Speaking of an awesome game play: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkj6wvRZEJdDPeAlSPDrYGwOGSytfpnvnbjj hero said:
The Newest Call of Cthulhu Trailer Plumbs the Depths of Madness
- Thread starter ffronw
- Start date
Dat edge.Samtemdo8 said:
Horror's not just a one-note concept, Sam. If Small-Town Eldritch is more your thing, read up on some Stephen King. If Gritty Urban Horror strikes your fancy, check out Caitlin B. Kiernan. If you'd rather revisit certain classics, check out Kim Newman's "Anno Dracula".
Lovecraft's appeal comes form an understanding that the author is kind of like J.R.R. Tolkien, in that both he and Lovecraft wrote in what was a recent Postwar context for them. In both cases, WWI redefined warfare's political limits, and reframed the Earth as being a pretty tiny speck of dirt on which the wonders of Colonialism couldn't exactly buff out human evil. Add to that burgeoning discoveries in Astrophysics and Astronomy, and you're faced with a concept in which Humanity is only *just* beginning to realize we're not exactly significant.
Ever heard Carl Sagan's "pale blue dot" speech? Nowadays, it's used to elicit wonder at the possibilities of the Universe. Frame it in the context of Great Depression-Era America, and you're left with a gaping sense of emptiness. Lovecraft considered that, and posited that anyone who'd be confronted to that level of meaninglessness would either kill themselves or lose their goddamn marbles. Lovecraft's Mythos is uncaring of us, it carries no redeeming values or morality-affirming biases.
We're ants, the Great Old Ones are the boot.
Of course, apathy is kind of a gold standard, nowadays. Knowing we're worthless or meaningless in the face of the greater Universe is part and parcel of the human experience. We shrug it off and move on. What makes Lovecraft popular today is probably a kind of backlash to that perception. I've run Call of Chtulhu campaigns before, and a lot of my players clung to their Sanity score and their hopeful outlooks for as long as they possibly could. Today, we like to imagine that there's a lot out there that we can't possibly grasp at present, but that turn-of-the-century dread's been severely weakened. It's not completely gone, however, as the Trump cabinet's stance on scientific research seems to suggest.
Early-1910s asylums and today's Post-Facts Facebook echo chambers might have a few things in common...
I just don't feel the theme of insanity is effective at inducing fear I mean the characters and the events they endured and the forces thety witnessed driven them insane yet I as the reader have not felt anything.IamLEAM1983 said:
I mean if I can clearly see a picture of Cthulhu right now and not be driven insane by his mere appearence than the immersiveness of the theme is shattered for me.
As someone who only recently finished reading Call of Cthulhu, colour me kinda half interested in this. I mean it doesn't have EA or Activision's marks on it so I can be sort of hopeful that it'll be not awful. I can just imagine the suits at EA coming in like "big final boss fight with Cthulhu done yet guys? Our shareholders say gamers love explosive boss fights!"
Proper Cthulhu is tough for video games since Cthulhu is not just a big tentacle man with wings for you to blow up with rockets, it's the idea (or fact in the CoC mythos) that people are incredibly small and insignificant in the great scheme of things and there's the idea that all human civilisation could be wiped off the map in an instant cuz lol Old Gods, and people are ignorant to it for the sake of their sanity.
Kinda tough to pull off in a video game since it's hard to make the main character insignificant since it's the way the player sees things. CoC worked because it was just a guy writing about his findings which was brilliant as a book but doesn't make an entertaining video game.
Proper Cthulhu is tough for video games since Cthulhu is not just a big tentacle man with wings for you to blow up with rockets, it's the idea (or fact in the CoC mythos) that people are incredibly small and insignificant in the great scheme of things and there's the idea that all human civilisation could be wiped off the map in an instant cuz lol Old Gods, and people are ignorant to it for the sake of their sanity.
Kinda tough to pull off in a video game since it's hard to make the main character insignificant since it's the way the player sees things. CoC worked because it was just a guy writing about his findings which was brilliant as a book but doesn't make an entertaining video game.
You can look at pictures of Dracula's various incarnations any time you want. Does that mean Dracula has less staying power?Samtemdo8 said:
Fiction comes with a certain amount of requisite suspension of disbelief. I've played rounds of Elder Sign where we just barely managed to punch Tsatshoggua in the D and eked out a meagre victory with two of our four players dead and the other two hanging on by a thread. The guy's fake as fake monsters can be, but in the context of the game, we were left with a piss-poor Sanity score and had to work off the assumption that paddywagons would cart off Humanity's unsung saviors to a dismal end in a late 1910s sanatorium, where their lives would probably end with a swinging rope.
What you're saying is that Cosmic Horror doesn't do it for you - which is fine. However, it's still an effective setting if you're willing to think as someone living in that particular context would; in which Western civilization is almost constantly under seige from barbarous occult forces.
It's racist, reductive and offensively Colonialist - but that's Lovecraft for ya.
Just so you know, although I don't find the horror aspect strong, I found the "lore" aspect of it intestering.IamLEAM1983 said:
I am more interested in the who are these beings in the Cthulhu Mythos and their history than seeing them as an element to be used for Horror.
Despite being a little rough around the edges, that game is a hidden gem and very true to Lovecraft's themes. It had a sanity system like Eternal Darkness and you'd start getting auditory and visual hallucinations if you were exposed to too much crazy sh!t. There was a section in the game that was an incredibly accurate representation of a scene in Shadow Over Innsmouth.TheScorpion said:Heh, I remember there being a Call Of Cthulu game being out on Xbox and PC when I was growing up.
It's a pity that the sequels to CoC: DCotE got canned. If this is anything like it I'll be getting it for sure.
I like parts of it a lot. Particularly everything up until you escape from Innsmouth. It's the later parts of the game where they tried to depict the FBI and Military raid on the town where the whole thing collapses. Awful research(no, officers in the coast guard are not referred to as "officer"), crappy shooting mechanics(which wouldn't be a problem if the game stayed a survival horror but since the game suddenly decided it wanted to be an FPS this is kind of an issue) and buggy as crap(I had to find a save game to let me skip the dagon fight because I couldn't actually get it to trigger).Programmed_For_Damage said:Despite being a little rough around the edges, that game is a hidden gem and very true to Lovecraft's themes. It had a sanity system like Eternal Darkness and you'd start getting auditory and visual hallucinations if you were exposed to too much crazy sh!t. There was a section in the game that was an incredibly accurate representation of a scene in Shadow Over Innsmouth.TheScorpion said:Heh, I remember there being a Call Of Cthulu game being out on Xbox and PC when I was growing up.
It's a pity that the sequels to CoC: DCotE got canned. If this is anything like it I'll be getting it for sure.
Though the part when you have to cross the bridge fighting the Polyps creeped the hell out of me. Those things were one of the freakiest VG monsters I've ever seen and I rarely get bothered by monsters of any sort.
Hell, I'd love to see DCotE but all of the crap parts fixed.
Now that I think about it, I agree with you about the crap shooting mechanics. I remember the game taking a bit of downward turn once I picked up a gun. Up until that point my heart was in my throat most of the time.Dalisclock said:
Fighting Mother Hydra and Father Dagon was pretty impressive though.