Recently American McGee's Alice got dusted off and made into a new game - along with a HD revamp of the original. I do remember seeing the original back in the day and being unimpressed. True I never actually sat down and played it but first impressions last and if a game wants me so badly to part with my cash then it better do a damn good job.
What rubbed me the wrong way was this supposed 'edgy' take on Alice in Wonderland. Now if some twat at EA though it might be great idea to dust off American McGee's Alice then I can do the same: I can dust off my thoughts on the original idea and harp on about them in this blog. Don't like it? Tough: This is my corner of cyberspace and I'm taking you all along with me whether you like it or not.
Firstly I don't know about the rest of you but I'm tired of people constantly basing something on Lewis Carroll's creation. What's the matter? Is it so easy to treat a long-lasting literature classic as an idea bucket? Is ripping things wholesale from the text source just a result of a half-arsed writer who couldn't be bothered coming up with something of their own? Anyone can come up with crazy shit - or are people unwilling to accept it if it doesn't have the 'Wonderland' tag attached to it?
I don't see why writers don't stop raping Alice in Wonderland and instead make something creative and imaginative of their own. Look at the anime Spirited Away: true it follows the formula of Alice - protagonist goes to a bizarre fantasy world where she has numerous adventures - but it's done with it's own style and populated with it's own creations. True anyone can come up with a formula but to stray from the formula - and it make it work - is indeed a credit to one's creative genius.
Secondly, I've never quite grasped why people feel that Alice in Wonderland needs to have this 'edgy/dark' feel to it. The original text has nothing of the sort: It's more of a whimsical nature based around mathematics - but obviously someone felt those elements were boring.
So I never quite understood this need for this dark/edgy take on Alice. Introducing things that weren't in the original text like violence/blood/plot seems more like insisting it was there (when it wasn't). From what I've heard about American McGee's Alice, it has some elements that could work like the decent into madness, Victorian environments and really sinister designs. Good ideas yes but they seem like they belong to an entirely different game - to insert them into Alice in Wonderland is more akin to an alien invasion. To insist these things into a long-standing literature classic is like insisting the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is about LSD.
Thus I never played American McGee's Alice - nor do I intend to. For me, American McGee strikes me more as a guy who had some great ideas for a game but was terrified that building his own IP would result in zero sales. So what he came up with instead was a childhood classic invaded with alien concepts.
Which is a shame because I think the setting of Wonderland, with it's creativity and abandonment of logic, could make for a fantastic gaming experience. In fact I reckon if Mr. McGee just ditched the 'edgy' BS and just flat out replicated the story in gaming it could've turned out kinda cool. Who wouldn't want to explore this world for themselves without any regard to logic? Who wouldn't want to see fantastical things mapped out in a whimsical nature when very few games nowadays do so?
Now there's a challenge....
No comments:
Post a Comment