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Frogwares' The Sinking City - that other Cthulhu game

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How Frogwares Explores the Gray Between Good and Evil – The Sinking City Interview



Frogwares is a studio with a storied history making Sherlock Holmes games. They’ve been allowing people to investigate those intellectual mysteries since their first title in 2002, going on to make a total of eight games about the intrepid detective, including Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments and The Devil’s Daughter, both available on PS4. Frogwares has had occasion between Holmes’ adventures to make games based on other properties, always exploring the ambiguity between good and evil and allowing player discovery. In 2019 they will be exploring the eldritch horrors of Lovecraftian influence with The Sinking City.

We had a chance to talk to Frogwares about their studio, the investigation genre, and how they are putting their own spin on the Lovecraft mythos.


PSLS: Frogwares is known most recently for the Sherlock Holmes titles and the upcoming The Sinking City. Mystery is clearly a central focus for the studio, but are there any other pillars that the studio stands behind when developing games?


Frogwares: Some say investigation is our forte, and it probably is what we are known for. However, to us investigation is a means to deliver journeys or experiences that we hope will stay with the player after they put the gamepad down. We want try to thrive on creating situations that people can either relate to or imagine themselves being in, and say “Hey, I’ve been there too,” or “I don’t know what I would do if that happened to me!”

Here’s a simple example from Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishment. While investigating, say, a brutal murder of a man, you find that his wife was having an affair because she was truly unhappy. You don’t know if her lover is linked to the case, but it’s an angle worth pursuing. So suddenly, your target is not a thief or a serial killer, but an average guy who probably made a mistake while trying to protect his loved one.

Say, you understand his motivation, but with a heavy heart you sentence him to prison. Then you realize that you were wrong about the murderer, and it was someone else. Now it’s time to ask yourself a question: “Do I have the right to decide the fate of people around me?”

We want to confront the player with these questions that aren’t easily answered. We aim to create moral dilemmas that will enable gamers to think about how complex our lives can be. And we want the player to realize that sometimes we all make wrong decisions and live with the consequences. That’s our approach to The Sinking City as well.

PSLS: Conversely, what is the one thing the team never wants to do in one of your games, be it a feature, gameplay element, or plot point?

Frogwares: Anything where we create a world with a generic divide between good and evil. We don’t want to go for cheap shock value to squeeze emotions out of you, like when cartoonishly bad guys kill kittens for no reason. It can work sometimes, depending on what you plan to achieve, but we prefer to wallow around in that murky grey area where people are left wondering who is “the lesser evil” in each this situation, me or them?

PSLS: How do you keep a game’s sense of mystery and discovery while also being accessible to a large variety of players?

Frogwares: We found that a good way to keep the spirit of mystery alive is to allow for genuine discoverability. If players feel like they uncovered something on their own through exploration, deduction and problem solving, then they should become more attached to the idea of solving the mystery. That’s why we’re pushing this idea of “Open Investigation” which basically means the game won’t hold your hand. There are no quest markers on the minimap, no checklist of clues you need to find revealed at the start of a quest etc. For example, the game gives you info such as an address but you need to use an actual map to locate it instead of some location marker on your HUD telling you where to go. Same idea with clues and investigations. You’ll be given plenty of info and tools to the solve them, just don’t expect it all given to you on plate. You need to actively discover and solve the clues to progress.

When it comes to keeping something like this it accessible, creating investigation mechanics and systems that are logical and easy to use are key. So through reasoning or even trial and error, the player is able to grasp what are the ways the game lets them collect, organize and solve clues. If it makes sense and the systems are fun to use, it will keep the player engaged.



PSLS: What’s something you really wanted to do with The Sinking City, but just had to cut it because it wasn’t working or didn’t fit?

Frogwares: At one point we had this interesting and intricate card game which you could challenge NPCs to in order to coax out information from them. The prototype worked well and was fun, but there was a bit of a domino effect on the rest of the systems. We’d end up with the card game becoming a blockade to the investigation chain. The information they had was essential so you had to extract it. But if you failed there needed valid and believable alternatives of getting that info too so then that hit us on the quest design scope. We also didn’t want this system to be an obvious way of getting key info all the time so players wouldn’t fall into a pattern of solving investigations, so we started loading some the NPCs with red herring clues. This in the end turned into more of a frustrating experience than a fun one, so we made the call to just ditch the system entirely.

PSLS: The Sinking City’s site says the following: “The game takes place in the fictional city of Oakmont, Massachusetts, set in the famous American Roaring Twenties. It’s a very distinct and often romanticized period of time in the U.S. history: economic growth, rise of consumerism, jazz, prohibition, gangsters and ethnic conflicts.” Is this awareness of the 20s being romanticized vs the uglier reality a factor in the game’s storytelling, and does that also extend to Lovecraft, who is also overtly romanticized—especially in video games—despite lots of themes like racism in and outside of the source material?

Frogwares: The “uglier reality” is indeed a big factor and one of the major points in the storytelling. All we can say is that we don’t want to shy away from societal problems that existed in the past and could be considered taboo nowadays. At the same time, we don’t aim to show these problems from the modern perspective. That is a really delicate topic. We prefer that you play the game and tell us what you think about it afterwards.

PSLS: Does The Sinking City pull from a specific Lovecraft work, or is it a more general overall “Lovecraft theme?”

Frogwares: We debated this at the start of the project but very quickly we decided we’d rather pull heavily from the Lovecraft themes and multiple stories, instead of focus on any one particular piece of his work.

It’s better this way as it gives us more room to create our own stories that match up nicely with the gameplay and story arcs we came up with. Had we stuck to established locations, characters and stories we’d be forced to recreate them well enough to appease avid Lovecraft fans while also trying to incorporate our own ideas. And while it may have been easier to sell the game as “Based on the story of…” we’d probably just end up with a lot of forced ideas clashing and a lot of unhappy Lovecraft fans.

In the end it was decided we’d rather give everyone a new story anchored heavily around the feel of Lovecraft’s world. Trying to recreate something that many people already have their own strong mental picture of just for the sake of being able to market the the game better would be foolish.

PSLS: Will The Sinking City take influence from The Shadow Over Innsmouth in particular? If so, will it lean more towards the unknown Deep Sea, or the cosmos? Or will it mesh the black sea with the stars above, as Lovecraft tends to do?

Frogwares: The sea and its impact on the game is a major plot point since the flood came from the sea, leaving Oakmont paralyzed and devastated. The city is now full of the fishpeople from Innsmouth, so if you know your Lovecraft, then the book’s influence is apparent.

Plus we believe that the sea fits the idea of cosmic horror perfectly. Both the sea and cosmos are enormous bodies of space, each concealing vast mysteries from human eye. If you look at the stars, your mind can can begin to wonder just how much we don’t know and how insignificant we are. Stare into the murky waters of the ocean, the idea is very much the same.

PSLS: How will the game attempt to measure madness? Will it be similar to other Lovecraftian titles like Bloodborne, or will it do so in a new way?

Frogwares: Bloodborne’s insight is a really fascinating mechanic, but we are going for a different approach here. We need something dynamic that shall constantly remind you just how fragile our hero’s mind is. That’s why we have a separate sanity meter, which goes down every time you see something disturbing. When it drops, our hero begins to see visions, phantom enemies and flashbacks from his past, environment changes too. It creates additional challenge, puts more pressure on the player because it can happen at the most inappropriate moment, when you least expect it.

PSLS: Outsiders are rarely welcomed in Lovecraft’s oeuvre. Is the PI a Miskatonic type, sent to uncover a hidden truth that everyone in the town except for him knows? Which side are the locals on?

Frogwares: The mystery overtaking our fictional city of Oakmont is one that very few characters in the game understand. The city has been enveloped by a mysterious and almost living flood, yet despite the sheer decay and degradation it’s causing, people choose to stay. They are somehow drawn to this place and begin to adapt to living with the flood. Very few people know why they are doing this, only that they must. Hostility to outsiders is still a common theme but its not from someone snooping around, trying to uncover their dirty secret, but rather it’s born from the insanity of living in a place like this and believing nothing is wrong with doing so. The main character Charles Reed is also drawn to this place but is still able to rationalize his being there as trying to uncover the mystery of the flood.

PSLS: Lovecraft was influenced by the detective stories of Edgar Allen Poe. Is Lovecraft the only influence the game has, or is he one of many?

Frogwares: Lovecraft is of course the biggest one, for sure, but the team also studied the works of his followers, August Derleth, Brian Lumley etc. We also looked at the authors Lovecraft himself drew inspiration from, like Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Blackwood, Robert W. Chambers and others.

And since we are creating a video game, we also dissected the original 2005 Call of Cthulhu Dark: Corners of the Earth game, the Silent Hill games, LA Noire, The Last of Us, maybe a bit of The Witcher as well as movies like In the Mouth of Madness etc.

PSLS: What did you learn while developing the Sherlock Holmes games that you are pulling into your experience developing The Sinking City?

Frogwares: Can we say everything? Everytime you ship a game you get a little more wiser if not a little more insane since it feels like making games is as much a science as it is black magic.

Features wise, we are building upon a few we created in Sherlock, like the reconstruction of events, the mind palace and the idea that investigation games don’t need to hold your hand or the player will give up after five minutes and leave.

PSLS: The properties you work on tend to have a number of versions. Sherlock Holmes in particular has a lot of iterations, whether it’s a more modern take, one with a comedic tone, or something much darker. How do you put your own personal spin on the properties and themes you are working with while retaining the nature of the original?

Frogwares: It’s a mix of what stories we want to tell and what is generally expected from a Sherlock Holmes game, to a degree. But the truth is that we create something we want to create, and so it happens that some people like it too. We don’t want make the same game several times, even though it’s probably safer business-wise.



The Devil’s Daughter was our attempt to create a more personal story, something that Sherlock was deeply involved in. We also added some action bits to convey the feeling of vulnerability, the feeling that you could fail at what you do. These bits could have been done differently, but it is what it is. Overall, The Devil’s Daughter was different from Crimes & Punishments in that sense.

For us, experimentation is a good thing. If we believe that changing the setting is absolutely necessary to tell an interesting story, we will consider it. Doesn’t mean it will work out obviously, , but we are not afraid to try new things and you often don’t know if it’s a good idea or not til you at least try a prototype.

PSLS: Is there a dream property or theme that you would love to work with?

Frgowares: Ah gee. I’m sure if I were to ask this question to the team, I would get several dozen different responses. Everyone has their own dream property. And since we’re currently scouting and also in a few talks with various interesting IP holders, it’s probably best we don’t drop any hints here.

PSLS: What’s next for Frogwares? Do you have any big ambitions past The Sinking City’s release?

Frogwares: We’ve got a few ideas for the future of the studio and what games we want to make, but sadly most of it is under wraps for now since nothing is set in stone just yet. “Don’t jinx it” and all that jazz.

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2018/11/04/frogwares-the-sinking-city-interview/
 
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TheSinkingCity_anteprima_gc2018-01.jpg
 
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Why The Sinking City Has Potential to be the Best Lovecraftian Game in Years: Part 1

the-sinking-city-4-555x312.jpg


Frogwares’ upcoming The Sinking City looks like it’s set to become the best Lovecraftian game in years if all goes according to plan. If you haven’t checked out our Call of Cthulhu review yet, you can read that first and come back to this, as this article will consider parallels with that game. Call of Cthulhu wasn’t bad by any means, but I don’t believe that it was great, either. As far as Lovecraftian games go, Call of Cthulhu amassed tons of jaded tropes and attempted to reappropriate them, which worked in some cases, but definitely didn’t in others. It was okay, but The Sinking City has the potential to be great.

For this article, I’m drawing on Chandler’s interview with Frogwares on The Sinking City and breaking down some of the things that they said that make me feel as if this genuinely will be a spectacular game. For example, I took issue with how utterly dependent Call of Cthulhu was on Lovecraft—it retained the “Lovecraft” part of that complex compound word “Lovecraftian,” but the best Lovecraftian works are the ones that play around with the space afforded to them by that little “-ian” suffix. There’s no reason to directly adapt Lovecraft into a video game unless it’s emphatically a direct adaptation. Go the whole hog, or write your own story that’s influenced by Lovecraft; don’t rewrite half of one, as that won’t be appreciated by Lovecraft fans, and won’t be particularly accessible to people who haven’t read any Lovecraft.

the-sinking-city-5-555x313.jpg


Frogwares directly addressed this in their interview with Chandler. They said, “We decided we’d rather pull heavily from the Lovecraft themes and multiple stories, instead of focus on any one particular piece of his work.” This sentence alone proves that they’re on the right track. Instead of using Lovecraft’s work as a crutch, Frogwares is using it as a means to tell their own story. Lovecraft, although very problematic in some horrifying ways, contributed a huge amount to the formation of the horror genre as we know it. Even authors as profoundly influential as Stephen King have attributed their flair for horror to H.P. Lovecraft’s iconic oeuvre. However, these authors write their own stories. That’s where Call of Cthulhu went wrong, in my opinion. It did tell its own story technically speaking, but it didn’t feel unique or new.

Frogwares expanded on their previous statement, saying:

In the end it was decided we’d rather give everyone a new story anchored heavily around the feel of Lovecraft’s world. Trying to recreate something that many people already have their own strong mental picture of just for the sake of being able to market the the game better would be foolish.

the-sinking-city-6-555x312.jpg


I couldn’t agree more, to be honest. Lovecraft’s world is what should endure—cosmic horror, the unknown depths of the cosmos and the sea, and the ancient Great One deities from beyond the stars who highlight the insignificance of microcosmic humans within the massive expanses of dark space. It’s horror recognized through the medium of insignificance, which is accentuated by the realization of external greater and malignant powers. By making a video game based on Lovecraft, studios should seek to put the player in the place of the protagonist—literally. Frogwares said that they “want try to thrive on creating situations that people can either relate to or imagine themselves being in, and say ‘Hey, I’ve been there too,’ or ‘I don’t know what I would do if that happened to me!'” This is exactly what a Lovecraftian video game should hold as its core tenet if it seeks to excel.

Frogwares intends to build on this, too. They “want the player to realize that sometimes we all make wrong decisions and live with the consequences. That’s our approach to The Sinking City as well.” By making the player accountable for their own decisions and allowing them to witness the consequences on the game’s environment and atmosphere, The Sinking City will allow players to actually explore a Lovecraftian world. Games like Bloodborne and Amnesia bore heavy Lovecraftian influences, too, and received unanimous critical success. The Sinking City will be less subtle, perhaps, by invoking the actual world of Lovecraft, but it will be the narrative and mechanics that make this game a worthy Lovecraftian one. Frogwares “prefer(s) to wallow around in that murky grey area where people are left wondering who ‘the lesser evil’ is in each situation, me or them?”

the-sinking-city-7-555x312.jpg


All in all, the basis for The Sinking City is strong conceptually and looks like it will yield an incredible game. However, there’s more to it, as Frogwares intends to implement some innovative and horrifying mechanics that will accentuate the horror to an ever greater extent. If you want to know more about that, you can read about it in Part 2 of this piece, which will delve more into the game itself as opposed to the development process.

https://www.playstationlifestyle.ne...otential-could-create-best-lovecraftian-game/
 

Zombra

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And a part 2 to that article, none of which I've read yet:

Why The Sinking City Has Potential to be the Best Lovecraftian Game in Years: Part 2
Part 1 of this longform thought-spew on why The Sinking City has the potential to be the best Lovecraftian game in years, I briefly spoke about the shortcomings of Call of Cthulhu and Frogwares’ basis for their own 2018 Lovecraftian video game—The Sinking City. While that piece was very much about the ideas that went into shaping The Sinking City, this one will talk about the game mechanics that will make Frogwares’ vision concrete, allowing for the game’s potential to be fully realized.


Call of Cthulhu‘s mechanics were relatively simplistic, making it seem more like a point-and-click adventure than anything else. This isn’t a bad thing; I’m actually a huge fan of point-and-clicks. With Lovecraft, though, you’ve really got room to experiment. Frogwares are keen to indulge in the experimentation the source material affords them. They told Chandler:

That’s why we’re pushing this idea of “Open Investigation” which basically means the game won’t hold your hand. There are no quest markers on the minimap, no checklist of clues you need to find revealed at the start of a quest, etc.



image: https://cdn3-www.playstationlifestyle.net/assets/uploads/2018/11/the-sinking-city-1-555x312.jpg

the-sinking-city-1-555x312.jpg



This reductionist approach to game mechanics limits the abilities the player has at their disposal, which accentuates the degree of powerlessness that the Lovecraftian IP is traditionally known for. In order for cosmic horror to truly work, insignificance and inability are key. The player, though, will be able to stitch clues together in order to pursue the mystery embedded in the game’s core story. Amidst chaos, the player must strive to solve a mystery using their own rationality, but chaos and rationale are miscible in Lovecraft. The more you know, the less you understand. The less you understand, the more insane you become. This is where the horror should lie—supposed sanity belying utter insanity.

Frogwares have incorporated an in-game mechanic designed to account for exactly this: “That’s why we have a separate sanity meter, which goes down every time you see something disturbing. When it drops, our hero begins to see visions, phantom enemies, and flashbacks from his past; the environment changes, too.” Call of Cthulhu features hallucinogenic sequences and the occultism branch on the (pointless) skill-tree does increased as the game progresses given certain prerequisites, but the sanity meter—although jaded at face value—has the potential to be an excellent in-game way of explaining the psychological state of the protagonist. Bloodborne’s insight executed a similar idea to great success, as stronger, more horrific enemies spawned if you had a high amount of insight. Conversely, some fights—like the Witch of Hemwick—are comically easy if your insight is lower, as you’re not yet sufficiently in-tune with reality and can’t see beneath the deceptive veil of familiarity encompassing it.



image: https://cdn3-www.playstationlifestyle.net/assets/uploads/2018/11/the-sinking-city-2-555x303.jpg

the-sinking-city-2-555x303.jpg



Frogwares has another ambitions in relation to mechanics, too. “Features wise, we are building upon a few we created in Sherlock, like the reconstruction of events, the mind palace, and the idea that investigation games don’t need to hold your hand or the player will give up after five minutes and leave.” Lovecraftian tales are slow-burning, so the conviction to forego a narrative laden with gratuitous cliff-hangers and “what the?!” moments in favor of one in which the player is tasked with patient discovery sets the tone for a successful narrative in line with the source material. As mentioned in the previous article, Frogwares intends to draw from a plethora of Lovecraft’s works, so tone is the most important thing to get right here. It’s not a direct adaptation of any single text and intends to direct its own narrative, so it’s the world itself that needs to be utterly Lovecraftian.

Frogwares expanded on the application of the investigatory mechanics, saying: “So through reasoning or even trial and error, the player is able to grasp what are the ways the game lets them collect, organize and solve clues. If it makes sense and the systems are fun to use, it will keep the player engaged.” The thing is, making sense is necessary before unmaking sense. Having a player use genuine deduction with a limited arsenal of mechanics makes for a game that needs to be dealt with rationally. Pride comes before a fall, traditionally speaking, so the illusion of progress is a mandatory part of weaving chaos into apparent logic.



image: https://cdn3-www.playstationlifestyle.net/assets/uploads/2018/11/the-sinking-city-3-555x304.jpg

the-sinking-city-3-555x304.jpg



The best thing about Frogwares’ ambition, though, is that they “are not afraid to try new things.” They said, “you often don’t know if it’s a good idea or not until you at least try a prototype.” Although they discussed some mechanics, even mentioning a discarded in-game card game, it seems that there is more to come in the way of developing in-game systems for the player to use as they experience the tale of cosmic horror and chaos. It really does seem like The Sinking City has potential to be the best Lovecraftian game since 2015’s landmark Bloodborne. Here’s hoping.

https://www.playstationlifestyle.ne...y-could-be-the-best-lovecraftian-game-part-2/
 

hexer

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The atmosphere seems godly!
Bros, March 21st seems so far.
My mind is ready... or not?
 

SerratedBiz

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Bad thing about the piece is that it bases its whole content on 'they said this, they want to do that'. If you don't know by now to be skeptical of promises, when it comes to games, then I don't know what to tell you.

Radiant AI, never forget.
 

Burning Bridges

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True, I watched a few videos over the last 2 years and it was indeed just a bunch of millenials with bad Ukrainian accents praising how awesome this upcoming game would be.
 

troupeg

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I'm glad it's gonna basically be Sherlock Holmes but more in depth and th.

I always loved their Sherlock series, and apparently it has Crimes and Punishments stylr mechanics, which is great cuz that's their best game (i'll pretend Devil's Daughter doesn't exist)

Radiant AI, never forget.

Remember Fable?
"The trees will grow in real time."
"you can get married and have kids, and then they can take over when you die"
Molyneux :dead:
 
Last edited:

Burning Bridges

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I did not write that.

Radiant xy was a buzzword for "physics engine" where an arrow had some properties and people went apeshit over it. The NPCs where still search engines but with some gimmicks from object oriented programming and polymorphism.

It was pretty depressing what happened in that year, don't bring that up again. But the problems of this generation are very different.
 

Zombra

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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
Whoa, the game will have levels on the sea floor as well? That's madness, this whole time I was thinking it was restricted to a GTA3-size city at best.
 
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Why The Sinking City’s Fictional City Feels So Creepy and Immersive

You find yourself in the rainy, New England city of Oakmont. You’re a private eye who’s been tasked with finding a missing son with nothing but a map and a compass to guide you. Your intuition tells you that you might be able to find more information on the disappearance at one of the local speakeasies, though that could easily lead to a dead end.

Above you are desolate, apocalyptic skies awash with oppressive hues of grey and blue. The buildings around you sport a fading, waterlogged opulence, and the neon signs attached to them flicker as though nearly dead. Many of the streets are completely flooded, forcing you to travel the city by motorboat.

And yet, you must forge ahead in search of the missing fisherman. You accepted the job at the request of his father, a man named Robert. Whether or not Robert’s cause is a lost one is up to you to find out.

This is a scene from Frogwares’ The Sinking City, an upcoming open-world action game that’s heavily influenced by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, a pioneer of surrealist horror. 1920s Oakmont, a fictional city in Massachusetts, is its primary setting. The player assumes the role of private investigator Charles W. Reed as he accepts work from the many troubled denizens of Oakmont.

Oakmont is stunningly wretched. It’s a city in which the decadence of America’s Roaring 1920s has come to a crashing halt, devastated by massive Lovecraftian destruction. It’s a peculiar setting with a lot of character and is central to the bizarre and disturbing atmosphere of the game.

Just as the game’s title implies, the player enters the game after Oakmont has been ravaged by floods. “In order to make Oakmont a depressing place...we flooded the city to disrupt its functionality and create a dire situation where people would feel helpless and powerless,” Frogwares’ Lead Environment Designer Alexey Yurkin said. “The flood itself symbolizes one of the most iconic Lovecraftian underlying themes — the feeling of insignificance.”

Yurkin explained that “loneliness, decay, [and] desolation” were other themes that Frogwares identified as evident in both Lovecraft’s work and the cultural history of 1920s America. To reflect this, all of Oakmont’s buildings are all dilapidated, and its citizens give the player the impression that they’ve seen better days.

Frogwares also looked to the cities featured in Lovecraft’s work for inspiration, like Arkham or Innsmouth. For example, Frogwares knew their own Lovecraftian city needed to contain a number of dark alleys to house the denizens of its sinister underbelly. “All these cults need a place to operate, don’t they?”, Yurkin said.

In spite of its Lovecraftian surreality, the other remarkable thing about Oakmont is how realistic it feels as a city. Frogwares spent a lot of time studying up on urban design to get the feel of the city right, researching the topology and urban ecosystems of other seaside cities to use as references for Oakmont. “Creating a believable feeling — that you are in a real city — was a priority for us”, Yurkin said.

Furthermore, Frogwares chose to defy typical video game convention and do away with quest markers for objectives. Instead, the player must rely on NPC instruction, their own sense of direction, and things like street signs or landmarks to navigate Oakmont. “We wanted to push the detective experience a bit further, create the feeling of a real investigation in all its components”, Yurkin said. “We also felt markers and waypoints are generally a bit too arcade-y and too distracting.”

We’re excited to lose ourselves in Oakmont’s many dark and furtive passages. Yurkin also explained that many of the atmospheric details have lore behind them, including the ads for perfume and alcohol that adorn Oakmont’s walls, so we doubt we’ll ever grow bored.

http://game.info.intel.com/gaming-a...-fictional-city-feels-so-creepy-and-immersive
 

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