‘I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing.’
The Cthulhu Mythos has always faced serious challenges when adapted. Whether on the big screen or in video games, the Lovecraftian material remains difficult to handle and the various attempts – generally bad or mediocre – fail to capture the unspeakable that constitutes the heart of the argument. Hence, the official Call of Cthulhu game (2018) struggles to convince, both due to its conservative gameplay and its disappointing scenery. Richard Stanley's Color Out of Space (2019) opts for a very different tone from the short story, for better or worse. Admittedly, different authors have been able to reinterpret the Mythos or Lovecraftian intention over the decades, but obliquely, to compensate for the dissipation of the mystery when images are added, such as WORLD OF HORROR (2020).
Another major problem haunts the adaptations: that of Lovecraft's moral and political positions, yet integral to his work. For several decades, it has been said that his creations were timeless and had no bearing on the events that shook the early 20th century. This fantasized vision of an apolitical Lovecraft is doubly wrong; first of all, it is factually false, since Lovecraft was inserted into the press milieu via his newspaper. Furthermore, it aims to erase the author's blatantly racist and sexist heritage, despite the fact that it forms the basis of many of his stories. To Bit Golem's credit, the game is punctuated with contextualisation elements that remind players of this essential facet of the author. However, one can sense the difficulty the studio has to organically incorporate it into their adaptation.
Dagon is a full transcription of the eponymous short story written by Lovecraft in 1917, foreshadowing his writing style for the years to come. Where other short stories from the same period, such as The Tomb (1922) or Polaris (1920), appear conservative in style and form, with ample inspiration from Poe and Dunsany, Dagon contains the main elements that would become recurrent in the Lovecraftian corpus – a traumatized anti-hero recounting his experience, to which more or less credit can be given. The title recites the text of the short story with a voiceover and the player progresses through it by interacting with objects in the setting. Sometimes a scene contains an Elder Sign, unlocking the famous contextualisation elements, more or less artificially chosen, denoting a concern for historical analysis.
Dagon's short story was written when Lovecraft was frustrated by his inability to participate in the Great War. Surprisingly enough, Bit Golem emphasises Lovecraft's pacifist stance, but completely sidesteps his racial interpretation of the war. For the author, it represents an aberration in the sense that the English and the Germans – whom he regroups racially under the banner of the Teutons – were clashing, leading to the collapse of humanity and the superior races, to the benefit of the inferior races. This extremely racist vision is reflected in the narrator's empathy for the Germans and feeds Lovecraft's conservative rhetoric, also found when he castigates alcohol and the drugs the protagonist uses to soothe his nightmares. How does one adapt these elements into a video game? Bit Golem makes the choice, often the most common one, of completely ignoring this conservative background. Likewise, when the narrator discusses with a scholar, the latter is never shown, both to save graphic assets and to avoid having to confront the Lovecraftian representations of the academics of the big cities: it is known, however, that Lovecraft is halfway between the disgust of the provincials' superstitious practices and the absolute scientism of the establishment – noticeable in The Color Out of Space (1927) or The Shadow over Innsmouth (1936).
Instead, the title focuses on depicting the environments of the story, with mixed success. If the interior environments are generally successful – special mention to the last scene –, the poor graphic assets barely convey the horror of the mire rising from the sea. The choice to render a realistic representation hardly works; it is rather in the abstract that the game succeeds best. The mound on the horizon is rather effective, with adventurous and mysterious accents echoing The Shadow Out of Time (1935) or At the Mountains of Madness (1936). Conversely, the overly smooth representation of the monolith ruins the indescribable, abstract attraction that the protagonist was feeling. The stone block looks too artificial and it is difficult not to smile when the narrator mentions the envy that Gustave Doré would have felt towards these few graffiti that fail to measure the inhumanity of the submarine civilisation.
Along the same lines, when the narrator is standing atop the mountain, he mentions the visions of Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) running through his mind. Whilst it can be left to the player's imagination by showing, as Bit Golem does, a completely black background, it seems to me that it would have been wise to adapt this reference through visuals. The Miltonian aestheticism permeates Lovecraft's work, if only through the depiction of a fragile and abandoned humanity within the universe, mocked repeatedly by Satan. The ascent of the mountain in Dagon is similar to that of Satan, and Gustave Doré actually produced illustrations of it to accompany the 1866 edition, which Lovecraft owned [1]. The mountainous chasms and steep peaks, carving out wicked depths, would have been most welcome to give texture to the narrator's journey across the forsaken island. Another possibility was to draw on the frightfulness of Henry Fuseli's paintings, a famous admirer of Milton, whom Lovecraft mentions in Pickman's Model (1927). The sequence where the narrator stands over the dark, murky abyss constitutes the peak of the narrative tension, through the invocation of the Paradise Lost imaginary. However, the very text-specific approach of Bit Golem misses the intertexuality of the short story, thus losing its evocative power: it is a shame, since the entire aesthetic universe of Miltonian Chaos is of rare richness. For this reason, the choice of italicising or bolding certain words in the story – often related to madness, strangeness or more generally terms with a negative connotation – must be considered odd, as if aimed at artificially underlining the horror of the tale. Instead, the studio emphasises the impossibility of transcribing it through visuals and casts doubt on the relevance of a game adaptation.
Dagon is nevertheless a free experience and it would be wrong to ask too much of it. The technical production is passable and suffices to set the mood; likewise, the atmospheric soundtrack is unremarkable, but achieves its purpose. Given the contextual information, one would have thought that Bit Golem would have understood Lovecraft's aesthetic project, both in its intertextuality and in the racist background, both of which represent important challenges for any adaptation: the studio chose to avoid both, ultimately resulting in a title that, if not terrible, barely says anything and fails to reintegrate Lovecraft's material into a new creation. It is regrettable, but few have managed to take up this complex task, while acknowledging a political discourse in tune with our contemporary society. Let us rather underline the effort of the creators and the fact that they have donated the earnings from the DLC to the victims of the war in Ukraine.
_________
[1] Christopher Cuccia, ‘A Bridge through Chaos: The Miltonic in ‘Dagon’ and Lovecraft’s Greater Cthulhu Mythos’, in Lovecraft Annual, no. 15, 2021, pp. 102-127.
The Cthulhu Mythos has always faced serious challenges when adapted. Whether on the big screen or in video games, the Lovecraftian material remains difficult to handle and the various attempts – generally bad or mediocre – fail to capture the unspeakable that constitutes the heart of the argument. Hence, the official Call of Cthulhu game (2018) struggles to convince, both due to its conservative gameplay and its disappointing scenery. Richard Stanley's Color Out of Space (2019) opts for a very different tone from the short story, for better or worse. Admittedly, different authors have been able to reinterpret the Mythos or Lovecraftian intention over the decades, but obliquely, to compensate for the dissipation of the mystery when images are added, such as WORLD OF HORROR (2020).
Another major problem haunts the adaptations: that of Lovecraft's moral and political positions, yet integral to his work. For several decades, it has been said that his creations were timeless and had no bearing on the events that shook the early 20th century. This fantasized vision of an apolitical Lovecraft is doubly wrong; first of all, it is factually false, since Lovecraft was inserted into the press milieu via his newspaper. Furthermore, it aims to erase the author's blatantly racist and sexist heritage, despite the fact that it forms the basis of many of his stories. To Bit Golem's credit, the game is punctuated with contextualisation elements that remind players of this essential facet of the author. However, one can sense the difficulty the studio has to organically incorporate it into their adaptation.
Dagon is a full transcription of the eponymous short story written by Lovecraft in 1917, foreshadowing his writing style for the years to come. Where other short stories from the same period, such as The Tomb (1922) or Polaris (1920), appear conservative in style and form, with ample inspiration from Poe and Dunsany, Dagon contains the main elements that would become recurrent in the Lovecraftian corpus – a traumatized anti-hero recounting his experience, to which more or less credit can be given. The title recites the text of the short story with a voiceover and the player progresses through it by interacting with objects in the setting. Sometimes a scene contains an Elder Sign, unlocking the famous contextualisation elements, more or less artificially chosen, denoting a concern for historical analysis.
Dagon's short story was written when Lovecraft was frustrated by his inability to participate in the Great War. Surprisingly enough, Bit Golem emphasises Lovecraft's pacifist stance, but completely sidesteps his racial interpretation of the war. For the author, it represents an aberration in the sense that the English and the Germans – whom he regroups racially under the banner of the Teutons – were clashing, leading to the collapse of humanity and the superior races, to the benefit of the inferior races. This extremely racist vision is reflected in the narrator's empathy for the Germans and feeds Lovecraft's conservative rhetoric, also found when he castigates alcohol and the drugs the protagonist uses to soothe his nightmares. How does one adapt these elements into a video game? Bit Golem makes the choice, often the most common one, of completely ignoring this conservative background. Likewise, when the narrator discusses with a scholar, the latter is never shown, both to save graphic assets and to avoid having to confront the Lovecraftian representations of the academics of the big cities: it is known, however, that Lovecraft is halfway between the disgust of the provincials' superstitious practices and the absolute scientism of the establishment – noticeable in The Color Out of Space (1927) or The Shadow over Innsmouth (1936).
Instead, the title focuses on depicting the environments of the story, with mixed success. If the interior environments are generally successful – special mention to the last scene –, the poor graphic assets barely convey the horror of the mire rising from the sea. The choice to render a realistic representation hardly works; it is rather in the abstract that the game succeeds best. The mound on the horizon is rather effective, with adventurous and mysterious accents echoing The Shadow Out of Time (1935) or At the Mountains of Madness (1936). Conversely, the overly smooth representation of the monolith ruins the indescribable, abstract attraction that the protagonist was feeling. The stone block looks too artificial and it is difficult not to smile when the narrator mentions the envy that Gustave Doré would have felt towards these few graffiti that fail to measure the inhumanity of the submarine civilisation.
Along the same lines, when the narrator is standing atop the mountain, he mentions the visions of Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) running through his mind. Whilst it can be left to the player's imagination by showing, as Bit Golem does, a completely black background, it seems to me that it would have been wise to adapt this reference through visuals. The Miltonian aestheticism permeates Lovecraft's work, if only through the depiction of a fragile and abandoned humanity within the universe, mocked repeatedly by Satan. The ascent of the mountain in Dagon is similar to that of Satan, and Gustave Doré actually produced illustrations of it to accompany the 1866 edition, which Lovecraft owned [1]. The mountainous chasms and steep peaks, carving out wicked depths, would have been most welcome to give texture to the narrator's journey across the forsaken island. Another possibility was to draw on the frightfulness of Henry Fuseli's paintings, a famous admirer of Milton, whom Lovecraft mentions in Pickman's Model (1927). The sequence where the narrator stands over the dark, murky abyss constitutes the peak of the narrative tension, through the invocation of the Paradise Lost imaginary. However, the very text-specific approach of Bit Golem misses the intertexuality of the short story, thus losing its evocative power: it is a shame, since the entire aesthetic universe of Miltonian Chaos is of rare richness. For this reason, the choice of italicising or bolding certain words in the story – often related to madness, strangeness or more generally terms with a negative connotation – must be considered odd, as if aimed at artificially underlining the horror of the tale. Instead, the studio emphasises the impossibility of transcribing it through visuals and casts doubt on the relevance of a game adaptation.
Dagon is nevertheless a free experience and it would be wrong to ask too much of it. The technical production is passable and suffices to set the mood; likewise, the atmospheric soundtrack is unremarkable, but achieves its purpose. Given the contextual information, one would have thought that Bit Golem would have understood Lovecraft's aesthetic project, both in its intertextuality and in the racist background, both of which represent important challenges for any adaptation: the studio chose to avoid both, ultimately resulting in a title that, if not terrible, barely says anything and fails to reintegrate Lovecraft's material into a new creation. It is regrettable, but few have managed to take up this complex task, while acknowledging a political discourse in tune with our contemporary society. Let us rather underline the effort of the creators and the fact that they have donated the earnings from the DLC to the victims of the war in Ukraine.
_________
[1] Christopher Cuccia, ‘A Bridge through Chaos: The Miltonic in ‘Dagon’ and Lovecraft’s Greater Cthulhu Mythos’, in Lovecraft Annual, no. 15, 2021, pp. 102-127.