Alone In The Dark Interview
Portion of GameZone interview with Nour Polloni, Producer at Eden Games:
Two years ago it was announced that Alone in the Dark would use the season format of a TV series within its one disc, as opposed to a single-script movie format. Have you kept this format, and were there any specific TV series that inspired this change?
NP: Yes, the TV-season style presentation was part of the original vision for the game and key in the delivering the experience we wanted in terms of storytelling. The biggest influences on us were the big US blockbuster TV shows like 24, Lost and Prison Break. During the early stages of the project we were all discussing the latest episode around the coffee machine and we hit on the idea of bringing that structure to the game to give the same kind of intense, gripping experience.
How will the story unfold? Each episode is said to have about 30-40 minutes of gameplay. Is it difficult to balance this when some players might beat a few episodes in 20 minutes, others in 40 minutes, and so on? And how will the transition occur from each episode to the next?
NP: There’s a total of eight episodes in the game which average over an hour each. Each episode contains plot twists, character revelations, action and cliffhangers deeply entwined with the gameplay and paced throughout the game. The difficulty was not to balance the play through time of each episode because generally during focus tests the players took the same amount of time. The difficulty was to ensure the pacing of the gameplay and the story worked and was consistent throughout the game so there’s no dead moment. There’s actually a short credits sequence that plays at the end of each episode that you can of course skip to continue, and if you’re coming back to the game a previously trailer will play to recap the key elements of the story you need to know to move forward.
