Alice turns the next corner in the maze and happens upon a mirror.
She looks in and sees herself with her trusty vorpal sword.
In a dark world.
Madness Returns
by American McGee
Alice: Madness Returns is a video game for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, released on June 14, 2011, in North America, June 16, 2011, in Europe and June 17, 2011, in the United Kingdom. It is the sequel to the 2000 Windows and Mac video game American McGee's Alice. McGee, who designed the original game, returns to design the sequel after EA partnered with McGee's studio Spicy Horse.
Alice: Madness Returns takes place immediately after the events of its predecessor.
Alice was released from Rutledge Asylum for the Wayward and Lost Souls at the end of the original game and now lives at an orphanage in Victorian London under the care of a psychiatrist named Doctor Angus Bumby, where she is still traumatized with memories of her parents' deaths.
While heading to a Highstreet chemist, Alice follows a cat to an alley, where, after being confronted by monstrous half-human, half-Jabberwock creatures, she meets up with Nurse Witless from the asylum. Witless implies that Alice has revealed secrets about her family's demise while in the asylum and believes Alice is still very unstable. While at Witless's place, Alice suddenly has a vision of her appearing in Wonderland and the Cheshire Cat appears and tells Alice a new law reigns on Wonderland.
Now back in Wonderland, Alice begins to uncover her submerged memories of the fire.
The Duchess gives Alice her Pepper Grinder and asks her to retrieve Pig Snouts for her. Afterwards, Alice continues on to the Mad Hatter's realm, as she and the Cheshire Cat believe that Hatter may have something to do with the ruin destroying Wonderland.
Arriving in Hatter's realm, Alice discovers that the now-monstrously mechanized March Hare and Dormouse have violently taken over the land, dismantling Hatter into individual limbs and enslaving the Dodos. After finding his head and torso in a junkpile, the Hatter requests Alice help him recover his lost limbs...
READ the rest of this storyline at wikipedia.
Excerpt from Revolver: McGee Talks About His Video Game, Marilyn Manson by Kory Grow
REVOLVER: As twisted as Carroll’s book can be at points, it’s still a children’s fairytale. Why has it had such a huge impact on this particular horror game and, in your opinion, horror and hard-rock music in general?
AMERICAN McGEE: The original books provide an amazing wealth of ideas for characters, setting and story. Alice herself has appealed to generations of readers, and by virtue of her new storyline, now also appeals quite well to horror game enthusiasts. The Alice character everyone knows from the books is appealing because of her fantastic imagination and curiosity; with the games we’ve turned that imagination into a sort of psychological super-power and used curiosity to drive her towards overcoming sometimes horrific obstacles.
What was the inspiration for turning this fantasy into something terrifying? Are there any other horror games or movies that inspired this vision of Alice?
McGEE At the moment of inspiration for the game, I was listening to “Trip Like I Do” by the Crystal Method. Back at my desk it was Rob Zombie’s “Living Dead Girl” and various tracks by Manson, NIN, Tom Waits and more that really drove a lot of the initial tone for story and characters in the game.
Games didn’t so much inspire the core ideas as inform me as to what I didn’t want to do—having come from a background of development on games like DOOM and Quake, I badly wanted to move away from the “Space Marine” horror theme—and Wonderland offered a great opportunity to explore really surreal environments and characters.
READ the full interview here.
PeekInside:
* the visuals really grab. if I were a gamer, this would definitely be one stuck in my game console
* image source header game screen
