Alone in the Dark

>>2904034
>Isn't it the scariest retrogame to this day?

Personally, I'd vote for the earlier Clock Towers

>>2904034
>I really feel like this game is awfully ignored.
The series tends to be ignored since they were very rough. It created the whole 3D survival horror type of gameplay, but it was flawed. Combat was a nightmare, even moreso if you had to use melee. They also suffered from Adventure Game Syndrome. Oh, you didn't know you were supposed to bring some item into this room that you haven't encountered yet? You die now. Have fun figuring out why!

I'll give them credit for being halfway fun back then, but the reason everyone remembers the Resident Evil series and Silent Hill series and Clock Tower series and even Dino Crisis series more is because they were more polished and suffered less from AGS.

Still, very creepy games, the Lovecraft-ish plot works well for the first game and I wish they stuck with it. Ghost pirates and ghost cowboys just aren't as creepy.

AITD is awfully underrated, or ignored if you will. Everyone knows it created the 3rd person style survival horror used up to the Wii/PS3 generation, but not many people seem to realize it's the entire industry that owes a lot to it, not just survival horror.
It created the whole "3D models in 2D pre-rendered backgrounds" to come around technical limits, and this was used in tons of genre then. For instance can you imagine Final Fantasy 7/8/9 without it ?

>Also, I can't find infos about its development, cut content, trivias or anything.

IMO one of the things that cursed the series was the departure of Frederic Raynal after 1. He and Infogrammes disagreed on the direction AITD2 should take so he left early in development. Now though, 2,3 (and A New Nightmare) are all good games, but they come off lacking the "visionary" touch which 1 had.
When the japs are able to make great sequels when the "main guy" is barely involved anymore if at all, see RE and SH sequels, the French don't seem to be able to.

Anyway the disagreement I just mentioned was due to infogrammes willing to make AITD2 more action oriented, which it did become. Per se it may not be a bad idea, and it's quite funny when you think about it how even for that they were ahead of its time (Dino Crisis 2 to DC1 is what AITD2 is to AITD1... even that AITD did first). Now the problem with 2 is that it's like it doesn't fully accept its action orientation, they should have improved the controls to support that direction. It's like the game isn't sure what it should be or not.

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However AITD did get the respect it deserves around here, in its former country, although that is probably due to some kind of nationalistic spirit, for once that we and not the japs create something important, we're not going to just forget about it.
For example:
>On March 13, 2006, Raynal along with Shigeru Miyamoto and Michel Ancel were knighted by French Minister of Culture and Communication, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, as Knights of Arts and Literature. It was the first time that video game developers were honored this distinction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9rick_Raynal


Anyway - two AITD graphic novels were made, one that came out in between 2 and 3, and one that came out just before A New Nightmare. First one was only released in France afaik; 2nd one was made in English and French at the same time but isn't that common to find.
I've been fan-scantranslating both comics to English, and I only have to fix a few mistakes and it's done.

The first one translates survival horror mechanics to another medium really well, in a way that I've already even seen (most adaptations don't even try). Pic related.

>>2904473
>the French don't seem to be able to
They are very much able to. The problem is management. People that manage the development process and business side, but do not understanding gaming, or their product.

>infogrammes willing to make AITD2 more action oriented
Exhibit A. Raynal knew what made AITD work. The suits at the helm didn't. And instead of doing the right thing, shutting the fuck up and letting the designer(s) do a good game, they pushed their worthless opinion on them. Raynal did the only right thing in this situation.

>Per se it may not be a bad idea
For generic action game #4366 it' a reasonable idea. For AITD it's death. The game relies, among many other things, on you being scared shitless of fights, and your character being largely bad at fighting.

>It's like the game isn't sure what it should be or not.
It's more like the suits saying "we want more action, action sells", and the desperate dev team trying to shoehorn action into a game not made for it.

>>2904481
>for once that we and not the japs create something important
Take a closer look at the history of french game dev. There's a lot of cool shit coming out of that country. France, not unlike Germany, has a bit of an unusual take on video gaming. The output is much lower than what the US do, but there are quite a few genre defying or genre defining gems in there.

>>2904486
>For generic action game #4366 it' a reasonable idea. For AITD it's death. The game relies, among many other things, on you being scared shitless of fights, and your character being largely bad at fighting.

Taking the basis of this kind of survival horror games and turn it into a full-on action game, if done right, can work. This even used to be an entire sub-genre, games like Parasite Eve 2, Dino Crisis 2, Onimusha, etc These games are amazing action games, and there is something very satisfying about them when playing them after a survival horror, it's like "finally I don't have to hold back anymore and I can shoot, revenge!"

But yeah you don't just need to add more weapons and enemies to make it work. You can't just say "let's make AITD1 again but put more action everywhere" which is pretty much what they did.

>>2904510
>if done right, can work
sure, but then it's not an AITD game anymore. That's what the suits failed to understand. They tried to force action into a game that has at its very basis the "normality" of the main character. If you want action horror, do a different IP, do a different story, and do it right from the ground up.

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>>2904034
>Isn't it the scariest retrogame to this day?

The ghosts that turn into unkillable vibrating spheres of death point to "yes".

>>2904598

Or the slowly roaming library ghost? Love this game.

>>2904481
That graphic novel was sold along with a copy of the first Alone in the Dark in my country. I've played AiTD3 shortly after and it was really cool that the comic was like a mini walkthrough as it followed the events unfolding in the third game very closely.

>>2904690
That's interesting, where are you from? Do you still have it so I can have a look what it looks like?

>>2904701
Poland.
Unfortunately I don't have the physical copy anymore, but I managed to find a digital version in DjVu a couple of years ago.

>>2904701
Pastebin just in case.

http://pastebin.com/xyPNBqYB

>>2904034
I just couldn't get into it. Sweet home is pretty tight though.

>>2904496
>There's a lot of cool shit coming out of that country.

Alone in the Dark, Rayman, Another World, Beyond Good and Evil, Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf.

Then something happened and now there are just a number of vaguely-french production like the Assassin's Creed or Beyond/Heavy Rain, and all I can think of is Off.

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>>2904598
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Blbg2bNznc

>>2904034
>How do I even explore the content of its PAK files.
It's a mystery. You need to understand that .pak files were used by many different devs, and everyone had their own standard that they called .pak. I've run them through a few different specialized archive programs, each one says they are a mystery.

Find out the old fashioned way, open the fuckers in a hex editor and make a small change, then go play and see what you did.

AitD 1 = Resident Evil

AitD 2 = Resident Evil 4

AitD 3 = Resident Evil 5

History repeats itself

>>2906032
>AitD 2 = Resident Evil 4
Surprisingly accurate. I hate both AiTD 2 and RE4

>>2906556

They're both good games, just way more action-oriented and cheesy

>>2906032
>AitD 3 = Resident Evil 5

Naaah
While it is hard for me to call AITD2 survival horror due to the total absence of a horror theme and the lack of survival gameplay mechanics, it's more like Dino Crisis 2 than RE4.
And AitD3 learnt from the mistakes of 2, it's definitely back to survival horror.

>>2906645

>AitD3 learnt from the mistakes of 2, it's definitely back to survival horror.

AitD 3 took AitD 2 and did everything worse.