GB Feature: Cyclopean Interview, Artwork, and Character Generator
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GB: As you were dedicated to the game's writing, what can you tell us about the critical path of the game?To complement the article, Scott also provided us with a variety of artwork and this nifty Flash-based character generator to provide a glimpse at how the team was implementing character creation toward the end of development.
Scott: Originally, the game was to take place in four key Lovecraft locations: Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth and Kingsport. Later, I consolidated it to a sprawling Arkham and the surrounding area. The player would start with a particular Background, which would determine starting location, items and certain special skills. This Background would also give him a starting quest and perhaps NPC contacts in Arkham.
I also conceived of a Sanity system where constant and reckless exposure to Mythos entities could, if it didn't kill him outright, permanently corrupt the player, which would allow him access to certain areas and abilities otherwise hidden. The downside of this is that while the player sees into that other world juxtaposed with our own, its denizens may see him as well.
Magic was to be an area where characters would start with absolutely nothing, except maybe a predilection for its study. You wouldn't be buying scrolls at the dry goods store in town. In the player were interested, he would have to seek out and research each spell through the discovery of cursed tomes and strange NPC's. Actually casting a spell would incur a Sanity cost, but also move the player inexorably towards the state of corruption already mentioned. Basically, there were no (fireballs). Using magic at all would be a decision to carefully evaluate.
Rather than have a single main quest, the game was intended to have three main quest branches leading to a major Mythos event, any of which could be followed initially, but only one of which could be taken all the way to the end. In each branch, the player could choose to thwart the plans of the cultists or madmen, or he could choose to join them and help to (for instance) open a gate to one of the Great Old Ones and bring about the end of the world.
In one of these quest lines, the player must discover which among the various weird secret societies is actually the dangerous (or more accurately, most dangerous) cult in Arkham, figure out what their goal is, identify the High Priest from a selection of Arkham notables, then defeat them, hopefully while hanging on bitterly to some small shred of his humanity.
These are in addition to many standalone quests investigating hauntings, forgotten tombs, strange experiments and disappearances.
