GC '07: Alone in the Dark Impressions

LEIPZIG, Germany--Alone in the Dark appeared at last year's Leipzig Game Convention, but little has been seen of the game since then. In development now for more than two years, the French studio has made no secret about its high ambitions for the latest game in the long-running survival horror series. With the game due out in February 2008, the demo at this year's Leipzig Games Convention was looking encouragingly advanced. Nonetheless, the developer chose to tease us with only a small glimpse of the game and no hands-on time to play it. But it is good that what we did see of the game was easily one of the highlights of the show.

It's clear that the team has attempted to make items in Alone in the Dark as interactive as possible. The first thing that was demonstrated was the inventory, which is presented by way of your character opening his jacket and looking down at his inside pockets. From here, you can see items, such as spray-paint canisters, blood pouches, matches, glow sticks, and tape. By using these items together, you can tackle the dark environment in a variety of different ways. For example, you can crack glow sticks and carry them around with you manually. Or you can wrap them in tape and thrown them onto the ceiling. For those with a more combustible attitude toward problem solving, you can simply light a match and spray medical supplies or paint to create a miniature flame thrower.

This approach to object combination also applies to overcoming enemies. The development team showed us how one of the enemies was attracted to blood and how shooting a nearby corpse would provide a distraction for the spiderlike creatures. You can take the concept one step further by piercing a blood pouch, wrapping it in tape, and tossing it onto one of the creatures. The other enemies will start to follow the creature, consuming the blood from the pouch and killing the host in the process. You can also do the same with canisters of flammable liquid, sticking them to a creature and watching as it runs around setting everything else on fire.

The implementation of fire in Alone in the Dark is one of the most impressive technical aspects of the game overall. The fire effects are apparently not scripted. Instead, they are worked out dynamically according to the surrounding material. In one point in the demo, a chair was set on fire and then tossed toward a pipe. Slowly, as the fire spread up the metal on the wall, the pipe itself broke off and fell to the ground, spreading the fire further to the wooden beams. It might not sound like much, but the way the fire spreads in Alone in the Dark is almost scarily realistic.

Another one of the cool ideas that the team at Eden has pulled off is combat, which is entirely dependent on how you move the right analog stick. You can pick up such items as chairs, tables, or pipes and wield them by holding the left trigger. From there, your character will swing with a speed and ferocity dependent on your movements of the right stick. The demo featured one excellent demonstration of this technology, where an electrical line had to be pulled out of the way gently so the character did not get electrocuted. Approaching the obstacle with a pipe, the demonstrator slowly pushed the line out of his path while the cable itself flailed around in a very believable fashion.

Aside from some very impressive physics demonstrations, we didn't really get to see much of the world of Alone in the Dark this time around. We do know that the game will offer the whole of New York's Central Park as a playing area, and we got to see The Belvedere Hotel as an example of one of the main environments. The rain provided some very nice water effects on the ground, and we're promised that we'll be able to explore the park on foot, as well as by car. Another neat idea is that the game will play out like a TV series, with individual episodes that will span an hour each, as well as including full intros and end segments.

We can't wait to find out more about Alone in the Dark. We also really hope that Eden's impressive technology is applied to a compelling and scary horror game. From what we've seen, there's an undeniably talented team behind the game, so we hold out hope that it can return the series to its former glory. We'll bring you more on the game as soon as we can.