Urban Gothicis a pretty simple term that covers a lot of media. It’s the gothic formula of looming fears, melancholy, supernatural threats, and architecture, but it sticks to settings from the start of the Industrial Revolution to the near future. Nearly all the most popular examples of gothic media are technically urban gothic, from the works of Edgar Allan Poe to practically all vampire media since Bram Stoker’sDracula.
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Still, some pieces of media are more urbane than others. They’ll have more modern technology and attitudes than dark clothing and ennui. Anne Rice’s vampires became rock stars.The Crow’s undead hero roamed the city streets, and these urban gothic video games gave players a wild ride.
Resident Evil 4? Gothic? That seems like a stretch with its wacky setpieces and goofy one-liners (“Your right hand comes off?”). Even the more serious remake has some pep in its step, with both feeling more like blockbuster movies than a Bram Stoker novel. But that’s part of its modern and postmodern flavor, beefing up a narrative formed more fromneeding to get the game donethan trying to match classic novelists.
That said, it still maintains a horror atmosphere. The grim, wooden village and castle full of cultists are like something out of a classic Hammer horror movie. Baroque art and literal gothic architecture surround the player in the early and mid-stages of the game. They formed most fans' favorite parts of the game too. By contrast, the last island section is cited as their least favorite as it gives up the gothic theme in favor of a more generic industrial facility.
The big irony behind the originalDevil May Crywas that it was originally pitched as a concept forRE4. But it was rejected for being too action-based for a survival horror. Sure, the combo-heavy combat gameplay doesn’t exactly chill spines like the otherREgames. Yet the finalRE4product wasn’t a world away fromDMC1’s snark and setpieces. Nor in ropey dialogue (“Flock off, feather face!").
That said, the first game does have a similar atmosphere too, as it also features an old Spanish castle, eerie music and foreboding sections full of horrors (albeit supernatural ones rather than biological ones). The series got more urbane as it went on, yet kept in touch with its roots with its demons, angels, and domestic drama. IfDMCdidn’t have its tongue in its cheek from the start, fans might’ve taken it as seriously as its more horror-based counterparts.
7Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman’s Darkest Night
Batman is pretty much as gothic as the traditional superhero can go. Eric Draven fromThe Crowand Jackie fromThe Darknessare similarly gothic figures, and are arguably superheroes too in a way. But Batman manages to maintain that sad, brooding edge, lurking in the shadows and his own melancholy, while wearing tights and fighting for justice likehis light-hearted superfriends.
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Yet some of his depictions lean more on the gothic theme than others.Arkham City,Origins, andKnightbecame too urban as they expanded into Gotham City. The first game,Batman: Arkham Asylum, had a more even mix. It blended grim Victorian gargoyles and spires with sterile, modern institutions into the same, sickly structure. There are no ghosts or ghouls in the game, yet the design alone reveals there’s something cursed at the heart of the Asylum.
For a less traditional hero story,The Darknesscombines mob drama with demonic powers. Set in (then) present-day New York, Jackie has to avenge the death of his girlfriend by fighting his mob boss uncle Paulie with the Darkness. It’s a demonic entity that has plagued his bloodline for generations. The more people he kills, the stronger the entity gets untilit can completely possess him.
The game is split between Jackie taking on gangsters in the city, and waging war in the Otherworld, a World War 1-themed version of Hell. When Jackie isn’t trying to tear Paulie’s criminal empire down, he’s got to take the Darkness itself down in its own castle. It was an inventive take on first-person shooters at the time, and it still stands out today. There was a sequel,The Darkness 2, which played well but lacked the original’s urban gothic atmosphere.
To think a story about vampires would be one of the more grounded entries on this list. YetVampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlinesmight as well be a realistic drama next toRE4’s giant robots andDMC’s electric guitar weapons. The player took the role of a recently turned vampire, who gets wrapped in the mystery surrounding a relic that could spell the end for all bloodsuckers.
Based on the tabletop RPG of the same name, the player can pick any one of its different vampire clans for their character. They each have differentpowers, abilities, and reputationson the street. The modern LA setting lacks the usual gothic spires, but it calls back to itsVampirenovel inspirations with its morality system (killing innocents takes away humanity points), masquerade (don’t expose vampire powers in public), and the drama between the clans.
Speaking of vampires, it would be folly to forgoCastlevaniain the discussion. Yet, most of the classic games are plain gothic rather than urban gothic, with the classic NES games taking place in the Renaissance and Baroque eras. That said, some of its best games span across the modern, present, and near future.Rondo of BloodandSymphony of the Nighttake place in the 1790s, whileAria of SorrowandDawn of Sorrowoccur in the 2030s.
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BloodlinesandPortrait of Ruinfeel like a more even balance between the traditional look of Dracula’s castle and the early 20th Century setting. The former even includes global stages that take place in factories and streets, as well as ruins and the castle. ButOrder of Ecclesiahas the best mix of old gothic and urban settings, as Shanoa tries to stop Dracula’s rise and regain her humanity in a Victorian city and an old village.
Not that an urban gothic story needs vampires or their lore to meet its urban and/or gothic criteria.Clive Barker’s Undyingskips the bloodsuckers in favor of Celtic ghosts and spirits. World War 1 vet and paranormal investigator Patrick heads off to the Irish Coast to put the undead Covenant family back to sleep and keep the Undying King sealed.
It stands out from the other examples here as its Irish setting is different from the usual Victorian callbacks. The standing stones, runes, and rituals go back to something more primeval than medieval. While the undead ghosts and demons are Lovecraftian in their power and unknowable menace. The game didn’t do well on release but has since becomea cult classicthat still plays well today.
The Sinking Cityalso goes for a Lovecraftian feeling and a 1920s setting, but it stays on the North American side of the Atlantic. Massachusetts to be precise, as its own WW1-turned-P.I Charles explores the flooded city of Oakmont. He’s tasked with tracking down a missing researcher in the city, thinking she may be connected to its flood, cultists, and possibly his own nightmarish visions.
The game is clearly going for H.P Lovecraft’s sense of cosmic horror, yet it also has traces of Lovecraft’s own inspiration in earlier gothic and supernatural horror writers like Poe and Arthur Machen. Like the looming, warped buildings that suggest there’s something dark in Oakmont even before the sanity-sapping creatures make themselves known. The setting is perhaps more familiar thanUndying, but no less grim or dark.
That said, when it comes to urban gothic horror, it’s hard to do it better thanBloodborne. Set in the 1800s, the player hunts through the city of Yharnam to discover how and why its inhabitants are falling to a blood-borne plague that turns them into monsters. Being a game by FromSoftware, it involves tricky, more considered combat gameplay, a foreboding atmosphere, and giant monster bosses that are as difficult as they look.
That, and exploring an eerie, grim locale where the light never shines. Inspired byDracula, theCthulhu Mythos, and real locations in Eastern Europe, FromSoft’s Yharnam is full of spires, fog, and sad, doomed people. Modern weaponry and tactics are no better against the Great Ones than arrows and broadswords. As urbane as it is, it’s no less full of despair, horror, and Gothic architecture.
