It appears that 2024 will bring us several noteworthy remasters and remakes. Numerous well-known titles, such as Final Fantasy VII and The Last of Us, are being thoughtfully re-released. Pieces Interactive and THQ Nordic’s remake of Alone in the Dark will land squarely in the middle of this stream of remakes. It tells the tale of a woman and detective investigating a haunted house to learn the owner of the mansion’s whereabouts—a tale that became an important virtual reality classic.
The first Alone in the Dark practically created the survival horror subgenre, establishing several benchmarks and design tenets that later Resident Evil and other franchises would expand upon and make mainstream. It is so challenging for its developers to find a balance between faithfully reproducing this experience and maintaining a sense of novelty. Producer Andreas Schmiedecker claimed that Alone in the Dark leans heavily toward the entire reimagining while discussing the spectrum between a true, director’s cut-like reproduction and a full reimagining, particularly when it comes to puzzle design when showcasing the remake to Digital Trends.
“Elements will be recognized by players. What could all these insignificant details from the previous game mean? As he worked through a redesigned problem in which he had to figure out the right combination on his talisman to open a portal to a nightmarish world, Schmiedecker spoke with Digital Trends. Nearly all of the names and items in the game will have existed in the previous version, although their purposes were different. We never replicated a puzzle from that era. To create something new, all the components of the previous game are essentially shuffled about.
Alone in the Dark has proven to be a remake that fans of the original and the games it impacted should be paying attention to, based on an early look at a prerelease build of the game and our interviews with its producers. The game’s creators hinted that it has a secret conclusion, so they might want to play it through more than once.
left for home
The fixed camera and puzzle-focused aspects that have become staples of the survival horror genre were first introduced in Alone in the Dark. The most obvious distinction between this remake and the original is the perspective, which is now third-person and more akin to Alan Wake 2. However, it puts more emphasis on the story and puzzles than on other gameplay aspects like fighting.
While the absence of a fixed camera removes some of the Filmic flair, THQ Nordic brought back that spirit by casting Hollywood talent, with Jodie Comer from The Last Duel as Emily Hartwood, the owner of the mansion’s niece, and David Harbour from Stranger Things as detective Edward Carnby. Both characters can be played, but for the sake of this preview, I went with Carnby, whose story has a noir flavor to it because he ends up in a predicament that is worse than he expected.
Executive producer Michael Paeck informed me that Hartwood’s campaign intended to portray “one story from two different perspectives,” so it will have a unique vibe. This implies that based on the character selected, Alone in the Dark customizes cutscenes, character interactions, and even specific segments. In certain sections, gamers will even visit locations like cemeteries outside of the Hartwood mansion—something that wasn’t done in the original. According to Paeck, who told Digital Trends that “there are some secrets and different endings that you can only unlock if you play as both,” users should replay the game.
appropriate direction
Pieces Interactive and THQ Nordic worked hard to create a horror game that players could take their time and enjoy, even if it was intended to be played more than once. Rather than providing a terrifying roller coaster, Alone in the Dark concentrates more on creating a spooky atmosphere and delivering players challenging environmental puzzles to complete. In one game, for instance, the player had to collect medicine bottles and arrange them according to their markings in the correct order to figure out the code required to unlock a lock.
When the game launches in January, there will be new challenges to solve since each of them has been redesigned and contextualized from the original. However, several guidance choices were introduced to the remake to make puzzle-solving more approachable, as some people might want assistance in interpreting the proper clues or figuring out the correct answers for some puzzles. Before embarking on the journey, players can choose between two difficulty settings: contemporary and classic, in addition to Edward and Emily.
While modern mode will do things like highlight all the interactable objects in a room and specific text on documents that players pick up that are crucial to progress, the old-school difficulty will leave most of the legwork for puzzles up to the player. According to Paeck, the creators realized through playtesting that offering certain players too much or too little advice might irritate them. As a result, they decided to give players the ability to toggle the features that would help them go in the right route.
Right now, survival horror and game remakes are both experiencing a boom, so Alone in the Dark is coming out at a perfect time. The remake appears to be able to live up to the hype it received during its brief period of time in the spotlight by feeling fresh and updating a game that was essential to the history of its genre for contemporary players. When Alone in the Dark is released, I’d like to play the entire game and discover the hidden conclusion.
On March 20, 2024, Alone in the Dark will be released for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
