11/27/05 >> Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corner of the Earth

Genre: First-person Shooter / Horror

Developer: Headfirst

Publisher: 2k Games

Official site

It's been a long time coming, but Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth for the PC is nearly here. The Xbox version is out now and has been receiving some good scores. However, the PC version has yet to see the light of day and some fans are getting concerned. We had a chance to speak with Chris Gray, Producer and Lead Design on Call of Cthulhu to find out how the PC version is shaping up.

1. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth has had a long and troubled development history (at least it’s been viewed that way by some fans).  What reassurances can you give that CoC will be released this year and will have been worth the wait?

Well, it’s on the way as we speak and will probably be in stores by the time you read this. Will Cthulhu be worth the wait? Damn right it will! In a climate of sequels, sports sims, and movie licenses, where innovation seems to be led more by technology than gameplay; Cthulhu stands out from the crowd as having something unique to offer.

2. What game engine are you using and will it be on par with current FPS engines today?

The game engine is completely our own. The visuals of the game are easily on par with other top end titles. But, it’s difficult to draw parallels with its peers as Cthulhu is set in rural 1920’s America, rather than a scientific base, a futuristic city or a war torn landscape! J So, not only does Cthulhu have a unique gameplay experience to offer, but the setting provides something a little different to explore and become immersed in.

That said, we have always maintained that the Cthulhu development is about innovation of gameplay, and telling a good story.

3. Does your game engine feature a physics engine?  What role will accurate physics play in CoC?

There is a physics engine in Cthulhu, but I wouldn’t say that it has a major role in the game.

4. At first glance, CoC’s ‘Sanity’ system reminds us of the “system” in Eternal Darkness.  How does your implementation of this differ from Eternal Darkness, and what’s being done to make it unique?

There were always going to me some similarities between the two systems. In both games as your mental condition deteriorates you are more susceptible to triggering sanity effects. These effects are represented through the manipulation of graphics, sound, and controller input. But, there are also a lot of key differences!

Without taking anything away from Eternal Darkness (it’s a classic game), the sanity system they used was a lot more gamey – sorry, can’t think of a better word. J For instance, it was a cool idea to display fake system messages about controllers being removed, or memory cards being erased, but it’s also an instant reminder that you are playing a game. With Cthulhu one of our prime intentions was to really bring the player into the world, to make you feel as if you are actually in those environments and exploring the worlds we have created – to have system messages pop up would just be too jarring. All the sanity effects in Cthulhu remain within the constraints of the game world; although admittedly some of them are a little crazy (you are losing your mind, after all). Some of the mental conditions that you can develop include: shaking, blurred vision, audio hallucinations, dizziness, and panic.

Another primary difference between the system used in Eternal Darkness and Cthulhu is that they utilized a sanity level gauge on the HUD, meaning you could always check precisely how loopy you were at any point. The absence of any kind of HUD in Cthulhu for maximizing immersion meant that we had to design alternative methods for getting feedback to the player. These methods had to be both intuitive and clear, but without being too intrusive. As you are exposed to traumatic experiences, be that for example looking on a corpse, getting a fright, exploring spooky areas, or fighting a mythos creatures, your breathing and heartbeat will become more pronounced. The prominence of your heartbeat and breathing is a subtle but clear indication of your current level of trauma, or to put it another way – your sanity level. The more your heart is thumping, and the more panicked your breathing, the more likely you are to develop a mental condition. If your sanity should deteriorate too far then you risk a massive insanity failure, and you will turn your gun on yourself.

5. The game features no HUD, which has presented you with unique challenges.  How has the development team dealt with them in order to make it both fun and unique?

We dropped the concept of a HUD from Cthulhu to maintain the highest level of immersion possible, and to avoid distraction of what was being visually presented on the screen. The key to any horror experience is suspension of disbelief, and this is less likely to be achieved if the screen is cluttered with status values for health, ammo, sanity, etc - a constant ‘in your face’ reminder than you are playing a game.

Communicating important status information back to the player without a HUD was one of the biggest design challenges in Cthulhu. Taking health as an example, if you have a broken leg then you will hobble along, if you are losing blood then you won’t be able to move as quickly and will moan and groan in pain. The screen will also grey out as your health deteriorates to give the feeling of your life being drained away. Also, as you actually sustain damage blood splats will appear on the screen, the size and location of these will indicate the severity and location of the damage. All of these mechanisms combined together provide you with a very accurate idea of your health status, but, critically, the information is being presented in a far more realistic way.

It’s worth noting that there is a separate interface screen for managing inventory items, medical supplies, and viewing the journals and files picked up during the game.

6. It’s been mentioned that CoC will have 16 levels.  Will the game play out in mission-based form or seamless (i.e. Half-Life 2)?

Referring to the level structure as mission-based would probably be a little misleading. The game unfolds over a series of chapters – some of which are much longer than others.

7. Obviously, with a game like CoC where a great deal of attention is being placed on storytelling and atmosphere, it won’t have multiplayer.  Was multiplayer or co-op ever considered?

Developing a multiplayer or coop component for Cthulhu would have been great fun, and we did have a lot of cool ideas. But, any time invested in these areas would have been at the development cost of the single player experience. It was decided early on by both Bethesda and Headfirst that for a game with such a strong story to tell, it was better to focus our energies on the single player experience.

8. Will CoC include an editor for fans to create their own maps?

No. Although all the tools used for scripting the gameplay in levels were internally developed, the backgrounds and character models were created using commercial applications. Also, the script content in Cthulhu is quite low level and more logically complex than other games. The style of game and the way it has been developed just wouldn’t make ‘modding’ a realistic option.

9. In an age where nearly every first-person shooter (and many real-time strategies and RPGs) feature either a multiplayer aspect or in editor (or both), does it seem wise to release a game with single-player only?  Please explain your stance.

The absence of a multiplayer component in the initial release of Half Life 2 didn’t seem to do them any harm. J That aside, it has almost become the norm for certain genres of game to include a multiplayer component – especially first-person shooters. BUT, Cthulhu is not a first-person shooter – you don’t even have a gun for the opening section of the game. The adventure and narrative aspects are much more pronounced than other first-person games. I’d argue that there are lots of games out there with great multi-player components, but not very many with great single player story lines.

10. Tell us about the locations and characters we’ll find.

The dilapidated and mysterious fishing town of Innsmouth is one of H. P. Lovecraft’s most famous settings, and a large proportion of the story, especially the opening chapters, unfolds on its streets. We have re-created many of the famous locations of Innsmouth that are detailed in the books and associated source material – such as the Esoteric Order of Dagon, the Gilman Hotel, and the Marsh Refinery. You will also get to voyage on a boat, explore Devils Reef, and make a horrifying descent down through the ancient tunnels and caverns that surround the deep one city. The environments of Cthulhu are far more varied than most other titles, and feel much less room-corridor-room.

There are numerous friendly folk you will meet on your investigation, and we have strived to make these characters as colorful and realistic as possible. I think it can easily be forgotten that creating a realistic character is not just about texture resolution and poly counts. I think it is critical to a good story and the adventure elements of a game for the main characters you meet to feel integral to the narrative, and for you to also feel they have a back story and history – it all helps make the world you are creating feel more real. Some of the characters you meet will be familiar to those who’ve read Lovecraft’s work, such as the old drunk fisherman, Zadok Allen. Other characters have been adapted from the role-playing source material, and some (like the player character - Jack Walters) are our own creation.

Then of course there are the enemies! The main cannon fodder, not that there is such a concept in Cthulhu, are the tainted population of Innsmouth – some at more advanced stages of transformation than others. As the plot develops the player will start encountering the deep ones, who are far more powerful frog like creatures. But, it wouldn’t be a Lovecraft game without some big monsters; these include a Shoggoth, Father Dagon, Mother Hydra, Flying Polyps, and a few other surprises.

11. When reading H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth, he includes a lot of history about the town.  How will this history come across to the player, and how will it be presented in a way where the gameplay doesn’t come to a stop? (Oftentimes, the player must ‘stop’ the game and read pages and pages of story, which tends to ruin the atmosphere and immersion.)

I don’t think it is necessarily true that stopping the action to read from a journal, or peruse a diary entry, always ruins a games atmosphere, it depends how well they are written and when they are presented. The same could easily be said of long in-game conversations or cutscenes. In all honesty I think it comes down to personal taste, and also the type of experience you are looking for from a game. With Cthulhu we have tried to take a balanced approach to presenting information to the player. For instance, in NPC conversations we have tried to always provide any critical clues and ‘objective’ information in the initial exchange, and used subsequent interaction with that character to add ‘none critical’ detail – such as personal history, extra plot detail, and town history. There is a lot of written information that you build up in your journal as the game unfolds, but a lot of this is intended to add richness and detail to the experience – rather than being critical to completing the game (i.e. you don’t HAVE to read it).

As a final point, with Cthulhu we have created a game with a much richer narrative – this is not some cobbled together story that is happening somewhere in the background while you blast hordes of enemies.

12. How closely does CoC follow Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth?

The main game narrative in ‘Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth’ is our own story, as opposed to a direct adaptation of one of Lovecraft’s tales into a game. However, the majority of the action takes place in the sea port of Innsmouth, the setting for the famous Lovecraft story ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, so this was the main inspiration for Dark Corners, and several scenes from the story have been woven into the game experience. We have also drawn elements from other stories, specifically ‘The Shadow out of Time’.

The characters and locations covered in these tales and other mythos stories are heavily expanded in the Call of Cthulhu RPG from Chaosium. This has provided us with the opportunity to pick the best bits from both the stories and source material to create the finest possible mythos experience.

13. When you create a game based on an established mythos, you have many fans watching you closely.  How much creative freedom did the team have in designing it?

The Cthulhu license is a double-edged sword in some ways, as on the one hand we are dealing with material that is very precious to a great number of people, but at the same time there is a wealth of excellent source material for game design. The popularity of the license alone is obviously valuable, as it will generate interest purely off the name, especially considering that there is a large crossover between Cthulhu fans and game players. However, the real rewards are reaped in the game design process as the Cthulhu Mythos provides characters, maps, locations, history and plenty of monsters – giving designers a massive head start. We have tried to remain as true to Lovecraft’s work as possible, obviously compromises need to be made for playability as specific elements of Lovecraft and the Call of Cthulhu RPG would not translate well in a computer game. For instance, many of the monsters would technically drive the player insane simply by encountering them, which may be fun the first time but would soon become annoying within the bounds of a game. In regards to creative license, the main game narrative is our own story inspired by Lovecraft’s tales, as opposed to a direct translation of one of his texts. Most of the locales and characters are direct creations of either Lovecraft or the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and we have tried to interpret these as accurately as is possible. But, as his work was only written down, a lot of it is artistic license based on interpretation of descriptions.

14. Is there anything else you would like to add?

Just to tell everyone who is sick of sequels and the lack of original games, to stop moaning and buy Call of Cthulhu!

Interview by Alex Hammond