Lovecraft Influences in Games Options

[Renee]

I finally sat down the other day and really read a Lovecraft story, Mammoth Cave, also known as The Beast in the Cave. Was surprised to learn he was only fourteen when he wrote this tale! So I decided to make a thread listing a variety of Lovecraft influences in Bethesda games, and here it is. I'm sure these influences can be found in other games, as well as other media altogether, so feel free to add these as you'd like as well.

It struck me though. The Beast in the Cave features a pale-skinned creature with snow-white hair, which the protagonist kills toward the end of the tale. Before he killed this creature, he could only hear its footfalls (he was in total darkness), and apparently the creature alternated between walking on two feet, and walking on four feet. After killing it, he managed to find the tour guide he'd gotten separated from. He and the guide were then able to return to the creature, and were able to see it with a torch.

At the very end of the tale, the protagonist describes the creature he'd killed as having once been a MAN!!! ... There is an implication that this MAN once lived aboveground, perhaps. Because it's impossible for him to have been born underground.

And to me, this sounds like a reference to the falmer of Skyrim, who also once were an aboveground-living race, called snow elves.

[SubRosa]

Renee: I am sure Lovecraft wanted The Book to end that way. He was not a very financially-minded person. He did not write stories to get paid, he wrote them because he wanted to, and then shopped them around to magazines afterward. There were much more profitable genres that he could have written in, but he vehemently opposed that, and he kind of snobbishly looked down his nose at people who did basically just write for the buck. In the end he could not write something that was not in his nature. For him it was all about the Art.

That is why he was not a big success in his lifetime. He had a niche of fans, but they were small. He really did not start to get popular until the 80s, when his work started getting re-released, and the game Call of Cthulhu came out. Ironically there were writers in his lifetime who were hugely successful that sometimes get named, and I have never heard of them. Once they retired, they just faded into obscurity, like last week's pop star. I think Lovecraft's lasting fame is due to him sticking to his artistic vision, in spite of all the people telling him to write in ways that were more commercially successful.

The podcast Voluminous covers all this in great detail. It is on probably permanent hiatus now, but they have a very extensive back catalog of episodes. It is put on by two Lovecraft nerds who take a letter of his each week and read it in full. Then they talk about it, what was going on in the world at the time, and in Lovecraft's life in particular, and just add another layer of conclusions. It shows all the really good things, and all the really, really bad things about him.

Khajiit: Dagon is one I put in the lower end B-Sides. Again, it is one of those where Lovecraft is working out ideas that would eventually blossom into great things. I don't think we would have gotten The Shadow Over Innsmouth without Dagon. Just like I don't think we would have gotten At The Mountains of Madness without The Nameless City first.