The Lovecraft Video Game That Never Was: "Call of Cthulhu: Destiny's End"

In 2005, a trailer was released for Headfirst Production's "Call of Cthulhu: Destiny's End." Below, you can see this trailer, complete with action packed sequences of characters battling strange creatures around a fire and a horrific monstrosity rising from the sea (Dagon?). This is all you'll likely ever see of this game. "Call of Cthulhu: Destiny's End" was never released, nor are there any plans to do so since Headfirst folded a couple years ago. The game was originally planned as a sequel to "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth," which was released for the PC and X-Box in 2005. It was to be the second video game in a trilogy based around H.P. Lovecraft's fiction, with the last one tentatively titled "Call of Cthulhu: Beyond the Mountains of Madness."

Alas, there's little hope of seeing any of these ever appear unless Headfirst's creations are purchased by another game maker for use in some new project. This is a real shame, since "Destiny's End" suggested interesting departures from the first video game. Going by the trailer and a smattering of screenshots released, it seems this game intended to incorporate much more action than its predecessor. The lack of large battles and weaponry in "Dark Corners of the Earth" was a complaint among many gamers. The unreleased Lovecraftian production appeared to remedy that, with graphics and fighting very reminiscent of gameplay in "Resident Evil 4," a game that appeared around the time "Call of Cthulhu: Destiny's End" would have been released.

Unlike the Lovecraftian movie industry, games based on H.P. Lovecraft's work have enjoyed fairly good success at capturing the weird atmosphere of his stories. It's just a damned shame to see another Lovecraft game that looked promising entombed forever in the catacombs of a derelict software company. Even worse, we'll never have a hint of what the producers intended for the third game, with a storyline presumably based on HPL's "At the Mountains of Madness." On the other hand, if Guillermo del Toro's desire to make a film based on that Lovecraft story takes off, then we may yet see a video game inspired by this Lovecraft piece.



-Grim Blogger