Cyanide Studio had a very busy showing at E3 2017, showing off at least three games. We were able to take a few moments to sit in on a behind-closed-doors demo of Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game. Our preview is ready for you to read, provided you don?t go mad first.
Chaosium-Approved Cthulhu Madness
Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game is, well, the official video game of the popular pen-and-paper RPG by Chaosium. It?s the 1920s, and you play as Edward Pierce, a former war veteran and private investigator. You?ve been tasked with figuring out what happened to one Sarah Hawkins, who died in mysterious circumstances in her mansion on Darkwater Island.
It doesn?t take very long in the demo to see that something eerie is going on. The environment outside the mansion has creepy, overgrown brush, an old stone cemetery ? all the usual makings of an old, abandoned mansion. Once on-site, Edward creeps around, with seemingly no one in the area. As he approaches a side door, he is suddenly shoved aside by the groundskeeper, an axe-wielding old man who doesn?t look like he takes kindly to trespassers. Here, we see branching dialog options, including some that were unlocked only because the player took the time earlier to learn about the environment by looking more closely at the graveyard ? noticing that freshly-picked flowers were placed on the owner?s grave, for instance, allowed Edward to deduce that the groundskeeper cared for the owner when they were alive. Eventuall...