E3 2017 Impressions — Call Of Cthulhu

Call Of Cthulhu

While at E3 I was able to see Call Of Cthulhu in a more intimate setting than just a trailer. Here’s my take on Call Of Cthulhu.

There was a small list of titles at E3 that I desperately wanted to go hands on with at E3 and Call Of Cthulhu was one of those titles. I was so ever hopefully that Cyanide Studios would have had a nice little slice of the game out there to be played on the PS4, Xbox One, or PC but sadly it was not. That is not to say that Focus Home Interactive didn’t put together a nice booth and experience for Call Of Cthulhu though and that in turn led to a lot of new information and details for the gameplay and scope of the game to finally get out there. I wish I could show you more gameplay than what we had for the public out at E3, but for now here’s what we have for it all as well as more on the ins and outs of the game.

Okay, the gameplay will follow shortly. Mainly as it is a spliced together string of Call Of Cthulhu that holds a lot of what was shown behind the doors of the booth and we’ll dig right in. Hopefully as you could assume, there will be a large investigation aspect to the game here just as the table top game had. Of course this makes sense as the video game is using a lot of the lore, abilities, character sheets, and many other aspects right from the Call Of Cthulhu table top game. If you are familiar with that at all then you’ll be able to understand a lot of the mechanics of the video game as it was stated that there were lifted from the pages and only altered when it needed to be for the virtual space. So far so go.

Don’t worry, that gameplay is coming still. The investigation aspect was shown off in Call Of Cthulhu as the main character took to roaming the small landscape we were on before going to the front door. There are apparently clues hidden all over and if you find them, you can use your detective skills to unlock various branches of dialog when it comes to NPCs. This was of course shown off as we went to the front door and were confronted by the caretaker of the mansion we were trying to gain access to. This is where an extra option popped up due to us looking at grave stones and noticing that one of them was being tended to more than the others and we could pull on some heartstrings to get the caretaker to be a little more open with us.

Gameplay soon… From there we went inside the mansion under the “mission” of trying to figure out what caused a murder and what made this case a bit different than a usual arson case all in the usual Call Of Cthulhu manner. Again, the investigation came back up as we had to move around the room looking for clues. Some easy to spot and others I am sure were only noticeable because Cyanide Studios was walking us through it all. None the less we found a few things that were overlooked and then had to piece together our own idea on what truly happened. A few options were available and given that we found all the clues it was easy to move right along with this play of Call Of Cthulhu and get to the rest of the game.

Maybe Gameplay? Not yet. Before moving on into the horrors that any Call Of Cthulhu game should be known for, we dove into the character sheet itself. It was comprised of the nine skills that could be leveled up through the game and gave us different effects in game. Some made us more capable fighters, some made it easier to spot things, and others would unlock more “social” dialog options based on our level with the skill. More or less three categories for a Mental, Social, and Physical tree that is pretty much common among all table top games and Call Of Cthulhu in general. Of course there were a few differences just because of the IP and game system we are talking about here.

No gameplay yet… One of the differences here was the Sanity Gauge for the character. Sanity always plays a big thing in Call Of Cthulhu so why not here? There was no true indication on how the game will raise and lower this, although Cyanide Studios did keep alluding to the knowledge and investigations being linked to it, but it would trigger “phobias” when it began to get to high. In the interest of showing it all off, as well as one of the creatures/bosses of Call Of Cthulhu, they had Necrophobia and Claustrophobia active. While other ailments may cause different in-game effects, these would cause the character’s heart to race when confronted with the phobia and if his heart beat was too fast, he would die, and then game over.

Soon…soon… This was shown off when looking about a room that was stated to have a “weird painting” in it through the earlier investigation. The painting was housed in a museum style room with many cases and items all over it. Of course, investigating the painting triggered a scene where the creature we’ve spoke of came crawling out and searching to kill us. Given that Call Of Cthulhu is not a first person shooter, but not a walking simulator, it was shown that there was a weapon in the room we could use to “banish” the monster but not be able to attack head on. We just had to figure it out and “investigate” more in the full game.

Coming full circle here and then gameplay. To buy some time, we began to look for ways to hide form the beast and stay alive. The best option was to hide in one of the small cabinets nearby to try and get the drop on the creature. Remember the Claustrophobia? This is where it all kicked in as it functioned like a normal hiding in a closet bit of gameplay, but you could hear the heartbeat starting to race and the character start to hyperventilate due to the small space. We jumped out and tried a “sneak attack” just before our heart gave out, but this was not the proper way to do things and we died. Again, investigation is key in Call Of Cthulhu and we needed to search just a bit more.

Even though I didn’t get to lay hands directly on Call Of Cthulhu here, I was still invested in the game and what was going on with it all. It does seem to play a lot like other First-Person titles in the same vein, but the direct addition of the table top mechanics and not using just weird visuals and audio to simulate insanity makes it new and fresh. Before leaving Focus Home Interactive and Call Of Cthulhu I did manage to find out that there are a lot of other forms of phobia and insanity mixed into the final game so don’t think we will be stuck with just the mechanics above. Now we just need a release date for Call Of Cthulhu and I will be one happy gamer here. Especially after seeing what they had at E3.