Post by Ieldra on Apr 18, 2019 11:59:57 GMT
So I've been playing Call of Cthulhu. Not the tabletop RPG, but the 2018 videogame. And it turned out quite a bit more interesting than anticipated. Not just that the investigation mechanics are excellent and the mood is great, the game approached central themes in a way I could appreciate, and that was very unexpected.
Because you know, I never bought Lovecraft's idea of a reality so horrific that you go mad from it. I still don't buy it. Chances are, if you wake up to an unpleasant reality and can't deal with it, you're simply a coward. And madness, that's sort of a blue pill. A necessary temporary relief, perhaps, at times, but in the end a crutch. Maybe a new reality will kill me in the end, but I find it hard to imagine that I'd not confront it head-on.
The game, however, doesn't try to reinforce that idea of a reality you can't confront. At least it doesn't come across that way to me. Rather, it asks about the nature of sanity, and that's an interesting question.
If you define sanity as being in touch with reality, the question arises of how you can be confident of your sanity. The usual answer is that other people tell you. Reality, to a significant extent, is what you perceive and other people perceive, too. It *may* be you're sane if you perceive the world differently, but you can't be confident of it, knowing that perceptions are sometimes misleading.
So what happens if the consensus about reality is broken? If you see someone die and later see them alive, the most likely conclusion is that you actually didn't see them die but were the victim of a delusion, trick of optics or some other kind of deception we know reality occasionally plays on us. However, what if you've seen so many strange things alongside that death that you'll take other answers into consideration? What if other people see the same strange things you see, or at least behave as if they did? Since other people reinforce the consensus about what is real, aren't you much more likely to become unlinked from reality? Or will you? What if the new reality really is real and not a figment of your imagination? No matter that *if* it is real, you will have the ability to deal with it, the question is not that, but rather which perception is real and which isn't?
Are you getting mad, or is reality stranger than you think?
If others see you as mad, is it because your perceptions have been flawed, or is it because they didn't see what you've seen, and your actions could only be seen as sane under a different reality, but then they *would* be seen as sane?
What you perceive is not up to you. You can choose to close your eyes, not expose yourself to a different reality, not read the relevant books, not let the words spoken by alien beings take root in your mind as anything meaningful, but if you open your eyes, what is there is consistent and persistent regardless. Isn't that one definition of reality? However, how you react *is* up to you. Do you act to reinforce the new reality, or to weaken it? You can't unsee "them", but you needn't speak as "them".
So, in the end, in this game you find yourself in two worlds, and make decisions about which is to be yours. The other doesn't go away, and knowing of a so-far stranger one may actually help you (at least that's how I interpret the game's logic with regard to how your choices influence the endings) but you will not necessarily be subject to its logic by just acquiring that knowledge - only by acting on it you will. And whether you're mad or not, that's a matter of perspective.
In some way, all this is familiar. Aren't we all - all on this forum, in any case - juggling with different realities in our minds?