The Cosmic Horror of the Abyss in Genshin Impact (Version 3.0): Lovecraftian Influences

the sumero update has some terrifying content like too spooky for me type content mostly in the peripherals as books and hidden quests but they give us a lot of insight into the nature of the Abyss I just wanted to talk a little bit about some of the horror that we now know about the abyss and just to be clear not the abyss order but the much older more pervasive void realm the corrupt of evil the dark beasts from the earth Etc as usual this isn't a comprehensive analysis or speculation and as usual minor spoilers for Quest exploration in sumero and there will obviously be talk about horror and horror themes there's a strange glowing parchment you can find in devantaka mountain and you complete different trials to get the full text but the parchment is unique in that it's not finding scraps and pieces instead as you complete the challenges the parchment evolves it changes words being added its name morphing upon doing the final task of lighting up some torches you learn the final Destiny of its storyteller and here's a breakdown of that story this text was left by hassad the adventurer who we learn about during the vamana agama Quest hasad the golden Adventure was the grandfather of Roy engine who originally found the Amity device for the ruined Gollum and eventually disappeared as adventurers seemed to do while his stories linger as Legends he goes on to explain that he has seen so much more than those stories tell including unknowable ancient knowledge that has cursed him and how he became the Oracle of an invisible creature he gives hints about the specific challenges you must do to find the treasurer that he retrieved from the cursed city of brass and interestingly this isn't the first time we've encountered an adventurer who speaks about a golden City although in some other stories it's unclear if Assad was hallucinating as jitong quite have been he recounts the pit of Filth where countless Dev once dwelt and to my knowledge there's only one other mention in Game of the dev and that's during a rear loading screen which reads the dark beast from beneath the Earth were once referred to as Dev by the people of sumeru and as as a brief aside from another loading screen that we rarely see we learn more about the dark beasts in sumeru it is said that in ancient times the monsters from the dark abyss lurked on devantaka Mountain it was only after a long battle that they were finally subdued by the sages and the heroes of davri you may recall that the legend of Dowry is mentioned by trainee duster zandic in a note which I briefly discussed in my previous video but as I said that's just an aside hassad goes on to say but those Eternal beings can never perish until death has become the end of death this is a really Choice sentence structure as it's an archaic but technically accurate way to Simply say has become it is strangely reminiscent though of oppenheimer's words following the first test of an atomic bomb where he references the Hindu text the bhagavad-gita now I am become death the destroyer of worlds the note finishes describing things older than the ancient pyramids and the Sinister Whispers of the spirits of al-azif that repeat over and over the accursed name Sharia is a reference to a figure in a book we can obtain called The Tale of sharia and Sheeran This Book is a continuation of the shepherd and the magic bottle where a gin recounts stories of old to a shepherd Sharia was the Lord of pestilence whose subjects eventually became lost to Darkness losing their language and faces almost likely probably needed a mask at some point to Briefly summarize he was prophesied to be an ill Omen to the kingdom and he was eventually exiled for said prophecy but his mother Sheeran would convince him to murder his father and the vassal King parvis ravan his guilt of staining the Royal bedchambers with his father's blood would drive him into a Madness and he would eventually fall into a deep Black Chasm and later from that same Chasm a plague emerged and swallowed The Souls of half the city of gurabad leaving only the legacy of shurier's plague in the timeline of things this all happens long before the death of the Scarlet King which itself happened long before the events of the cataclysm 500 years ago with Sharia we have a gruesome tale of repeating generational patricide and regicide and a plague from what we might be able to surmise is the Abyssal depths and the plague consumed his people just as his guilt consumed his own consciousness the Scarlet king would also end up descending into madness himself seeking forbidden knowledge to abandon his mortal form they say that the Scarlet King separated his mind from his flesh and Bone and became one with the Labyrinth he created as his body gradually decayed on his throne while worms feasted on his corpse his soul merged with millions in his kingdom dooming them to wander growing ever closer to the bottomless Abyss and although we don't know exactly what happened in conria we do know that the kingdom was destroyed and its citizens were cursed to wander the Earth endlessly in in human forms and during the cataclysm the skies turned red and the rain turned dark as beasts spewed out from the depths of the earth causing Devastation across tevot the details of these stories are different but each one ends with an encounter or even an intimacy with the abyss and subsequent destruction and with shurier and the Scarlet King they start with a Madness a fracturing of the psyche even an obsession the decay of the king's psyches may have been ripe for Abyssal corruption and with that their Kingdom suffered did something similar than Place Conrail on the same path towards destruction perhaps the king Airmen the king of conoria went mad in pursuit of forbidden knowledge maybe just maybe in his ambition to overthrow the Gods and in this pursuit of forbidden knowledge he became corrupted by the abyss and with his corruption he lost his strength rule leading to the Albert Clan taking over trying to fix the mess he caused and perhaps Schwan and Richter emerged then too to fight the Abyssal monsters that gold made for earmen this is just speculation of course and I also don't mean to imply this is a loop set on a timer but I just wanted to point out that this may serve as an example of history repeating itself over and over in the last segment of the parchment there is another name mentioned al-azif the only other mention of Olive in game is in the book The Shepherd and the magic bottle where it describes the shepherd finding the magic bottle in the gravel sand dunes which is not a set place as the dunes are ever Changed by the winds this place is noted to also be called the DAR all azif the question is not where or even who is elizif but what is all azif al-azif is the alleged original title of the Necronomicon the Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire created by author H.P Lovecraft that is said to be a terrible and forbidden book a Chronicle of the old ones and how to summon them the achievement for quieting the parchment also references Lovecraft with Call of the nameless City a reference to his 1921 short story The nameless City this work may be considered the first in the Cthulhu Mythos for those familiar the story follows an adventure in the desert who happens upon some ruins after stumbling upon a tomb he finds a brass door leading to a portal to a phosphorescent Abyss with a strong wind trying to pull him in beyond the portal he sees figures of inhuman unfamiliar creatures and the door closes behind him leaving him alone in darkness and silence the story has obvious parallels to what hassad the adventurer probably encountered in his journeys throughout the desert and for what it's worth Lovecraft said in a letter that the story for the nameless City came to him in a dream which itself was inspired by a line in another story the unreverberate Blackness of the Abyss while making this video I also wanted to draw another comparison to a couplet that appears in the nameless City and is attributed to the Necronomicon that is not dead which can Eternal lie and with strange Aeons even death may die this couplet reminded me of the ominous words from the parchment but those Eternal beings can never perish until death has become the end of death originally I was going to cut this brief mention until I saw a Reddit post on the gentian impact subreddit in this post by user Barbara made me do it they translate the text on the icon for the parchment and find that the note contains the couplet itself this really bolsters the lovecraftian influence but also makes me appreciate the level of detail in this game and kudos to Barbara made me do it for finding it as a fan of horror I draw a lot of parallels between the abyss and the core of cosmic horror Cosmic horror or lovecraftian horror focuses on the fragility of man's sanity and the utter pointlessness of Humanity's existence wherein Humanity's existence is akin to that of a grain of sand in the sea of an infinite Abyss I mean the abyss or the void realm has likely existed for as long as the light realm predating all of written records with no tangible hierarchy or rational motive it's a malignant amorphous entity and also a terrifying space an alluring but incomprehensible unknown that exploits the faults in the human mind resulting only in chaos and destruction with all this said I would really like gentian to lean in on these horror themes give us Eldritch Horrors give us Terror beyond our human comprehension actually I think it'd be really cool if they implemented a sanity mechanic this would be similar to sheer cold or the withering but instead of losing HP and dying you hallucinate or see unseen Horrors games like amnesia the Dark Descent and bloodborne do this a more obscure game called Eternal Darkness sanity's Requiem has a more extreme version that breaks the fourth wall even pretending to delete your game obviously this would take some fine tuning to implement but could be cool I am constantly amazed at the attention to detail in this game and was really thrilled to discover all these spooky secrets I hope you guys enjoyed this video it was somehow way more scuffed than my previous videos which are Baseline scuffed but I super appreciate all the comments and likes I've received so thanks and see ya

Channel: roozevelt

Views: 10,720

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Id: ikkxhc6hGFI

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 18 2022