed in ways their obvious blueprint is not.

Alien:
In Lovecraft narrators are interested in pure science. They want to know how stuff works. This is admirable... which makes it all the more tragic when it ends in ruin and madness.
In Alien the corporation and all the crew members are basically driven by the profit motive. Somehow I can't get myself to care when a group of people looking to profit from the sale of a bio weapon get wiped out by said bio weapon.

Another problem with Alien is the character of Ian Holmes. He's the resident scientist that does some quite dubious things in order to preserve the creature for the company. Sadly, he turns out to be an android. So much for plumbing the depths of the human soul...

Prometheus:
I'm not sure about this one but don't humans develop from a fragment of Engineer DNA? Humans are then a form of degeneration not an experiment. Anyway, its a thouroghly stupid movie that rips off At the Mountains of Madness but cuts all the good stuff. I could go into detail but I will spare everybody a TLDR rant.

However,

However, it has some rather un-Lovecraftian elements in that we're most likely the project of an abandoned experiment or project rather than the random side-effect of a failed experiment. I am, of course, talking about the origins of our species: the protoplasmic ooze left behind by the shoggoths. Yes, we are all part shoggoth.

From chapter VII:

For personal locomotion no external aid was used, since in land, air, and water movement alike the Old Ones seemed to possess excessively vast capacities for speed. Loads, however, were drawn by beasts of burden - Shoggoths under the sea, and a curious variety of primitive vertebrates in the later years of land existence.

These vertebrates, as well as an infinity of other life forms - animal and vegetable, marine, terrestrial, and aerial - were the products of unguided evolution acting on life cells made by the Old Ones, but escaping beyond their radius of attention. They had been suffered to develop unchecked because they had not come in conflict with the dominant beings. Bothersome forms, of course, were mechanically exterminated. It interested us to see in some of the very last and most decadent sculptures a shambling, primitive mammal, used sometimes for food and sometimes as an amusing buffoon by the land dwellers, whose vaguely simian and human foreshadowings were unmistakable. In the building of land cities the huge stone blocks of the high towers were generally lifted by vast-winged pterodactyls of a species heretofore unknown to paleontology.

Now, I suppose there could be a link... but I can't think of a passage that explicitly states as much.

 

[Zitterberg]

Playing Eversion right now. I'm both grateful for this opportunity to be provided with such ample amounts of inspiration for my thesis paper as horrified at the manner in which this is completely ruining me as a human being.

I love it.

 

[Stuntcrab]

The biomass in Metro 2033 could possibly be an example of this, it seems to have that creepy feel I would expect from Lovecraft.
http://metrovideogame.wikia.com/wiki/Biomass_(Mutant)

 

[Zitterberg]

Now, I suppose there could be a link... but I can't think of a passage that explicitly states as much.

The power of Lovecraft's writing lies in suggestion and the imagination of the reader rather than specific statements (see my TL;DR post about Amnesia: The Dark Descent). It might also be possible that scientific research back then regarding the origin of our species and its evolution in the estimated era of the Earth's history might not have been as good as it is nowadays - I would have to look back on that (but it's late and I need to go to bed soon). There are, however, strong hints on the human species being the unnoticed and unintended side-effect of a failed experiment conducted by a hyper-advanced and unfathomable extraterrestrial species.

Alien:
In Lovecraft narrators are interested in pure science. They want to know how stuff works. This is admirable... which makes it all the more tragic when it ends in ruin and madness.
In Alien the corporation and all the crew members are basically driven by the profit motive. Somehow I can't get myself to care when a group of people looking to profit from the sale of a bio weapon get wiped out by said bio weapon.

Indeed, the typical Lovecraftian "hero" is a solitary scholarly bent man with a background that is either struggling to get by or born in a family of upper-middle class origins (all of these backgrounds are reflections and projections of Lovecraft's own life). However, personal preferences aside, deviation from the typical role of a character belonging to the intelligentsia (e.g. the protagonist from Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth) does not necessarily detract its potential for achieving "Yog-Sothothery" or a narrative faithful and effective to the Lovecraftian tale.

Let me clarify: I do not believe that the Xenomorph is Lovecraftian - it is slightly Lovecraftian. The inky-black, slimy and faceless alien shares traits with a Lovecraftian horror. Along the train of thought that Lovecraft had when he wrote The Shadow Over Innsmouth--ignoring the supposed "dangers" of miscegenation argument--showcases the unspeakable abominations that are born from the union of non-human life forms and human beings. Prior to the expansion of the Alien franchise in James Cameron's formulaic, though somewhat entertaining, Aliens, the Xenomorph was defined on its "unknowability." It resembles a human figure, but it clearly is not human; it bleeds highly corrosive acid capable of burning through everything, but the Xenomorph does not melt from its own blood (alien materials argument) et cetera.

Where it fails to be truly Lovecraftian, however, is the fact that there's a profit margin behind the motives of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation in seeking to enslave and experiment upon the Xenomorph as a biological weapon to basically earn a lot of money. It's disconcerting to see how neoliberal capitalism has provided the human population with a shield against normally insanity-inducing monstrosities in the relatively near future. Joking aside, the Xenomorph is simply not the Lovecraftian horror it should be as it is killable (they die by the dozens with a well-placed sentry turret) and they're, ultimately, fathomable ever since the post-Alien era (from Aliens and onwards).

Plus, it's so much more fun to throw Marxist critical theory or, especially, Freudian psychoanalytical criticism at the series.

Another problem with Alien is the character of Ian Holmes. He's the resident scientist that does some quite dubious things in order to preserve the creature for the company. Sadly, he turns out to be an android. So much for plumbing the depths of the human soul...

Ah, but those are elements belonging to another environment entirely: transhumanism. We'd best be using Blade Runner and Deus Ex as points of referents when we talk about the role of Ian Holmes.

Prometheus:
I'm not sure about this one but don't humans develop from a fragment of Engineer DNA? Humans are then a form of degeneration not an experiment. Anyway, its a thouroghly stupid movie that rips off At the Mountains of Madness but cuts all the good stuff. I could go into detail but I will spare everybody a TLDR rant.

Yes, they do, which already shows a far more deliberate and personally invested project of the Space Jockeys. They literally sacrificed one of their own to set the events leading to the creation of our species in motion. It is possible that this member of their community was a criminal or there might be a ritual or honour-bound code of conduct behind all of this. Ultimately, it might be best that we simply wouldn't know all too much to at least keep some of the incomprehensibility element that might still remain in Prometheus and the inevitable number sequels it will spawn. Wishful thinking, I know.

We are, however, the deliberate offspring of that experiment. Obviously, we became far smaller in size, less intelligent, less physically strong et cetera. The only upside we had was racial and ethnic diversity (because, as we all know, the gods are always white or pale - but I am digressing). All in all, we were an experiment that succeeded: we were born. However, we had a purpose that remained unfulfilled after the mysterious and cataclysmic event that caused the Space Jockeys on the research facility in Prometheus to become dysfunctional and non-operational. Thus, the human species was allowed to live for a longer time than our creators might have intended. The reason why we are still alive is, probably, because we were simply forgotten and abandoned because of other reasons (likely the Xenomorph, or not). Hence, the failed experiment element pops up, but in a rather non-Lovecraftian manner. Yes, we're not the product of a white man in the sky with a long beard who loves us in his rather questionable ways, but we also served a possible purpose. If the human species had a specific purpose to achieve and its creation was intended for some grand design regardless of its amoral/loveless approach, we still have a somewhat special place in the cosmos whilst we simply do not have this luxury in the Lovecraftian horror tale. Cosmic insignificance and all that.

TL;DR
Yeah, they have Lovecraftian traits, but not enough of them to truly be considered Lovecraftian. Sorry if I left the impression that I implied otherwise, such an argument would require exaggerations of the Lovecraftian properties of the Xenomorph and the Space Jockeys and that would hardly be academic.

Is anyone getting sick of my TL;DR posts yet? If I'm overdoing it, please say so. Thank you.

 

[Zitterberg]

The biomass in Metro 2033 could possibly be an example of this, it seems to have that creepy feel I would expect from Lovecraft.
http://metrovideogame.wikia.com/wiki/Biomass_(Mutant)

Some of these creatures from Metro 2033 have a The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath vibe going in the spirit of gugs and all the fantastical creatures and whatnot. However, despite being amorphous in nature, it's a bit too similar to the Master in the original Fallout video game.

 

[DioWallachia]

And who can forget Yathzee Crosshaw "Magnus Opus" (sarcastic quotes) know as The Chzo Mythos? Mind you, it doesnt feel like it is lovecraftian UNTIL the 3rd game Trilby Notes.

The plot was kinda......em...er..yeeeeeah, i will just leave this here:

http://lparchive.org/The-Chzo-Mythos/

 

[Zitterberg]

And who can forget Yathzee Crosshaw "Magnus Opus" (sarcastic quotes) know as The Chzo Mythos? Mind you, it doesnt feel like it is lovecraftian UNTIL the 3rd game Trilby Notes.

The plot was kinda......em...er..yeeeeeah, i will just leave this here:

http://lparchive.org/The-Chzo-Mythos/

Is it me or is Trilby's Notes just really similar to Marble Hornets?

 

[mechalynx]

It's Japanese, so I'm unsure of the influence, but check out Grandia 2. Valmar is all about tentacles until the very end. The plot is basically to prevent an old god from reforming.

 

[Zitterberg]

It's Japanese, so I'm unsure of the influence, but check out Grandia 2. Valmar is all about tentacles until the very end. The plot is basically to prevent an old god from reforming.

Thanks! I'll check it out. Also, screw video games! I should totally write my thesis paper about Lovecraft's influence in the hentai genre.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

There's also:
They Bleed Pixels
Cthulhu Saves the World
Torchlight 2 (or at least that's what it looks like to me)

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

As far as I can tell skimming, and using good old Ctrl+F no one has mentioned the series that more than any other game, including Eternal darkness, draws heavily from Lovecraft. It may not have direct mythos linkage but Koudelka, and Shadowhearts 1 through 3 are RIPE with eldritch horror. Plus H.P. Lovecraft is a fucking NPC in one of them!

I discovered Lovecraft's writing well after having played the games oddly enough.

Seriously these games are awesome enough on their own, but they are about as perfect an example as you can get for your purposes.

Sadly this isn't even close to the 1st time I've had to be the one to mention them in threads similar to this one. Its like I'm one of the only 12 people that played them or something. I'm pretty certain Shadow Hearts 2 outsold Eternal Darkness by a wide margin, but EVERYONE knows about ED and NO ONE mentions Koudelka or Shadowhearts.

They all have some of the most depressing endings in gaming, for what its worth.

 

[Aaron Foltz]

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Is based on several of Lovecraft's stories, (from what I've heard, I've beat the game, but never read any of his books). The earliest one being "Shadow over Innsmouth"

Thank you!
Several books like Shadow Out of Time, Call of Cthulhu, Shadow over Innsmouth, and one more that has Escaped my memory.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is the be all, end all Lovecraft game. Captures everything perfectly. I'm surprised people don't talk about this as much it deserves. Lil buggy but worth every moment.