Out of the Blue Games' Call of the Elder Gods arrives as a confident follow-up to 2020's Call of the Sea, trading the original's claustrophobic island mystery for a sprawling globe-trotting adventure that channels the cosmic unease of H.P. Lovecraft without leaning into the gore of traditional horror.
The story unfolds across two decades. Evangeline Drayton, daughter of an ill-fated expedition member, awakens from troubling dreams of an ancient city and reunites with Professor Harry Everhart to uncover what her father discovered. Returning protagonist Norah narrates the proceedings with a self-aware quality that deepens the narrative's strangeness. The five-hour journey spans the Everhart estate, Virginia caves, a remote Australian desert, and even an abandoned Nazi compound housing corrupted experiments, all rendered with visual flair and intentional atmosphere.
The shift in scope distinguishes this sequel immediately. Where Call of the Sea confined mystery-solving to a single lush location, Call of the Elder Gods embraces the sweeping aesthetic of adventure films, complete with streaking red lines across world maps. The escalation draws liberally from Lovecraft's "The Color Out of Space" before pivoting toward the time-bending surrealism of "The Shadow Out of Time," leading Harry and Evangeline through increasingly bizarre moments that stretch across time and space.
Yet this expansion brings trade-offs. The brisk pacing whisks players between locations too quickly to fully absorb each environment's visual majesty. Just as one chapter's atmosphere settles in, the next chapter arrives, sometimes funneling exploration into tighter, less imaginative enclosed spaces. The animated cutscenes, while showcasing strong character personalities through voice work from Yuri Lowenthal and Mara Junot, occasionally feel like stilted transitions rather than organic narrative beats.
Puzzles That Click, and Ones That Don't
Puzzle design mirrors the original's Myst-like approach: collect clues, examine environments, piece together solutions with Norah's journal as your guide. The best moments reward careful observation and lateral thinking. An early sequence positioning statues during a thunderstorm to unlock a gated area exemplifies the game's ability to weave atmosphere with mechanical challenge. These organic moments, where the logic of a puzzle unfolds naturally before the solution clicks, rank among the game's true strengths.
The problem lies in consistency. Call of the Elder Gods abandons the steady difficulty curve of its predecessor in favor of a fragmented structure that occasionally spikes without warning. Some machine-heavy puzzles demand cycling through the journal obsessively, as if working through an instruction manual. Players hit walls requiring extended backtracking to locate missed clues. A hint system in the menu provides step-by-step solutions, which prevents complete stalling but also signals where the puzzle design could have been clearer from the start.
What prevents these stumbles from derailing the experience is the emotional core beneath the mystery. Playing as both Harry and Evangeline, with moments where they solve puzzles in tandem, allows the narrative to deepen through their parallel journeys. Story beats where players make choices during interrogations or confront personal trauma carry genuine weight. A sinister cult pursuing the same ancient power maintains escalating stakes and provides the adversarial pressure needed to sustain tension.
Voice performances elevate the writing considerably. Cissy Jones' narration as the absent Norah adds layers of intrigue, while Lowenthal and Junot bring nuance to characters grappling with memory and an uncertain future. These performances transform what could be exposition into character-driven storytelling.
The ending, however, falters. After carefully constructing mystery across multiple continents and temporal layers, Call of the Elder Gods closes with an unsatisfying finish that leaves too much of its central intrigue unresolved. Evangeline's arc as a newcomer does lend greater tragedy to her father's failed expedition, enriching the original game retroactively, but the sequel's conclusion fails to capitalize on the emotional investment the game has earned.
Call of the Elder Gods stands as a worthy successor that expands its universe and deepens its character work, even if its scope occasionally outpaces its ability to land every moment. The puzzle-solving captures moments of genuine delight, and the dual-perspective structure feels genuinely innovative. It's a game that reaches for something greater than its predecessor and mostly succeeds, marred primarily by a third act that doesn't quite justify everything that came before.
Author Emily Chen: "It's an ambitious sequel that plays to the strengths of puzzle-box storytelling, but the ending feels like a mystery that solved itself halfway through."
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