Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare turns XNUMX today, the fourth installment of the Alone in the Dark saga. This series has made the history of horror and, for the occasion, we decided to retrace its history, trying to understand why it has completely disappeared from the radar in recent years.
Alone in the Dark: the story of the first survival horror
The first Halo in the Dark dates back to 1992, and is generally considered to be the first survival horror video game in video game history., although some experiments in that direction had already been done in the past. This conception derives from the fact that Alone in the Dark has, in effect, created the modern formula of survival horror, then masterfully reinterpreted by Resident Evil.
The game also has the same source of inspiration, given that what the developers wanted to create was a title in which the protagonists would have to come out alive from a zombie invasion. To this initial idea were then added elements taken from the nightmare imagery born from the mind of HP Lovecraft, as the manufacturer Infogrames held the rights to The Call of Cthulhu.
The final product (which takes place in a villa) allows us to choose between two protagonists, Emily Hartwood od Edward Carnby. Unfortunately, the first Alone in the Dark lacks both cutscenes and dialogues, so the choice of character is mainly aesthetic.
Just like many other survival games released after him, in Alone in the Dark you can check your health by opening your inventory and most of the creatures that try to kill you can be avoided. once you understand how to move between pre-rendered environments, using a bit of cunning. Exactly the same play structure that we later saw with the Resident Evil saga in 1996.
The story of Alone in the Dark and the evolution of the series
Already from the second chapter of the series (1994) then Alone in the Dark becomes much more story driven, with dialogues that are written on the screen together with images with a lot of captions. The setting also changes, abandoning the Lovecraftian tones to refer to a more original supernatural imagery, net of some elegant quotations here and there.
Already from this second chapter the series begins to deviate a lot from the purely survial gameplay of the first game, launching itself in a pace of gameplay much more devoted to action and shooting. A trend that was then reconfirmed also for the third chapter, released in 1995, which further expands our arsenal to use against the hordes of undead creatures.
Years later, in 2021, finally arrives Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, which is configured as a real reboot of the series of the same name and launched both on Game Boy Color and on PlayStation 1. The game has no direct connection with the first three chapters and even here we will be able to follow two parallel paths depending on the character we choose at the beginning.
Unlike what we experienced with Alone in the Dark 2 and 3, The New Nightmare returns to its origins, presenting itself to the public as a survival horror in the most classic sense of the term, entirely set on a mysterious island in which vast maps will be explored, once again populated by Lovecraftian-inspired creatures. If it was Resident Evil who initially looked at Alone in the Dark in the beginning, in this case it is the exact opposite, and it is possible to see how the developers have been heavily inspired by some mechanics of RE 2 and 3 for their game, such as the introduction of the command examine, which allows to observe the models of the objects obtained.
Hell and decline
If up to now the evolution of the project has been rather constant and characterized by a good reception from the fans, it is with Alone in the Dark Inferno, nel 2008, that the series begins to lose some of its distinctive features. In this case the game is a real sequel to the third chapter, completely ignoring the events of the fourth.
The video game was born with the best intentions: rejuvenate the series by offering a game that fully exploits the potential of PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. So goodbye to the claustrophobic, small and stringent structures of the first chapters and welcome free roaming in Central Park. Certainly an interesting idea, that of giving more freedom to the player, but it is a sterile freedom, given that exploration was actually of little use, within the playful economy.
Even in Alone in the Dark Inferno it is felt a strong drift action, which combined with the mechanics relating to the open world not fully exploited, highlights how the saga was beginning to no longer have a clear creative direction to focus on, which was then painfully evident with the sixth and final Alone in the Dark: Illumination. .
Lighting and fall
After the Inferno parenthesis, the Alone in the Dark brand remained dormant for years, until 2015 when Atari proposed Alone in the Dark Illumination, a spin off of the series that totally embraces its new action soul. the only problem is that it did so by adopting superficial and poorly implemented mechanics.
In the game it was possible to choose a class from four available (Hunter, Witch, Engineer and Priest), each with unique weapons and powers. Net of large imbalances in the effectiveness of the individual classes, this solution combined with the gameplay made to say the least crudely helped lay the last stone on the grave of Alone in the Dark, which to date has exhausted its history in the worst possible way.
A few years ago, rumors emerged about a possible new chapter of the series currently in progress, but given that we are talking about 2018, it is likely that it was just an unfounded rumor. Of course, a new chapter capable of redeeming the last years, definitely forgettable, of survival horror we would not mind, but perhaps what is dead is better than remains dead.
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What happened to Alone in the Dark? History and decline of the saga
