Focus Home Interactive has released the E3 trailer for Call of Cthulhu. When H.P. Lovecraft first wrote about Cthulhu, he probably had no idea that elements of his horror stories would remain popular nearly a century later. But those stories that question sanity and praise madness still linger. Call of Cthulhu is one of those stories that just got a brand new trailer for E3.
In Call of Cthulhu, the player will take on the role of Edward Pierce, a 1940s private investigator, as he ventures to Darkwater Island to investigate the murder of the Hawkins family. He soon realizes that there is much more to this dark and lonely island than meets the eye and that strange creatures lurk in the shadows, ready to crawl out of the pages of mythology and into the real world. He soon finds himself up to his neck in the Cthulu mythos, cultists and weird science, which threatens his sanity and pulls him into the world of madness.
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Focus Home Interactive released the trailer for E3, which focuses on the fine line between sanity and madness, a common theme in the Chaosium pen and paper RPG that the video game takes inspiration from. In the tabletop game, players lose sanity points every time they come across something horrifying, and lose the game when they lose all sanity and descend into madness. The trailer shows this same link between sanity and getting ahead in the game in terrifying detail. This story is right in line with the concepts from Lovecraft’s 1928 short story, “The Call of Cthulhu”.
Although the developer for Call of Cthulhu is Cyanide Studios, the publisher is Focus Home Interactive, which recently published the DontNod horror game Vampyr. Gameplay for Call of Cthulhu, though, is almost entirely focused on RPG elements, including choosing from different paths that Pierce’s investigation can take, as well as making certain dialogue choices. However, the player will need to carefully choose each path, because there are certain events that might lead to traumatic experiences that make it harder for him to cope with this new and dark world. There are also branching storylines and multiple endings, as well as skill trees that will help Pierce hone his investigation skills.
Call of Cthulhu is one of those games that horror fans should put on their wish list for later this year. But beware: sanity is only temporary and is often a curse, especially in a world so full of madness.
