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Guess Who's Back... Bumby's Back!
🕑 Added 2021-03-30 21:11:32 +0000 UTCDear Insane Children,
I thought he was dead! You did too! We all saw Alice push him under that train...
But don't worry! We will NOT be bringing Bumby back to life in Alice: Asylum. I promise he's dead and will remain so. Except... The Dollmaker. He's going to make an appearance. Yikes.
This will happen when Alice explores the memories stored in the Memory Mines (temporary name for this location). She will discover a number of critical memory/scenes including...
A) Scene: Early Life. Home, family, and fire-related. The Fire. Alice’s family. Burning toys and beds. Children playing and laughing. Memorable moments from early childhood. Scenes with characters who once visited and left an impression - Bumby and Radcliffe take center stage. Alice overhears conversation critical to her quest.
B) Scene: The hospital. Flashes of the night Alice was taken to the hospital. Scale is distorted to create a sense of disorientation, smallness, and distance. Giant beds, warped hospital rooms, giant scalpels, her family (relatives) tiny and far away (in the sky looking down on her among lots of other giant faces), massive pill bottles. Gauze for clouds. Trolleys. Dead bodies under covers. What did Alice fear most about this period, these scenes? The lack of family? Not knowing where she was? Feeling lost and alone? Feeling small. Again, Bumby and Radcliffe take center stage, saying, “insanity is the best option.” Alice overhears conversation critical to her quest.
C) Scene: The Asylum. Long, dark corridors of prison-like doors. Straight jackets. Screaming. Padded rooms. Strange “mental health” contraptions. More assortments of “tools” and nurses, doctors, inmates, etc. Bumby and Radcliffe take center stage. Alice overhears conversation critical to her quest.
D) Scene: London/HFMC related. Insane Children, broken children, broken toys, therapy (infernal train, forgetting, seeing something strange happening with other children in the home).
E) Scene: Bumby related. Dollmaker stuff, scissors, thread, needles, tools of his trade. Combined with brains, open skulls, other concepts related to brainwashing and prepping these children for his plans. All of this takes place inside an environment of dark woods, open black spaces, and conveyor belts of children's dolls. (See the dark dollmaker illustrations from AMR).
F) Scene: London and the Train Station. Elements from the London street; butchers, police, thieves, filth, and depravity in the East End. Alice pushing Bumby under the train.
The images in this post are focused entirely on the recollection of The Dollmaker encounters.
The idea being that these powerful negative memories have been saved from recycling by Shadow Alice.
She visits these painful scenes over and over - feeding off the negative emotions they generate.
Another amazing batch of illustrations from Adam!
Since these are "just" memories... should Alice be able to destroy them? That might be a bit of fun - we could construct these out of some flimsy-magical material and allow Alice to bash her way through these areas... ensuring that the dark energy they contain can never be used again. Hmmm.
Let us know in the comments below what you think of Alice revisiting these dark scenes.
From The Shadows,
-American
Comments
Veronica Bohrer
I really like the first image of the doctor sitting in the chair I feel if this was shown we can have Alice be like whaaaaa the. Further into the conversation he morphs into that hideous boss creature
Lucas Severin
I do remember this was someone else's idea to have him in Asylum all I did was send the Super Chat purposing the idea
Wiki
I'm actually happy you're bringing him back. I think he'll fit well with the game for a few scenes
If we find ruin in Asylum, would these memories be the source? I think they are just there, rotting, decaying
Don’t think Alice can destroy these memories, agonising though they are, since as the Cat said in Madness Returns it was most important that she know the truth. But if she encounters these memories in a maze, the challenge should be for her to work her way around them somehow and finally nullify their effects by containing them in some way, maybe in some sort of “memory bottle”, to stop them running riot through Alice’s consciousness?
As perhaps the only villain scarier than the anti-skid pad, I look forward to seeing how Bumby will be incorporated into the story of "Asylum". Question: when Bumby was last discussed it was in relation to toy weapon upgrades, would he still have anything to do with that, and are toy weapons and/or weapon upgrades still being considered?
MaddieTheHatter
Oh snap, Bumby is like a true villain now....he never dies
The dollmaker was bound to appear, he had too big an impact on Alice's life to just be forgotten. I'm not entirely sure about destroying those memories, isn't that repressing her feelings instead of working on them? If she "destroys" is she denying that, for better or worse, these events led her to be who she is now?
Oh, this is a very powerful side of the story. I was afraid and felt relief when Alice pushes Bumby in Madness. It's my opinion, but Madness helped me as the game said: "You can have bad and good, terrifying and light memories and fantasies, but don't forget your Wonderland. All of your memory and Wonderland help you be yourself." This thought really support. So I don't think Alice full cancel Bumby. He and his painful actions also part of Alice life. I am waiting for your scene with Dollmaker in the game, I believe in you!
Nicholas Brokaw
Oh wow. This is all really good stuff. Bringing back The Dollmaker through memories would be creepy stuff. And bringing up the point about how they are just memories is good too. I think there is definitely room to have Alice manipulate these memories; likewise, The Dollmaker might have some of his own manipulations to make... 😬
Sarah Heist
I like the idea of watching a cutscene shatter
Death of Ink
Exploring the memories and bashing your way through could work for a level. Could also help benefit the narrative if done well.
