Representing the Unrepresentable: The Videogame Adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s Work Confronts the Question of Figurability

Abstract

This study focuses on the adaptations of Howard Philip Lovecraft’s work in video games and the difficulty of representing it through images. After a quick analysis of a corpus of video games borrowing from Lovecraft, this text engages in more detail in the analysis of the games Call of Cthulhu (Cyanide 2018) and The Sinking City (Frogwares 2019) in order to identify the devices used to adapt visually the issues specific to his work. The visualization modes and the plastic games intended to make possible the paradox of the visibility of the unspeakable necessarily imposed on any transcription by the image of the creations of H. P. Lovecraft are identified. The failures inherent in the chosen methods are identified and confronted with the pictorial currents directly cited by the author. Thus, cubism and futurism, through the formal and conceptual dimensions that structure these currents, allow us to consider the possibility of adopting a relationship to representation that can be placed on the border between the representable and the unrepresentable, in order to resolve, perhaps, the question of the figuration of what cannot be shown.