We talk to Alone in the Dark publisher Atari about brand reinvention, breaking clichés, and a new direction for Survival Horror...

Could you tell us your name, job title, and what you worked on specifically in Alone in the Dark?

My name is Benoit Auguin, Brand Manager at Atari, working on Alone in the Dark, specifically in charge of the marketing campaign for the title.

Alone in the Dark is of course one of the great gaming series. This has been a bit of a brand reinvention. What audience have you aimed for this time, and how have you done that?

We wanted to re-establish Alone in the Dark as a major mainstream brand broadening the appeal beyond its historical survival horror genre.

To achieve this, the game has been designed to contain key elements that appeal to both core and casual gamers. The marketing campaign for core gamers highlights the game's technical innovations and how Eden are breaking videogame clichés with Alone in the Dark. The mainstream marketing campaign talks about the game in terms of its Hollywood blockbuster presentation, the great storyline based on the conspiracy behind Central Park, and Alone in the Dark's DVD chapter select feature which lets everyone reach the end of the game without becoming stuck.

Has the fact that the last Alone in the Dark game, The New Nightmare, released nearly seven years ago now, been a problem from a brand perception point of view?

As with the team at Eden Games, we think Alone in the Dark's core fans are more faithful to the first PC iteration of the game which introduced real innovations and created the genre than the later console versions. However because of the time that's passed we also think we're bringing the brand to a completely new audience who don't know the earlier games for the most part, which gives us something of a clean slate.

This game is not a sequel in the normal sense and we've taken the clean slate as more of an opportunity to give a new birth to the brand, releasing this opus as Alone in the Dark.

And how about your competition in the realm of Survival Horror? How does Alone in the Dark differ? What does it offer that's new?

With Alone in the Dark we want to change what players expect from action adventure games, breaking the established clichés of the genre.

It's traditional in the genre to have creepy corridors and claustrophobia, which is why we blew that all apart literally in our game, and at the end of episode two the wide open space of Central Park becomes the play area.

We've also done away with the cliché of locked doors that are just textures, or doors that need a specific key. Every door can be opened in Alone in the Dark – you just need an object heavy enough to smash it down!

We've gone for a really high level of environmental interaction which breaks game rules by rather relying on the rules everyone knows from the real world. If you can't interact with it realistically, it's not in the game.

Storytelling is obviously a big factor in Action-Adventures like Alone in the Dark. What was your process for creating the plot and integrating it into gameplay?

The story itself was written at Eden and was a very organic process which evolved along with the game. The initial inspiration came from Hervé Sliwa, the lead designer, who visited New York ten years ago and was amazed at the sight of Central Park at night – a huge black mass in the sea of bright lights. He thought then it would be a great place for a new Alone in the Dark.

The park itself was a great inspiration – there's lots of weird things that happen there in real life, some of which you can read about on www.centraldark.com. It's also a city within a city with a museum, police precinct, lakes, ice rinks etc, all of which game the designers lots of gameplay ideas.

We're really emphasising the intense story-telling in Alone in the Dark which is inspired by the structure of US TV series like Lost and 24, with a paced dynamic of action, plot twists and cliff-hangers in each episode. Eden wanted the game to have the same impact on the player as those TV shows.

We asked Lorenzo Carcaterra, the guy who wrote the film Sleepers, to work on the script for the game and he brought his big-screen style and New York authenticity to the dialogue.

The story is told by seamlessly integrated cut scenes created in the game engine as well as normal in-game dialogue and the player learns more about what's going on from the things he finds and characters he meets, some of whom play a big role and others who don't last very long at all!

The DVD Chapter-style feature is obviously new for a game. How will it work, and what are its pros and cons?

The DVD Chapter select feature is a real innovation that we supported since the beginning. And one figure is enough to justify it: according to research only 22% of console gamers finish all the games they play. We want everyone to finish Alone in the Dark!

If you end up skipping too much of the game there is a price to pay – you wont get the complete finale of the game and Xbox 360 players will miss out on achievements.

Of course we also want people to play through the whole game, but in the same way you don't skip straight to the end of a film on DVD, we think players will want to do that too. The only person they'll be cheating if they skip to the end is themselves.

Alone in the Dark is due for release on five systems. How have you gone about getting the most from them individually? What do the different versions offer?

On PS3, X360 and PC, the possibilities offered are huge to create a completely destructible environment with dynamic lights and fire propagating in real time to any flammable part. Moreover anything that could realistically be picked up and used as a weapon can be, including pieces of the items you will have already smashed. Last, the interactions with the environment are also huge and everything is ruled by real world physic.

Wii of course offers completely different and immersive gameplay possibilities. It's almost as if Wii had been designed for Alone in the Dark. You can use the Remote and Nunchuk to realistically manipulate objects, drive cars, draw your gun, aim at enemies, shoot, access your inventory... Everything is done thanks to specific movements of the controllers, creating a maximum immersion in the game.

PS2 is the platform which still remains the best mastered by developers and therefore the goal was to exploit everything PS2 could offer. As a result we focused our attention on implementing as many next gen features on PS2 as possible. And most of them have never been seen before. With the real time inventory, all the interactions with the environment, the DVD structure, the fire, the combining of different items, got the best of what the PS2 could offer.

The original release date was due to be March. Why the delay, and what has it allowed you to achieve?

Alone in the Dark could have realistically been released in March. However, we wanted to make sure we were delivering the best experience possible. After having given so much to this project, we preferred delaying it a bit and giving it the finishing touches to make it perfect.

And how's the final project shaping up? Sell it to us!

You take the best ideas from the original Alone in the Dark to which you add brand new highly innovative concepts and exceptional technological quality. Then add huge amazing interaction possibilities plus a living environment with never seen before fire behaviour. You mix all that with an amazing scenario based on all the mysteries of Central Park and an unstoppable action pace. Last you polish it with a special focus on details and fine tuning. The result is Alone in the Dark, a game that will not only reinvigorate the brand but change what gamers expect from games.

Thanks Benoit.

Interview by: Mark 'Dark' Scott
Interview Published: 20.03.08