Lovecraft Maps?

[Adrianis]

The sky really is the limit in this case. It depends on the amount of imagination the developers have how well it can be pulled off. Yes, when you create a game you have to arbitrarily design environments and characters to be experienced in exactly one way (well, you have different interpretations of course, but the appearance never changes), whereas literature spends much of the time giving a general description. Reading a story that explains the environment in such tedious detail that you know where everything is including how the drain pipes on houses are designed or stupid stuff like rocks would just be unbearable. In a game however this is mandatory. You cannot cut any corners with the environment or the game world is not going to feel real.

So, just because all the unspeakable horrors and unearthly objects will be totally arbitrary in their appearance doesn't mean the idea itself is necessarily lost IMO. Call of Cthulhu: DCotE proved that Lovecraftian games can work. It nails the atmosphere and sense of helplessness which is the most distinctive part of Lovecraft's stories for me. It will always be best in literary form of course, but I think saying it cannot or is necessarily difficult to do is incorrect. It will be changed and some things will be lost but the core will always remain and the rest of the stuff is up to the developer to fill in. If you can't do it it's just because you don't know how, not because it can't be done. IMO at least.

I guess it really depends what you value most from the stories. I don't doubt that representations of the stories and atmosphere can be done, or even done well, it's the element of incomprehensibility that I would say is most unique to his horror stories, at least that how it seemed to me when I read them, that's what would be so difficult. I haven't played Dark Corners of the Earth but I have heard great things and would like to try it someday, when I watched the trailer at the time however (I do appreciate that they of course show exciting shooty-action moments for trailers, which is often not representative) and saw creatures in the boat scene, it was very clear that the aspect I valued most would not be there, so I didn't bother with it.

As I said it would be great fun to try, I mean that sincerely, but I have no idea right now how that particular element of incomprehensibility could be translated into this kind of experience without it feeling like a trite arbitrary representation, particularly in a mod where we do not have access to the engine source code.

P.S. Rock Worm I'm happy to give you feed back if you wanna PM me