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Frogwares' The Sinking City - that other Cthulhu game

Tancred

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Cool, didn't know this game is viewed from the perspective of a midget who's constantly running just behind and to the right of the main character.
Please start a thread in General Gaming about how all games should be first person perspective. Please.

You sound triggered. I have no particular issue with OTS-perspective games although I don't play them often, but this ultra-cinematic style of the player character occupying the entire left-hand third of the screen feels genuinely unnatural to me.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
note
crazyrobot.gif
in this case does not mean (autism) but "I AM TRIGGERED"
 
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E3 2018: Unravel mysteries and your sanity in The Sinking City

Frogwares’ The Sinking City could be the game to bring the shadowy, grotesque world of H.P. Lovecraft to life in all its tentacled and sanity-shattering glory.

Frogwares is best-known for their Sherlock Holmes adventure games as well as Magrunner: Dark Pulse, a Lovecraft-themed action puzzle game, so it’s no surprise they would want to combine these themes in a larger, deeper and open world game.

“We’re all big fans of H.P. Lovecraft.” My play guide smiles as he begins.

The Sinking City is set in the 1920s in a flooded, decaying seaside fishing town called Oakmont. Painted in a palette of gloom with a side hopelessness, Oakmont bears all the hallmarks of classic H.P. Lovecraft settings. It is largely isolated and forgotten by the rest of the world and its inhabitants are unwelcoming to outsiders. Moreover, they seem curiously immune to their obviously decaying condition.

You play as Charles W. Reed, a private investigator who has been experiencing chaotic, dark visions that call him to Oakmont. Even with an already haunted and fragile grasp on reality, Reed must solve the mystery of what his visions mean. And Oakmont beckons with answers.

Welcome to The Sinking City

My gameplay demo began with a brief tour through the streets of Oakmont, a festering cesspool of a seaside town isolated from the world and mired in flooded streets, rain, dark alleys, and off-putting, inhabitants of questionable mental health and motives. You can travel on foot or fast travel between parts of the city. Some parts of the town are so flooded that you can only travel the streets in a small boat.

A distraught woman asks Charles to help her find her husband, Harry. After a brief conversation, Charles takes the case and accepts the (probable) widow’s ring as payment. (Does anyone really expect a good outcome here?)

He could have chosen not to take the ring, but detectives need to eat too. How and what you choose to pursue has a direct effect on the game, which itself has multiple possible endings and outcomes depending on your decisions. Save often.

“It’s a game about making choices, and those choices have consequences,” my Sinking City guide explains.

With only an address of the husband’s last-known whereabouts, Charles sets off—and with nary an objective marker to aid him. The Sinking City does very little hand-holding apart from recording necessary clues in your journal. My guide consults the in-game journal for the cross streets of the address, travels there, and then looks for the correct street signs.

In other words, don’t expect simple pop-up navigation aids and quest markers. The Sinking City is a type of detective game after all, and Frogwares wants you to actually do a little detecting. You may even want a physical notebook to play the game with—a decidedly “old school” twist.

And similar to AAA open-world inspirations such as Deus Ex, there can be multiple paths to any given objective. After arriving at the apartment where the husband was last seen, Charles has to figure out how to get in. Fortunately, there appears to be an entry on the second story he can reach by climbing up to a balcony.

Entering the apartment, we find a photo of the woman that hired us and (presumably) her missing husband, Harry—confirmation that we must be in the right place. It’s a ramshackle apartment; it doesn’t look like it has been inhabited for some time. Eventually, we find some curious symbols painted on a wall.

Charles photographs the symbols—one of the skills you’ll frequently use in your investigations. (He’ll later take these to the Oakmont librarian and consult archives to learn more about what the symbols are, and perhaps where he can find more information.)

After he regains his sanity anyway. During the investigation, Charles stumbles upon a lot of blood. Lots of blood. And then something happens… maybe a psychotic break? The screen warbles and distorts. The insano-meter (my name, not theirs) rises.

Mental trauma is a constant threat in the game, and experiencing gruesome things (monsters, dead bodies, etc.) causes a few clowns to leave Charles’ circus. And then the monsters appear—bizarre, tentacled horrors.

“You don’t really know if these monsters are real or not, but you have to deal with them just the same or you can die. You can run, hide, or fight them until your insanity level drops to normal.”

A few shots from a pistol and a lot of running away later, Charles survives the encounter and his sanity stabilizes. Exiting the apartment he fast-travels to the part of the city with the library, which is staffed by a sole proprietor whose lips are literally sewn shut. (I guess that’s one way to ensure quiet.)

Research tells us that the photographed symbols are none other than the Eye of Dagon. And further research into Oakmont’s history indicates the fish market may be somehow tied to it and worth investigating further. Did Harry join a cult, or was he the victim of one? We head off to the fish market to find out more.

At one point in all this running about Oakmont, my guide decides to take a boat down a flooded street. The back (or perhaps backs, or maybe tentacles) of large, shadowy bodies briefly surface. They’re as tantalizing as they are menacing, another hint at the lurking horrors just below Oakmont’s fragile surface.

Eye of Dagon. Fish markets. Lurking horrors. It’s a Lovecraftian cornucopia.

At the fish market we meet and talk to a man who is either a little fishy himself (literally, as in greenish, scale-like lesions on his face) or just has an indeterminate skin disease. Conversing with him we learn that Harry (the man we’re looking for, in case you forgot), perhaps went into the basement below the fish market, so we head there next.

In the basement, there’s clearly an altar of some kind, soaked in bloodstains. Odd symbols adorn the room, including the Eye of Dagon. Clearly, these are the trappings of a demented cult. Something unsavory has been going on.

We’re attacked.
Someone cold-cocks us and takes us down.
We awaken bound, surrounded by cultists.
They begin to close in…

And then the f*cking demo ends.

The Sinking City launches March 21st 2019 on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

Overall thoughts

I definitely liked what I saw at E3 2018. The Sinking City looks to be one of the best translations of Lovecraftian themes to a video game I’ve seen (although I kind of wish it was in an FPS viewpoint). Oakmont is thick with atmosphere, colorless and bleak but as intriguing as it is menacing.

With roughly 30+ hours of investigations to solve, it may well be the deep, Lovecraftian-styled game we’ve been waiting for.

https://pcgameexaminer.com/2018/06/22/e3-2018-unravel-mysteries-and-your-sanity-in-the-sinking-city/
 
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How The Sinking City Is Forging Its Own Unique Lovecraftian Experience

As the horror genre has evolved over the years, movies and video games are relying less on jump scare tactics and utilising more psychological horror elements. A subgenre of psychological horror is Lovecraftian horror – a premise based upon the works of author H.P. Lovecraft that deals with themes such as fear of the unknown, helplessness, loss of sanity and more. Lovecraft’s works, such as Call of Cthulhu, didn’t gain substantial popularity until after his death in 1937 and they are now a popular source of inspiration for all kinds of projects.

One game harnessing the themes of Lovecraft is The Sinking City, which is currently being developed by the Ukraine-based studio Frogwares, a team known for its work on the Sherlock Holmes series. We caught up with Frogwares’ community manager, Sergey Oganesyan, to find out all about The Sinking City and how it will give players a unique Lovecraftian experience.

WP: Thank you for taking the time to speak to us about your upcoming game The Sinking City.

SO: Hey, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about it!

WP: In your own words, what is The Sinking City all about?

The Sinking City is a third person action investigation game, heavily inspired by H.P Lovecraft and is set in his universe. The game tells a story of a 1920s private detective, who arrives in the fictional city of Oakmont, Massachusetts, to find it in total disarray and chaos.

Locals are trying to survive a brutal flood, which at first looks like a natural disaster. But as the flood is not withdrawing and the city inhabitants are slowly sinking into insanity we feel that some supernatural power is at play. Our goal is to solve the mystery of this city which oddly seems to relate to us in a strange way.

As a detective, we will be using our wits and intuition to conduct investigations, examine crime scenes, question suspects and deliver justice (or injustice, based on your moral compass☺) to those we consider responsible for something. And when push comes to shove, our hero can rely on his weaponry to try (try!) and keep himself out of harm’s way.

WP: As a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft’s work I am excited to see your take on his universe. Are the majority of the development team fans of his work?

You bet! Most people in our company have read his works, and have a strong opinion on them. Our narration team, for example, really dig his underlying themes, such as fear of the unknown, fatalism, our place in the universe, the futility of our efforts, insanity, and, of course, cosmic fear.

Btw, we’ve actually made games in the past that featured the Cthulhu Mythos, like Sherlock Holmes The Awakened in 2007. This should tell you we have been fond Lovecraft for a long time, and The Sinking City is not something we decided to make out of the blue.

WP: You’ve explained in a dev diary video that your adaptation is more of an expansion of Lovecraft’s works as opposed to a rendition of a particular story. How beneficial has this freedom been?

You are absolutely right, The Sinking City is an expansion of the Lovecraft universe. What does that mean? It means we totally recognize events that happened in his novels, they are canon in our game as well. Characters of Lovecraft and his followers created also exist in our world.

That doesn’t mean they all will be present in The Sinking City though. I mean, some will be, like hybrids who moved to Oakmont from Innsmouth. Of course, certain INCOMPREHENSIBLE and ancient beings are also part of the game.

But what we ultimately want to do is use the foundation – the underlying themes I mentioned above – to tell our own story. This allows us to build our own world, create our own characters, write their own motivations etc. Our hands are untied because a lot of what we do is basically based on our interpretation of Lovecraft’s works.

On the one hand, this freedom is great for us for obvious reasons. On the other hand, we must make sure what we create actually fits the Lovecraftian world.

WP: You mentioned that The Sinking City is set in the fictional city of Oakmont. Was Oakmont inspired by any real cities?

SO: Yeah, by Boston and a lot of other cities in Massachusetts and New England. We obviously want it to feel and look like something that could exist in the U.S. in the 1920s. We have seven districts in Oakmont, each conveys different atmosphere and mood, based on lighting, architecture and a ton of different factors. So each of this districts was created to be pretty unique, in accordance with its history and lore.

Our city unit designed how the city was founded and how it was developed over time. This means different areas of the city were shaped under the influence of the architectural styles that dominated at the time. Early colonialism, federal etc.

WP: The game is set during the 1920s. How much research went into ensuring the setting is accurate as possible whilst maintaining the Lovecraftian atmosphere?

SO: Hell of a lot. We looked at dozens of different cities, both real and fictional. We went to Boston to see if we can capture that New England-ish look and feel and implement it in Oakmont. We brought home hundreds of photos of different buildings, streets, back alleys etc.

You know, it’s not just architecture that makes the city, it’s urban planning and city grid as well. Our architect, concept and environment artists have browsed I don’t know how many references online and in literature… It’s crazy. A city is an ecosystem that should make sense, so when you know there is a street you know why it’s there. That’s what we want to do.

For example, our city was founded in one area, Salvation Harbor, and then it spread eastward and northward. We have a few buildings Oakmont was built around, like the university.

When it comes to the Lovecraft in it, we obviously examined places like Arkham, Innsmouth etc. We needed to understand what makes them unique not only in terms of visual distinction, but also urban planning. We are creating a place where cults can operate, where decay and desolation play their own role. It’s a tricky thing, especially when you consider that the city should mix the Roaring Twenties and Lovecraftian components, and also fit gameplay rules. Not an easy task at all.

WP: The number of mediums using Lovecraftian themes has increased in recent years. In your opinion, what makes it such a good foundation to build a game around?

SO: In the past decade, there haven’t been a lot of popular video games that explored these themes. Whenever I talk about that with fans, they always mention one game, Call Of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth. In recent years, the situation has somewhat changed indeed. We have Bloodborne, we have other video games that incorporate Lovecraft in certain ways – Darkest Dungeon, Sunless Sea, Amnesia etc.

Lovecraftian themes and horrors are not your traditional, well, horrors that mostly rely on gore or jump scares. They are deeply philosophical concepts that leave a lot to imagination and contemplation. I feel like a lot of people out there want to have this psychological depth in their projects. And a lot of people can relate to the concepts that Lovecraft wrote about.

It’s a really interesting and fresh setting, not particularly overused. Plus, Cthulhu.

WP: After spending years working on Sherlock Holmes games what inspired the decision to work on something new?

SO: Well, we never want to make the same game twice. Even our Sherlock Holmes games were different from each other in terms of gameplay mechanics and story approach. And after eight Sherlock games, we wanted to do something completely new. We wanted to do open world with side quests, enemies, combat etc. When we started working on the project, we realized we couldn’t do that with Sherlock. That’s how our The Sinking City was born.

WP: This is the biggest project Frogwares has ever worked on. How many more resources does a game like The Sinking City require compared to a Sherlock Holmes game?

SO: Significantly more. Sherlock Holmes The Devil’s Daughter was our biggest project, it was semi-open world kind of game. But making a full-scale city is something very different. We need more lore, more content, more resources, more story, more everything. Our studio got significantly bigger, with around 80 people working on The Sinking City. And we are still looking for more professionals, animators, environment artists etc. If anybody of your readers are interested, they can find more info at http://frogwares.com/careers.

WP: Are you using a new engine for The Sinking City? Or are you sticking with Unreal? If so why?

SO: Sticking with Unreal Engine, now version 4 of course. We are more than comfortable with this engine, and we have a lot of experience working with it. We even created our own software in the engine, like City Generator, and other tools that allow us to easily create characters, dialogues and quests for our game. There’s no reason for us to consider something else.

WP: Unlike your semi-open world Sherlock Holmes games, The Sinking City is fully open world. How much more challenging has this been from a development point of view?

SO: Our semi-open world levels in Devil’s Daughter were created mostly for story and atmosphere, exploration didn’t play a major role in that game. With The Sinking City, exploration is a pillar, a key element. That’s why we need a visually rich and varied city, and it’s not very easy to build it from scratch.

Thankfully, we can use the City Generator tool we mentioned. It allows us to avoid tedious manual placement of every building on the map, which otherwise would take I don’t know how much time.

But yeah, it’s still a lot of work. After each street is created, we need to go over it, make sure everything is its place, everything makes sense, polish it, add a human touch, add landmarks, create interesting scenarios etc.

WP: Sidequests are a common component of open-world games. How challenging is it to make these quests unique and not rely on fetch quests?

SO: Well, if our goal was to (artificially) increase playtime, then we would probably add something like that, some filler to keep the player busy. It’s not our goal, though. In our game we have zero fetch quests. We would never ask you to deliver something or collect X items. The Sinking City is not a sandbox game, where the player needs to find ways to entertain themselves.

In addition to side quests, the game will offer lots of things for the player to discover. Accidental encounters, interesting situations, danger zones, discoverable lore pieces, collectibles – all that to encourage gamers to explore the world we are creating.

WP: How long can we expect it to take to complete everything in The Sinking City?

SO: 30 hours for main quests and a big chunk of side quests. Around 50 if you wanna do everything there is in the game.

WP: The Sinking City is billed as a story-driven experience. How important and difficult is it to ensure that the story is engaging, but doesn’t stray too far from Lovecraft’s themes?

SO: It’s extremely important to have a story that fits Lovecraft’s style and canon. But as I said, we have a lot of freedom with this one, since it’s largely our story. It’s not that difficult to exploit Lovecraft’s themes, since they are sort of philosophically universal and can be applied in different situations.

Although, we have a narration team that knows and loves Lovecraft. We’ve studied not only Lovecraft himself, but also writers he himself may have drawn inspiration from, like Edgar Allan Poe. We’ve even read some of his critics, H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq for example.

WP: Much like your Sherlock Holmes series, The Sinking City’s lead protagonist, Charles Reed, is a private investigator. How much of Reed’s personality (if any) was shaped around Holmes?

SO: Cannot say we are shaping Reed’s personality around Sherlock Holmes, aside from the fact they are both detectives. Reed has his own background, character, motivation etc, his own opinions on things. Also, The Sinking City has RPG elements and we do want to give players the opportunity to roleplay and build their own character to a degree, through dialogue options and moral choices.

WP: Investigation is a primary part of The Sinking City’s gameplay. How much of this will this borrow from your previous Sherlock Holmes titles? Are you expanding this system at all?

SO: So with The Sinking City we are stepping into a completely new territory. While we are using the experience we’ve obtained from Sherlock Holmes games, this is a different game. We have new mechanics, which should work great with our open world and the concept of ‘no hand holding’. We want the player to experiment with their findings and test their intuition.

WP: We’ve seen brief glimpses of the game’s combat in action. How much of a role will combat play?

SO: While this game is not about fighting monsters, combat definitely plays a noticeable role. We want the player to feel the danger of the city, we want the player to be constantly aware of their surroundings. Different challenges arise from combat, like resource management. Also, we want to give the player ways to tackle each particular encounter, based on how many bullets they have, how strong the enemy is. Stealth or fleeing are valid and feasible options, you know.

WP: How many different types of weapons will players have access to?

SO: Quite a few. Revolvers, rifles, weapons, grenades etc. Weapons you’d expect to see in that period of time. At the same time, guns are not the only instruments we want to give you. There will be other tools for the player to use – like traps, for example.

WP: Lovecraftian horror is often about fear of the unknown, helplessness and loss of sanity. How are you balancing these themes from a gameplay point of view, especially when it comes to combat? Will players be able to pick and choose their battles?

SO: Yeah, as I said above, we absolutely want the player to make their own choices when it comes to virtually anything in the game, including combat. Engage, sneak past or run away – the choice is yours. Especially when you not only have to care about health or ammunition, but also the protagonist’s mental state. Insanity is one of the mechanics we use to reflect on Lovecraft’s fundamental psychological themes, and there are other ways we do it as well.

WP: I read you’re looking to add a sanity (or insanity) aspect to the game. Can you tell us briefly how this will work or what ideas you have?

SO: We have an insanity mechanic in the game, though we are still playing with it, trying to find the best way for it to work for the game and the player. Right now it works like that: when our main character witnesses something disturbing, he begins to gradually lose his sanity… Hallucinations, strange sounds – the hero is under a lot of stress. We are still looking at what kind of impact we want it to have on the character.

WP: What sort of consequences will your choices have? Will they be permanent or will players get the chance to atone?

SO: Oh, that’s something we want to talk later on, sorry

WP: Will we see any RPG elements like skill upgrades or weapon upgrades at all?

SO: Yeah, we are actually working on different sets of skills in the game, which should complement your primary gameplay mechanics like investigation, exploration or combat. These skills are supposed to make your life a tiny bit easier and more convenient. We are still fine-tuning these sets at the moment.

WP: You’ve shown The Sinking City through a playable demo at a couple recent events. How has the public and critics responded to the early build of the game?

SO: Not only we’ve received warm reception of the game, but players have also given us some very valuable feedback on certain moments in The Sinking City! Like camera angle, which is something we are tweaking based on people’s comments. Press coverage has been positive as well. People really like the game so far. And we are very grateful for their feedback!

WP: How many different endings will the game feature?

SO: More than one

WP: You’ve stated that you will announce a release date when you’re ready. Is the target still 2018?

SO: Excitingly, we announced a release date alongside our E3 2018 trailer. Players can explore The Sinking City as of March 21, 2019.

WP: Both The Sinking City and Sherlock Holmes games are based on works of fiction. If you could use another author’s works as an inspiration who would you choose? Any titles in particular?

SO: That’s an interesting question, but to be honest I don’t have an answer. People in the company are fans of different things – horror, sci-fi etc. Can’t give you any particular titles or works though

WP: Thank you for your time. Looking forward to seeing what you have planned for E3. Good luck with the rest of the game’s development.

https://www.well-played.com.au/how-...rging-its-own-unique-lovecraftian-experience/
 

Zombra

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I finally read both of the above tldr articles.

My summary of the important takeaways:
* Doubling down on no handholding, no quest markers etc. Read street signs by looking at them like a human being.
* Insanity effects and wobbling screens when monsters appear. Do you fight? Run? Hide? You gotta do something because whether they're hallucinations or not they can kill you.
* Protagonist is a predefined guy but his personality is kinda up to you. Different dialogue options and moral decisions.
* You can fight a lot if you want, but enemies are obstacles and not goals in themselves mostly. If you can sneak past or avoid them altogether when getting to your objectives, that's fine.
* That said, there are tons of guns, grenades etc. so it seems like Rambo playthroughs are supported.
* Open world means exploration will be rewarded with lore items and treasures etc., but the missions (main and side) are all handcrafted and focused, you're not supposed to just blunder around and "find your own fun" and missions are never fedexes or garbage kill 10 xyz. No procedural quests.
* All new detective mechanics "which should work great with our open world". No details.
* Release date March 21st 2019.
 

Deathsquid

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Sounds very exciting. I am absolutely sure I will suck at this game because 3D adventures are something I'm traditionally horrible at but I am definitely gonna give this one a try.
 

Zombra

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Sounds very exciting. I am absolutely sure I will suck at this game because 3D adventures are something I'm traditionally horrible at but I am definitely gonna give this one a try.
FWIW you can hopefully enjoy it anyway. One of the devs was talking about Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments which allowed you to get answers partially correct or even wrong yet continue forward with the main story. So if you are bad at finding all the clues you may be able to say, "Fuck it, this man wasn't murdered, he tied his own hands behind his back and fell backwards onto that sledgehammer. A clear case of suicide! Moving on!"
 

Deathsquid

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Sounds very exciting. I am absolutely sure I will suck at this game because 3D adventures are something I'm traditionally horrible at but I am definitely gonna give this one a try.
FWIW you can hopefully enjoy it anyway. One of the devs was talking about Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments which allowed you to get answers partially correct or even wrong yet continue forward with the main story. So if you are bad at finding all the clues you may be able to say, "Fuck it, this man wasn't murdered, he tied his own hands behind his back and fell backwards onto that sledgehammer. A clear case of suicide! Moving on!"

Oh yeah, C&P, would you say it's worth giving it a shot? It sounded like a pretty cool concept but I'm looking at the price tag and being like "Well this sounds great but I usually suck at these, so maybe I should wait for a 99% discount first..?"
 

Zombra

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Oh yeah, C&P, would you say it's worth giving it a shot? It sounded like a pretty cool concept but I'm looking at the price tag and being like "Well this sounds great but I usually suck at these, so maybe I should wait for a 99% discount first..?"
Down to $15? Absolutely, I think it's a brilliant detective game. Note that the next one Devil's Daughter is not as good, I don't recommend it.
Then again some other guy I recommended C&P to for the sale didn't like it, so grain of salt and all that.
Just remember, don't use spoilers and don't accuse your first suspect right away. I didn't know how to play at first so screwed up the first couple cases. Keep investigating until you're sure.
 

Deathsquid

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Oh yeah, C&P, would you say it's worth giving it a shot? It sounded like a pretty cool concept but I'm looking at the price tag and being like "Well this sounds great but I usually suck at these, so maybe I should wait for a 99% discount first..?"
Down to $15? Absolutely, I think it's a brilliant detective game. Note that the next one Devil's Daughter is not as good, I don't recommend it.
Then again some other guy I recommended C&P to for the sale didn't like it, so grain of salt and all that.
Just remember, don't use spoilers and don't accuse your first suspect right away. I didn't know how to play at first so screwed up the first couple cases. Keep investigating until you're sure.
Are there time limits or anything of the sort?
 
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The Black Seas of Infinity — The Sinking City E3 2018 preview

l_7_r.jpg


I’m a sucker for all things Lovecraft, and I enjoy the mythos around the Old Gods most of all. The team at Frogwares shares in my love of Cthulhu, and they showed a bit of it off in a demo at E3 2018 in their game The Sinking City. A semi-open world RPG, the title aims to build on the strength of their fantastic Sherlock Holmes titles with some entirely new mechanics.

The game takes place in in the early 1920s in the city of Oakmont in the United States. The city has partially flooded, leaving the residents to try to get around in motorboats and, where possible, on foot. You play a detective named Mr. Reed who’s been tasked with discovering the source of some disturbing things occurring across the city.

Beyond this objective, the game does very little to guide you. There are no objectives or map markers — it’s an open world for you to discover. In our demo, Dorothy Evans’ husband has gone missing, and she’s trying to hire us to discover if he’s missing, dead, or simply lost. She, like most of the people in this semi-ruined city, has almost nothing, so she offers her wedding ring as payment. We refuse (though we have the option to accept it as payment), and use the clues she offers to head to the local watering hole to see if he might have ended up there.

Hopping in our boat with its little outboard motor, we begin to zip through the flooded streets. Menacing tentacles skurry away from the little ship, flotsam and boats riddling the edges of the shops in the periphery. Arriving at a nearby docks, fisherman dot the landscape, eyeing us suspiciously. That’s when I noticed the gills...

Steering clear of the human / fish hybrid creatures, we head towards the bar. The front door is locked, so we climb the hood of a nearby broken down bus to try the door on the second floor. Inside, we find rotted planks, as well as evidence of a struggle, weapon ammunition, film for our camera, and cans of food places on the shelves. My demo driver points out a symbol on the wall — a large eye and comments “Now, we don’t know what this eye means”. I interrupt him “Yes, I do. It’s the Esoteric Order of Dagon”. The look on his face was priceless as I was absolutely correct. That said, our character doesn’t yet know this fact — we’ll have to travel to the nearby library to uncover this knowledge.

As we make our way out of the bar, we stumble across our first example of true madness. A creature made of entirely too long of arms and far too many joints scurries across the floor. Voices whisper in our ears as our vision streaks and warps. Our limited ammunition is taxed as we dispatch these hideous creatures, and we are reminded that The Sinking City is not a combat game.

Escaping the freakish scene, we make it to the library. There are seven different districts that make up the city, each with a large number of locations that you can visit and explore. Heading into the central district, we find ourselves surrounded by tall buildings with beautiful architecture and wainscoting. Finding the librarian, we are aghast to find that her mouth has been sewn shut. She’s being punished for saying things she shouldn’t. She indicates that she’s not seen this symbol before, sending us to inquire in some reference books for a possible clue.

Using the fast travel system to head to the fish market, as indicated by the reference book (and our demo driver) we spot a sign that says “Feel the gentle touch of tentacles”. On the horizon there is a massive monolith that looks like a chitinous claw reaching into the sky. Hybrid Innsmouth fisherpeople are all over this part of the city acting as fishmongers and dock laborers. They are only too happy to talk to us, their otherworldly eyes unnatural as the breathing through the gills in their neck.

Following our clue, we head into the basement of the fish market (because, what could go wrong?) and we find an alter. The demo driver once again checks my knowledge and I indicate that it’s indeed an alter to Dagon. He takes a step forward and we are immediate greeted by Dorothy Evans. She says “I’m sorry... I had no other choice” and we are cracked on the back of the head and end up on the altar. Had we spent more time in the library and looked through the clues we might have been able to discover this was a trap, shot our way out, possibly gunned down our assailants, talked down or even shot Mrs. Evans, or several other other outcomes. The choices, and the consequences, are entirely yours.

I hadn’t heard of The Sinking City until a week prior to E3, but now that I’ve seen it, I am eager to see how the open world embraces the mythos. Frogwares and their work on Sherlock Holmes makes me excited to see how the investigation elements of the game shape the story. It’s nice to be surprised at E3...

The Sinking City is headed to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC on March 2019.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
Patron
Joined
Mar 27, 2016
Messages
9,175
Location
Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Wait there are 2 version of that troll smiley now? The one with $ and the one with jew gold? Or i just realized it and it was there all along?
 

Vaarna_Aarne

Notorious Internet Vandal
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
Messages
34,585
Location
Cell S-004
MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
I'm glad there's only one clear gunshot in the trailer. Low emphasis on action is important for a good horror experience.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,406
Location
Djibouti
so far this game looks like the typical modern understanding of lovecraft:

'lololo tentacles'
 

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