‘Call Of Cthulhu’ Game: Understanding The Madness

Sometime in 2018, the most anticipated pole playing horror game will bring new cosmic horrors to gamers everywhere, “The Call Of Cthulhu”. The game, from Cyanide Studio, is an adaptation of the RPG boardgame based on the famed short story written by H.P. Lovecraft in 1926 before being published in 1928.
Players will take on the role of a private investigator named Edward Pierce as he investigates the mysterious death of an artist named Sarah Hawkins on the mysterious island of Darkwater. As Pierce, players can recruit others to help him investigate different cases on the island in an open-world setting, all the while facing your own sanity as madness slowly grips you.
 

 
Many fans of Lovecraft’s works pretty much know the background of this tale that’s taking place in the same universe as the original short story but there’s also a strong possibility that some may not be aware of the lore that will be seen in it, to those I say, I got your back!
First off is the obvious question, “What is Cthulhu”, well… Cthulhu is a winged octopus-head creature who is not of this world, now that can mean planet, this reality, this dimension etc. Cthulhu, as described in Lovecraft’s short story, came from the stars eons before mankind came to be on this planet and every so often, arises and causes terror.
 

 
Now, “What’s the Call?” Cthulhu’s “call” is interesting. Cthulhu lives (rests is more appropriate) at the bottom of the ocean in a Atlantis-like city called R’lyeh (where Lovecraft actually charted its location) where he’s in a slumber in which he sends out a telepathic “call” that certain people hear in their sleep and dream about the “Nightmare City” that is R’lyeh.
The people who are affected by the call impulsively draw or build images depicting Cthulhu itself in great detail even though the person who made it has no artistic talent. What makes Cthulhu intriguing is the fact that it has a cult of worshipers actively seeking out those who hear its call and murder those who try to learn more about the creature.
 

 
From what I’ve seen of the trailers for the game I think it’s safe to say more than one Lovecraft story is at play here. In one trailer there was a scene showing a couple police officers with a lamp and when they brought the lamp up it showed the one officer’s face looking scaly and amphibious. This is a characteristic trait of the locals of a New England town called Innsmouth, a fictional location in Lovecraft’s short story, “The Shadow over Innsmouth” where the locals who secretly worship “the deep ones” eventually transform into fish/frog-like creatures.
 

 
Since there’s still time before the video game “The Call of Cthulhu” hits shelves, I strongly recommend you read the story itself and some of the other works by Lovecraft like, “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, “Dagon”, “The Lurking Fear”, and “The Color out of Space”.