Did anyone else hit a certain point in Malmouth and go: “Oh Shit, he’s a Vorlon! They let the Vorlon out! This will not end well.”
(Might have just been me. It’s happened before.)
The one scifi series I never got to watch much in the past. I see little bits of lots of things hither and thither in GD and AoM but I’m not sure I’d be so bold as to call them outright references. Some themes, tropes, etc. are just really ubiquitous.
No, I was thinking more references in the forum than references in the game. Lovecraft notwithstanding.
Sometimes it’s as much what you bring to it yourself as what the writers intentionally put there.
Now that you mention Lovecraft, are any of the devs Lovecraft/Lovecraftian horror fans? I see the “fear of the unknown, disgust and revulsion towards the strange, etc.” themes and the obvious tentacled nether-beings from not-Hell. Maybe some of the Mi-go in there too with the emphasis on biological re-engineering/magical “surgery” (especially the AoM content).
I found this one and posted here a while back now 
" I just realised after listening to war of the worlds original broadcast by Orson Welles , ground zero was Grovers mill , there is even a photograph of a huge barn with " Grovers mill " emblazoned across it .
So the quest to clear out " Gryver’s mill" must be a nod to that classic radio show "
Well, the aetherials do tripods…
You mean the Obelisks (like Herald of Flame/Destruction), I’m guessing?
It’s seems to me the lore and ingame notes are indeed heavily influenced by Lovecraft. There’s also the notorious death quote of the Reanimators, “Death is just the beginning”, if that isn’t a clue that there is at least SOME influence… then I dunno what to say.
There were a few notes too that really captured that dread, the fear of something unknown but truly terrifying.
With AOM content, for me, simply having wendigos in the game was enough to give that fear. Wendigos are a weird thing, some people (superstitious native americans mostly) are actually so terrified of them that they won’t even mention the word. Just knowing that fact alone makes AOM that much cooler for me, also kinda diminishes the power the wendigos have by making them so easy to dispose of… double edged sword, heh.
They’re easy to dispose of and then you bump into a Ravager and things get exciting. The sounds a lot of the enemies make (Wendigos included) are nice and appropriately creepy/chilling/primal too. I’m actually really impressed with the soundwork done in GD and AoM, and I kind of wonder how they found/created such good samples or how they foleyed so much of it in. I’m not sure how many people really appreciate how important it is for an enemy to SOUND right (Diablo 2’s enemy sounds were largely uninteresting by comparison to GD).
Was thinking Commander Lucius actually. The Obelisks are either monopods or hexapods, depending on how you define limbs.
Haven’t had a good look at the Shaper’s chassis iterations; one or more of those might qualify as well.
Hear hear. The sound design on this game is as impressive as the art design. Kudos to Dan Crislip.
Oh, yeah, Lucius and the big critters from Port Valbury too, come to think of it. I was thinking more of the eerie sounds/stature the Obelisks had.
Point. Again with the excellence in sound design.
Had a look at Marcell’s stage 1 and 2 chassis, though, and neither one is a tripod. So just the watchers/Lucius.