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Red Chess
🕑 Added 2021-05-05 01:26:33 +0000 UTCDear Insane Children,
I hope everyone is having a wonderful day. We are just wrapping up a big National Holiday here in China - Labor Day Week. During the holiday, we took Lucky with some friends to a nearby National Park for a day of sun and fun where Lucky ran into Pucca...
Meanwhile, our pre-production team continued their efforts on Alice: Asylum with Omri turning in a stunning render of Alice confronting the Red Chess King and Queen (main image, above).
Of this he wrote:
about this image- i keep seeing Alice's parents as the queen and king, they are the chaos, they are the guilt. the sister i still feel should be somewhere but perhaps something else. so for me- personally making half chess pieces make "No sense" and in that case can work well for chaotic chess. IF you'll find it suitable for the story we can also redesign the chess pieces to be halves in general.
To which I replied:
This is fantastic, @Omri - I love it. And I DO have a place for it... I realized this whole section can be moved to the Real Wonderland area Alice will travel to after she escapes from The Snow Globe. This makes sense because she's going to revisit a lot of the places that Shadow Alice previously explored and conquered. And it will give us a chance to fill in some blanks and answered some unanswered questions from the previous games.
And the timing of all of this is great because I am just wrapping up the final bits and pieces on the first section of the game - Inside The Snow Globe - then moving to the second section of the game - Real Wonderland. The idea is that Child Alice finally escapes from The Snow Globe only to wind up in Real Wonderland. Hatter is waiting there for her and explains that unless she stops Shadow Alice all is lost.
In the sections that follow, Child Alice will chase Shadow Alice through a sequence of scenes linked to areas in the first and second games. The idea is that Child Alice needs to "walk a mile in my shoes" to understand everything Shadow Alice fought through and conquered.
Crowd Design Time
Like I said above, this will offer a chance for us to answer some unresolved questions - or to fill in some mysterious blanks. Now... I've said many times that I think answering ALL of the questions is boring and that we should leave some questions unanswered in order to maintain a level of mystery around Alice and her adventures.
That being said... Let me know in the Comments below... What answers would YOU like provided in the revisiting of these areas from the first and second game? And what areas would you like to see revisited? You could want to go back there because it was beautiful - or you want to see what it turned into after Alice left - or because you think it might contain some useful information. Think about it... and let me know!
Burning Memories
Adam also sent over a final version of another of Alice's recovered memory scenes.
I've included this as an Attachment to this post in case you want to do like I did and make this your Desktop Background. Enjoy!
From Shanghai with Pucca Kisses,
-American
Comments
Megan Thomas
I’d like to know why Radcliffe took the Rabbit! And I’d LOVE to visit the Vale Of Tears again, it was my favourite area of A:MR!
Also amazing art as always, I love the deep blood smudged reds of the first image. I also like the contrast of colours in the bottom drawing where the cool tones exemplify the obfuscation, lies and deception; while the warm oranges and reds of the love, comfort and ultimate burning demise of her family. I like knowing part of my Patreon subscription is going to paying the artists for making such wonderful work.
Aside from the areas you already mentioned being included, I’d like to know more about Radcliffe’s connection to the Oriental Grove, especially if it divulges more about his motivations. Is Radcliffe analogous to the Caterpillar? I kinda like that considering in the book he was characterized like a snub-nosed, armchair intellectual who couldn’t be bothered about the trivialities of those beneath him (children); which fits in with how dismissive Radcliffe is of Alice (Also why did/would he take the bunny?).
Always a big fan of the Pool of Tears, not just for its beauty, but the music every time. Maybe that could be revisited as well
Lucky Dragon ‘She.They’
I noticed that you had said you prefer to keep everything to the posts, so if you read it and have something to say, you can reply to me here.
Lucky Dragon ‘She.They’
Or here for the less adventurous https://www.patreon.com/posts/50887126
Lucky Dragon ‘She.They’
Okay. I was writing it all night, but I finished something I'm quite proud of. Check it out on the community tab.
Looking at first art I thought about Alice parents. I don't know how to say, but it's so... magnetic.
I would definitely love to play in the land of fire and brimstone again! Where her burned up house sat on a cliff over a lava sea! That was one of my favorite visuals and then getting to fight the Jabborwocky inside! I think it would be amazing to play in this area! Then perhaps we can do what the first game does and and branch off into looking glass land again and then into the Queens maze! One thing I've always wondered about the first game is the ending? Alice kills the Red Queen and then her thrall on wonderland is pulled back like a curtain to reveal the beauty. I almost feel like we should explore themes of rebirth in that aspect. Because Alice leaves the asylum with a smile. Perhaps instead wonderland is still a twisted up wasteland. But it is regrowing and Alice herself leaves the Asylum looking truly the worst for wear. But she Is Alive. Not many belongings aside from her old rabbit. Killing the Red Queen did not purge wonderland of its infection. It merely removed the source so that the festered wound might heal. Just a thought:) I really do want to see these pieces fit into this current narrative. I'd like to correct the first games ending to correlate more with what we currently have and Child Alice would Definitely be apart of that 💕
Sarah Heist
I really would like to revisit the madcap villages- i feel like there's a war-torn story there that wasn't told in AMR. And obviously the oriental grove.
I know a place I loved was in the second game: The Insane Children's Domain. To see what it looks like after the defeat of Bumby and what Alice's mind made it into now would be quite interesting. Is it desolate and dull? Is it even more vibrant and interesting to one's own mind? What would it be, and what would lurk inside?
Lucky Dragon ‘She.They’
I have something that could help. I was gonna write an opening for the game that addressed some of this stuff, but just for fun, and I was gonna post it to the community tab, not because I want it to get used, but it may inspire some ideas. The cliff notes version is that it starts with Alice waking up from a nightmare where she killed Bumby but she was more sadistic than how it happened. Then she was gonna go to Houndsditch and find Radcliffe rifling through some things, but he brushes it off as just taking stock of her assets and leaves in a vaguely threatening way, before Alice goes to her old room in Houndsditch where she passes out and has a vision where all the denizens of Wonderland are accusing her of killing them and Wonderland. She falls through the void, the image of Alice falling through the blackness and butterflies, and immediately after Child Alice is jolted awake in her circus tent. Anyway, I’ll write that up for you tonight. Like I said. I don’t expect you to use it. But it might inspire something.
Lucky Dragon ‘She.They’
Like to further clarify, the questions that I would be asking are being asked by this narrative specifically. Before there was never any indication that Radcliffe had something to do with the fire, and now we are being told that he did. So, to know which questions I should be asking I feel like I need more information that would lead me to believe there are more questions that need asking. If that makes sense?
Lucky Dragon ‘She.They’
One other thing I did forget to say, is that Wonderland should be something of a desolate wasteland. If the real Wonderland looks pretty Alice could retreat there and not be so messed up. That denizens of Wonderland should look a little worse for the wear too. Maybe skeletal?
Aaron Picklesimer
I'm not entirely sure about questions either, but I would definitely like to see either the remains of Hatter's Domain, or the ruins of the train. Possibly even get memories of Bumby that could help correlate to the 4 appearances of Bumby. Just a thought I had.
Lucky Dragon ‘She.They’
Reposted it here, because Patreon keeps eating it No, I got you, but both of those games honestly didn't have me asking many questions at the end save for one at the end of Madness Returns. Where was Alice at the end when she was in Londerland? Did she go completely mad or did she bring Wonderland to the real world somehow? The existence of this game kinda answered that for me. And as far as the Red Queen goes, the first game implied that the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen were the same because we never saw a Red Chess Queen, just a Red King that was in league with the Queen of Hearts which was also referred to as the Red Queen. I assumed weirdness like that is because Wonderland is always shifting and changing because Alice herself is shifting and changing.
American McGee
Were there any questions you had after playing the first game? What about after the second game? What I am looking for are those questions people always post online about "what did this character/location mean?" or "where is the Red Queen?" - like that. This is not about the current story. This is about the previous stories. You did play the first and second games, right?
Lucky Dragon ‘She.They’
I’m not sure what questions I should even be asking at this point, to be honest. So much of this story is still fogged in a mystery that I’m struggling to think of what I don't already know because I don't know that I don't know it, ya know. Maybe if you gave us a little more information about the kinds of things you’ve been thinking about for this section? Then I could come up with things that would be narratively satisfying to learn, but at this point, I would just be saying random stuff.
