H.P. Lovecraft and tons of horror games! (it's educational folks)
By thomasriis1987 34 Comments
Hi everybody! (it’s time for some education!)
Today, I’m gonna lecture you guys, in H.P. Lovecraft!
Well, I bet that most of you have already heard of this horror-writer, but for those of you who haven't, I’ll mention that there are indeed a lot of game developers who have drawn inspiration from him, over the years.
Before I get to that, I’ll tell you a bit about Howard Phillips Lovecraft:
Lovecraft was born way back in the year; 1890 and fell off the swing (well, died) in 1937. Both his father and mother died in an asylum, (yes, there is actually a reference in that Batman game since H.P actually invented that town, Arkham, for several of his stories, and used the asylum in: The Thing on the Doorstep ) he was forced by his mother, to wear girls clothes to cover up how hideous he was and in 1908 he got a mental breakdown which left him drained of energy for about 10 years.
Although he was weak both in health and mind, he started writing about the year, 1907 and drew inspiration from his own dreams. –
10 years after his breakdown his carrier accelerated:
His style was much like any other horrorwriter, but when his wife left him – everything changed!
He started his own genre, which he called “weird fiction”. Among sci-fi stories and such, he created his most renown work: Call of Cthulhu (Ringing any bells – Bethesda made a game about this, which must be the best depiction of Lovecraft in a game, ever – I mean, both Innsmoth, the monsters – everything, right as Lovecraft would have wanted it). It’s a mythology about the old ones, evil creatures and gods in the deep oceans and creepy towns.
Lovecraft often used insanity as the red line in his stories and the obscure universe he created was indeed a very exciting and new style.
Many of the main characters in his “Major works” (he wrote tons, and tons of small ones) is often depicted as himself and can hardly be separated. He never wrote about sex or
money, since they didn’t fit in his universe and he despised both to a certain degree.
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Well, now you know the man, let’s focus on his impact, on videogames!:
- In Devil May Cry 3, the name is used as “lady”’s father.
- In the web-based game Urban Dead, the towns are called Arkham and New Arkham.
- MechWarrior 2 featured a level called Arkham Bridge.
- In Penny Arcade Adventures there is a town called New Arcadia, which is a spoof of Arkham
- Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the earth: in this game it’s very much based on Lovvecraft, and even Arkham mental institude is used. So is the town of Innsmoth and all of the mythology.
- In World of Warcraft (aaah, got you attention, huh?) the monster Darkspeaker R’khem is a wordplay of Arkham.
Quake: Shub-Niggurath - In 2008 a game called Necronomicon (bet you heard about that book in many games too), was released and was a single play card game (yeah, sound boring) and was based on, well, Lovecraft.
- In the game Darkness Within, you need to discover all kinds of creepy shit in the town Wellsmoth, and the game is packed with Lovecraft hints.
- In Quake, well – that game is a classic, and not many know of the Lovecraft influenze, check it out here: http://kell.quaddicted.com/stuff_lovecraftinquake.html - I can say though, that Shub-Niggurath, is from Lovecraft.
- Alone in the dark contained tons of lovecraftian refrences and so did Blood (that fucking cool 1995 fps), Castlevania 64, Daugthers of Serpents, The lurking Horror, Eternal Darkness, X-COM (hell yeah) and tons, and tons of games!!
I could seriously go on, but I’m tired.
I love you all, and hope you’ll write a comment if you found this interesting. (insert the Metallica song “call of cthulhu” and terrifying laughter “muhah… – oh never mind)
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