Story Spoilers: Nyarlathotep?

[Alardem]

No, I don't think that this story had anything to do with Lovecraft's stories. The Machine is not an independent entity, at all, but a broken piece of Mandus's own soul insane with the horrors of the 20th century and given god-like power through endless blood sacrifices. This game is all about the dark depths that humans are capable of succumbing on their own, and adding in some malevolent outside power to the mix would badly dilute that message.

And let me add that it seriously bugs me how poorly represented Nyarlathotep is by basically every writer other than Lovecraft. People keep presenting him as some apocalypse-level troll who screws wityh humanity for the hell of it, when in Lovecraft's own writings he is consistently a guardian on the treshold between mundane and supernatural, requiring sacrifices from those who attempt to cross that line and pursuing relentlessly those who don't pay the price.

...so he's like the Shadow?

I disagree about the inclusion of supernatural elements diminishing the effect of the story. After all, we have electric piggies, walking corpses, ghosts, sentient machines and a pig invasion to challenge our suspension of disbelief.

Amnesia (and presumably Penumbra) exist in a world ruled by the cosmic insignificance of humanity and their inability to understand the true nature of the world. In the case of Mandus, his vision of the 20th century, while technically 'true', seems to be very specifically tuned to highlight the most hideous episodes of humanity. Lest we forget, there have been many positive steps towards a better future in the last century - the toppling of colonial empires, the advancement of medical and educational systems, the creation of extensive communication networks (internet), and I can continue.

The tragedy of Mandus is that, seeing himself as too far-gone to truly redeem the world through positive change, the greedy industrialist instead chose to continue his cruelty to the logical extreme. Him creating a machine to redeem the world in blood is, in function, not any better than the horrors of capitalism and industrialization. And ultimately, his attempted genocide fails and he fades from history, having failed to understand the true solution to the human evil he had witnessed.

Again - as terrible as the wars of aggression and genocide in our century were, as horrific as the introduction of new weapons of mass destruction became, as slow as the tide of progress is in changing the exploitation of the underclass, it is still better to strive for positive change rather than give up entirely and embrace your nihilism. By decrying the evils of others, you ignore your own problems and pointless suffering is the only result.