If import can be mea­sured in influ­ence, Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890−1937) is cer­tain­ly one of the most impor­tant writ­ers of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Everyone from Neil Gaiman to Joyce Carol Oates has cited him as an influ­ence, and in videogames you can find his ten­ta­cles in every­thing from Amnesia: The Dark Descent to Borderlands. Lovecraft, like his friend Robert E. Howard and, of course, Professor Tolkien, is every­where in genre fic­tion.

It’s Lovecraft’s influ­ence on Mass Effect which caused Kyle Munkittrick to argue that Mass Effect is “the most impor­tant sci­ence fic­tion uni­verse of our gen­er­a­tion.” In both Lovecraft and Mass Effect, human­i­ty has to jus­ti­fy its very exis­tence in the face of an indif­fer­ent uni­verse and with­out recourse to any high­er author­i­ty. This, Munkittrick argues, makes the Mass Effect uni­verse par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to our post­mod­ern and increas­ing­ly sec­u­lar soci­ety.

While it’s impos­si­ble to deny Lovecraft’s influ­ence upon Mass Effect, there is a fun­da­men­tal dis­so­nance between this influ­ence and the game’s over­all struc­ture which goes all the way down to its roots and gnaws at them like Nidhogg. I believe it’s this ten­sion which is respon­si­ble for the game’s more incom­pre­hen­si­ble moments. At the end of the day, I believe Mass Effect sim­ply bor­rows Lovecraftian trap­pings with­out fully embrac­ing a Lovecraftian world­view, there­by con­struct­ing a deep dis­so­nance between the sup­posed power of the Reapers and the unstop­pable jug­ger­naut that is the player-controlled Commander Shepard. The game attempts to be both a Lovecraftian nar­ra­tive of Powerful, Unspeakable Forces Beyond Human Comprehension and a straight­for­ward videogame power fan­ta­sy, and this is an irrec­on­cil­able ten­sion which weak­ens the game as a whole.

Even Dead Gods Dream

“Rudimentary crea­tures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fum­bling in igno­rance, inca­pable of under­stand­ing.” — Sovereign

When most peo­ple talk about Lovecraft, they are pri­mar­i­ly inter­est­ed in the sto­ries which would form the back­bone of the “Cthulhu Mythos ″ of the early 20th cen­tu­ry. These sto­ries, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to The Call of Cthulhu, At The Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Out of Time and, prob­a­bly his best, The Colour Out of Space, all share cer­tain pow­er­ful themes. In each, the pro­tag­o­nists (for they can­not usu­al­ly be called heroes) dis­cov­er the over­all impo­tence and unim­por­tance of humankind in the face of some cos­mic rev­e­la­tion, and many either go mad or are qui­et­ly mur­dered by their dis­cov­er­ies.

In At The Mountains of Madness, an Antarctic geo­log­i­cal expe­di­tion dis­cov­ers the remains of an ancient, pow­er­ful and alien civ­i­liza­tion which may well have cre­at­ed human­i­ty to serve as a slave race. In The Colour Out of Space, some inex­plic­a­ble Thing from beyond human com­pre­hen­sion crash-lands in rural Massachusetts and pro­ceeds to ter­ror­ize and destroy a help­less fam­i­ly. And in The Call of Cthulhu, a man dis­cov­ers that some­where, sleep­ing deep beneath the sur­face of the ocean in his House at R’lyeh, waits a being of such ancient and ter­ri­ble power that its awak­en­ing would sure­ly spell the end of human civ­i­liza­tion, and dis­cov­ers, to his dread, that there’s absolute­ly noth­ing any­one can do about it.

In each of these sto­ries we are con­front­ed with the cos­mic irrel­e­vance of human­i­ty and the exis­tence of pow­er­ful beings far beyond our under­stand­ing. At best, these beings regard us with indif­fer­ence and at worst would utter­ly anni­hi­late us for an after­noon’s light enter­tain­ment. Even the hap­pi­est of these sto­ries ends with no more than a delay of the inevitable — human­i­ty is qui­et­ly doomed, and none of our under­tak­ers will care much about us even as they’re destroy­ing us.

These themes will sound very famil­iar to any play­er of Mass Effect. Mass Effect’s pri­ma­ry antag­o­nists are the Reapers, a race of ancient machines which return every 50,000 years to anni­hi­late and har­vest all advanced life in the galaxy as part of a cos­mic Cycle which has stretched back since long before human­i­ty’s dis­tant ances­tors con­sid­ered swing­ing down from the trees. The Reapers are vast and inscrutable, each the size of an enor­mous star­ship and capa­ble of incal­cu­la­ble destruc­tion. One Reaper is enough to threat­en the com­bined fleets of sev­er­al advanced space­far­ing races.

The Reapers thus recall Lovecraft’s “Great Old Ones,” of whom Cthulhu is the most famous. Even their design is rem­i­nis­cent of Cthulhu’s ten­ta­cled descrip­tion.

Their motives are ini­tial­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble and cos­mic in scope, and they shape the very course of galac­tic his­to­ry time and time again. Spending time around a Reaper caus­es any organ­ic life to go insane as they are enthralled by the Reaper’s pow­er­ful indoc­tri­na­tion. The game assures us repeat­ed­ly that they are far beyond human under­stand­ing, and that Shepard’s quest to pre­vent their har­vest of this cycle’s civ­i­liza­tions is almost cer­tain­ly doomed.

There is a scene in Mass Effect 2 which makes the Lovecraftian con­nec­tion about as explic­it as pos­si­ble. A Cerberus sci­ence team has found the corpse of a long-dead Reaper and sets up camp on board to dis­cov­er its secrets. Though the Reaper is dead, some­thing of its abil­i­ty to indoc­tri­nate remains, such that the sci­ence team begins to slow­ly go insane, and is fully gone by the time Shepard arrives. In a log left behind for Shepard to find, one sci­en­tist, real­iz­ing what’s hap­pen­ing, states that “even a dead god can dream,” recall­ing the “much-discussed cou­plet” from the Necronomicon and the chant of the Cthulhu-cult: “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dream­ing.“

Shepard is faced with an impos­si­ble task, fac­ing down the wrath of a race of beings far beyond his/her com­pre­hen­sion. Yet Shepard some­how man­ages to sur­mount the insur­mount­able, and it is here that we find our dis­so­nance.

Hither Came Shepard

Mass Effect, like most games of its ilk, is a power fan­ta­sy. Shepard is able to deal with these tremen­dous prob­lems because he/she is the Player Character, and there­fore infal­li­ble. Shepard is a prime exam­ple of the Mary Sue arche­type: a proxy for the play­er who is infi­nite­ly more pow­er­ful, charm­ing and respect­ed than the play­er might ever be. Everyone is impressed with Shepard. Krogan war­lords, Drell assas­sins, and even the Reapers them­selves know Shepard’s name and rep­u­ta­tion and bow to him/her as the badass­est of the badass­es. When Shepard is killed in a Reaper-orchestrated attack, one of the most pow­er­ful human beings in the galaxy spends a vast for­tune to res­ur­rect him/her, because Shepard is the Only One Who Can Do It. He/she is the Hero, the Chosen One.

Shepard is preter­nat­u­ral­ly per­sua­sive and pow­er­ful. He or she can talk any­one into any­thing sim­ply by shout­ing at them. Two sep­a­rate games have a penul­ti­mate dia­logue encounter in which Shepard can talk a pri­ma­ry antag­o­nist into shoot­ing him­self in the span of five min­utes. No one can with­stand Shepard’s sil­ver tongue or bru­tal threats, and no one, no mat­ter how pow­er­ful, can beat Shepard in a fire­fight.

Further, Shepard is always con­ve­nient­ly placed in a posi­tion to make all of the most impor­tant deci­sions in the galaxy, even when it does­n’t make much sense that he/she would be. Shepard decides the fate of entire races on at least three sep­a­rate occa­sions, plots the course of galac­tic pol­i­tics at least twice, and fre­quent­ly issues orders to mil­i­tary offi­cers high above his/her own rank, some­times even those in entire­ly sep­a­rate mil­i­taries. Shepard is so badass that the Reapers specif­i­cal­ly seek him/her out to kill him/her, but only ever suc­ceed in mak­ing him/her angry.

Shepard is the mod­ern Conan, com­plete­ly free, above the law, above the chain of mil­i­tary com­mand, immense­ly pow­er­ful and free to be hon­or­able or scum­my as the play­er sees fit. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a prob­lem in-and-of-itself. Power fan­tasies have their place in the world. But there is a fun­da­men­tal dis­so­nance between Mass Effect as power fan­ta­sy and Mass Effect as Lovecraftian nar­ra­tive, and it is this dis­so­nance that dam­ages the coher­ence of the game as a whole. Humans can­not be both irrel­e­vant and immense­ly pow­er­ful. The moral of any Lovecraftian nar­ra­tive can­not be “but if you just try hard enough you can win.”

A Pleasant Chat With Cthulhu

Nowhere is this dis­so­nance more pro­nounced than in Leviathan, the sec­ond piece of add-on DLC released for Mass Effect 3. Released at least part­ly in an attempt to assuage annoyed fans by giv­ing them more infor­ma­tion about the Reapers and their back­sto­ry, Leviathan puts Shepard on a quest to find and recruit a leg­endary Reaper-killer, a pow­er­ful crea­ture called the Leviathan of Dis. The Leviathan does not par­tic­u­lar­ly want to be found, how­ev­er, so Shepard must work his/her way through a vari­ety of tri­als and tribu­la­tions before final­ly com­ing face-to-face with the thing and con­vinc­ing it to join the cause.

Leviathan hap­pens to be remark­ably sim­i­lar to the cen­tral con­ceits of Lovecraft’s most famous short story, The Call of Cthulhu, and it is in exam­in­ing the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between the two works that we can see the real prob­lem inher­ent in couch­ing a power fan­ta­sy in Lovecraftian lan­guage.

In both sto­ries, our pro­tag­o­nists are search­ing for some immense­ly pow­er­ful crea­ture of leg­end that can only be dis­cov­ered by care­ful­ly inves­ti­gat­ing arche­o­log­i­cal infor­ma­tion and strange behav­ior from cer­tain cults or other orga­ni­za­tions. In Leviathan, the tit­u­lar beast keeps track of what’s hap­pen­ing in the galaxy by enthralling var­i­ous sci­en­tists and other agents and forc­ing them to report back on the goings-on around them. If any­one gets too close to dis­cov­er­ing the nature of the crea­ture, Leviathan orches­trates that per­son­’s demise. In this way, Leviathan remains hid­den, and can observe the events of the galaxy and bide its time until it feels it can act on its grand designs. In Call, Cthulhu is wor­shiped by a cult that works to bring about his return to the earth and mur­ders any­one who asks too many ques­tions about him.

Unlike Leviathan, the pro­tag­o­nist of Call never does much in the way of inves­ti­ga­tion him­self, pre­fer­ring to read other peo­ples’ diaries. Yet the struc­ture is oth­er­wise the same — Thurston first reads an account of an unusu­al young man hav­ing weird dreams about a sunken city/Shepard first meets a man who is under the con­trol of some­thing he does­n’t under­stand. Second, Thurston reads about a cult of Cthulhu-worshippers in Louisiana/Shepard dis­cov­ers a min­ing colony which is entire­ly under Leviathan’s con­trol. Finally, after a bit of dig­ging, Thurston reads about a man who actu­al­ly encoun­ters Cthulhu/Shepard trav­els to an unchart­ed plan­et and finds Leviathan.

Cthulhu slum­bers deep beneath the ocean in the ancient, sunken city of R’lyeh, and Leviathan waits with sev­er­al oth­ers of its kind deep beneath anoth­er ocean on a dis­tant world. Both are asso­ci­at­ed with the untrav­eled depths of dis­tant oceans, but it’s in the phys­i­cal encoun­ters with these crea­tures that the sto­ries diverge.

Cthulhu dis­cov­ers a boat full of tasty and inquis­i­tive sailors and imme­di­ate­ly sets to work eating/frightening them to death. The first mate, Johansen, only bare­ly escapes, appar­ent­ly because Cthulhu is too unin­ter­est­ed to seri­ous­ly pur­sue, choos­ing instead to hit the snooze but­ton after Johansen caus­es it to stub its toe. Not long after the sailor makes it home, he is mur­dered by a cultist. There is never an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the crew to speak with Great Cthulhu, who appar­ent­ly views them as noth­ing more than a mild annoy­ance. Even being direct­ly rammed by a large boat only caus­es Cthulhu momen­tary incon­ve­nience. Cthulhu cares noth­ing for our attempts to harm it.

Leviathan, con­verse­ly, rises threat­en­ing­ly out of the ocean only to dump a great deal of expo­si­tion on the play­er. The details are large­ly irrel­e­vant to the mat­ter at hand, but Leviathan is revealed to be a mem­ber of the race that indi­rect­ly cre­at­ed the Reapers, and is even greater and more pow­er­ful than the Old Machines them­selves. It is capa­ble of destroy­ing a Reaper with rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle effort, and once held entire plan­ets in thrall. It is vast­ly beyond Shepard, and cares noth­ing for Shepard’s trou­bles.

Shepard valiant­ly attempts to enlist its help in the war, but it ini­tial­ly refus­es, argu­ing that there is lit­tle rea­son to sus­pect that this cycle will be any dif­fer­ent from the count­less cycles it has already wit­nessed. Then, the absur­di­ty begins. The play­er makes one dia­logue choice which sim­ply changes the fla­vor of Shepard’s rhetoric (friend­ly or mean) and then Shepard, with per­haps three lines of spo­ken dia­logue, con­vinces the ancient and inef­fa­ble mon­ster to change its mind.

Commander Shepard, like Abraham, can suc­cess­ful­ly bar­gain with God.

One can­not imag­ine Randolph Carter nego­ti­at­ing with Azathoth, or Albert Wilmarth con­vinc­ing Shub-Niggurath to help out in the Second World War. There is sim­ply no rea­son for Leviathan to care about Shepard’s prob­lems — Shepard is as far beneath Leviathan as an ant is to Shepard, yet we are sup­posed to believe that a brief set of apho­risms is enough to con­vince this ter­ri­ble and eldritch Thing to help in the war effort. The entire con­ver­sa­tion with Leviathan, includ­ing all of its Stygian-voiced expo­si­tion, takes eight min­utes and forty sec­onds. Leviathan ulti­mate­ly agrees to help because Shepard is con­fi­dent.

Cosmic Boss Fights



“The most mer­ci­ful thing in the world, I think, is the inabil­i­ty of the human mind to cor­re­late all its con­tents. We live on a placid island of igno­rance in the midst of black seas of infin­i­ty, and it was not meant that we should voy­age far.” — H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

The rhetor­i­cal power of the Reapers and Leviathan is under­cut by the ease of this con­ver­sa­tion. Again and again we are told that these beings are beyond our under­stand­ing, that they are count­less mil­len­nia old and full of immense power. Again and again Mass Effect clothes its vil­lains in Lovecraftian rhetoric. The Reapers are gods, the Old Machines, “eter­nal… the pin­na­cle of evo­lu­tion and exis­tence. Before [them], [we] are noth­ing.” Yet time and time again, Shepard is able to beat them with brute force or out­rea­son their bet­ters in a mat­ter of sec­onds. Shepard kills Reapers with orbital strikes, he/she kills them with hand-mounted nuclear weapons. He/she kills them in sin­gle com­bat when they fool­ish­ly pos­sess human-sized beings and stride into the arena rather than just nuk­ing him/her from orbit.

Much has been made on forums and blogs of the fact that explain­ing the Reapers’ ori­gins dam­aged their mys­tery and emo­tion­al power, and this is prob­a­bly true. It’s very dif­fi­cult to make an answered ques­tion as fright­en­ing or intrigu­ing as an unan­swered one. We never find out what the Colour Out of Space is, or if it thinks, or what its moti­va­tions are, and that makes it ter­ri­fy­ing.

But what real­ly dam­ages the Reapers is the fact that they are over­come­able antag­o­nists in a power fan­ta­sy rather than the all-consuming, unstop­pable Forces of Lovecraftian cos­mi­cism. The Reapers become weak because we know we can beat them, and fre­quent­ly beat them with ease. Shepard is the Hero, the Chosen One, and can do any­thing. This makes the eldritch lan­guage used by and about the Reapers feel hol­low and ridicu­lous. The Reapers aren’t beyond our com­pre­hen­sion, they’re just boss fights.

Who’s Your Elder God Now



There are a lot of prob­lems with the last ten min­utes of Mass Effect 3. Any kind of end­ing to a game as expan­sive and fre­quent­ly grip­ping as Mass Effect was going to be dif­fi­cult, and the sharp left turn the game took into spec­u­la­tive phi­los­o­phy is noth­ing if not jar­ring. But I believe that the real prob­lem with the end­ing stems from this dis­so­nance.

Shepard has to make some kind of Big Decision in order for it to remain a power fan­ta­sy. Shepard has to hold the fate of the uni­verse in his/her hands and choose accord­ing­ly. Yet the Reapers, couched as they are in Lovecraftian lan­guage, can’t be defeat­ed just by a mas­sive bomb. They have to be beat­en by some­thing inef­fa­ble and tremen­dous, some­thing con­cep­tu­al­ly larg­er than they are. There has to be some­thing of Lovecraftian scale behind Shepard’s vic­to­ry in order for it to be remote­ly plau­si­ble.

So we’re greet­ed by the Catalyst, the cos­mic AI that designed the Reapers to do some Great Task, and so on and so forth. We watch the orig­i­nal end­ing cutscene, almost insult­ing­ly short, leav­ing so much up to the play­er’s imag­i­na­tion, so much left unsaid. They want­ed to fill us again with the sense of won­der and small­ness we got when first we talked to Sovereign on Virmire, when first we read of Azathoth, gnaw­ing hun­gri­ly in dark­ness, and Yog-Sothoth, the Key and the Gate. But it’s too late for that. We don’t believe it any more. Shepard is the real eldritch force, the unstop­pable jug­ger­naut, and when faced with the tight­ly lim­it­ed choic­es the Catalyst offers, we don’t feel won­der. Instead, we feel cheat­ed out of our fan­ta­sy.