Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth Preview

Judging from the current previews and the games we're playing at the moment, PC players are in for a scary ride. So, as I'm playing the spooky Clive Barker's Undying, and preparing myself for Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare whilst watching the first trailers for Carmack's DOOM III engine on a GeForce 3 (which got closest to changing the level of moisture in my pants), I decided to write a preview for a game which the developers claim will be the scariest game of all times: The Call o Cthulhu.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, probably one of the most famous and influential SF/horror writers of the twentieth century, has devised this funky title, which should be pronounced something like Cuh-thoo-loo or kuh-THOO-loo. During his relatively short life he wrote more than 65 stories, a lot of articles, essays and letters. His work left a substantial mark of Horror novels, movies, music and video games. This may sound strange, but a lot of famous computer-games have strong Lovecraft references: Blood 2, Quake 2, Shadow of the Comet, Prisoner of Ice, Resident Evil, Alone in The Dark, X-Com: Terror from the Deep... etc.

Wanna bullet?

Nice chair...

Chthulu Mythos is a name he gave to a series of his stories, which are based on the idea that the Great Old Ones ruled Earth before humans came. In the meantime, they retreated deep underground, but the remnants of their settlements can be seen all around Earth. Then residents of the small town of Innsmouth are in close contact with these creatures. The creatures made a deal with the residents of this town according to which they pay them immense quantities of purest gold for intersplicing their genes with the humans... For, if the prophecy is true, when the stars are right, they will once again emerge from the depths and control the surface once more.

Call of Chthulu was first used somewhere in the early eighties for the pen-and-paper RPG developed by Chaosium. This game achieved great success and opened the doors to Lovecraft's magic... Dark Corners of the Earth: Call of Cthulhu is the first video game that managed to acquire all the regal rights to use the Chthulu name (X-Com, for instance never managed to get the copyright). What's more, Headfirst got all possible resources pictures and original games from Chaosium and fans of the original game... Lovecraft's fans must be standing in a puddle of saliva by now as this means that they will be seeing and interacting with the characters they could only imagine up to now.

The game will consist out of four chapters based on four Lovecraft's stories. The first chapter will be based on "The Shadow over Innsmouth", and the others should be based on "At the Mountains of Madness", "The Shadow Out Of Time" and "The Dreamlands" as these stories can best be used for an open-ended tale full of intrigue and horror. The CD should contain one or two more bonus stories for those who manage to finish the game.

The game takes place in 1920, and the player assumes the role of a private eye who got an assignment to solve the mysterious disappearance of some trader. In the course of this seemingly ordinary investigation, our hero gets tangled up in the secrets of Chthulu Mythos. You will be initially given the possibility to choose one of the four characters, each of them with his own upsides and downsides (strength, agility, mythos knowledge, driving capability, spell-casting, sanity system...), which introduces a RPG-like system of character creation and development. However, there will be no dice and no large quantities of stats. The rest of the characters (the ones you didn't choose) will also have their place in the game, but they will run their campaigns computer controlled. You will be able to join forces with them when you meet them or exchange information... As you progress through the game your journal will fill with information...

The game will obviously have several different endings as not even the books had final solutions (apart from the hero going mad). It will be up to the players to decide if they will employ brain or brawn in solving their quest, and the way he chooses will determine how the game progresses. The game will in any case definitely not be a classical shoot-em-up as that would conflict with the original concept of the stories upon which it had been based... I don't know what impression this game will make, but I know that the developers hired some psychologists to study the phenomena of fear (why are people afraid of things, what can cause fear, how does fear influence people, how do you go insane from fear, etc). Another interesting feature will be the possibility to flip your lid. Your hero will start the adventure calm and down to earth, but once he sees all the things that are in store for him... who can tell? If he plays carefully and tactfully he will have less chance of going bananas than someone who would just rush into any horrifying situation ... as each character has both good and bad sides each of them will experience their insanity in a different way: some will have hallucinations, some paranoid delusion, some will experience vertigos through screen-distortions, until you won't be able to distinguish what's real and what is an illusion.

Just imagine a situation where you bump into a dangerous enemy, but until he starts attacking you, you only see him as a helpless person. You will get a vertigo every time you stand over a ravine, and you won't be able to control yourself in small, confined spaces if you suffer from claustrophobia... All this will happen gradually so that the players can feel their characters slowly losing sense. These ideas will probably come to their full potential in multiplayer co-op matches, where you will have a hard time distinguishing friend from foe.