Alone in the Dark, it’s not a fun thing when it comes to New Orleans.
It’s been a while since I’d played the prologue of this game, but after going through it I had to put the full release on my wishlist. People started talking about it’s upcoming release so I was prepared to buy it on the day it came out.
New Orleans and voodoo aspects? Yes, please.
Who is this game for?
- Achievement hunters
- Collectors of collectibles
- Cutscene fanatics
- Psychological seekers
- Story-driven gamers
- Supernaturalists
Game length
Anywhere from 5-10 hours, which I know is a bit of a stretch of time frame.
Where can you buy?
Pros:
- Atmospheric
- Voice acting
Cons:
- Clunky combat
- Game stuttering
Explanation to Negative Feedback
Clunky combat
It’s a survival horror, but more of an unraveling of a mystery as the main focal point of the game, so I can excuse the bad combat, as there’s not a lot of it, but basically you have to be a little careful with your ammo as there is a chance you can run out if you’re going out in a blaze of glory and have terrible aim with just a couple monsters.
It’s pretty easy to find the ammo to gear yourself back up during downtime, or in preparation for larger battles.
You do get weapons you can swing at enemies with, if you don’t want to waste ammo, but these weapons do break after a certain amount of hits. Not only that, but you can find molotov cocktails at some point to use them to set enemies on fire.
The dodge isn’t the best and you can get stuck on objects, which really sucks.
My guy couldn’t figure out how to get down off of a table so I had to reload the last auto save to help him out.
Game stuttering
It wasn’t actually so bad when I started the first playthrough for a recording for my podcast, and I had higher settings on that video, but when I started streaming a fresh game, the stuttering was really…oof.
Whether I was running a straight path, turning a corner, entering a cutscene. The stuttering was just bad.
I don’t know if it was because I was streaming, but I even lowered all settings and it just stayed janky as all hell. And that’s not good when you’re entering combat, mind you.
Explanation to Positive Feedback
Atmospheric
The combination of both the surrounding environments as well as the ambiance that goes on around you is top notch. I sometimes feel like I am definitely in a swampy bayou with the sounds of wildlife, including flies and mosquitos around my face.
Plus, some places you come across are just flat out spooky with soft whisperings.
Voice acting
I love that they made all the letters and things you can pick up as spoken content. It’s nice to read things quietly, but the people they’ve got on staff to read some of these things really bring out the story of the game, in my opinion. They make things more real than the reading voice in our own heads ever could.
Links Worth Checking Out
- Nothing here
Achievements
- Alone in the Dark
- An Honest Day’s Work
- Back to Normal
- Bonfire Night
- Case Closed
- Chatterbox
- Come at Me!
- Don’t Mind if I Do
- Drop Me Off in New Orleans
- Found & Lost
- Frenzy
- Gangster
- Hard Boiled
- I Abandoned Him
- I Don’t Got All Night
- I Stole the Child and Let Him Drown
- In Between There are Doors
- Left Holding the Bag
- Librarian
- Look At All the Free Stuff I Got!
- Losing My Mind
- Nobody Knows What Happened
- Now You’re on the Trolley!
- On the Mend
- One of the Thousand Young
- The Past as a Present
- Radical Acceptance
- Safe and Sound
- Somewhere Else Entirely
- Teetotaller
- The Thin Veneer of Civilization
- Watch Out Where You’re Waving That Thing
- Welcome to Derceto
- What Just Happened?
- Whatever It Takes
- When Therapy Makes It Worse
- Where I Belong
- You Can’t Keep Me Out!
Alone in the Dark 2024 Review (with spoilers)
Let me start by saying I never played the original of this game, so I have no idea what it’s going to be about and only know things based on the short prologue I played some time back. I know that it had a creepy atmosphere, things weren’t always what they seemed, and there are a few different monsters lurking about that don’t seem to be too out of the ordinary?
At least, it didn’t seem that way to the girl we played in the prologue.
The 2024 version of Alone in the Dark starts us off with some environmental detail that clearly tells us we’re somewhere out in the bayou of New Orleans, and given that this is our location, you can probably already imagine we’re going to run into something along the lines of voodoo, even if it isn’t the main focal point.
At least, I’d like to think so.
I know very little of voodoo, but did have a voodoo doll once upon a time as a kid.
Yeah, who needs Barbie and Ken when you can stab pins and needles into something that has a resemblance of someone you know, right? I mean, I didn’t think along those lines back then…but I did try to sabotage my brother at some point with it.
Didn’t work out.
Anyway, the cinematic shows us looking at a toad at the start, who’s then eaten by what looks like a caiman, though I don’t think they’re native to Louisiana, so we’re just going to say it’s a crocodile. A car has to stop before hitting said crocodile, but going by the way of things, I thought this was setting up a domino effect.
Toad dies to crocodile, crocodile dies to car, car gets struck by something.
Good times all around.
But no, the only good time comes from the crocodile who got a free meal and a free pass on life. It kind of reminds me of when I went to Yellowstone National Park and there’d be bison just chilling in the road and whatnot, not giving a crap that you need to get through or anything.
This crocodile is those bison…though it does move out of the way and we then get a conversation between two characters in the car–Emily Hartwood, who’s played by Jodie Comer, who I know from Free Guy, (though I didn’t know who she was for the life of me when I played the game), and then there’s Edward Camby, who’s played by David Harbour, the chief of police from Stranger Things.
Turns out that Emily’s uncle Jeremy Hartwood is possessed, though she doesn’t believe that to be the case. Instead, her family suffers from “deteriorating melancholy” she calls it, but I’m going to assume that it’s more along the lines of what we’d call melancholia, which is a type of depression.
He’s gone to Derceto which is something of a psychiatric hospital, hoping to find a cure through Dr. Gray’s psychoanalysis, but all he’s managed to do is become even more paranoid by blaming the staff for being in a cult and out to get him.
This is all in a letter he wrote to Emily.
And we all know whenever we get a vague letter or video stating where someone is and bad things might be happening, the main character just has to go check it out.
But I guess this one checks out, because she knows her uncle is mentally unstable and suffering from an illness that seems to affect everyone in her family at some point. So now she’s just going to check in on him, though I find it really odd that she’s brought a private investigator to come with her, and is even paying him.
Like, does she know something? Why would a private investigator be needed here if she just didn’t want to come here alone? Unless he’s really the only person she confides in and wanted to pay him for his troubles?
Then again she also requested he bring a gun just in case he needs to wave it around.
And it’s not that she didn’t want to come alone, it’s that she didn’t feel safe coming alone.
This again can be two-sided. On one hand, we’re entering a place that’s home to people who aren’t quite of stable mind, and who knows who’s a guest here and what they’re going through. She could possibly get hurt.
But…she could also know something more and that something more could end up hurting her.
I would like to say though, there’s a quote from her that hits home, about Jeremy, telling himself all these lies because he doesn’t want to face the truth, which is:
That we are all terribly insignificant. That people mean so little to one another. That there is no one out to get Jeremy Hartwood, because he isn’t worth getting.
Damn.
When you approach the house, you’re left with a choice on who to go with in your playthrough, either Edward or Emily.
I feel like Edward is a first-choose favorite for people who play this game just because a lot of people know him as Hopper from Stranger Things, but even if that wasn’t the case, he’s got a gun which means combat. Not to say that Emily won’t be finding a weapon in her own playthrough, but combat and recognition of a character is more fun to most people.
If you think about it, Edward doesn’t know anything about Jeremy, so he’s on a blind search for Emily’s uncle to help her find him. Emily, however, knows her uncle, probably knows what he’s going through mentally, I’d say, to a certain extent. So she’s going to understand things that Edward won’t.
It’s a good way to split two different people from the main storyline while also keeping things constant between the both of them as you progress.
Characters will more than likely act different depending on who you’re playing as, the hard-edged male detective or the more feminine family member.
It makes you want to play both characters, honestly, just to see the differences.
But I went with Edward.
Since standing outside a door hoping someone will be around to open it is too boring, we’ll be making our way around back in order to either find someone or let Emily in ourselves.
Of course, this is also our first clue that something is off here. A mental hospital with nobody answering the door and with everything looking like the place is abandoned. I would just like a psychological horror where you approach a large house or mansion and there are actual staff to greet you and it actually looks lived in and lively.
Why does every horror location have to be empty, even when people live there?
Throw us for a loop over here.
Going through the doors initiates chapter one.
At this point we control the character in a third person point of view. At the bottom left we’ve got an action wheel for two different things.
The flask is for healing yourself–I don’t think you can drink this multiple times and get yourself drunk, but that would kind of be fun to have Edward stumbling around for a short period of time. When you’re at full health you can’t use the flask at all.
You’ve also got your weapon, which is a pistol. you can start collecting a lot of pistol ammo in the beginning of the game, which is slightly unnerving because it makes you think something is coming sooner than you’d expect, but the game’s just making sure you’re geared up, I guess. Your first combat scene is still a little ways away.
Also, as you pick up the ammo, it states that it’s pistol ammo, indicating that there’s other ammo you can get in the future.
You’ll also notice a notebook appearing in the upper right corner from time to time, which is objectives being written. You can go into your objective menu and there’s a voiceover recapping what’s just happened with typewriter sounds in the background as she speaks.
The first items you acquire here are the Flashlight as well as the Kitchen Garden Key.
You won’t be able to accidentally skip out on these items in your haste of moving forward because the path will be too dark.
When you do retrieve an item, you’re able to open them, which basically just means to open your inventory, because you can’t exactly open up a key if it’s just a normal every day key. As you’re viewing items in your inventory, you can also view them. This isn’t huge for normal items, since you can’t rotate them at all, they’re just a static image, but if you’re looking at a piece of paper that has something drawn on it, then viewing it will bring it closer so you’re able to see the images better.
Do note that the flashlight is of amazing quality despite how small it is, and you don’t have to worry about batteries at all.
If you do check out your inventory here, you can find your Edward Carnby, P.I. badge as well as a Lasting Debt note. The Lasting Debt is basically a threat from someone named Obed Morton that Carnby owes him money, and he wants it before he pays off Emily. And it’s an old school mobster kind of threat, what with the whole “I don’t want to take you for a ride” statement.
But what is he paying her off for? I thought she was paying him for coming with her here?
When you go down the hall, you’ll need to unlock the door, and I just want to say that the unlocking of doors animations are so aesthetically pleasing to watch. It’s literally just an up close of the lock located on a door and a key going inside and turning, but damn it feels nice to watch and listen to it click. I’m pretty sure Resident Evil VII and the like did the same kind of animations.
The first area of the house we come to, aside from the Garage, is the Kitchen Gardens.
It’s got your typical plants competing with most of the space, a table for two smack dab in the center, as well as a female statue tucked into the corner that watches whoever sits at that table. It is an outside area and I suppose it would look nice on some days with the sun filtering through the trees, but now is not that time.
The ambiance here is very distant. The sounds of cicadas I suppose and the occasional crows perhaps, an echoing drip. The primary sounds are your footsteps.
One of the things you’ll notice in the gardens is a locked up toolshed.
A locked up toolshed that requires a boltcutter to get in, to be more precise.
How many horror games out there don’t use a boltcutter at this point? When was it an unspoken agreement that most all horror games have to have a boltcutter in order to get through certain places. I get it, they’re a handy tool, but how many places need a boltcutter out there to get in and who just leaves them lying around?
What about all the horror films that don’t use boltcutters. Are they doing it wrong? God forbid someone’s being chased by a bad guy and comes across a door that they can’t get through because they left their boltcutters at home.
If you’ve never played the game Deponia before, the main character has a list of what to take with him when he leaves and one of those is a boltcutter, except his suitcase won’t close so he has to take something out and when you click on them he says something like, “Boltcutters? When am I going to use Boltcutters?” …And of course he needs them in the next section.
There’s nothing to do in this area right now. The game just wanted to point out the locked shed as well as an area in a corner that has something of note that you can’t get to quite yet, so the objective still stands at finding a way inside the house.
The next area you enter is the Conservatory.
It’s technically still outside, but with glass walls all around. You’ve got hanging birdcages with nothing in them, signifying either the birds have died or nobody’s bothered to catch any of the crows that always seem to gather around. Some benches to sit on and relax and listen to the nonexistent birds, as well as the trickling fountain in the center that has some stagnant looking water in it.
A perfect greenhouse scenario, if you will, considering the larger than life tree tucked off to the side.
If you’re playing Edward, he’ll mention that it’s a big tree to fit inside of a conservatory, but if you’re playing as Emily, she’ll mention that they had to have built the conservatory around the tree in order to fit it in.
I agree with her, how’s anyone going to know the amount of space to give that tree if they planted it first.
It sort of looks like a weeping willow, which also makes me think of the tree in Hogwarts Legacy where they have the class regarding the mandrakes. Get close enough to this tree, however, and you’ll be able to hear whispers. You can’t really make them out at this point, though.
In order to progress, there’s the Housekeeper’s Key in a pot that’s broken, which makes it an absolutely terrible hiding spot.
Once in the next area, we receive the achievement Welcome to Derceto.
In one of the attached rooms, you can find the Family Bible. There’s a lot going on when you read it, and I wanted to look into some things that I wasn’t sure of. Like I said, I don’t know much about voodoo priests and priestesses and some of the things they use for their craft and it’s all kind of interesting to me.
It sounds as if this person is speaking to a god or goddess instead of a person, due to mention of their silence and the world suffering and becoming a dried husk, basically, and due to the silence they sought help elsewhere, but didn’t want to offend the being in question by doing so.
We get two names, Batiste and Charlotte, who goes by Lottie. They’d have to be practicers of voodoo by the sounds of it and I can only assume they turned this person to it as well.
At first I thought that Batiste might be a god since we’re dabbling with religion here, but once I looked at Charlotte’s name, I was like, there’s no way. I can’t imagine a goddess being named Charlotte unless they were hiding under a guise of some sort. Plus I was confusing the name Batiste with Bastet anyway.
There’s mention of a Caribbean cult, maybe that Batiste and Charlotte are a part of, and gris-gris.
I’m familiar with the term gris-gris; I’ve seen it in books when I read urban fantasy novels, but I don’t think I ever knew what it was, just what it was associated with. It’s actually something–typically amulet or incantation of sorts–that either wards off evil or brings misfortune to others.
In this case, I’m going to say she’s carrying it around to ward off evil.
I wonder if that’s technically what a hex bag is that witches use in the series Supernatural?
She goes to say she’s thankful for the words he gave Mr. Hartwood, which is Emily’s uncle, Jeremy. Meaning this letter is to a male then, as also signified by the “heavenly father” statement, to whom she’s not addressing the Christian God.
What I don’t understand is the statement of “a mother of earth, wood, and dirt. A mother of a thousand young.”
And then there’s a receipt tacked on at the end of a few things she’s bought for black magic and an ending conversation regarding a goat without horns.
It’s actually beneficial to listen to the voice actor here, because there’s extra being said that isn’t written in text.
Looking back on it, I wonder if she’s writing this to the Dark Man which Jeremy has some kind of connection with. That also makes me wonder if the Dark Man could be a loa? If there’s some kind of contract going on and voodoo is a primary suspect, I would think that makes sense.
Continuing to the next room, where we’re in the Kitchen. If you turn to the right inside the closed door is the Pantry where you can find Rat Poison, which is one of the collectibles known as a Lagniappe, and by definition is a small gift given to a customer by a merchant at the time of purchase.
Does that mean the devs are giving us these collectibles as a thank-you for purchasing and playing their game?
I wanted to mention the rat poison in there because at a later date you won’t be able to enter the kitchen due to the housekeeper getting upset with you mucking about. Obviously at some point you’ll probably be able to enter and grab it–the same playthrough or even a different one if you choose to play with the secondary character, but it’s something worth noting.
Another thing worth noting is that you’ll be unable to collect all lagniappes unless you play through the game on both characters. The ones you do get transfer over, so it’s up to you to find the other ones that are only character-specific.
If you go into the Boiler Room, there’s a Sabotage note regarding the boiler. It’s sprung a leak thanks to someone messing with it, and if it is sabotage that’s caused the blockade, it makes you wonder what’s on the other side of the steam.
It’s nothing you can fiddle with now, but this is where you’ll be completing a plate puzzle once you’ve acquired both pieces.
Another dead end that you can enter is the first portion of the Cellar, as the second part of it is locked up. In here you can get the Streetcar Ticket.
Leaving the cellar I think is the moment I realized doors do close behind you, but it’s more noticeable from the cellar due to the creaky iron doors and I think I was just too engrossed with possible things I needed to find to recognize the click of doors closing after I’ve walked away from them.
Once you actually take note of it, it does get a bit creepy, but honestly at this point it’s not something that’s as startling as it should be.
Personally, I love exploring in a game. Finding things that were tucked away that you wouldn’t have been able to find if you hadn’t actively been looking for something out of the ordinary. But given the fact that our objective is to let Emily into the house, and we’re permitted to wander around to a certain extent kind of dulls the game a bit.
We get a lot of ammo. We get a lot of health. We get some notes and backstory and collectibles, but aside from that this is a walking simulator at this point.
I think it would’ve worked better if they’d locked off specific areas, such as the pantry and the cellar so we’re basically forced to not be able to explore yet and do what our objective demands us to do.
Think about it. We’re wandering about while Emily is still outside the front door waiting to get in.
Are we going to need the ammo soon? Yeah. Are we going to need the health soon? It’s a possibility. Do we need either one right now? No. There’s no threat around us. There’s a build-up of a possible threat when they hand these things out, but it’s an empty promise. There’s nothing that’s going to jump out at us at the moment.
And even in the section where there are enemies, the game gives us enough ammo to pick up to deal with them when they need to be dealt with. There’s no need for all the downtime.
It took me 6 minutes to get to chapter one, which was mainly a cutscene. At this time of the recording, I’m almost 18 minutes in and nothing’s happened.
Exploration is great, but let it happen when a location becomes something of a priority.
Moving forward, as you go through the house, you’ll come across doors that will obviously be locked and need a key, but there are other doors with a barred icon. This is kind of like a shortcut door, you won’t be able to open it from one side until you get rid of what’s stopping it from opening on the other side.
In the first open room you come across–Lottie’s Room–you’ll find the Derceto Floor Plans, of which there are three, as well as the Piazza Key.
The map of the floors is excellent and very reminiscent on Resident Evil Village. The rooms have a specific color for when you’ve not explored them, when you’ve explored them fully and there’s nothing left inside, and when there’s something unique with the room.
For instance, in the Boiler Room there’s a puzzle piece icon to remind you you need to do something there, like find the valve as well as finish the panel.
Puzzle icons don’t pertain to things that are locked, however, such as the medicine box in Lottie’s room. It simply remains a pink background for now.
You can also see which doors are locked as well as which ones you just have no access to, like with the front door of Derceto.
Putting the map down for now, you can read Lottie’s Diary, sitting on a table by the bed.
Judging by what she wrote, she seems to be a caretaker, but is sort of forced to neglect a certain Cassandra who needs her pain meds in favor of looking for Jeremy. There’s another person named Waites that we’re clued in on who went to the post office in order to obtain Cassandra’s pain medication, but it came without a key so the box is literally sitting in the room we’re in right now due to being unable to open it.
Why would the pain medication box reuse the same kind of key over and over. That’s what the letter is hinting at with the line, “They must have figured we had plenty of their gimmicky keys by now.” Meaning the medication has been coming for a good while if the keys are aplenty.
Is it weird for medication to come in a locked box as well? Was that normal for this day and age or is it something this game does to evoke a sense of importance to what’s in the box?
I mean, if the only key you recall seeing that goes to this box was in the hands of a girl named Grace who was playing with it, then someone doesn’t take care of the keys very well. What if a patient nabs a key and gets into the medicine and takes it themselves?
Hello?
Are the staff part of the halfway house’s residents too, hello?
She also states that Jack knew something, whoever that is. And his dog? I didn’t even realize there was a dog in this place (I know, I know, it’s the start of the game, but still), unless she’s using it as a slur for a person who acts like a dog, but I doubt it, since it found rot that’s growing around the house.
There’s a “she” that’s mentioned. Showing them something that has to do with the rot, I’d wager.
I’ve no idea, and at this point, we have a lot of character names and a lot of nothing surrounding them, other than what’s stated in the letters we’re reading.
To name the characters we know so far:
- Emily Hartwood
- Edward Camby
- Jeremy Hartwood
- Dr. Gray
- Obed Morton
- Batiste
- Charlotte / Lottie
- Cassandra
- Waites
- Grace
- Jack
- Jack’s dog (?)
Obed Morton and Jack’s dog are kind of up in the air as characters, but if it’s a letter we got from the start of a game threatening us with Obed’s name on it, I have to assume he’s going to show up again at some point. I don’t know about the dog, and it’s a bit too early to tell, I guess.
There’s not been any barking in the distance or paw prints anywhere, but the night is still young.
In any case, that’s still 12 characters mentioned, two of whom we’ve actually met, which are the main characters.
You can finally cross the Piazza and enter the Stair Hall, where I expected the stuffed grizzly bear at some point to come alive and try to eat us. We’re dealing with supernatural stuff, so I suspect anything out of the ordinary is possible.
This is where the front door is and Emily can finally come in after 15 minutes of waiting.
And finally. Finally. We see that there are in fact other people residing here. We don’t get all of their names, but MacCarfey is mentioned.
Guess we can add one more to the character list.
We’re confronted by what looks like a maid? She tells us we’re trespassing, which we are, mind you, and to leave immediately, but she doesn’t exactly threaten us with calling the police. And then when Emily mentions knocking, the girl on the stairs states:
We can’t hear you knocking anymore. None of us can.
Which is a weird thing to say. I don’t know if she means that in the literal sense, or if she’s saying nobody ever comes around. I suspect it’s the latter, and it’s weird to think how that’s possible. Even if magic were in play somehow, I don’t think this game has that kind of magic where there’d be like a silencing spell or something, right?
The woman at the door mentions Jeremy is missing and it might be some time before anyone finds him, despite the fact that the whole staff is looking for him.
How the f*ck are you going to say Emily’s uncle is missing for an unforeseeable amount of time and think that’s going to be okay. I mean, this is a big place, but it’s not that big. Not with all the freakin’ locked doors. How does she even know that he hasn’t left the building entirely?
Edward over here got in on his own, who’s to say Jeremy didn’t get out and become eaten by a crocodile?
Also, are police out of the question? You’ve got a missing patient who admitted himself due to psychological problems, and it’s just the staff that are looking for him? Not authorities?
Hell, maybe they want to keep things from outside guests, which is why she wants us gone, but still. What kind of operation has Dr. Gray got going on here?
Edward point blank tells her that they’ll just go ahead and wait in his room and that surely she wouldn’t mind, which I think is something Hopper would totally do in Stranger Things. Just passively brute force his way into a location while the other person is a little too stunned to say no.
In Jeremy Hartwood’s Room, there’s a Locked Box you can open after reading The Commonplace Book, as you’ll get the Painted Tile from it.
There’s a lot to unpack in The Commonplace Book with its five different pages, but we learn a lot about what Jeremy has to say in regards to the Dark Man and the fluctuations of reality in Derceto.
I don’t exactly know what’s going on with the Dark Man at this point, but he seems to be waiting for Jeremy to die, perhaps, judging by the line “Counting the days until my spirit spills out of my tired shape.” That’s a bit dramatic but it gets the point across. Jeremy is tired of whatever’s going on, maybe more mentally than physically, and the clock is counting down.
It’s also stated that the Dark Man stands at the threshold of Jeremy’s room–as an ominous figure being all foreboding, or can he literally not step into Jeremy’s room?
He wears a mask instead of baring his face, which saves Jeremy his sanity. I get the feeling that’s being dramatized and the man wears a mask for a specific reason, maybe only revealing his face to someone who’s died? And Jeremy labeled him as a demonic sultan, so a Muslim sovereign?
I don’t know, whenever I think of a sultan I think of Jafar from Aladdin.
So now this dude just looks like Jafar with a mask on to me, and yo u can see what the mask kind of looks like in the drawing of the book we’re reading.
Here are some interesting lines though:
Would he have looked the same to my father as he struggled for his life. Does his veiled face haunt my niece quite the same way?
Remember at the start in the car ride when Emily said this kind of thing runs in her family? Does that mean the Dark Man is tied to their bloodline somehow? Would he then be the root of the problem in their deaths and how they die?
This is a lot of theorizing here since it’s the start of the game and the first time we’ve heard any kind of information about the Dark Man who’s been stalking Jeremy apparently.
It’s just kind of interesting to try and sort things out with what little information we have.
Even though I’ve played some of the game so far, I’ve not gotten to the end yet so it’s still all up in the air as to what really is going on for me.
On the first page still, Taroella is mentioned, as well as two characters, one being Juan and the other being signora Perosi. We can assume Perosi is dead because their name is followed up by “back from the beyond.” I’ve no idea about Juan though. Looking it up, Taroella doesn’t seem to be an actual place, either.
Moving onward, it seems he’s jumping from one memory to another in order to hide from the Dark Man. Which is…I don’t know it’s hard to grasp when you don’t actually live in a world where this stuff isn’t out of the ordinary. On one hand, maybe he can’t reside in one of these memories because the Dark Man will eventually find him, but on the other, maybe they’re dangerous memories due to the fact that they’re misshapen and born from a fantastical and delirious mind.
He also doesn’t know how or why signora died, but he buried her in a chapel, which is drawn on the page as well.
That wasn’t his wife or significant other was it?
It’s just weird that that’s where she’ll rest and where he’ll weep. It just sounds like a really close bond, even though we don’t know the bond between him and Emily or him and Juan at the moment.
No she couldn’t be either of those, because the second page makes it sound as if she were part of the staff at the hospital, because she knew about…I guess the cracks in reality? The places he could go to that would tear a hole in reality and form a place of his own memories.
He mentions Taroella again as a place he really wants to go to. I don’t know if it’s just to visit Juan or some other reason since he’s not exactly staying in any other memory he’s reached.
There’s talk of a talisman sold to him by a miss Jackson who happens to be a voodoo priestess. Due to not sharing her secrets, he had to travel to Toncre, which I have no idea once again where that is because it doesn’t seem to be an actual place.
At this point, while it’s frustrating, it also makes you wonder what’s real and what’s fictionalized by Jeremy, because some things you just can’t find information on. Is that his sanity gone astray and making up locations he believes to be real, or are they real, but not in the reality that we know?
Whatever the case, it seems he learned what the talisman could do when he went to Toncre, since she wouldn’t deal out any information.
Although it’s stated that she told Batiste, who we now know is Jeremy’s caretaker, that he’d be betrayed and killed with the line:
That the one he loved would pierce his thigh with a sharp spear, and that he would be devoured by his own mother.
Now I just want you to know I’ve watched way too much Hazbin Hotel and have been so hung up on it that I’m not just imagining someone using an angelic spear on him, and one of the cannibals from Cannibal Town being his mom and also the one to eat him.
Thank you Hazbin Hotel for that mental image.
On the third page, he mentions that the personnel at Derceto are becoming dangerous and wanting to call evil upon the world. Maybe they have something to do with the Dark Man? Though he states Mr Waites, who’s the clerk, as well as Beauregard seem to have a clear head about them.
I don’t know why he went to the doctor about them or what they’re up to, aside from it being a compulsory action. Oh he’s a doctor, he’ll listen to me. Except this is a psychiatric hospital with patients that aren’t all quite right in the head, so of course he wouldn’t believe Jeremy’s words at face value.
On the fourth page, there’s an image of Derceto in the middle of nowhere with what looks like a black sun.
Jeremy writes that the Dark Man offered him a prison, and so now everyone is safe except for him.
Has he somehow teleported Derceto to a place that can’t be reached by anyone because nobody knows where it is or that it even exists? But how did we come across it then, if that’s the case? Unless the pact hasn’t been made to fruition because Jeremy’s still alive?
Is this what the girl meant by they can’t hear anyone knock anymore? The place is slowly phasing out?
The fifth page shows four drawings that will no doubt be important later on.
It’s a lot to unpack and a lot to think on.
After you’ve read the book, you can speak with Emily on it and question if she knows anything about Taroella. Being the amazing investigator we are, we tell her that we think that’s where he wants to go.
He literally said he wanted to go there in the book! What the hell kind of stupid deduction was that?
On the dresser–which holy shit has six drawers, why does it have six drawers? You wouldn’t have hardly any room to fit anything in them except small stuff–interact with the Locked Box. Place the Painted Tile on it and you’ll find yourself solving one of the easiest puzzles ever. Just move the pieces where they need to be, with what looks like a tree with a celtic knot as the tree’s roots on the bottom.
Oh but don’t worry, they’re not all this easy, but they’re not all difficult either.
There’s a scene regarding a piece of paper with a talisman and how it’s supposed to be pieced together drawn on it. Also, I don’t know how it looks like a talisman to Edward. Is he used to seeing this kind of stuff as a private investigator?
I mean, I wouldn’t even know what a talisman looks like because they’re literally any object, just infused with magical properties. He might as well just say that it says it’s a talisman on the paper.
Afterwards, Emily requests our assistance as she pulls a wrapped painting from beneath the worktable.
This painting is very reminiscent of some of the works you can find in the game Call of Cthulu.
There’s a scared looking man who I assume is Jeremy, holding not just the talisman that we found paperwork on, but also a cross and a pouch, maybe? Could that be gris-gris he’s carrying around? In his other hand he’s holding a book titled Reflection – on the power of the… and I can’t read the rest of it. It’s either a title of something or written in another language.
That or I’m not squinting hard enough.
The first name of the author is clear though: Juan.
Maybe the Juan he’s been talking about who’s in Taroella? In any case, his face is clearly one of terror and turmoil and if I’ve learned anything from Lovecraftian type of games it’s don’t mess with shit like this.
It even draws our character in, like there’s a distinct pull where we’re about to lose ourself to the same madness that the painting has captured. And of course Emily wants to keep the damn thing, which is a godsend believe it or not, because as soon as it’s rolled up and put away we kind of snap out of whatever thrall it had us in.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awesome painting of oneself, but where the hell are you going to put it without creeping people out?
We don’t really question it though–just like many things–and follow the other out the door, where they’ve disappeared. Things are also a bit different than they were before. If I’ve got the layout correct, we’re actually on the second floor where Dr. Gray’s apartment can be located, however when we first went up the steps it was from the Stair Hall. Where we are now is as if we’ve taken the Servant’s Stairs on the other side.
I could be mistaken though. It looks like that’s the case, but…in this game looks are obviously deceiving and my memory has had a leak for years now, so maybe I’m fitting pieces of a puzzle together that obviously don’t match.
Either way, when we look out over the balcony, the street is completely different, and this is also where you’re currently denied any kind of snooping about within the confines of the house, because the doors are blocked off by brooms and such.
Your only way of destination is out the first floor door that’ll lead you out onto the street where there’s a monster that lurks at the end of the alleyway.
Behind you there are some bullets, but this is the part where one might point out my complaint of the initial inspection of the house where we found a lot of bullets loitering about. Obviously I complained about things being too open, and I stand by that, because you can still go through rooms to reach the front door without having so many available to snoop through. So there’d still be ammo to obtain. Just less time dawdling about.
All right, so this is our first take on the combat system, and it’s not something one might be thrilled to experience multiple times.
For now all we have is our gun, so all we can do is shoot.
I believe three shots to the head will down these guys, but body shots may need an extra bullet or two to bring them down. The smaller ones you’re dealing with here don’t have any long-range abilities, so all they can do is stumble forward until they’re in melee range where they’ll swipe at you.
They also make little growling noises when they’ve not noticed you, so if you listen, you can hear them.
Meaning if you listen closely, there’s another monster right around the corner out the alley.
However, before dealing with that bugger, I’d like to state a fun little problem.
When dodging out of the way of the first enemy, my character ended up stepping up onto something in the environment. Once he did that, I was unable to move forward. I was stuck on whatever I was standing on.
Be it a box or a table or a chair, this can happen in the game. Apparently, you’re meant to stay on the ground, otherwise your character becomes confused on how to step back onto the ground.
When dealing with these two monsters at the start, it almost feels like you could’ve run past them if you wanted to, since there’s no closed door you’d have to interact with, just an open gate that spills out onto the street. Maybe this was an opening they put in just in case someone didn’t have enough bullets and there’d be no way to fight both monsters?
The problem is I don’t know if they get to a certain point and reset back to where they initially were, or if they just stop following you altogether, or if they continue after you.
Most game enemies will lose focus after a bit, but you never know.
This is a Lovecraftian game after all, these enemies aren’t quite your typical run-of-the-mill ah, forget-about-’em type of creatures. If you ended up shooting them dead, you’ll get the achievement Now You’re On the Trolley!
You also might’ve noticed in that fight that reloading sucks when you’re in the middle of combat. It’s such a slow process and you can’t run your way through it. You have to walk while slotting the bullets back into the chamber all nonchalantly like there aren’t bloodthirsty beasts breathing down your neck.
Always, always reload once you’re out of combat.
When you’re actually out onto the streets, I’m still kind of hung up on how not much is being said about what’s going on.
I get that a lot of people don’t want to hear the character randomly talk to themselves a lot, and if you’re one of those people, I don’t think you’d enjoy playing Oxenfree, because those kids do not have an off switch. However this is more of a detective game, so it’s up to the main character to kind of deduce what’s going on, and the only thing they say when approaching the corner store is:
What the hell is going on?
Which has already been asked before without an answer.
Basically, a private investigator is Edward’s job, so he has to figure things out. Emily is merely a family member who’s looking for her uncle and making sure he’s all right, so I wouldn’t think she’d be one to work things out, and dare I say maybe she’s even used to this kind of thing, where Edward wouldn’t be.
So why is he not freaking out more?
Also, the game gives us the input for sprint as we traverse down the road, as if that wouldn’t have been helpful just a little earlier in the game. We don’t exactly walk fast, y’know?
When you reach the store, there’s a bicycle out front that you can ring the bell on.
There’s no achievement that I can tell for ringing bells in this game. This won’t be the first one you come across, and so it makes me wonder if the noise is to alert monsters. Otherwise…it just feels kind of weird to have them around.
Dinging bells is fun and all, but it’s even more fun when you’re dinging the bell for a purpose.
Like annoying someone at the front counter.
When you enter the store there’s a conversation between you and Batiste. You find out that it’s confirmed Jeremy has entered a pact with the Dark Man. We’re also being paid 150$ to help Emily find Jeremy…which he was just supposed to be at the hospital so it’s weird to pay someone that much just to confirm they’re where they should be.
Is that confirmation that she knew he wouldn’t just be at Derceto? Why else would she need to pay him.
If he knew the crap he was about to be put through, you know he’d be wanting a lot more as payment. I wouldn’t put it past him to collect some kind of raise at the end of all this.
Again there’s confirmation that Jeremy got his talisman from a Miss Jackson down the street and it’s how he’s hiding from everyone. We get Batiste’s Keys to the gate he’s locked up to keep the “ghouls and goblins” out.
Does this mean that these creatures have no name? They’re just creepy monsters that lurk about this world that seems to be a twisted memory of Jeremy’s.
Edward doesn’t even acknowledge the ghouls and goblins statement.
UGH.
It just p*sses me off that there’s not more context as to what’s going on. There’s not more questions being thrown about. There’s no internal dialogue when it comes to trying to wrap their mind around what this is all about. It’s just like an it-is-what-it-is mentality.
The next enemy we come across is a bit more deformed than the first ones.
This is also where we get a tutorial on throwing things at enemies, which are basically bricks that are laying around.
Here’s another con of the combat system.
I’m not sure if you’re capable of directly holding onto the item without the explicit need to throw it. The text says to tap to throw the item or hold to aim, but that means when you pick it up and release, it’s automatically thrown.
So now you have one less thing to use against a nearby enemy.
I tried seeing if I could somehow get around this because I couldn’t fathom how the game would want you to hold onto an item while aiming it when you walk so incredibly slow while doing so. And there aren’t even any enemies nearby once you take out the big guy, so it’s like…WHY AM I HOLDING THIS???
So while holding down the aim button, I went into the menu and then backed out. After that, I was actually holding onto the brick, without specifically aiming it. So I could move around normally. The problem I was then faced with was that I couldn’t throw the damn thing. I had to press every button to figure out how to get rid of the brick in my hand, since I couldn’t even aim my pistol at this point.
Oh but I could reload, so no worries there.
Eventually I got rid of the brick by pressing some button that I can’t remember, but that’s kind of a big issue.
Not only that, but at some point, I decided to switch to keyboard and mouse, because let’s face it shooting things is so much more convenient on a mouse than it is on a controller, and half the time I couldn’t bring my gun up to aim.
My cursor was on the screen after I switched to mouse, and when the cursor is on the screen, you’re not actually in the game. It acts as if you’re doing things outside of the game and therefore can’t do specific things…like aim a gun at a monster coming at you.
I had to revert back to controller to get everything working properly again.
I don’t know if you have to start the game with a mouse and keyboard in order to continue that functionality, but I do know not to ever switch mid-combat or I’m screwed.
Before you unlock the gate, if you look around you might be able to find a hatchet, which is a melee weapon to be used against monsters. Unfortunately for us, these melee weapons have durability to them. Even more unfortunate for us is we don’t know what their durability status is until they’re either showing a yellow broken symbol next to their image, or until they just break on you.
Trust me when I say don’t rely on them too heavily. They do break after like ten swipes or so on an enemy, maybe even less, and once you kill an enemy with a melee weapon you earn the achievement Come at Me!
After unlocking the gate, you’ll come across three enemies, two of which are upstairs and another which will come out at you on the ground floor.
You have bricks to throw, but I don’t suggest trying to aim for the big guy that’s patrolling back and forth because your odds of hitting it are slim to none, thanks to the railing blocking a good shot. You can instead lure it down the staircase and fight it in the open, and then go upstairs to attack the enemy that’s hiding around the corner like some mugger in an alleyway.
This is where you’ll find the Lagniappe Ju-Ju.
When you enter the room, Edward recognizes this place as Miss Jackson’s seance parlor, but how? Is he local? Was there an image of it that we somehow didn’t see up to this point? I just don’t understand how he could recognize it unless he’s already been here before.
Has he?
I don’t think he has.
Here’s where we pick up the Talisman for the achievement In Between There Are Doors and place it onto the slot on the table. The combination is found in the Talisman Schematics of our inventory, 3-5-8.
These puzzles get me every single time. I always end up placing the top and bottom numbers opposite of what they’re meant to be. The top, or smaller section, should be 8, and the bottom, larger portion should be 3, making the middle section 5.
So if you’ve got all the number aligned properly and it doesn’t do anything…switch the top and bottom. I know it’s a me thing.
It’s always a me thing.
The large dark slot in the talisman will reveal a place, which Edward doesn’t know the location despite being in the same freaking room as the objects the talisman reveals. Literally it reveals the table we found this thing on, and a torn painting, which we can see is right on the wall.
Luckily we don’t have to look, because the door automatically opens for us, spilling us back into reality and into Dr. Gray’s office.
I hate this guy.
He sounds so evil. All dry and sibilant and the amount of times he calls me Detective is over the top. Like, drop whatever act you’re trying to pull, because I get the skittery skin when near you bro. He can’t possibly be a friendly doctor to these patients. Not with the kind of demeanor he’s oozing.
Let’s see all the lines where he calls me Detective.
Detective, I was wondering when you were going to show up.
You don’t happen to have some identification, Detective?
Enjoying the Vieux Carre, Detective?
Welcome to Derceto, Detective.
A drink, Detective?
Oh you do belong in the French Quarters, Detective.
Having low standards is not a virtue, Detective.
I know I’m a detective, but if you don’t shut the f*ck up with pointing it out constantly, I swear.
The doctor doesn’t give us much to go on as to Jeremy’s whereabouts, and he doesn’t seem all that concerned about a patient of his missing, which is concerning in itself. Instead he gives you a drink and shoos you off to speak with the orderlies who might need help in their search.
And that, folks, is where we are met with Chapter 2.
