London's Burning (and Sinking)!

Dear Insane Children, 

Three images from Joey depicting a section of Alice: Asylum where Alice explores the burning/flooding remains of London. This is Child Alice revisiting the places, characters, and memories that served as the challenges that shaped Shadow Alice.

From the Art Brief for these images:

Alice steps from the station into a broken and confused cityscape. The streets of East London snake out before her in large chunks of floating blocks - a mix of flooded and burning buildings suspended - some upward, some downward - under a black winter sky. Snow and ash fill the air. Water floods the streets in many places - suspended in air between the empty abyss in between the islands of buildings.

This is where the final piece of the puzzle will be revealed in Radcliffe’s office… if Alice can find it.

We PLAY as Alice navigates the scene heading towards the direction indicated by her Inner Compass. Along the way, she encounters a variety of Chaos Creatures and London Citizens who attack and taunt her. Navigation between the islands of buildings requires a combination of climbing-jumping-floating and running-swimming-fighting. Some buildings exist in down-is-down gravity; and some in down-is-up gravity. So that jumping up can result in falling down, depending on where Alice jumps from.

The Carpenter is found on one of the islands, frantically repairing a ramshackle dike built of stone and wood. “We must not let London sink, my dear! Civilization is all that stands between us and the consuming chaos. Build! Fix! Build! Fix! Maintain the order or we’re all doomed!”

Alice “There hardly seems any point. This entire place is either on fire or beneath the waves… and whatever else still stands is broken beyond belief.”

Carpenter: Exactly, child! Belief! Belief is what keeps us going despite the burning fires and the rising tides. Belief - that doing something is better than doing nothing even when we all fail in the end. Better to have died trying than lived idly, I say!

Amazing stuff!

Let us know in the comments below what you think! 

From Shanghai with Love, 

-American