YMMV / The Sinking City

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is a murderer of Albert Throgmorton, Lewis Flynn, a victim of the hysteria plaguing the town or was he, based on the evidence you've accumulated, acting in his right mind? That's for you to decide and act on. Evidence you find much later in the game heavily suggests the murder was in fact premeditated, but you don't learn this until well after you've made a conclusion in your investigation.
  • Throgmorton clearly loves his son but directly after you help him and find the killer he’s uninterested in Charles' investigation, leading some to believe he may be hiding something. Is he overwhelmed with grief over his son dying because of his investigation, consumed with vengeance against the Innsmouthers, or up to something else? We know that at least one of his activities is resurrecting his dead brother.
    • Is Robert Throgmorton really proud of his ape-human heritage or is overcompensating for being an inhuman monster and engaged in constant Inferiority Superiority Complex? He seems sincere in his overconfidence but anything less would see him treated as a monster.
  • Are the Innsmouthers victims of Fantastic Racism or a justified suspicion due to the fact they're followers of a Religion of Evil as well as heavily involved in the organized crime in the city. Given their actions, one may suggest they're Invading Refugees and Robert Throgmorton is Properly Paranoid.
  • Doctor Grant at the hospital, while treating his patients, is using backwater treatments like eating leeches and materials for his experiments. When Charles voices concern for the public he immediately hushes him and says to wait for Miskatonic University to get back to him. This may be due to him being a complete quack or the fact that Miskatonic University may be the only weirdos in the world who would know how to treat occult illnesses.
  • Is George Cavendish a Knight Templar Well-Intentioned Extremist who is doing what is necessary to frame the EOD for crimes that will turn the public against them given they are a Religion of Evil or is he just a Green-Eyed Monster Crazy Jealous Guy who is upset his wife cheated on him with a fish? Is his False Flag Operation a mixture of both motivations?
• Ascended Meme:
  • A Tombstone can be found in the game that says "Respawning in 3...2...1... Connection Error".
  • Across the square from Oakmont's town hall is a poster for the fictional Sherlock Holmes story "Mystery of the Creepy Watson", as immortalized in This Video.
• Awesome Ego: Robert Throgmorton is a hideous apeman and a complete snob who inherited all of his wealth but he is absolutely proud of it.
• Broken Aesop: Much of the game deals with the evils of racism (the KKK are sidequest villains) and the plight of the Innsmouth refugees. Every figure who engages in xenophobia is treated with disgust and Reed's dialogue always makes his low opinion of xenophobes clear. However, the Innsmouthers are followers of a Religion of Evil and heavily involved in the city's organized crime. Given the Deep Ones are historically villains in Cthulhu Mythos fiction, it also will confuse longtime fans of the setting. The Esoteric Order of Dagon is established as the "real" evil among the Innsmouthers but almost all of them are involved with it or at least sympathetic. It doesn't help that no matter how nice Reed is to the Innsmouthers, they will attempt to kill him multiple times.
• Broken Base: The combat system leaves players divided, with some thinking of it as a way to add tension, other views it as a case of Padding in an otherwise good detective game, which also feels very out-of-place in a Lovecraftian story. Regardless both sides agree that the combat isn't the strongest suit of the game.
• Creepy Awesome: Robert had a cake made for his son's funeral in the shape of his deceased son.
• Dueling Works:
  • With Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game. Notably, developer Frogwares were attached to the former project for a couple of years before they were pulled off it and the contract given to Cyanide Studios instead. The Sinking City came out only about six months after Call of Cthulhu, hinting that it might contain more than a little of the skeleton of Frogwares' original design for that game.
  • The game also has numerous parallels with Dontnod Entertainment's Vampyr, which came out several months earlier, both being horror-themed open-world games with RPG Elements featuring a mix of story, investigation, and combat in a dark supernaturally plagued turn-of-the-century city. They even have similarly named protagonists (Mr. Reed and Dr. Reid).
  • With itself. Nacon and Frogware's dueling ownership claims have resulted in the former putting the game up on steam while the Playstation 5 version is done by Frogware exclusively. The others have shared interests that have been sued over.
• Disappointing Last Level: The final chapter, "Into The Depths", is largely a Fetch Quest with minimal detective work and unclear objectives.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The writing in this game more can make up for a myriad of issues the game itself has— if you're willing to tolerate some pop-in and amateurish animations, there's a genuinely good story under here.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The action-focused monster-slaying, the relative openess of the supernatural, the pro-tolerance message, and use of Cythlla aren't characteristic of HP Lovecraft. They are, however, characteristic of Brian Lumley's Titus Crow.
  • The American Flags that are in the city only have 48 stars, which was correct for the 1920s this game takes place in.
• Jerkass Woobie: Ebernote Blackwood. Raised from a child to believe he was the chosen one only to find out that wasn't true and then left behind by the other Blackwoods when they returned to the sea as punishment for being a failure. As he's part Deep One, that's like deliberately leaving a fish to suffocate on land. Then he's constantly harassed by the Ku Klux Klan and his followers get murdered in front him. All while having the knowledge that humanity's time is coming to a close but with no way to stop it. Ebernote is an asshole, but it's easy to pity him.
• Moral Event Horizon: Granny Weaver is only one of many monsters in Oakmont but she loses any and all possible justification when you find out she murdered Joy Hayden's dog and sewed it into a teddy bear. The psychological torture and evil she engages in we find that she also did to her own daughters is enough to make every player wnat to put her down.
• Narm: Reed's giant backpack that he wears on his default outfit. It just looks ridiculous. So ridiculous that the developers eventually released a version of the outfit sans the backpack.
  • The Cultist outfit which is obtainable from finishing the "Mystic Tomes" DLC case. It gives Reed badass-looking tattoos, adds a nice dose of Nightmare Fuel with an apron made of human faces... And then it slips right back into Nightmare Retardant territory with an octopus that he wears on his head like a hat. Needless to say, wearing this outfit will suck all drama and gravitas out of the game.
• Narm Charm:
  • The animations and character models are very unnatural. To be fair, Frogware is not one of the biggest companies out there so they were bound to miss something. If anything, it adds a bit to how off everything else is.
  • The voice acting can come off as a bit over-the-top but it serves to make a lot of the characters way more memorable. Robert Throgmorton in particular gets this since his voice actor chews the scenery.
• Obvious Judas:
  • To anyone familiar with Lovecraft, it's almost immediately obvious that Johannes van der Berg is Hastur (a.k.a. The King in Yellow). Not only is his outfit an eye-catching yellow, but Reed even goes out of his way to comment on the unusual colour. You can also view the ensemble in the wardrobe as soon as Reed reaches his hotel room, where it's named the King's Robes.
  • Similarly, anyone familiar with The Shadow Over Innsmouth will instantly peg the EOD as really being the Esoteric Order of Dagon.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The Sinking City received a fairly muted reception on release. Far more has been made of the long-running, increasingly unpleasant legal dispute over the distribution rights to this game and the Sherlock Holmes series that erupted between developer Frogwares and publisher Nacon not long after The Sinking City came out. As of March 2021, it's still generating coverage long after interest in the game itself has largely waned.
  • As of January 2024, Frogwares made a huge step forward in resolving the controversy by reclaiming publisher rights and posting the official latest version of the game back up.
• Porting Disaster: An odd example as the Steam version of the game was put up by Nacon cracking the code of Frogware without the latter's permission. It is thus subject to a large number of lawsuits and legal challenges on top of lacking a number of crucial bugfixes due to being based on an earlier build of the game.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The "Infested Areas" found through Oakmont are meant to encourage exploration and reward the players who dare entering them with extra loots, but considering what's said above about the combat system and the fact that materials aren't that hard to get by other means, most will avoid these areas completely.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Despite the game's title, the city doesn't actually sink and the cataclysmic, supernatural Flood happened entirely offscreen, six months before Reed arrives in Oakmont. It barely plays a role in the plot and is only referenced to justify the waterlogged setting.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • The Wide-Open Sandbox aspect is greatly hindered by the fact that...well, there isn't much reason to explore Oakmont on your own. Outside of the infamous "Infested Areas", there is nothing to discover, as most secondary investigations are found in locations you are likely to have already discover by following the main story.
  • The Bargaining System. Due to the Flood, the dollar lost its value and Oakmont instead relies on exchanging goods. However, there are very few situations where you need to use this system and several times where there's no option to, even if the situation is ripe for it. Made noticeable as after being told about this, you come across a beggar asking for a spare bullet, but the game gives you no option to give him one.
  • With the introduction of the Sanity Meter that will affect the player, many believed it would be similar to Eternal Darkness where it would have the screen suffer a fake BSOD, bugs crawling across, etc. Instead all that really happens is some phantom characters appearing for a short time.
• The Woobie:
  • Joy Hayden. Once a glamorous singer, she's been reduced to a librarian and had her mouth sewn shut for daring to break the rules of Oakmont. And there's no way to help her. Even if you deal with Granny Weaver, Joy still has to endure her punishment else worse things be done to her by the locals.
  • Bethany Throgmorton was divorced by her husband claiming that she was suffering mental infirmity. He then has her committed to an asylum. In fact, she knew her husband had placed their son's soul in a magic mirror so he could put his half-ape son up in his place. She spends decades trying to figure out how to bring her son back and when she does, it will be as a seven-year-old zombie. She is a horrible victim of a domestic abuser but there's no good ending for her.

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