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Back To The Start
🕑 Added 2020-04-14 05:37:51 +0000 UTCDear Insane Children,
We're making good progress on the planning and definitions required for building the Alice: Asylum Design Bible. To help put in order all of the required details, Alex sent me a series of questions related to Alice and her story. Here's a sample:
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY (When the player meets Alice - POINT A):
How does she feel?
She feels abandoned, alone, forgotten and that something is missing. Having suffered a massive trauma - though it’s now largely forgotten - she is unable to form close relationships or to care much about anything. She feels distant, closed off, numb, and distracted.
She also feels life is scripted (hence the Circus, the monotony of denial). Certainty has become her prison. Nothing new ever happens. Nothing ever deviates from the script.
What is she seeking / what is her motivation?
She’ll start by wanting to bring order back to her existence in Denial. But will end by embracing the chaos represented by reintegration with her adult self. Her goal will be to “put things right” or put things “back in order” but the object on which she’s enacting this goal will shift as she realizes that it’s not just Denial (The Circus) that needs fixing, but Wonderland, and then herself.
What are her fears?
The irrational, sudden, unexplained and unnecessary introduction of confusion and chaos. Change. Being abandoned. Being alone. Being unwanted. Being forgotten.
What gives her strength?
She starts by believing it’s her logic and knowledge and her ability to keep everything in order and well organized.
What are her ideals / What does she value?
Logic, order, organization, intelligence, curiosity.
What does she love?
When we first meet her - nothing, really. Love means embracing uncertainty and accepting that the thing you love will eventually die or be taken away. As such, Alice prefers to remain distant, cold, unloving… indifferent. “The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.”
What does she hate?
Disorder, confusion, lack of clarity, illogical persons/things.
What annoys Alice?
Mess, disorganization, waste, inefficiency, repetitive noises, unsolved puzzles, things not being “in their place.” She’s got OCD.
What makes her happy?
Putting things in order, solving puzzles, cleaning up messes.
What does she know?
She thinks she knows everything there is to know.
What does she need to learn?
That she knows nothing because nothing is as it seems. That change is constant. That it is better to be prepared for encounters with chaos than to pretend that any sort of action can avoid those encounters entirely. That chaos is the catalyst of health, change, growth, and life.
And as we progress through these definitions we're also working to lock down basics such as Alice's size, shape, and appearance. We need an exemplar of Young Alice.
Why do you suppose we struggle so much to establish and then stick with a standard model of Young Alice as we hope to see her in Asylum? Is it because we've just not seen her yet? Or because each of our artists - and our Insane Children - all carry personal conceptions of an Ideal Alice?
I can almost imagine a Character Creation Tool in Asylum that allows subtle adjustments resulting in a near-infinite range of Alice's... just to satisfy everyone's different notion of who this girl really is! (No, we won't actually be doing that... I said "imagine").
As if on cue to make my point... I noticed this image from Dario (from a series he's creating that deal with non-euclidian geometry) in which he presents us with yet another interpretation of our main character. This time in the form of a silhouette - one we can tell, even from a distance is Alice... perhaps because she carries a hint of the Dis...on't Say It(!) Alice?
It's an interesting topic, to say the least!
And since we're on the topic... let's discuss it in detail with the next...
LIVE STREAM!
We'll be over on Twitch again. Hit THIS LINK to subscribe to my Twitch Channel.
We're aiming to go live at 7PM PDT on April 15th. Hope to see you there!
And, yes, this live stream will be backed up to my YouTube Channel once it's done.
There will be prizes! And Martin (back in the studio)! And Lulu?
Questions and Feedback, Please
Share with us your questions and feedback in the comments below. We'll read those things out loud and answer them during the live stream. Yay!
Alright... I have a massive task in front of me again...
From Shanghai with 500 Posters to Sign,
-American
Comments
Its possible. I really liked her black hair it made her look more serious and dangerous... i really really love her character design
Oh yeah, I noticed that too. I wonder if the hair color serve a purpose like since she's younger, the hair color emphasizes on her innocence and young age.
What color exactly is her hair this time? It was brown the the first game, and solid black in MR. Is it a reddish brown or something else? I have a very hard time seeing similar color.
I would like to place an order, if it were possible you could put subtitles in portuguese in the game "alice: asylum" ??? PLEASE ANSWER ME!
Question I know everything with the virus has been delaying/ stopping poster shipments, but i have not gotten a poster since december 2019. Is this the same for everyone? I have checked and all my payments have gone through for the $75 tier. I have not been able to keep up with updates on here. Thanks in advance
I think Gregory has some good points. There are aspects of Alice that are stylized that let you know you're seeing the same person, such as her smoky, dark eyelined eyes along with all her physical accoutrements. I actually just finished AMR last night for the first time and after having played both games back to back one of the things that popped most to me was the darkening of her hair in AMR from AMA - it was a lot darker, almost black in AMR where in AMA it was a brownish color. Actually, when she's in London it is black but she has a tad more saturation when in Wonderland. I don't know if this was intentional or just a design choice to try to help obscure some of the minor issues with hair physics (which were awesome, by the way!) but I kind of associated it with her having a darker experience. To steal some of your words, I can imagine her starting off a lot darker looking - her eyes dull and lifeless, maybe a flatter, desaturated green color - or grey. Her hair can be like she's shown in the above images - then as she descends through to Denial she grows darker and her eyes more lifeless as she retracts further inside. When she moves toward Anger through to Depression, her eyes can become more piercing - pronounced makeup to contrast the brighter whites of her eyes - maybe a tad off color eye (reddish?), an unsettling shift to show something is changing in her. Her hair can darken and perhaps grow longer, and cover up some of her face for another visual aid, possibly growing a bit disheveled as she's struggling. Then as she starts to break free of that shell and moves into Testing and Acceptance she can start to get some color back, her eyes appear less sunken and gain more life and energy, and her hair stays dark but we can see some of that brown returning.
Anytime I try to view twitch it doesn't work
American McGee
Good thoughts. We'll discuss in detail on the stream!
American McGee
Not sure I understand... you can't view Twitch streams? Just curious... but why not? From what I can tell it's possible to view Twitch from an app or from a browser. And it doesn't require an account to do so. In any case, we will also record and share these streams to YouTube once they are over. AND we're looking at enabling some sort of multi-stream technology in the future.
Sadly i cant stream twitch
For the trouble coming up with the “standard” model for Asylum’s Alice, I wonder if its because there doesn’t seem to be a standard Alice in general? She’s cryptic enough a character that we all see something different in her, the two existing games are so technologically far apart that even they don’t share a common Alice design (not to mention that the cover art, in game, and cinematic appearances are all different within each game), and toss in “Otherlands” and all the concept artists bringing their own styles that I don’t know if there ever has been a consistent image of her. We do always hit the same points: long dark hair, the omega necklace, the Vorpal blade, blue dress and white pinafore splashed with blood, the boots, etc, but her face is constantly shifting. To my taste, *the* defining Alice image is Joy Ang’s illustration with all the cards flurrying around her with the dripping Vorpal in hand; there’s something terrifying and commanding in her eyes. Given all this design confusion, I’d suggest doing something bold and daring that sidesteps trying to mimic her past designs, like make the Denial dress *the* dress for the game, rebuild our Alice from the ground up…yet, that doesn’t really help us find her face.
American McGee
And... yes, the story starts before the fire. Uncertain what was written in there to give a different impression. But keep in mind that this is all snipped out of a much larger document. And that the full document will be shared for review once we've got it a bit more ready for public consumption and comment! :)
American McGee
Those are the answers for the state she's in at the START of the story. It's intended to be an opposite position in relation to where she ends up. Perhaps I should have posted the other half of the questions and answers... How does she feel? Having reunited with herself (adult Alice) she’ll feel whole. She will feel that she is once again moving forward - not stuck. Like there are possibilities again because there are once again mysteries. Her script now leads to a blank page. What is she seeking / what is her motivation? By the end of this journey she’ll view challenge and chaos as opportunities to be embraced instead of as obstacles to be avoided. What are her fears? Now, whatever they are, they represent signposts guiding her towards the places she must explore. She will run towards her fears. What gives her strength? She ends by realizing that it’s embracing the unknown. Being prepared. What are her ideals / What does she value? She’s held onto intelligence and curiosity but let go of her obsession with order. Now she values balance. What does she love? She’ll learn to love herself. What does she hate? Ideally, at the end of this journey, she’ll have released all hate towards herself, her situations, and others. What annoys Alice? Still a bit annoyed by messes. Annoyed by people who think they know it all. And by those who were once like she was - obsessed by order or consumed by chaos. What makes her happy? Finding balance. What does she know? That either too much chaos or too much order are both unhealthy.
Wendy Jaa
I feel that the answers to the questions from Alex need to be revisited. Since when does Alice have OCD? How could Alice hate illogical things when she created Wonderland? Does Alice actually enjoy cleaning up messes? Also, are we no longer starting the game out with before the fire?
