Alone in the Dark Reboot from THQ Nordic and the writer of SOMA

[Wunderbar]

https://aloneinthedarkgame.com




https://af.gog.com/game/alone_in_the_dark?as=1649904300

Spoiler

The game got leaked ahead of its official announcement (will happen later today).

Psychological horror and Southern Gothic meet in this revisit of the survival-horror classic Alone in the Dark. This love letter to the cult game of the 90s will make you live a story as sinister as memorable through the eyes of one of the two protagonists. As Edward Carnby or Emily Hartwood, explore the various environments, fight monsters, solve puzzles and discover the terrible truth about Derceto's mansion... In the deep south of the United States during the 1920s, Emily Hartwood's uncle disappeared. Accompanied by private detective Edward Carnby, she goes in search of him in the mansion of Derceto, a psychiatric asylum where prowls... Something. You will meet strange occupiers, nightmarish kingdoms, dangerous monsters, and lift the veil on an evil conspiracy. At the confluence between reality, mystery and madness, the adventure that awaits you may undermine your certainties. Who are you going to trust, what are you going to believe and what will you do next?‎

‎· Explore Derceto's mansion in this revisit of Alone in the Dark, a true love letter to the 90s horror classic.‎
‎· Go back to the roots of psychological horror and experience an atmospheric adventure worthy of the game that founded the genre.‎
‎· Immerse yourself in a world punctuated by sounds that will give you goosebumps against a backdrop of doom jazz as memorable as it is hypnotic.‎
‎· Feel the adrenaline as you desperately try to survive a world where reality is beginning to crumble, evil lurks in every shadow, and ammunition is scarce.‎
‎· Experience this nightmare from the perspective of Emily Hartwood or Edward Carnby and unearth the dark secrets of a Gothic mansion.‎
‎· Go beyond imagination through a complex psychological story written by cult screenwriter Mikael Hedberg, author of SOMA and Amnesia.‎

 

[Wunderbar]

‎· Go beyond imagination through a complex psychological story written by cult screenwriter Mikael Hedberg, author of SOMA and Amnesia.

I was kind of late to the computer RPG party, because playing a lot of tabletop RPGs made me think they were pretty bad in comparison. I did start liking them around the release of Fallout 2 and played a bunch of the RPGs released around that time. I still consider Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura to be one of the best computer games I’ve ever played. You see, the thing about being a tabletop RPG player is that I’ve played and hosted easily over a hundred different stories in this very free and responsive type of play. Going to computer games, it’s really difficult to get excited by the storytelling because it’s rarely that interesting. Not because it doesn’t tell the right stories, but because I never feel like I’m really doing anything. I feel like I’m slowly moving a movie forward. It’s like all I do is power the projector by pushing keys. People often get dumbstruck when I don’t go nuts over games like the Last of Us. They are great at story, they tell me. Yes, they really are, but we have always had good writing and conventional storytelling. Look at the Sierra games from the 90s. They are absolutely fantastic in that respect.

dude is based.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Hedberg is a cool guy but Alone in the Dark is a cursed title at this point. I'd be more optimistic even if it was an exciting spiritual successor called Lonely in the Gloom.

 

[Jasede]

Eh, doesn't hurt to try.

 

[Dodo1610]

Another game inspired by the REmakes eh. Those screens already look pretty dated and
it's coming from THQ Nordic and some no name dev, so expect some jank.

Horror is the kind of genre that needs a lot of polish, nothing worse than seeing an enemy bug out during a jumpscare.

 

[Tacgnol]

Why does the mansion look trashed in the screenshots? Derceto was pretty intact in the original.

Also why is Carnby not a soulless ginger?

 

[A horse of course]

author of SOMA

yikes

Anyway it was already rebooted

 

[Reinhardt]

Also why is Carnby not a soulless ginger?

because he's probably nigger now. same letters.

 

[Tacgnol]

Also why is Carnby not a soulless ginger?

because he's probably nigger now. same letters.

Looks pretty white in the screenshot, but he has dark hair.

Racist to the Irish.

 

[toughasnails]

It's a reboot going back to the OG game's theme and setting, and seems to have competent people behind it. I'm willing to be optimistic.

 

[Lemming42]

I really like the first Alone in the Dark, and basically none of the others. Something about how each room is a weird gimmicky mostly self-contained challenge really appeals to me.

Hope they don't go for the usual lame-ass "bone-chilling psychological horror" mood that's so popular these days - the original feels almost like it's trying to be funny more than scary, which is the tone they ought to aim for. Hate how those screenshots look gloomy and dim as opposed to the original garish, brightly-lit, borderline psychedelic mansion. Hard to judge just from those three screenshots, of course, but getting very System Shock remake vibes from it, which is not a good thing.

On the plus side, at least Emily's finally back. "That CREAKIN' old MAYN-SHUN with it's un-YOO-sual TAAAYLES and its SECRAT LAHBRARY DOOAH."

 

[Tacgnol]

I really like the first Alone in the Dark, and basically none of the others. Something about how each room is a weird gimmicky mostly self-contained challenge really appeals to me.

Hope they don't go for the usual lame-ass "bone-chilling psychological horror" mood that's so popular these days - the original feels almost like it's trying to be funny more than scary, which is the tone they ought to aim for. Hate how those screenshots look gloomy and dim as opposed to the original garish, brightly-lit, borderline psychedelic mansion. Hard to judge just from those three screenshots, of course, but getting very System Shock remake vibes from it, which is not a good thing.

On the plus side, at least Emily's finally back. "That CREAKIN' old MAYN-SHUN with it's un-YOO-sual TAAAYLES and its SECRAT LAHBRARY DOOAH."

Hopefully they stick to the Lovecraft mythos as well.

I can't think of many horror games that have combined the haunted mansion trope with Lovecraft.

 

[toughasnails]

The environments very much remind me of The New Nightmare which I thought p good tbh.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Have some background music fitting for reading this thread:



(Yes, I'm aware this is pretty much just "Galway Races", but this fits the AitD theme better)

 

[whydoibother]

I don't even remember the plot to Alone in the Dark anymore.

 

[Morgoth]

Those screenshots are saying "I'm a wannabe RE clone", which is tiresome, otoh, they got the Amnesia and SOMA lead writer working on this... so I'm conflicted.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I don't even remember the plot to Alone in the Dark anymore.

I like to view Alone in the Dark 2 as a survival horror from the point of view of the "bad guys". Story is after all : some guys throw a party in a house, a crazy detective dresses up as Santa Claus and kills them one by one with a frying pan.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Story for first game is "Evil tree in mansion basement spawns monsters, you must burn it down".

 

[Tweed]

Alone in the Dark introduced me to Chopin back when I was a kid.

 

[Tacgnol]

Story for first game is "Evil tree in mansion basement spawns monsters, you must burn it down".

Evil tree possessed by a Cthulhu cultist pirate who wants to possess a new body to wreck havoc on the world.

I don't even remember the plot to Alone in the Dark anymore.

I like to view Alone in the Dark 2 as a survival horror from the point of view of the "bad guys". Story is after all : some guys throw a party in a house, a crazy detective dresses up as Santa Claus and kills them one by one with a frying pan.

taxalot made an excellent summary of the plot of AITD2 there.

 

[AndyS]

Getting back to the source and away from Cool Leather Jacket Scruffy Guy Carnby is a good move, but I'm not feeling the screenshots. I like that the original game is pretty clean-looking. Never hurts to keep expectations low.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Wunderbar]

Welp, this looks nothing like the original, and not even like RE1-2.

Reminded me of People Can Fly's cancelled "hardboiled detective vs mutant rednecks" RE4 clone.

 

[Rincewind]

Based on the trailer, this has not much in common with the first game, except for the name.

 

[Wunderbar]

https://blog.playstation.com/2022/08/12/alone-in-the-dark-returns/

some new info

tl;dr

- all monsters were designed by Guy Davis, a production designer and illustrator who worked with Guillermo Del Toro on Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak and The Shape of Water. He also did BPRD with Mike Mignola;
- Jason Köhnen will write the "doom jazz" music;
- the game's plot will incorporate bits and pieces of all three original games from the ninetees (so yeah, apparently you're gonna leave the mansion at some point, and will probably have to fight against zombified gangsters, ghost pirates and wild west cowboys lol).