[QUOTE=Pops;50942640]Nothing wrong with dcote[/QUOTE]
Well... It's still a damn fine game, but I wouldn't be that generous.
But on the main subject, the Cthulhu Mythos can make for great games when done right. Eternal Darkness was pretty great, Dark Corners of the Earth was cool (though quite janky on modern systems), Amnesia was a rush, and even stuff like Eldritch was rather good.
bloodborne, literally one of the best games to have eldritch cosmic horror in the past 10 years.
Man that concept art is on point.
[QUOTE=codemaster85;50942715]bloodborne, literally one of the best games to have eldritch cosmic horror in the past 10 years.[/QUOTE]
True that. The monster design in that game was fucking gorgeous, in an "oh god my amygdalae are rupturing" sense of gorgeous. And both the Insight and Frenzy mechanics really gave it an eldritch twist.
Now THERE'S a game I'd be hot to see a sequel for. Perhaps set in some sort of Prohibiton era style of setting, retaining some of the gothic architecture of the earlier Yharnam while having the city be more "art deco" akin to New York and Boston in the 20's and 30's.
Well part of the problem is building a visual representation of something that should not exist. Dark Corners of the Earth worked well because the art style of the game was warped and distorted but when it came to the actual eldritch horrors it fell flat.
Bloodborne works because of the sheer scale and ferocity of the enemies, and the unexplained mystery behind a good deal of things in the game, it keeps you guessing as to what horror could have possibly caused it. Also the contrast between body horror and the cleaner cosmic beings was very effective.
The reason Amnesia works so well is because they managed to find the right balance of elements, plus something else: What the devs should try to take advantage of is not just making cool-scary designs, they don't work for Lovecraft. Why not take advantage of the uncanny valley? Design a monster, then subtly change aspects of its appearance until it looks strangely wrong. The same could be said for human characters as well, in fact maybe starting with people as a base for the game's "monsters" may be a good idea.
Can't wait for what the devs do with Cthulhu, there's also that other one, The Sinking Ship by the Sherlock Holmes devs. Will be interesting to see two different interpretations of the source material.
EDIT: I almost forgot, Darkest Dungeon is an incredible example of what an effective Lovecraftian narrative does right. Everything from the intro, depraved narrations and the ending are completely on point.
[QUOTE=codemaster85;50942715]bloodborne, literally one of the best games to have eldritch cosmic horror in the past 10 years.[/QUOTE]
Thing is, Bloodborne's advertising hid away the eldritch horror from the front spotlight. It was sort of an eerie, subtle and gradual revelation past the monstrous people and wicked beasts that draw loosely from gothic, mythical terrors.
If you're going into a game called [i]Call of Cthulhu[/i], the player who knows about eldritch knows what they're probably getting into in terms of tone and horror, even if the characters don't.
Well there's a difference between Bloodborne's Lovecraftian Horror, which is [b]NOT[/b] based on Lovecraft's works, and it's lore and monsters are tailor-made to fit with the Soulsborne type games. And then a game that actually tries to adapt Lovecraft's stories to either the Big Screen or Video games. The latter has always been a challenge to do right.
dark corners of the earth was dope tho
it had the same unsettling feeling of the original stories
DCoTE was probably the first horror-game that scared me shitless from atmosphere alone. I've played horror games before that but nothing has ever reached the level of scary as DCoTE for me except possibly the Clock Tower series.
The level where you have to escape the hostel and lock/block doors behind you is the most stressful shit I've ever played. It still haunts me.
[QUOTE=Coyoteze;50944469]DCoTE was probably the first horror-game that scared me shitless from atmosphere alone. I've played horror games before that but nothing has ever reached the level of scary as DCoTE for me except possibly the Clock Tower series.
The level where you have to escape the hostel and lock/block doors behind you is the most stressful shit I've ever played. It still haunts me.[/QUOTE]
I remember that part. Unfortunately that was the peak of the game, after that the game simply turned into a first person shooter.
Similar happened to Cryostasis, very atmospheric in the beginning, then in the middle both you and the enemies get a damn Tommy gun and it turned into a shooter.
[QUOTE=Lucien1337;50942798]The reason Amnesia works so well is because they managed to find the right balance of elements, plus something else: What the devs should try to take advantage of is not just making cool-scary designs, they don't work for Lovecraft. Why not take advantage of the uncanny valley? Design a monster, then subtly change aspects of its appearance until it looks strangely wrong. The same could be said for human characters as well, in fact maybe starting with people as a base for the game's "monsters" may be a good idea..[/QUOTE]
SOMA does that really well, and pushes psychological horror very, very far as far as video games are concerned.
I agree with a lot of the article. I love Bloodborne and other games that have taken a "Lovecraft"-style, but they aren't fully representative of what specifically make Lovecraft's stories horrifying.
What made the tabletop game great was that the great old ones were pretty much unstoppable, and if you just looked at them you either met a horrifying death in various gory ways or simply went insane. The horror of Lovecraft is more than the general creepy look of the monsters, it's the idea that something horrifying is there, as in the "horror of the unknown". If you give the player the ability to mow down enemies with guns and weapons, you remove an important aspect of the horror behind Lovecraft.
For instance: The creepiest moments I had when I was roleplaying was when our DM would put Lovecraftian shit into our adventures, and we had no fucking idea what was going on.
The article is talking about an adaptation of the actual book and its literary surroundings, not about just putting lovecraftian stuff in video games.
And they're super right that stuff like DCOTE, while not necessarily bad games, are usually about as subtle as a truck and don't really capture the exact kind of feel that Lovecraft short stories convey. They're about the mythos but they don't present it in the same way at all, which can be disappointing.
-snip-
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;50946498]The article is talking about an adaptation of the actual book and its literary surroundings, not about just putting lovecraftian stuff in video games.
And they're super right that stuff like DCOTE, while not necessarily bad games, are usually about as subtle as a truck and don't really capture the exact kind of feel that Lovecraft short stories convey. They're about the mythos but they don't present it in the same way at all, which can be disappointing.[/QUOTE]
i think that comes down to the whole adaptation challenge. depending on the medium it's getting put into, you have to cut bits out to allow for that medium to fill in, or you go the route of telltale games and basically make it a visual novel.
[QUOTE=Pops;50947669]i think that comes down to the whole adaptation challenge. depending on the medium it's getting put into, you have to cut bits out to allow for that medium to fill in, or you go the route of telltale games and basically make it a visual novel.[/QUOTE]
There's that, and the matter of the actual scope of what you're showing.
A good example I think would be Eternal Darkness. It deals with a lot of things that Lovecraft deals with, but does it less subtly and at a considerably larger scope. In a short story like the Call of Cthulhu a single character will rarely encounter more than one object related to the old ones in their entire lifetime, whereas in a game like Eternal Darkness one character can obtain knowledge of the full picture in the span of six hours and survive the ordeal.
True, although I imagine the horror of the thing was partially offset by the hefty thrumming of a [sp]YITHIAN LIGHTNING GUN. Which is pretty fucking metal, though not what you'd expect from a horror game. Still, wasn't it the only thing that could deal with the Polyps?[/sp]
You can have really awesome lovecraft inspired games.
games that try to directly adapt his shit 1:1 though? No chance. There's no way you can recreate that sense of helplessness and dread without making the game bullshit heavy and unfun. I mean, sometimes the characters don't even see anything and completely lose their shit, lol.
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