Narrative Crowd Design Session (recording)

Love your ideas for Shadow Alice!

Greyson Kehm

Like Greg and Lucky Dragon has already stated, I too am beginning to feel like the scope of the story has grown too large. Having noticed this, I took some time to consider all that I know about the story as of this point, and I have put together some of my thoughts on it in the following paragraphs. I’m starting to realize that I am not as large of a fan of Child Alice as I once thought I was. The character that I truly care about is Adult Alice, or just “Alice,” which is what I hope we can refer to her as. With having Child Alice, Shadow Alice, and Adult Alice (where Shadow and Adult Alice are also sort of the same), I feel like we are losing the real Alice that we have come to know through the first and second game. Their past and story may be the same, but this is arguably not the same person. You might say that she has changed and is no longer supposed to be the same-old Alice we know, but I truthfully am not a fan of that - I would like Alice to be the same Alice we see in AMA and A:MR. This is not to say that I don’t like Shadow Alice though. I am actually a huge fan of her. Of course, without Child Alice, Shadow Alice is going to need some adjustments. Here is what I propose for that: - Shadow Alice is the worst side of Alice, where killing Bumby has unleashed a fury and thirst to kill anyone else standing in her way. She is our new “face of evil in the heart of darkness.” - Shadow Alice is not Adult Alice, but more so she is who Alice will become if not stopped. - Shadow Alice is proactively trying to destroy Alice. - Shadow Alice is the repressed child from the night of the fire, who has been unleashed after re-living that night countless times and being trapped in Denial. Right, so we’ve laid the groundwork for Shadow Alice, now I’ll get into what this means for the story: When Alice’s family died November 5, 1863, Alice’s inner child was broken and forced into Denial where she continued to live out the events of the fire, but never accepted it. This continued up until Alice killed Bumby. The murder of Bumby struck Alice so deeply that it broke the “snowglobe” of the Wonderland where the inner child resides reached the inner child, who had been in denial for nearly twelve years. The child who was once in denial now not only knows the truth about the fire but also understands what it is to take someone else’s life. This is the birth of Shadow Alice. We PLAY as Alice is walking through the streets of London (this is immediately after the end of A:MR). She is going to attempt to retrieve her rabbit again from Radcliffe. What follows is a walk through Londerland where the player will learn the basic mechanics of the game. Upon arriving at Radcliffe’s estate, she will retrieve the rabbit and return to the HFWC where she heads to her room and goes to bed. We watch as Alice lies in bed next to her rabbit and closes her eyes and attempts to fall asleep. Before long, Alice’s rabbit gets up and leaves the scene. Alice wakes up shortly after and notices her rabbit is missing. It is nighttime now. She gets out from under her covers, now wearing the Slumber dress and goes searching for her rabbit. This is when the player will be presented with another opportunity to learn the basic mechanics of the game, plus some more advanced things like gliding with your dress. [This is where I’ll leave it for now. Please do not hesitate to let me know what you think of this idea via Discord, Patreon comments, etc.]

Nicholas Brokaw

These are some pretty good options you've laid out here. As I stated in a reply to Greg's comment, I am in agreeance with considering simplifying the story. I'll put some more of my thoughts into a new comment.

Nicholas Brokaw

Hi, just throwing an idea out there. I couldn't help but think of an Ouija board as a way Adult Alice in London might try to communicate with Child Alice. Also perhaps tarot cards, regular playing cards, even a chess set. The whole point being to manifest an action in the physical world from the internal influence of Child Alice, and then observe from the perspective of Adult Alice. So then perhaps in London it's much less of a spectacle and more of a struggle that forces Adult Alice to try and fill in the gaps of that fractured communication, even talking to herself out loud to help her think. Ovetime and with practice this could become more fluid, perhaps as Child Alice in Wonderland progresses through the game and completes sidequests or collects shards or whathaveyou.

SUGGESTION: Thought about the visualisation on Alice's talking to each other... you know how in madness returns when you leave a radula room there is the whole zoom into Alice's eye thing... maybe something like that and the other Alice is kind of in the eye?

Catheryn Alice North

And if you did go with option 1, all the London and Radcliffe stuff would fit so much better, because much like AMR, between the Wonderland sections, we could periodically return to London and Alice can use what she’s learned in Wonderland to help her with the troubles she’s experiencing in the real world. Her primary goal and the thrust of the story is for her to find a way to deal with Radcliffe and get him off her back, and take up ownership of Houndsditch, all the while not succumbing to her darker tendencies and just kill everyone in her way. The story kicks off because after Killing Bumby, it’s like Alice opened a Pandora’s box in her mind that she can’t seem to close. She’s fighting the urge to kill again, and not just Radcliffe. Anyone that makes things difficult for her. It’s also forcing her to process her grief in a way she never really did. Her grief processing was never dealt with. It was only delayed. The shock of killing is now activating the process finally. The destinies that lay before Alice are either becoming the psychotic killer everyone thought she was, or becoming the care giver to orphaned children.

Lucky Dragon ‘She.They’

And if we want to preserve the idea of the child merging with the Adult, then go with option 1, but Shadow Alice is actually the child self. She’s the petulant, temper-tantrum throwing immaturity that wants free and wants Alice to take revenge on her enemies, because to me children are often very cruel. Shadow Alice resents Adult Alice for shunning childish things and being so dull for so long, but Adult Alice has to recombine with her to be a whole person, because without her child self, she can’t enjoy life.

Lucky Dragon ‘She.They’

I too think the story has become too complicated, and I still can’t get past the fact that since Child Alice is a figment of Adult Alice’s mind, I find myself not really caring about her plight. She’s really just Adult Alice’s imaginary version of herself, so why do I care what happens to her? She can’t really die. I know from the beginning that her goal of returning home is futile, so I can’t get invested. There’s no stakes to her story, especially if she’s not trying to save Adult Alice from killing herself anymore. Sure I don’t want Adult Alice to become a cold blooded murderer, but she’s already killed Bumby. Why do I care if she kills Radcliffe? Once she’s killed a human being, there’s really no going back from that. So I am struggling to care about the very basic reason for why the story is even happening. My fix for that might be a tad extreme, and I have a couple options. Option number 1. There is no Child Alice. Adult Alice is the character I’m most interested in. Not an imaginary Alice in an imaginary Wonderland, meaning not the one we’ve spent two games in. None of the things that she remembers happening to her actually happened to her. She never existed in the real world. She’s just a persona that lay dormant in Adult Alice. That’s not super interesting to me. So, keep everything the same except, it’s Adult Alice’s consciousness that we are playing as in Wonderland. Perhaps due to her mental state, the appearance she’s taking in Wonderland is her younger self. She’s regressed when she goes into Wonderland for some reason, but it’s Adult Alice’s mind and personality behind the child avatar. No more dual consciousnesses. Option number 2, we make this a prequel again. At some point the story stopped being a prequel and became a sequel, just staring a young looking Alice. It can’t be a prequel because all the events in Child Alice’s Wonderland are happening in real time in Adult Alice’s mind. The second option is to get rid of Adult Alice. Return to the idea that we are telling a story of events that happened in the past, just prior to American McGee’s Alice. The many different levels of Alice is an intriguing story to tell, but it may be a tad too ambitious for its own good. If we want to adhere to the golden rule of KISS, we either need to lose Adult Alice or Child Alice, although that’s just how I see it. Option number 1 is my preferred solution because it doesn’t have to change much, it just recontexualizes everything that happens in Wonderland. It simplifies everything. Option number 2 however would leave much on the cutting room floor and you’d basically have to start over. Option number 3, we keep going with the complex story and try our best to convey it as simply as possible. What do you think?

Lucky Dragon ‘She.They’

William Faulkner — 'In writing, you must kill all your darlings.' The process of cutting elements from a narrative is normal, natural, and necessary. It's good that we are at that point actually.

American McGee

Thank you for writing this Greg. I can see where you are coming from, and I agree with each of your points you've made. I might recall that American wrote about how he was struggling to fit certain pieces into the narrative a few days ago. Refocusing would be a good idea in my opinion. Side-note: I reread this and it sounds awfully negative, but my intentions are far from that. I'm just trying to help :)

Nicholas Brokaw

Apologies in advance if this seems overly negative but after reflecting on yesterday’s Crowd Design Session I am in full agreement with the idea American floated near the end of potentially “paring the story down”. I wonder if perhaps the main narrative of “Asylum” isn’t starting to get muddied by excess ideas that, while they may be interesting in concept, only seem to distract from the central plot. The initial thrust of the story as I understood it was simple: a young girl goes though the five stages of grief. Now it feels like more and more is being piled on that I don’t necessarily see as helping or strengthening that narrative. We have events in “reality”/London (the scope of which are always being expanded and given more importance), we have the “regular” Wonderland, the “snowglobe” Wonderland, “Slumber” as its own thing, additional stages like “Shock”, the construction of The Champion, characters potentially being aware that they are in Wonderland, etc, and all this makes it feel at times like the central concept is being lost. I understand that stories change and grow over time, and perhaps this is the new vision for “Asylum”, but at least to me it feels like we’ve drifted away from the purity and strength of the initial story pitch to the point where I have trouble understanding how some of it helps or even relates to the narrative. Perhaps I’m the problem here, perhaps a clearer understanding of story events would make everything click, but at the moment for me it feels like something has gone missing because of all the additions.

I'm going to have to give this a listen for sure. I'm curious to see if anything I said made sense or if it was a frantic mess XD

Nicholas Brokaw