Alone in the Dark 2008 - A Complete Retrospective

The game that promised to reinvent the Survival Horror genre.
Innovative, ground-breaking, bad.

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Music includes tracks from the entire Alone in the Dark series, Resident Evil, Call of Duty 4, Test Drive Unlimited, Kya: The Dark Legacy, The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, Arena, Wayward Realms, Sims: Makin' Magic, Crash Bandicoot and Medievil. Chronological order: https://pastebin.com/ZNLaNDih

Sections
Intro 0:00

Reinventing the wheel -
Gaming in 2008 2:46
Atari SA 4:15
Eden Games 6:00
Making Of 7:51
Episodes 15:03
Marketing 20:57
Review Backlash 25:38

Gameplay -
Gameplay 31:20
Controls 29:29
Presentation 43:15
Combat 46:03
Styles of Play 53:52
Puzzles 57:02
Driving 1:02:58
Open World 1:06:05
"Survival Action" 1:09:28

Narrative -
Story 1:12:17

Legacy -
Legacy 1:35:06
The True Remake 1:38:05
Should you play it? 1:39:26
Outro and Q&A 1:40:42

When Alone in the Dark created the prototype for the 3D Survival Horror Genre, Frédérick Raynal’s team under Infogrames created a very hard act to follow.

PS1 goliaths like Resident Evil essentially emulated AITD’s original formula for years. Even Infogrames' own attempt to reboot their pivotal series failed to innovate beyond the cinematic flourishes Capcom had instilled.

In 2004, one year before the fourth instalment of Resident Evil further evolved the Survival Horror genre, David Nadal, co-founder of V-Rally developer Eden Games, dreamed of bringing Alone in the Dark back.

Not as a copy of what had come before, but to invoke what made that 1992 original so groundbreaking. He wanted to revolutionise the genre and possibly fork off their own. What Hervé Sliwa, Lead Game Director, dubbed: “Survival Action”.

If you know anything about 2008’s disastrous Alone in the Dark entry, then you would think they failed, but that’s what’s most surprising about this story. For how unfortunate the game turned out, the innovations they made? They did leave a mark on survival games.

Diegetic inventory. Searching for items in first-person. A believable, grounded crafting system. Adherence to real-life rules and immersion for the sake of immersion. A high degree of environmental interaction. Physics-based destructibility. Episodic television-style story delivery with chapter select and the one they were proud of the most: advanced fire technology.

Individually, these systems went on to inspire, or at the very least beat-to-market, developers around the world. And yet, in their pursuit of greatness, Eden Games fell victim to a classic. ‘It isn’t how good your ideas are, it’s how well you execute them.’

Alone in the Dark 2008 is undoubtedly a AAA game, offering all the blockbuster set pieces intended to thrill gamers. They just forgot two cardinal rules: One, the game must be fun. And two, if you’re going to create a sequel, don’t completely distort a character beyond recognition.

Alone in the Dark 2008 - A Complete Retrospective

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