The viewing perspective was also rather original for its time. Instead of the camera simply following Carnby or Emily from room to room in typical adventure game fashion, it is set up in odd spots to provide the most dramatic angle on the proceedings. In this way, Alone in the Dark was one of the first games to fully embrace cinematic conventions. It's hard to imagine a Hollywood director staging the scenes any differently than Infogrames did. Another unique visual idea involved the graphics engine itself. Instead of drawing the characters with standard sprites, the designers used polygons to construct them. This made them less lifelike in appearance but allowed them to move realistically and quickly. Animations in the game were certainly ahead of their time, particularly the battle sequences.

Alone in the Dark drew on the Cthulhu mythos stories of H.P. Lovecraft in a more direct way than any developer since Infocom's 1987 classic, The Lurking Horror. Sharp observers could find references to the peculiar mythology crafted by Lovecraft and associates like Robert Bloch in nearly every room of Derceto, with the library being the best repository of such arcane secrets. This lent the entire game an eerie atmosphere that has yet to be duplicated. It also emphasized the power of the threat inhabiting the old pile and afforded you a real sense of satisfaction when you walked out the doors of the mansion at the end of the game.

The hedge maze is a difficult part of Alone in the Dark 2.

Perhaps the only negative was Infogrames' inability to deliver a good sequel and turn the great original into a popular series. Alone in the Dark II was extremely disappointing. Along with being almost absurdly difficult due to the prevalence of tough battles that couldn't be avoided, the captivating Lovecraftian atmosphere of the first game was jettisoned for tripe about undead pirates becoming modern gangsters. Alone in the Dark III returned to a story- and puzzle-based design centered on a haunted town in the Wild West, though the engine was so dated by the time that the game was released in 1995 that few cared.

Still, the impact of Alone in the Dark reverberated for some time. One can't forget its place as the father of Capcom's survival-horror subgenre. Without Alone in the Dark to blaze a trail, the Sony PlayStation would have been left without the Resident Evil and Dino Crisis lines, two of the series that made the console system such a hot seller throughout much of the 1990s. Few PC developers picked up on this trend, though Psygnosis released two Ecstatica games (1995 and 1997) with the same quirky camera angles and a roughly similar graphical engine (that used spheres in place of polygons). A blend of horror and humor gave the games a very different feel from that of Alone in the Dark, though. Finally, the game has spawned a modern 3D sequel with an all-new engine in Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare.

 

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