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Cosmic Horror and Video Games
CaptainNemo
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
How do you feel the cosmic horror genre has been handled in video games? Alan Wake, Eternal Darkness, and Mass Effect seem to be the only ones that tackle it well. Are the concepts of it too abstract for a primarily visual medium like gaming?
PSN:CaptainNemo1138
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are you talking like, Lovecraft, or Event Horizon?
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So did Amnesia: the Dark Descent.
You could argue Darkseed, too.
Go play more good horror games.
They've got a real Azathoth feel to them. The whole Reapers plot is very Lovecraftian in style and structure.
Anyways if you've played Eternal Darkness you've played the best cosmic horror game out there as far as I know. There are quite a few nice tabletop games that you could try instead though, like Arkham Horror.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was a pretty good Lovecraft game, I thought. Walked the trope pretty much straight through, copied plenty out of the source material.
Somewhat less so if you picked the others, though, yes.
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Shadow Hearts 1 and 2, big time.
Shadow Hearts has that too.
As for Alan Wake, I think the quality of that variety of story is largely a matter of taste. When playing the game, there were a lot of pieces that just didn't work for me because the story was playing more by arbitrary rules than consistent ones. Regardless of whether those points were due to poor writing or just the use of the cosmic horror angle, they just stuck out too much to me to let me enjoy the game much.
Cosmic horror is a tough sell under the best of circumstances. Make it too mysterious and nobody cares. Make it too explicit and you lose all the tension of the mystery. Horror is a lot easier to pull off when the nasty stuff is at least relatable instead of seemingly random forces with unknown motives. As for how it's been handled in video games, I think it's almost always going to be a matter of making it appeal to people who like those sorts of stories rather than trying to making cosmic horror fiction everybody can get into.
I'm not saying it doesn't work in video games though. The Frictional guys have done a badass job of proving that. If I can keep my shit together long enough, I may even get through Penumbra one day. Amnesia is really high on my to-buy list too.
And finally, there is this. Eversion. This link is to the free version. There is also a version on Steam for pretty cheap that has all kinds of new features like Leaderboards.
Doom started out as mysticism and demonic ritual in space, but turned into aliens attempting to capitalize on human fears. Of course, having a whole (effective) arsenal at your disposal tends to soften the idea of an enemy juggernaut spacial entity.
Dead Space seems to fit the OP's bill as well. It still suffered from the intention that towards the end of the game, the player should feel more powerful instead of less, but I thought the idea of tying the whole ruckus to an artifact or ancient cosmic force went a lot towards establishing series credibility when I played through it.
But to answer your question, I think it's enough of a niche genre that few games get the opportunity to do it well. These days, in order to get publisher dollars, you have to be able to pitch a game that is based on more than a pervasive sense of dread and foreboding*, which is why we're seeing people mentioning survival horror, action, and puzzle titles all mixed in with shooter. Perhaps more often than not, it's too abstract, as you said, to be able to convince a panel of people that it's worth putting into a video game. (Or at least, making it the main concept of a video game)
*The third game I thought of-- Silent Hill was a perfect storm that thankfully led to more games of equal caliber. I don't know if it fits with the thread, but at least in the first game, the darkness and the town as a whole became a foreboding presence...practically a power unto itself.
Ka-Chung!
Ka-Chung!
I'll check it out, see if the old Interactive Fiction muscles still work and get back to y'all.
Bayonetta had really interesting and Lovecraftian angels as well.
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The Siren games weren't precisely cosmic horror, but they had an awful lot of the same feel as they went on.
And, again, Amnesia.
If you don't play it you're mad.
Wear a diaper
Shepard just kicks ass and takes names.
Shepard is pretty much the video game definition of "Did you just punch Cthulhu" from tvtropes
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
Silent Hill Series (1-4, and Shattered Memories. Origins is okay. Avoid Homecoming).
Dead Space (play it on super hard, otherwise it's too easy)
Condemned. (Not really 'cosmic').
Alan Wake. (Not really 'cosmic').
Clive Barker's Undying.
I can see the Reapers, as a theme, could be considered 'cosmic horror', but Mass Effect itself is anything but. Definitely a fair heaping of Body Horror though, like Dead Space and Condemned. I wish that Jericho had been better.
Thinking on it, Cosmic Horror is pretty hard to do in games. There's a certain amount of stuff you need to know, and that needs to remain constant in games for them to actually work. The theme's a favorite of mine, I find that it works especially well in table-top RPGs that are handled right. We need more of it in video games, though. I love stuff like that.
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Not sure how Dead Space needs to be on Super hard to satisfy the Cosmic Horror genre.
IMO, Dead Space was pretty tough on normal.
Eternal Darkness is, IMO, the best for this type of game. It is clever as hell and breaks new ground in this realm. All of the gods you deal with are like right out of the Mythos. They have their own styles and influences on the game, but remain so massively out of our realm that they remain rather frightening.
Amnesia, in the meantime, nails the mood perfectly. Cosmic, traditional and personal horror, all interwoven. It gets the spirit of Lovecraft (and his contempories and inspirations- Machen, Hodgson, Blackwood, Chambers, etc) right without directly referencing anything.
Randolph Carter would like a word with you.
Well you always get a Mary Sue when you write yourself into stories.
But Amnesia is a better game
And then there's always Call of Cthulhu, though I've never played it
There really isn't quite enough of this particular brand of horror in games. Dead Space had moments had smacked of Lovecraft-ian monstrosities and ancient evils, but it's never really scary, and the actual backstory for all of it explains everything, which goes against the entire "cosmic horror" philosophy
The only thing it does consistently that's thematically appropriate to that genre is insanity. But even then, it's not caused by the right stuff to count, I think
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
But that's all that we know about that. At least until the VGA awards, they're supposed to have something about it
In more current news, there's a mod for Crysis that literally came out today that is definitely all kinds of cosmic. It is called The Worry of Newport, and it is pretty cool! If you can get it working, anyways. Apparently modding Crysis is like pulling teeth
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET