A Journey Through ALICE: Madness Returns 

Ha. A grind. Ded. Yes, the Dormouse Mecha Boss was supposed to be an actual boss encounter. But we could not get the mechanics of it tuned properly so it was abandoned and replaced with the Mecha Fail scene. To make up for that, we plan a TON more boss encounters in Alice: Asylum (though I do think it would be funny to bring back at least one fake-out boss in honor of this one). Regarding the issue of "boring repetition": We only saw this critique appear after Eurogamer gave MR a 50/100 and complained loudly about the game overstaying its welcome. After that, a lot of reviews echoed the sentiment. Prior to that, no one had mentioned it. I believe that was the moment of inception for this idea. /shakes fist at Eurogamer. For the nail-on-the-head way we approached the reveal with Bumby and Alice enacting her revenge... There were two big reasons (for me) as a creator. First, this is a deeply personal story for me. As a survivor of physical and psychological abuse, I wanted to see him squished under the wheels of the train. It was and remains a hugely cathartic moment for me. The gore and directness of it were intentionally over the top for that reason. Second, I didn't want him or this aspect of the storyline resurrected at some later date (by me or any other writer). I wanted to put the nails in the coffin and be done with it. No escape for these particular villains. Again, cathartic and final. No ambiguity. Only revenge. That being said, I do not believe - and I hope the games don't suggest - that revenge is the way to overcome trauma. In fact, what's ironic about the "game too long" comments is that I think TIME is the primary tool we need in healing these wounds. And that in the time we spend in healing, we must explore and confront, over and over, those things that make us uncomfortable. So the notion of replaying a game like AMR aligns with my idea of therapy. And the more of it and the longer we can spend doing it, the better. As for addressing the larger systemic abuses and "the system" - that's what we do in Asylum. And it continues her arc - from someone who overcomes her inner demons (Alice) to someone who addresses real-world threats against her life (AMR) - and then transforms into someone who can take everything she's learned and use it to help others (think about the other orphans, the children who have already been sold - what of them?). That next step is what we do in Asylum. Everything we've done with design for the 3rd game (Asylum), we've done via Crowd Design over on Patreon. In that way, I hope that we are able to continue delivering through these games the narrative elements and emotional aspects that make them so cathartic for so many. Making these games has done a lot of help heal my own personal wounds. And I am very happy to see that playing them has helped so many others. Thanks, Ragnar, for another great dissection. Your feedback will help shape where we go next.

The art for this game has held up SO well. It deserves to be held up as an example of why a solid artistic style can be so much better than photorealism for games and interactive media in general.

While I agree with you about the bumby confrontation being cartoonish, I feel like you missed an important aspect of WHY him (and the system he represented) being so ...industrial and encompassing so many children was included in the story. One of the most beautiful aspects of AMR to me is the interweaving of the industrial revolution and the subsequent systemic abuse with more "individual" abuses, and the direct correlation thereof. And with that comes Bumby and the asylum's role. When we play as Alice in the very, very, VERY beginning of the game, we are told a few things. 1) she works for bumby in exchange for room and board and 2) she has a very bitter relationship with the other orphans there. They jeer at her, and so, she jeers in return. Something we can understand, even, from the view of our troubled protagonist, and with the stylization of the game and their odd, beady faces, we almost forget that these are ALSO troubled, traumatized orphans (see: charlie's story as we leave bumby's office). As we get further in the game and are introduced to the mad children and the dollhouse level, that that theme is emphasized once more, but the idea of the weak and innocent being exploited on systemic levels is one you point out as being present in the whole game. It simply comes to a head at the dollhouse. However, I would like to point out the explicit asylum reference in the design of the mad children Not only is this about Alice coming to realize the truth about her trauma and how she's been exploited for her inner trouble, it's also an evolution of the survivor's guilt narrative from before. Alice in the first game WAS the child, helpless and confused, and was incapable of stopping what occured to her. But now, she's an adult. Regardless of her trauma and abuse, by being unable to see Bumby for what he was, and by pushing away the other orphans (who were just as vulnerable as she was), she was unwittingly complacent in their abuse. That's a huge part of why she's so infuriated at the end. She has to come to peace with how even though she couldn't stop Lizzie's abuse, how even though she failed to see through Bumby's lies and failed to support other victims, she can change that NOW, and she can not only act as an agent for her own wellbeing, but for that of others. Sorry, I hope this didn't come across as a harsh criticism or attack, but this part of the story meant a lot to me growing up, because I also went from a helpless child to someone who, despite everything, felt a lot of self loathing when I realized I turned a blind eye to other abuses, and from there, realized I had a lot more power to stop those abuses than I thought I did. This wasn't just about Alice's own vengeance, as satisfying as it was-- it was also about protecting the other children in her own limited scope, as a now-adult who finally understood what was happening. And I don't think it's a coincidence that child sexual labor and abuses are being drawn in comparison to the industrial revolution of london, in which children were also sacrificed bodily for dangerous labor.

I was abused for most of my life, in different stages. Without getting too obscenely graphic and inappropriate for RU-vid, when I wasn’t permitted to be around the outside world whatsoever, I did have one book hidden away and it happened to be Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I would sort of, create and recreate Wonderland over and over again in my mind for years, and during the different stages of prolonged abuse, shifted and manifested. So when I finally became free of it on my own by escaping and working away from homelessness, I had always a particularly fond soft spot for Alice in Wonderland. Eventually when I was looking into games, I found both American McGee’s. Seeing someone else interpret trauma, mental illness and abuse through the sort of lens of Wonderland like I did, meant the absolute world to me. It helped me relate and understand and, honestly not be so quiet to others about the things that happened to me. I’ve only played both once, because of the extremely emotional impact it has on me, but it means more to me than I can express. As dumb as it sounds, it was really nice to be able to beat through creatures and such that symbolized things in the story, along with my own symbolism of it. I will always adore American McGee’s Alice for the creativity and special place in my recovery it had.

"You used me and abused me, but you will not destroy me" I absolutely loved Alice saying that, in no way was i taken advantage of, but I can see people feeling empowered over Alice's character. How much she grew and overcame her dark past. One of the many reasons I fell in love with the games.

Here's a little correction I'd like to make: According to "The Art of Alice: Madness Returns" book and McGee himself, the Queen of Hearts is a young version of Alice, not an avatar of Lizzie. I think the script didn't do a good job communicating that since we know from the first game that the Queen IS part of Alice's psyche.

To me Alice madness returns was about abuse shs went through from Dr. Bumbby and apathy of word around. Allowing him keep getting away with what he did to Lizzy and then to the whole household of Liddle family. How dr. Bumbby used systems in place to try and bury the truth of his crimes. How he used his skills to prey on orphans under his care, and Alice was just one of many. Sure we can call it was cartoony of Bumbby to explain his plans to Alice and laugh over how he gets away with his operation...but to me it honestly felt like moment where he showed how rotten he was. How sadistic and proud he is of suffering he caused. Of damage he did to those kids...and he keeps getting paid handsomely for it. He keeps flexing this all on Alice because he believes she's powerless to do anything against him. He is rubbing it in and enjoying every second of Alice's reactions. A situation he can show her how much of a nothing she is, and Alice has to take it. Which is why l loved her pushing him under the train. She give this abuser what he thought was impossible - grave consequences for his actions. She took revenge for everybody this guy hurt and abused. She made sure he can't do it to again to anybody. In other words Alice madness returns is for me story of revenge on her abuser, and killer of her family.

One of the things I love about Madness Returns' thematic shift from internal to external horror is that it challenges one of horror's most sacrosanct myths - the Dangerous "Crazy Person". The truth is that, in the real world, people with mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence, prejudice and systematic abuse and exploitation than its perpetrators. The fact that we have not only seen, but, in a way, experienced Alice's struggles against her mental illness in the first game is an example of a story that only video games can tell. And we can then see the way she takes this madness (i.e. the Wonderland Symbolism), and the strength she's gained from the experience of overcoming and learning to live with and deal with it, and it becomes the strength which becomes her greatest weapon against those who would exploit and oppress her and people like her. That's some damn deft thematic work.

I remember this one AMcG:A+A:MR video and how it praised the first's sense of finality and critizing the second as "unnecessary and it just serves as an excuse to make Alice suffer even more". And I was just here thinking: "Does this person not know the concept of relapse or...?", because it happens all the time with mental health patients. Did that person seriously think that someone that has been catatonic for 10 years in an asylum was gonna be a-ok after waking up and leaving? Plus, (afaik) American McGee himself confirmed that Alice being dressed in her blue Wonderland dress at the end of the first game was an indicator that she wasn't out of the woods yet, since that's not how she actually looks like in the real world (as seen in A:MR). Great essay, RagnaRox. I was waiting for this one!

bruh, the fact that the villain is revealed and condemned so clearly is GREAT, because it hammers home the fact that *they know what they are doing*. People like that in real life know that they are incredibly, horrifically evil, and they *enjoy* it. For folks like me who *need* to see the villain unmasked fully, it's cathartic. There are no more lies, no more insidious hints that she's spouting nonsense. And then there is an appropriately gory death

The ending was clumsy for sure, but it's a story-fied version of what the actual Sigmund Freud did; that's why he's famous for his weird sex theories, like how he suggested "the moment we're born we're horny for our parents," to paraphrase his wack shit. His clients were wealthy/politically important patriarchs that were abusing the young women and little girls in their families, and rather than lose out on that Good Money, Freud made up these theories so that he didn't have to report abuse, with the bonus that it was a Condition that required further care by him (ie gaslighting so they keep quiet about it.) Then, with the actual problem left untreated, that would keep their PTSD symptoms going so he could further justify long-term clients, all while essentially giving a medical go-ahead for the women and children to continue being abused. That plus Magdalene asylums are, unfortunately, pretty accurate to how women in the Victorian and Edwardian periods were treated via mental health. May Freud be perpetually pushed in front of trains for eternity in Hell.

This was.... such a good video that made me feel all sort of things. I've played Madness Returns first like 10 years ago, after a friend sent me the soundtrack to the game and i was left mesmerized, and i demanded the game for my birthday then, age 16. I wasn't much into horror but i finished the game in 3 days. I've heard so many people dunk on this saga for either the edginess or the way people interpret the mental health issues as being mishandled (which i disagree with but have heard too much) and for a long time it made me push the game aside out of shame while... also constantly thinking back to it, always having it haunting me. The two videos you made on Alice really encapsulated why this game stayed with me all that time. There's nothing i could say better than what you've said across those videos. I suspect that as someone with trauma and various mental illness and Otherness, i connected to the very elements you highlight in the videos, and it explains how it was always cathartic to think about again. Two things that stood out in this particular video to me were the way you talked about how the critisms about the game's pacing made you feel more impatient than you actually were and how this sort of critisms take away from your appreciation of the game that was otherwise sincere. It's a feeling i got about this saga before without realizing, and that i have with my favorite games in ways i've realized so much i ended up muting my fav games on social media because i can't stand it anymore. The way some stories connect to us is very personal i think, and socmed have turned it into a social performance where constantly bringing up the faults is the way to go. This part of the video really sank in so much at once for me. The second part that stood out to me was the ending, the conclusion about how this was an ode to the Otherness, to people who felt outcast by the society. It brought me back so much to when i was a teen, and how much i needed this message back then, and that this game served into having me take it in then. I haven't played this game in years, ever since my ps3 broke, but the nostalgia i felt watching this duology of video made me go buy Madness Returns on Steam, hopefully to play it again anytime soon. Thank you for such a good, well articulated video, that really talked about the game in all the ways it deserved to be talked about, even with its downs, and in a way, thank you for helping me reconnect with this part of myself that resonated so much with this game that i have constantly buried away due to embarrassment. It really feels special. Thank you for your hard work o7

Great video! However, I never thought that Alice herself was s*xaully abused by Bumby, just her sister who was then murdered and the house fire was a cover up. Alice later uncovered that the other children were abused as well. Dollhouse was the representation of the trauma the Insane Children have indured, not necessarily just her own. So the ending for me makes sense: Bumby when confronted just laughs at her because who's gonna believe a poor loony young woman? I think Alice confronting him without the subtlety is the core of the story.

17:47 this whole segment talking about the magical girl dresses is just *chefs kiss*. I was utterly obsessed with Alice solely because of the, as you said, aesthetics & narrative, and also because of the amazing fashion styles. I am terrible at confrontational combat in games and the only reason i powered through in this game was because i was just utterly inlove with every aspect of it, and haven't really seen a game which ticked all of my aesthetic boxes like Alice did. I've always wanted to invest in the artbook but never got the chance to but hopefully oneday i will. At the time the game released, i was very much in my Alice in wonderland phase, and i was rather obsessed with reading up on asylums and mental illness. So seeing this game on the shelf at the local gameshop was like a dream come true. Alice played a significant role in my adolescent years and i will always be grateful for McGee creating this stunning character & world

Madness Returns is makes me feel at home, I daydream a lot so when I played the game I just felt at home. Being at the time still in my emo phase and being an artist I still find myself drawing Alice to get into my head space for art. This game makes me just feel not alone in my thoughts and depression. I don't know how to explain it but with this game I would have been more lost than now. Thank you for the video!

45:50 Perfect choice of tarot cards. 3 of Swords to represent extreme pain and suffering. Tower to represent a total loss and traumatic event, but with a light at the end of the tunnel and the possibility to rise again. And 9 of Swords to represent fears and anxiety. Overall represents Alice's physical and mental struggles and her eventual rise because of and in spite of them.

I would love to see this game come to the Switch. Original will always hold a special place in my heart but this one is a rare example of how a sequel CAN be better than the original. It's SO polished.

Thank you for covering one of my favorite games. The checkpoints were annoying but I have loved the two games for almost my whole life.

1st game: you confront yourself, you thing your quirks are an illness and try to heal, by suppressing them. That's psychiatry. 2nd game: you learn to live with your quirks, not illness just emotions and thoughts sometimes running wild; to control them to a certain extent, to avoid them controlling you. That's psychoanalysis. I like the shift in focus. It's in line with the character's progression. The point of therapy is not to be eteranlly in therapy but to go out into the real world and cope with it and all the external things that harm us. Alice 2 is not about healing, it's about living in the real world at the same time you're trying to heal.

This was one of the first video games I ever played, at 19. It still holds up, it’s like it never aged! I’m also a cosplayer now, and Hysteria Alice is one of my personal favorite works, and I keep my Vorpal Blade on display, it’s one of my best prop creations! Gods I love this game so, so very much! One quick edit: I believe what happens to Alice’s sister is not simply physical abuse, but rape. Also, the criticisms of the ending are something I agree with yet also relished in, as someone who has experienced various forms of sexual/mental abuse. Sometimes defeating the immediate villain is more satisfying because you recognize the whole system takes more than just one momentary solution! It’s satisfying in that way, yet as you said, rather cartoonish. If the third game is ever brought to fruition (gods, I hope so) I wonder how McGee will handle the way our current world reflects the series…

As someone who has experienced this sort of systematic abuse, and know others whom I've heard stories of, the "that right I'm evil and no one will believe you" speech/vibe is a lot more common than you'd think. I actually found this quite cathartic in-game, the power fantasy that I could just push them on some train tracks and have it all be done almost granted a sense of relief. Yes, its never that simple, but in a way we always wish it was.

"And maybe get a good gender feel... I know a few people-" I'm one of those people for sure haha. Also, as a trauma victim, Alice has always been a HUGE coping character and game series for me- really hoping for Alice: Asylum!! I love both the first and second game, they're both different but gosh they've both helped me cope with so many issues stemmed in trauma, identity, and struggle. Neither game are perfect, but gosh they're both two of my absolute favorite games! If nothing else, seeing the first game, and then watching her 'relapse' in the sequel, and seeing the vague ending - it gave me such a sense of assurance that "progress and growth isn't linear. Relapse is progress. Struggling really hard again, even maybe worse than before, is part of growth." Anyways, thank you so much for your videos!!

I feel like I want to nitpick the ending of the video about the sexual abuse stuff because at some level I disagree with your thought process of how surprising it was. If you collect enough family tokens in the game, you can unlock more dialogue with Lizzie and she speaks about a man who groped her in her home. You can unlock the first explicit dialogue of this at the end of the third chapter, in the asian inspired world. And you can discover more as you keep collecting them. To me the sexual assault reveal at the end wasn't a surprise at this point at all if you had paid attention and the whole last chapter is just sinister when you understand that this was about sexual abuse. But the shock was immense when I heard Lizzy's dialogue and I wish more games or media would have guts to handle this subject like this. As you showed in the video, there were a lot more designed hints on body parts etc as you progress in the story. It was very obvious that Bumby must have been behind this abuse all along. I can agree that the manical laugh and the last dialogue could have been polished to something equally sinister as the whole game.

Ah, Madness Returns, a 10 years old game with better looking hair physics than whatever current day AAA games are trying to boast

Overall great video, but I highly disagree with your take on the ending. The sad fact of the matter is - horrible people don't THINK they're horrible people, no matter how objectively abhorrent their actions are. In real life, people don't actively seek to be evil for the sake of it. They justify the evil, they twist words and reality itself to keep themselves as the good guy. Humans are arrogant and their egos are fragile - they'll do anything to make sure that in their own minds, they're the ones in the right. "She wanted it", "It's your fault for being weak", "She shouldn't have given me the opportunity", "I'm just doing what I have to to survive", "I'm not in the wrong because it's the right of the strong to use the weak". No matter how absurd it seems to normal people, it happens because it's a biproduct of the human mind's design. Our egos, our inherent bias towards ourselves, is to protect ourselves. Without it, humans would wallow in self loathing over the sacrifices that living necessitate. If we didn't prioritize ourselves to a degree, we'd be crying messes over every animal or plant we ate. We have to be selfish to live - Bumby is what happens when a person's ego goes unchecked. All they care about is themselves and any harm they cause to others doesn't matter as long as it benefits them. He'll do the most disgusting, vile acts a human can commit and still believe he's in the right because the only thing in the world that matters is HIM. Bumby isn't cartoonish - he's frighteningly human. And at that point in the story, subtly doesn't do anyone any good. It's good to be subtle to start with - you need to ease both the characters and the audience into the dark and uncomfortable topics. But there comes a point where both the characters and audience are fully aware of the depths of what's happening and the stakes. Why be subtle at that point? Once everyone is aware, continuing to beat around the bush and whisper about taboo topics doesn't help. That's exactly the sort of attitude that allows the taboo topics to keep happening - because everyone is too scared or uncomfortable to face it head on. In character, Alice has no reason to be subtle. She knows what's happening and so does Bumby. Given her direct personality, it doesn't make any sense for her to continue to dance around the topic during the confrontation. I can't imagine how cathartic it must be for those who deeply empathize with Alice to watch her take justice into her own hands and do away with a villain who probably echoes their own demons.

I'm really thankful for this video and the previous one. Actually, knowing that there was going to be an AMR video is what convinced me to buy the game on Steam as soon as I saw it on the store after all these years. I remember fondly the many afternoons I spent playing my copy of Madness Returns for the Xbox 360, a console I no longer possess, but nothing could have prepared me for just how much I'm enjoying myself playing it now, ten years later. That thing you said about trying to enjoy games without much external influence (like those comments that say “too long”, “too short”, “overstays its welcome”) because so far the game's rhythm has been perfect for me. How deeply you appreciate it that my heart fills with nothing but the sensation of being seen and understood, finally. I played Madness Returns before American McGee's, and while I love them both, Madness Returns has a special place in my heart. You're correct when you call it a gateway drug, because Madness' aesthetic still defines what I look in many things today, and the tone of its narrative has influenced not only what I read but also what I write. Thank you so much for another great video.

You made an excellent point about any form of media having a difficult time effectively portraying the severity of mental health issues in an impactful way. The authors behind the most impactful stories have experienced that form of trauma to some extent which is why their depiction of how a person should react can feel a bit too realistic. While the ending might be a bit on the nose with the final reveal and cartoonist evil laugh you can feel the catharsis when you finally kill the doctor, and that I think was the point. If I could put my old psychiatrist behind bars or make him experience the pain he put me through with misdiagnosis and actively trying to have me put in a psych ward I'd do so in a heartbeat. I also wouldn't take any game criticism too seriously if the primary complaint is about what feels like an intentional design choice. We all have an inherent bias on how we believe a game should approach certain design choices. However this is where empathy can be a useful tool in understanding why the author took a certain approach. In other words, the criticism against any form of entertainment should be whether we feel the author achieved their goal rather than how we felt they should have approached it (of course this topic is more nuanced, but that would result in an hour long discussion).

I kind of liked the ending, the way she just silently gave him a shove and the sudden slam of the train was so satisfying.

This game will always have a special place in my heart. I engaged with it when I was very young, and while that may have been slightly unwise, it helped me feel understood in a time where no one really could. Being a young mentally ill girl with quite a few repressed memories (without even knowing it at the time) this game hit home for me in a lot of ways. As I grew up I could look back and be more critical of the narrative's lack of subtlety by the end and a few other things, but I keep coming back for the atmosphere, the feelings it stirs up, the music, the themes at large, not to forget the nostalgia. It's something unique and profound that is difficult to describe concisely. Even if some emotional aspects are hard to describe accurately, i think what you have created here is as solid as it gets. This video is a great look at the game and it was a joy to watch

I have to disagree with the 5th part with Bumby. That could be me being completely attentive to detail, but he was foreshadowed for quite a while now with the memories Alice gets. Hell, he’s foreshadowed from the beginning with a girl singing the “The train is coming with it’s shiny cars”. There was a story there from the beginning. The memories about Lizzie have already been alluding to it. So to say that it was sudden feels like it’s giving a disservice to the memories.

I disagree with your take on the ending. If anything I saw it as freeing as an S.A victim myself and childhood abuse. Evil people lik Dr. Bumby exist and for me it was someone in my own family who abused me that was considered a star student and someone that could do no wrong. Abusers are everywhere and some live amongst us. Alice pushing Dr. Bumby to his death is a cathartic wish that many abuse survivors like myself would have wished to have had.

Amazing video! Thanks so much for going through this! As someone that is.. I suppose calling it 'mentally unwell' is alright to say yet doesn't feel as crappy to say to someone else about myself... I have some different thoughts and theories about some things in the game just from my own feelings of trauma and how I've been trying to fight it for many years. .. My thoughts are in no specific order.. I'm just typing as I think it up.. and I will be mentioning spoilers too. 1) Immediately I felt Bumby was off as a character/person in the game since by the time I knew about the game I was already in therapy. He already sent out red flags talking about 'forgetting' trauma, suppressing memories and pain. It was the exact opposite of what I was learning to do in order to learn to better fight back against the negative thoughts. 2) I already had been going through years of people openly and not so openly using/mistreating me because I wasn't seen as normal or 'sane' to others, so a lot of this really hit me hard. .. I was having some flashbacks because of these sections in the game. 3) The ending with Bumby at the train station, I felt more like this was by the time we already get the idea that Alice isn't a reliable narrator to tell what has happened or happening because in her current state she's going so much back and forth to and from Wonderland in order to escape reality as much as try to use it as a sort of back door to finding information on her trauma that she was locking away. With my own traumas, I do recall sometimes only remembering some things happening not quite how they were in reality much like it seems in that scene itself. He could very well have said something not so open about what he was doing but now nobody will know because she took it on herself to push him out of existence into an oncoming train. ... OR... she didn't and she imagined it. Fantasizing about catching the one or ones responsible for her mental and physical state. Maybe he actually fell on his own and she saw it happen or read something on it. 4) When Wonderland bleeds into reality, it felt a lot more to me like she had 'snapped' by that point... either because she killed Bumby or something else triggered it after being able to hold only so much. She very much uses Wonderland as an escape from reality yet also as a way to push herself to find what she's looking for in her trauma, going back over it over and over looking for answers. She had been told to take medicines too so it's possible it's been making things worse for her. 5) Real reason the house burned down... I don't really know why they went this route with it but it still could've worked if they make it a biiit more believable in that maybe Alice WAS reading in the library. Possibly forgot the lantern/candle there. The cat got spooked when Bumby was creeping about and knocked it over. Maybe Bumby noticed there was a little fire happening and tried to get it to spread more quickly ( it's possible he did lock her sister in her room because he might've gone too far in his abuse and this fire happening was the perfect thing to him to be able to hide it all ). So what would've been more easy to tell of arson to hide another crime... actually became a much more tragic set of events that played out. .... this is what all I can think of right now... wrist is hurting but hope I've made sense. o.o;

this game will always remain in my heart in its aesthetics and story. It opened a new page for me in Alice in Wonderland and shaped both my thinking and creativity. The visual references were incredibly good, especially in the final levels. I even wished for a more brutal aesthetic like in the first game. However, as much as I love it, I could never quite ignore the negative aspects of the game. I don't necessarily feel the game is too long, but rather it never gets to the point. Not only was the gameplay that way in this regard, but the graphic design as well. Although it was pretty good, I constantly had the feeling that the game had already told me everything the level wanted to tell me, but it went on for hours. If a lot of that was cut away and presented a bit more clearly, it would be perfect. Maybe that's because the gameplay was never an obstacle for me to overcome. It was somehow always clear what I was supposed to do and I had the solution many times, hours before. Not like a real trauma or a psychological problem. Here the solution is unclear at first. Everything is confusing. You don't know the solution and you fall down again and again. This was solved much better in Silent Hill 1-3. Often you are wandering aimlessly trying to figure out what exactly is the problem and what is my goal? The mini-games and many attempts to upgrade the gameplay were good, but none of them were really thought out. The puzzles not really thought through to the end. There was a similar problem and almost identical solutions in Nier Automata. Somewhat better solved, but also many years later. Still, it's an outstanding game and I wish for nothing more than to be able to play the third game someday.

I think you don't understand how much child s** trade was common in orphanages and asylums. Especially during 18th and 19th century, it was basically a breeding ground for it. And even if it wasn't for s** trade, children were treated as cattle and something to be sold and be made for profit. This type of abuse deserves to be exposed in it's full. And it's also bittersweet that she can only enact revenge on one man, but literally "the best" she can do at the moment

(core) really loved this, i think you nailed a lot of it on the head perfectly. for me, i wanted to comment on some of what you said about madness returns as an external journey. for some background, i/we have dissociative identity disorder or DID. it comes with huge amounts of dissociative amnesia, forgetting past trauma as well as day to day life. for me with madness returns, it embodies what it's like to have dissociative amnesia. alice would always have had to do further personal digging after the events of the first game. dinah was never the cause of the fire, that was just the level of understanding she could safely have at the time. she leaves rutledge, a place of massive medical abuse, and eventually she either would've processed the truth as it trickled through, or, as it happened to us, she would've been triggered and retraumatised, leading to the past events coming to light in her memories. i like to imagine bumby sh*tting himself as alice exits the asylum. he r*ped her sister and probably either assumed alice had died in the fire or was insane in an asylum. instead, alice returns but actually can't remember his role in the events. she knows something's wrong, hence why she keeps asking about the truth, not quite the guilt and self-hatred of the first game but something else. bumby gaslights her into forgetting the past, but ironically spurs her on to uncover the full truth because of what he did to wonderland. i also think that unconsciously alice saw what was happening with the other children and her brain dissociated it away, something we deal with frequently, and that guilt sat inside of her to fester as well as triggering something in her. she had to just lie in bed and hear her sister be graphically r*ped before nearly dying in a fire that cost her her entire family. seeing poor children be hurt in the same way was going to resurface those memories too, hence why the dollhouse level exists in madness returns. i think we'll make a video about it eventually but for us madness returns nails that feeling of thinking you're done remembering and processing but you're nowhere near done. pandora's box has more to give you, and you can't ever go back. madness returns is alice going on a deeply intimate and personal journey of reclaiming her lost memories against all external forces to stop her from knowing the truth. it's the drive to discover the truth that pushes her through the game, not anyone or anything else. for us as survivors of childhood sexual abuse, with us only fully processing and remembering this trauma that happened in childhood in our mid 20s, this game absolutely nails it in a way that is so visceral we can't even play the dollhouse level. i don't mean this as a criticism. this is the ugly real picture of what abusive p*dophiles are like. it's not exploitative or played for shock like other pieces of media, it's horrifying and dehumanising but the people affected by it are rehumanised and reclaim their autonomy against the abuse, and the abuser himself pays for it. "the past must be paid for", and bumby pays for it. for me, if you're gonna depict csa, you have to come at it with the right intent, and for me the alice games have the right intent. an example for me of another piece of media that nails it is an anime called revolutionary girl utena. it also depicts graphic csa and abuse of minors but it nails it in the same way that the alice games do. the story is centered on the characters inflicted by that abuse, with empathy and a deep understanding of their struggles, shows their lack of power then gives them that power again to reclaim from the people that hurt them. the alice games don't reek of ableism like the outlast series, they don't exploit and torture the characters being abused for the sake of enjoyment like suckerpunch does, they don't drop sexual violence particularly against female characters as a chance for a male hero to rescue them like, well, most things? particularly films? most prominently remembering a scene from the first spiderman film. most media shows sexual violence and abuse from the perspective of the person who isn't going through it, often from a male gaze directed at helpless women. the alice games instead recentre it on the protagonist and show the direct experience of her working through that trauma and give her autonomy against the man who put her through it. so for me madness returns isn't handling csa in a tacky or exploitative way, in fact for me it's one of the most graceful, hard hitting, and accurate portrayals we've ever seen in media so far, and without it i don't know if we'd be where we are today. it helped us confront our own lack of memories and search for the truth, and i'm glad it did. anyway thanks for reading if anyone does, we'll make a video of this hopefully someday since i think not a lot of people (thankfully) know what it's like to be traumatised, forget, then have to remember you went through it, same with the fact that the alice games give a lot of DID symbolism that we wanna get into sometime too.

I've been following for a while. You are a great writer. great scripts! Also great choice of games to cover!

This game because a fixation for me before it came out and a short time after. To me, it felt so impowering to see this girl who suffered with mental illness in a rough and scary world, to be able to find herself and find the truth and make her own narrative. Also being able to imagine a cool heroic version of yourself in your head was already something I was kinda doing when I was young, so it was relatable on that level as well. I didn't have a super traumatic experience with doctors and such, but I did feel like no one actually cared to help me and just wanted me to do what they were told to make me do, which was get me back in school. So it was also relatable on that level of having doctors and teachers and anyone else, just mishandle my mental health and not even truly care. To them I was just an annoying kid who should just do as I'm told. Relatable on THAT level as well, adults being incompetent or just not caring and other kids around you just thinking you're weird. This game and Alice herself were like a comfort. It instilled in me that I decide who I am and what I can do.

Throughly enjoyed this video. I played this game relatively recently, a year ago, and it really clicked with me, I couldn't have found it in a more ideal moment that it became one of my faves of all time. I connect with that feeling, or something similar, to that you described with the public's opinion on the game's pace. I've felt that disconnect? and then sudden urge to plug in? (I don't know how to express it) with the public's concensus. It's a very weird feeling ngl, it's like some mild gaslighting but not really malicious. It sometimes makes me feel a bit alienated tbh and struggle to share likes and dislikes about things but I quickly realize that we sometimes experience the same things very differently, and that's cool. And regarding the ending, I can't really disagree with the criticisms. I still think the story "earned" the big bad being such an unapologetic PoS, and still perfectly works in giving the final empowerment to Alice in a world so uninterested in her wellbeing, but I can't shake off the feeling that, yeah, it was a bit clumsy. Although I could make the argument that this feeling originates more from cultural influences rather than from s fault of the work itself, both in gaming culture with a post-SH2 world (with its gray and grey-er themes) and its still inexperience with heavier topics, especially surrounding mental health, women and systemic issues, and in the wider (media) culture about what is "correct" representation of real life elements in fiction, empowerment, where the limit lies between a work being 1-to-1 depiction or a caricature/satire, espcially surrounding mental health, women and systemic issues. Madness Return is surprisingly not the only game I like where the general playerbase seem to have this or similar criticism that I think there might a deeper layer to it. But really, this was an amazing video and any love for the Alice series is always welcome, especially in a thoughtful way as I feel the game wants to be engaged that way.

I played Alice earlier this year after watching your first video and loved it though it was hard to play as a modern gamer that didn't play PC games of that Era. Then I played Madness Returns, and loved it even more than the first one. Something that really stood out to me is how much the game made it clear that someone suffering from mental illness are not a danger to those around them. Even the cops comment that she is just a danger to herself. This is sadly STILL so uncommon in media. Like seriously how is Madness Returns one of the few stories that makes it clear ppl with mental illness are not a danger to others. With regards to the ending, I actually like it, it is an over the top thing yes. However, I think it works very well, that kind of abuse of patients is yes a very exaggerated version of reality, but it is very rooted in what kind of abuse asylums did commit. Asylums committed so much abuse on their patients, from testing experimental procedures on them to sexual abuse. So the idea of a Dr that figured out how to erase memories using this skill to sell patients to wealthy individuals as toys, is very "real". I also think they did a great job foreshadowing this by slowly building up distrust in me regarding the Dr.

This video dropped just before my commute to work but now I know I have something awesome waiting for me when I get back home. The previous video of Alice is one of my faves and not knowing much about the sequel is making me hyped to watch this video

I’ve been saying this for years, but I’ll never miss out on the chance to say it again - I think madness returns is - though completely different in every sense from the original book - the best and most accurate adaptation of the original alice in wonderland. it’s a well known fact that lewis caroll groomed the girl he wrote the book for, and tying wonderland together with the reality of that abuse instead of of veering towards happy like the disney version, or not addressing its influence like the first game, is a logical conclusion to be drawn from wonderland and its creation - it’s the step forward that makes the most sense, and in a certain way it’s what the story of wonderland *needs* after caroll’s own abusive actions were brushed off for centuries. yes, bumby can be heavy handed, and I think his speech at the end definitely could’ve been done better, but his general appearance as a constant and pervasive force in alice's life is accurate to how memories of abusers often fit into the minds of their victims. obviously, alice killing bumby will never undo what he did, and it won’t topple the industry of sex trafficking - but it bleeds wonderland into the real world, and lifts that taboo, that pressure to keep everything blissfully ignorant, just a bit. madness returns as a game reflects this too - a video game isn’t going to change anything, but it may empower others to tell their own stories, as well as help normalize discussion of said topics, including the reality of caroll’s abuse and its ties to the wonderland story we know and love. alice’s actions, and this game, are nothing in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time? they’re a start

Oh my Lord. I never thought I'd see Emilie autumns novel in a video in the year of our lord 2020. What a hot mess that was..... Awesome review btw. Loved the coverage of the art and both positive and negative qualities :)

Man. Honestly, fucking thank you! This game holds a special place in my heart & one of those comfort games I just put on & escape into when the need arises. I just recently discovered your channel from your Riddick & VTM Bloodlines videos, & I'm glad that I found someone who really takes the time to dissect each element of a great game & showcase the beauty of the concepts & why they work so well, rather than nitpicking the few threads that will inevitably stand out. That takes some restraint & I appreciate it. Everything you touched on in this video is exactly why I consider this (& to an ever-so-slightly lesser degree; American Mcgee's original Alice game) not only a great video game adaptation of the original Carroll source material but my favourite iteration/reimagining of the entire story & the universe it inhabits. An absolutely wonderful video essay love-letter to an absolutely wonderful game. ..here's hoping Asylum gets the greenlight sooner rather than later 🙏

This is mad. About 4 hours ago I randomly wanted to listen to someone talk about this franchise and watched the first video. I came back and bam! New video. This game is so beautiful and I am so happy ppl still talk about this game

Thank you so much for the great video ! I held myself back from this game because of the theme, so it's nice to have a deep dive like this one to reconsider and know what to expect. In a weird way, i think there is something to say about the ending being so "absurd" : i don't think there would have been a way to respect the trauma and the principle of "game" (overcoming obstacle via skills) without it. I appreciate the sort of "pure catharsis" it seems to offer, as you said, but more then that i think it also respect how our minds work, because yeah it's not realistic but for some people your abuser(s) FEELS like an archvilain with mad plans. It's sometimes easier that way. It's more comprehensive to have this crazy narative that put the person as the machiavelian bastard that ruins your life purpucefully then face the banality of evil, the way that althought they are integral to your daily life via symptoms and trauma, you're often nothing much to them. Well, all of that at least for a time, as a necessary part of healing. In anycase, amazing job as usual, thank you !

Funnily enough I have never been exposed to the "repetitive virus", yet when I reached the Dollhouse, I started to feel the game losing its edge - despite, visually, Dollhouse is the one that gets psychologically the grittiest. It wasn't the mechanics or the story - it was the enemies. When you see the same exact black-blob-foes in every region, fighting them with the same exact moves.... while thematically it fits perfectly, it starts to get tiring after a while, to the point that I had to put down the game because of game fatigue... and I promptly, and unwillingly, forgot about it. Another thing is that MR did not have the same atmosphere First Alice had, it was nowhere as that gothic gritty dark fantasy everyone liked before... and I will be honest, MR, for me, was a bit of an acquired taste. You can see the love the devs and lads poured into it, it has a clear direction as well, and the visuals, while it was nowhere like First Alice, instead it established its own, separate, and really cool MR Style - but it didn't exactly pack the same punch as the previous installment did. Comparing two separate eggs was a bit of a bad move from our part. It felt like something held MR back from using its true potential, and if you check American's " Alice 2 March " trailer, you can see the amount of cut content from it - all the threads that would've connected Alice 1 and 2 mechanics and perhaps content-wise. MR might not be the greatest of the two games, but it was still alright - enough alright that MR and First Alice together got enough of a big fanbase to warrant a third entry. And I think that's a win.

I lived in a small town and couldn’t really indulge alternative aesthetics much because of it and these games have me an outlet to really explore those things. Forever grateful.

I'm more surprised this video wasn't already on your channel. Here's to watching you make a video on Alice: Asylum... the years after its release.

Excellent video! So glad you made it for Madness Returns. I think possibly, speaking only from personal experience, women may find the ending less cartoonish. It's not unusual for an abuser, gas lighter or narcissist to spill everything like that once they believe they have utterly gained control, broken down or discredited a victim as Bumby thought he had with Alice. What could she do to stop him? As a woman during that time period (which for some women, sadly hasn't changed), she had no power to stop him, even if she wasn't mad. She was impoverished and young, had been at an asylum for years and had no social standing whatsoever. It never felt cartoony to me. It was clear confirmation that what Alice suspected was true. In a world full of madness, lies and symbolism, the villain defines his character and crimes clearly. That moment allows Alice to self-actualize, merging her timid, pallid real-world self to her powerful Wonderland psyche. In that moment, she does what she does best: slays a Jabberwocky. It was immensely satisfying for me. True, it doesn't fix -anything- but it unlocked Alice's power to control her own life, mind and destiny. She broke free of her abuser's machinations and became her true self, shedding the skin Bumby had molded her into. AMR really is an amazing game. Thank you so much for exploring it. Hope one day you'll be able to do the same with Asylum.

I agree with what you said about the final reveal, but there is one thing I love about that man being pushed under the train. It takes him from being this dangerous and invulnerable figure, into a pathetic and fragile human. As someone who's been through abuse and SA, I used to see my abusers as big looming figures over my life, and healing for me was realising how little any of them mattered in my vision of myself and my feelings. I hate them, but I now think about myself before thinking about them, when I recall those experiences. They don't even deserve to occupy my mind. To me, the act of just needing one push for him to be gone is not just about revenge, but also to make him small, non-threatening. There is a reason he goes after mentally ill children, he isn't capable to be a treat to anyone that isn't already vulnerable, and it makes him weak and pathetic, and his actions even more vile and cowardly. He's so pathetic that he doesn't even deserve a boss battle, one person pushing back was all it took for him to crumble. He is weaker than the ones he abused in that way. The game, the boss battles and the conflict was about and in-between Alice and herself the entire way and not about him. I appreciate that.

This game has been a guilty pleasure of mine for years now. Yes the checkpoints are, hilarious and the gameplay is as basic of a 3-D platformer/hack and slash (which itself was interesting enough to make those sections more enjoyable than annoying) but it's the aesthetic that keeps me coming back. The visuals, the story, this game takes you on an unforgettable trip, and every time I revisit it (which I admit had been more times than a few other even newer games on more advanced hardware that I own) I notice something new. Thanks for covering this guilty pleasure that I will likely be revisiting for years to come

I think it would have been better for him to try to gaslight her one more time, call her insane and beyond his help, and say that her replacement as an assistant to him (in one way or another) will be coming soon and maybe even say something to elude to hims sending her back to the asylum again, with a condescending tone that could imply her hunch was right or that he actually just looks down on his patients for having mental illnesses, which was a severe stigma back then. Much in the same vein as being gay (which was also perceived as being a mental illness), it was seen as a choice and something that could have been helped by the patient. That is given that mental health was even considered at all with being non-normative in behavior. So her choice of pushing him in the way of the train would be up for the player to decide whether he was actually at fault for the assault or if it was just an explanation her mind made to cope with the traumatic memories. Because eventually, in the end her perception of reality and reality as seen by her corrupted coping mechanism fueled by her mental illness blend together, causing her to never be able tp distinguish between the two ever again (at least that’s what’s implied), which would mean the act of killing him, whether it was true or not, is what caused her to fully snap. So if the players think her recollection was true, then she is free. If they think she is genuinely delusional, then she’s fully gone off the deep end, trapped forever in wonderland.

"A Love Letter to American McGee's ALICE" made me save up to repurchase A:MR once again a few weeks ago, and I'm still in the process of playing it. I'm still in the Caterpillar area, but I'm slowly making progress in between being busy with academics. It was an amazing change of pace from online games that tend to be very grindy and necessitate daily logins at the risk of burning out, and I felt like it was an appropriate feeling to associate with a game that encourages you to slowly but surely pick up the pieces of your mind and overcome mental illness. I'll return to this video when I finally finish, but just know you made me replay a game I loved so long ago

My only issue with this essay is you seem to misinterpret Bumby’s place in Alice’s memories. Alice was not a victim of Bumby’s, not in that sense anyhow. And his abuse of Lizzy was a one time affair. When collecting Alice’s fragmented memories throughout wonderland, we learn from Lizzie’s own mouth that Bumby (at the time a student of Arthur Liddell) had mistook her simple glances in his direction and minimal, courteous conversing as soliciting his affections, and he began to obsess over her. Lizzie was already a young adult when Bumby’s obsession finally boiled over, and on the eve of the fire, he broke into Lizzie’s room and assaulted her, either killing her on purpose so she couldn’t blab, or accidentally out of rage. Bumby never had to gaslight Alice into believing that when she had seen him in the house that night, she had actually seen a Centaur, or that the noises she heard from Lizzie’s room was just her sister mumbling in her sleep, as Alice had already convinced herself of that fact during her 10 year catatonia, so as to protect her already fragile and young mind from the horrid truth. And he didn’t need to convince her that it was Dinah and her own forgetfulness that caused the fire, as her own survivor’s guilt did that just fine. Bumby’s abuse of Alice was purely psychological, as he tried to destroy her memories, and in doing so, the last piece of evidence pointing to him.

I just can't believe that Alice asylum isn't going to happen, I was so excited and really looking forward to jumping back into the twisted and hauntingly beautiful world again but with modern technology. While I know it is just a "video game" and that there are much more important problems in this world, I truly believe that we are all missing out on an extremely powerful work of art and it saddens me.

The biggest thing that made me really sad is that Chris Vrenna wasn't as prominent in composing the music of the game. Jason Tai did an amazing job too, there's a few favorites in the soundtrack but one thing I really liked was how Chris used found things like a broken kids piano for one of the tracks. Or how there were in parts of the songs they had snippets of Alice crying, screaming, etc. To teather together the dream world with the real world. Like the fight with the Dutchess and the screaming in the background in the track was not only supposed to represent a person being boiled alive by the Dutchess, but fan theory also states that it could be alice freaking out during being given a bath or maybe put in an isolation tub that may have been too hot. These were just some of the fun little things that I really appreciated from the OG soundtrack. I know they're making a 3rd and I'm hoping they do it just as much justice.

Despite this franchise being one of my favorites,there are certain criticisms Thay i need to make on my opinion regarding the story: First:the queen of hearts the way she was represented to me dindn't make much sense since she is a manifestation of Alice ego and negativity so it would have made more sense for her to have been represented as Alice was in the first game with brown hair,the blue dress completely in blood with the face completely destroyed as shown at the beginning of Madness returns and with the tentacles coming out the flesh sewn from her hands and her deep eyes oozing blood from the fact according to cherishire cat the queen took form from someone important to her so it wouldn't make sense to be herself when she was 18 since without her Alice from Madness returns would not exist and would have a great impact when this was revealed as we and Alice herself would not expect it would be a great irony for the fact that the relationship contains between the two and how Alice was negleting herself and she seeing this in the queen of hearts. Second:in relation to the second antagonist the Doll maker would be could have divided the fight against him into four stages: The first would be the Doll maker would be more present manipulating the residents of wonderland behind the scenes from the beginning and little by little you discover this thus making her introduction more impactful and threating the second would be in the oriental domain instead of Alice facing samurai and daimyo insects she would face daimyo and samurai centaurs already foreshadowing the flashback to the fire,the thirth stage would see Alice somehow taking control of the infernal train and using it to fight the Doll maker and the fourth and final stage would be Alice confronting him in the real world and discovering the truth behind his family death and discovering the behind his family death and discovering that Augus is just a doll controlled by something bigger and that this something is not something or someone physical or physchological plus a concept that would be the corruption and everthing else disgusting that exists in every form of life represented by the industrial revolution and its evils and that if she wants to live and protect wonderland she would have to prepare and strenghthen herself to fight merging the external London and the internal Wonderland and after killing Augus she would leave the station giving the same of Mystery and cliffhanger of the Madness returns finale Third:in relation to the personality of the second antagonist i think they could have left him more like doll without emotion, humanity and autonomy creating an irony of a doll that makes dools and presenting it as ladder to the real threat that Alice will have to fight Fourth:in relation to the flashbacks and certains parts of the plit instead of being represented as drawings that despise being Amazing i think it would have more impact if It was done with in game cutcenes like for example Alice in each flashback searching her house and finding out the truth behind his family death.

One of the strenghts of the game for me besides the story,art stlye,lore, worldbulding and visuals is the setting of Wonderland and London we don't have many work portraying the macabre,cruel and inhumane side of the industrial revolution so the way this setting is done in the game is amazing and spetacular even without you knowing anything about the industrial revolution in England in the 19th century you feel that everthing that happened there somehow happened in real life,regarding a lot of story content and gameplay that was cut or changed this is EA fault for not giving spicy horse the time,funding and freedom needed to finish the game and preventing this master piece from reaching its true potencial . In my opinion i find the story of the second game as amazing as the first game,they both deliver on their goals but in diferent perspectives one focuses on the psychological internal and the other on the psychological external so that the stage is set for when the two perspectives merge into one. In my opinion makes sense that Alice dindn't resolve all her issues at the end of the first game because after all she was locked In a sanatorium for 10 years being tortured and mistreated in addition to dealing with her various traumas caused by the death of her family so why more that she manages to keeep her sanity and overcome some of her issues doens't mean that everthing will dissapear one hour To the next as the white king said in the first game in the war truth predominates the lies come later and this was shown with all the letters in the end of the first game,real life and the cruel,paintful and eternal journey in it never ends a happy ending where there are no more difficulties,struggles and sufferings unfortunately it is. An illusion a war and struggles won in life is just another chapter of an eternal journey that will always continues

Huh, I totally rember the ending much differently. In my memories he said exactly the same stuff, just in a far calmer way. He didn't cackle or shout, just kept talking like it was perfectly normal to talk about what he was talking about, and there was absolutely nothing Alice could do to stop him..

I have to respectfully disagree that they fumbled the "systemic sexual abuse of children in Victorian London" bit. I personally would've been really disappointed if the game had stayed vague and made you infer what was really happening. I really appreciate games that don't feel the need to be all artsy-fartsy, "Oooh, you didn't figure out all the sYmBoLySm??? I gUeSs YoU'rE nOt a ReAl GaMeR!" With subject matter like abuse, you can't beat around the bush. That's what has allowed people to get away with it for so long; this strange social taboo around speaking about it at all. What does that fix?? What gets accomplished whispering and avoiding the issue? Abusive Narcissists act just like Bumby when confronted with their manipulations and misdeeds, they've NeVeR done anything wrong. Because in their minds, they haven't. I got chills listening to Bumby gaslight Alice during their final confrontation and as someone who grew up sexually abused by a narcissist, I almost cried when she got the best justice she could for her family and all those kids by pushing that parasite in front of the train. This game was what gave me the strength to face my own trauma, and I obviously can't speak for anyone else, but this game felt so real to me in the way that it portrayed reality and how both kind and depraved people can be. Not to mention that all the people in places of power are corrupt and try to take advantage of Alice and the only person who does her a real kindness is her Nanny-turned-prostitute; the actual bottom of the power structure. More often than not, people are capable of some truly depraved things when they're desperate, and Victorian London was about as desperate as it gets, especially for women of all ages. And the way they wove in both the original Alice in Wonderland symbolism of childhood innocence and random fun, the first game where Alice has to confront her own intrusive thoughts, depression, and survivor's guilt, and then finishing the saga by having Alice confront the people and events that are the root of her mental illness and trauma. It's just like facing trauma in real life, you can't shy away from the memories that haunt you, you have to remember, so you know how to move on. I just really don't feel like they mishandled anything, and the people who thought it needed to stay vague should maybe ask themselves 'why' they think that. Just my humble opinion.

This game has been my favorite for so long and I always love it when someone gives it some appreciation. Thank you!

I remember when I first saw this game. I was 7 and just happened to see someone playing it in my living room. I thought it was beautiful and had a dream where I was Alice in the game. Granted I kept dying but I loved it. I also had the storybook app on my grandmas iPod touch and played it in church. I drew it a lot and at other points in my life forgot it. I got it last year and I haven’t finished it due to school but it’s wonderful. I also just enjoy the overall themes and it reminds me of what I have dealt with (not 100% but still). This game is beautiful not just in playing but everything about it is. Sure I’m biased bc of Alice in Wonderland but I can’t wait to finish it and play the first game. I hope asylum is released soon. I’m so excited and glad that one person had this one idea and brought it into this world to share it.

A feature I really liked was "Shrink in Size". I would have liked it to be used more for traversal. But as a concept instead of crouching to take up less space, just shrinking to a smaller size was such a good use of the world it just made me happy to see it implemented like that. Also, cool that when you're smaller you can see secrets and stuff, much nice ^^

I have a slightly peculiar memory of this game. You see, in my case, I played it only because a slightly... dense, by no means an insul, adult in my life accidentally bough it to my 11 year old older cousin, knowing we both would share it (since we for years have expressed our love for Wonderland). He obviously was not aware of the bloody and horror-based gameplay that comprised said game; not that it ever stopped us from enjoying it for weeks. It slipped my mind for years once I had finished it, only vaguely recalling Hatter's Domain and his little henchmen with cutlery and tea set weaponry; but about two years ago, I once more encountered it with newfound love for the genre and immense appreciation for the whole ambiance. I can surely say it is one of the reasons I enjoy alternative art and style, and why I am working with a beloved friend to create a small game inspired by this one, with her doing all the coding and me making textures and 3D models for the enviroment. Obviously it won't be anywhere near an easy endeavor to take, and we have quite recently started, but we are more than excited.

Loved this Game, It may have it's flaws and had parts and glitches that made me go mad myself when playing it but This game and American Mcgee's Alice in general will Always hold a special place in my heart....Also I've been vibing with Alice's style and have realized I may also be into a gothic/emo/punk and etc styles, to what degree that's up for debate.

I simply don't look into a game if I want to play it. Death stranding is a good example of this since everyone I tried to have a conversation with started with 'the walking sim?' Like yes you walk, you walk a lot. People didnt even know about most of the action sequences or that you do recieved weapons. This is turned into a semi vent but I love that game because what it means to me. You can love games because what they mean to you. I don't mind criticism if mechanics are janky (I don't mind a little jank) or as a good example in this video when a game has some points in the story that have weight but loses its footing. I think people get caught up in how it plays not what it's trying to say. Either way I love games for the way they tell stories. This is an excellent video and I feel I always walk away feeling I little bit more understood, weirdly enough.

Love this video, but I disagree with the ending part. People who are like the doctor very much do act like that, apathetic and sadistic, even with the evil laugh and all. Because they know that they can easily get away with everything. I'm glad Alice threw him in the train tracks.

Still love this game, especially is style. It's nice to see someone mention the card castle in the sky. It's such a beautiful, relaxing section in the game I could replay it all the time. The soundtrack is also fitting and in both dark and peaceful moments. Loved how, and I say this is the best way possible, simple the game was. No super complicated crafting systems, no millions of types of collectables and wepons upgrades. The combat is fun and punchy without the need to spend so much time reading on the damage type and worrying what builds are best for what section. You grow stronger in an organic way and don't have to worry or think about it too much while the battles do get more fun features and all. It's so refreshing in a way, especially if you just want to play something and get your mind off of things without it either being mind numbing like mobile games and not super complex million side quest OCD simulators all around. Very excited for Asylum^^ Especially the dresses hehehe

43:24 i had no problem with anything you said up until this point. i dont understand the problem? how else will you take a stance against sexual child abuse through a game story if not in a direct way? its a great direction from the developers. taking a much more indirect and vague approach for a serious topic like this would be terrible. it would be like what on earth are you trying to say. its the grand ending to make sense of all the pieces, of course it needs to be clear and direct. every piece exists for the purpose to send a message and that message is the ending itself. "not how systemic abusers work in reality" in what way? how he got away with all of it and continued to harm others? or in the way that she ended up getting rid of her abuser? who cares, its fiction. we already know abusers tend to get away with it. thats why we use fiction to empower. the merging of the real world with wonderland to me is like the game is saying alice is now finally free. no one is telling her what to think or what to forget. she is her own agency and thats whats most important. thats why when she closed her eyes and became wonderland alice, pushing bumby to the train, is a powerful ending. she chose to reject the lies and illusions people made to control her. i dont think depictions of victims getting back at their abusers in fiction or actually in real life where maybe rape victims murder their rapist does nothing to "fix the system". it might be a mainstream approach using the law but its the same concept that we have when we talk about criminal law, in indonesian we call it "efek jera" or deterrence. its not just to "feel good", alice killing bumby off would significantly stop the potential abuse he was gonna continue committing.

AMR was the first and is only game I’ve ever played and finished. I’m very much a backseat gamer, love watching but neither have the patience/expertise or means (I played the game on a personal laptop, lol) to play games. It took me hours and I completed it rather hamfistedly, but I finished it nonetheless and actually enjoyed it. I think my completion of the game is testament to how fantastic it really is. The attention to detail is astounding, and the story’s nuances in dialogue/design appeals to my analytical, obsessive brain. Every time I play, I find something new, or an alternative way of piecing the story together. The way wonderland paralleled Victorian london was really cool and I revelled in linking wonderland characters with real-life ones (and I cite this game as the beginning of my obsession with Victorians/vic lit - thanks American I have a degree and masters in Lit thanks to you). I also have to bring up the voice acting - how bloody good was Alistair McGowan??! I have never seen anyone ever ask him about this game (which is so weird and so sad to me) as he did a great job.

"Wake up babe, new RagnarRox dropped"

I think it's interesting that you mentioned the review inception because I think that also happened to me. I played the game for the first time when I was 16 (and played it multiple times after that) and when I played it quickly became my favorite game ever, I enjoyed every single thing in it. That's not to say the game doesnt have any problems, but none of them bothered me until I finished it and went online to read other people's thoughts on it. That's when I started to read the same reviews of it being too long etc and the same thing happened to me, as I went to play it again I started to feel impatient and that some stuff went on for too long, even my view of the game as whole was a little damaged at the time. Something that I had enjoyed so much and suddenly I was thinking "hum... yeah, I guess it wasn't thaaat good". Thinking back on it I feel so stupid lmao. But I can say that overtime it went away, that after playing a bunch of times in these 8 years since the first time, I still love this game and everything that it meant to me at the time and now, that I still enjoy it a lot and it is still one of my 2 favorite games ever, even with flaws, even with bad reviews I feel like at this point no comment can take away my positive feelings towards it.

I'm actually blown away by the ending and the Dev's willingness to address heavy issues.

Both games are absolutely fantastic examples of how graphics can hold up over time -- I still think A:MR in particular is one of the best-looking games I've ever played. And yeah, that comment about how the levels aren't too long until you read something saying they ARE too long. . . I think that shows pretty well how we might rely on outside opinions a little too much in our gaming sometimes. (Personally, while the game COULD have been trimmed down a bit, I'm happy enough to get more of the pretty scenery and awesome dresses.) Yeah, okay, some things could have been done better (Subtlety Hammer ahoy, yes), but all in all, when I first played this right after it came out? I could NOT put it down! I was just on that thing damn near 24-7 (with a brief break for the BTTF Telltale Game's final episode, because well, I love that too). Bumby may be a bit too cackly at the end, but ooooh that shove onto the tracks. SATISFYING. I still love it loads and I'm happy it exists. :)

What of the infernal train is a manifestation of the end of adolesence and the shift into adulthood? Wonderland is soft, fluid and vibrant. Like the imagination of a child, where the borders of reality and fantasy is incredibly fuzzy and undistinct. The train, with it's rigid, metallic certainty to me seems to represent the more solidified and experience driven worldview of an adult. So the infernal train running around destroying wonderland, much in the same way that maturity ends up demolishing the youthful and fantasy-driven worldview of a child, might represent Alice's angst at the prospect of growing up.

I have no problems with the way the ending confrontation with the psychiatrist was handled, even as a someone who suffered sexual child abuse, but I approach stories as stories - a sequence of events that happened in a different world, to different people, not as allegories and metaphors to our own world. I do appreciate your video, and your love for horror, and by all means you have the right to approach media whatever way you may feel like, but far too many people get hung up on "meaning", "what the story is trying to tell", "metaphors", "allegories". I just want a well written story with high and low points (high and low not in terms of quality, of course).

Omg I seriously hope American can get the third one going. I'm in love with this rendition of the Alice saga. Edit after video: *girlish squeal* Dude, now I'm just overloaded

I figured out almost from the beginning that Bumby was responsible for the train. I mean really, are we supposed to think it's a coincidence that Alice is seeing a shrink that wants to erase her memories, and that not long after that an evil entity appears that wants to destroy Wonderland, which is in Alice's mind? However, I didn't initially see him as the "villain" per se, but a misguided but well-meaning doctor with a period typical stiff upper lip attitude and understanding of mental illness, much like Dr. Wilson from the 1st game. Just like with the bloodletting and lithium, I know those things don't actually help with mental illness, but I understand the logic behind it - "the memories are hurting her, so if I get rid of the memories, they can't hurt her anymore." Wouldn't it be an interesting twist if Bumby HADN'T set the fire? If it truly had been an accident all along, and Alice's "memories" of him starting the fire were delusions, which were caused by his therapy sessions making her mental health deteriorate. This man, who has dedicated his entire life to medical science and the betterment of his fellow man, has not only NOT helped Alice with his methods, but actually set her progress back. On top of that, he has unintentionally made the children under his care vulnerable to predators and child abusers. The final boss would still be the Dollmaker, but instead of him representing Bumby specifically, he represents a false version of Bumby, created by both Alice and the Infernal Train. After Alice left Rutledge Asylum, she thought things would get better. But it hasn't - she's living in poverty, everyone treats her like a freak, and she's still haunted by the deaths of her family. She wanted someone to blame for her misery, a villain she could defeat so that she could get closure - and Bumby was the perfect scapegoat. But now she realizes that he wasn't the boogieman she thought he was. There is no conspiracy, no murder. The fire was an accident. Her family is dead. And she has to accept that. After the Dollmaker's defeat, Bumby resigns, not trusting himself with Alice or the orphans' care. And just like in the original ending, Alice "can't go home again". The Train caused too much damage to Wonderland, and it, and she, will never be the same. But there is hope - Alice can create a new Wonderland, and face the future with renewed strength. Not that I have anything against the way the game is written. Cliched as it is, Bumby being the villain works well with the theme of systematic abuse and the corruption of those in positions of authority. Plus, who doesn't like to see a rapist get their just desserts?

I actually disagree with your biggest sentiment and I felt the way that the game handled child sexual abuse and exploitation was the most realistic any video game has portrayed it, and I didn't think they took it too far; it was supposed to make you feel uncomfortable, that's the entire point of making something judt realistic enough that ut induces the uncomfortable feelings that arise from the situation it is trying to interpret.

I don’t play horror games. I’ve always had a very active imagination and I’m fairly empathetic, so I have to be careful with what media I consume. I couldn’t even watch the X-Files reboot because one episode gave me nightmares… it’s a thing, I digress. But I’ve always loved and appreciated Ragnar’s channel because he always does a fantastic job deep-diving into every thematic nook and cranny of a game. I love horror games, old games, indie games… even if I can’t play them for whatever reasons. A lot of that appreciation comes straight from Ragnar’s content. And THANK YOU to all of his Patrons; I don’t have a cent to give right now, so I really appreciate this crowd funding his work while I get my life together before I can give back too. Y’all are some all-stars for my mental health, on the real. The Alice franchise looks wicked cool and I’ll definitely be going straight to Steam to wishlist it, if not impulse-buy it. Thank you!

Thank you for covering this game! It's one of my all-time favorites and I think it should have been a bigger deal than it actually was. There's some genuinely disturbing stuff in there,the sequence in which shaved-head Alice stumbles through the mental ward of the hospital and they drill a hole in head...and then you see it in the overworld realizing that you're in her head right now...WOW

One thing I really like about the ending and the game's moral is that Alice's abuser's theme is making people forget and brush things aside bcz that's what benefits him, like "Forgive and forget" is such a basic moral lesson that when taken to it's extreme just sorta turns into a weapon against victims, but Alice doesn't want to forget her family, she doesn't want to forget the wrong things that happened to her, and she wants justice and closure, that's honestly why these games feel so empowering to me personally, despite it sometimes cartoony portrayal of abuse it never leaves the heart of this story about Alice using what power she has the way she does. And at the end with London and Wonderland fusing together, not denying Alice of having a part of herself, but fusing it with the world around her.

This game means so much to me as a schizophrenic CSA survivor. I feel like this game really gets me in a way. It was one of the first M rated games I played and it really impacted me and helped me start my road to recovery from being an SH addict. This game really echoes my life in a lot of ways. Except my therapist is a really chill guy who actually wants to help me and has for the past 5 years.

I played this when it was new, and at a time I didn't have internet access. I found it a lot of fun, and didn't have that same mindset of "it's too long" Though I do remember getting to the point of wishing that the teeth had some use beyond just upgrading weapons since once you finished them, there wasn't much of a point to them. Also I wish there were some levels that were longer and some that were shorter. Like I didn't love the aesthetic of The Dollhouse, so that being the longest level wasn't something I enjoyed as much, and wished I could have spent more time in earlier levels, especially Queensland and The Hatter's Domain. Also not sure if this is something that's still in the game, since you didn't mention it. But there are more dresses than the few you showed. Or at least there were at the time I played it initially. Though at the time, they were also all paid DLC

To be very honest, that ending confrontation always made sense for me. Basically, the whole section leading up to it dealt very openly with Alice merging both the real world and Wonderland in her mind as a sign of strength, so it could very well have been her own interpretation of the doctor at that moment before pushing him into the tracks as opposed to what was very literally happening in real life. While it IS likely that the doctor was dismissive of her given, to him, she's nothing more than a patient he was trying to brainwash, however, the more cartoony behaviour could've been Alice amplifying his dimissiveness as she was starting to embrace her Wonderland self more.

I love the absolute commitment to an aesthetic. Not just the visuals and music, but the themes, atmosphere, and plot are 1000% 2000's goth. Even the complete lack of self awareness and self restraint that is typical of early 00's teens, deep in the throes of Nu-Metal, neon trimmed UFO pants, black nail polish. The game has no idea how ridiculous it looks. my play through was halted when I came across a desiccated bird corpse in one of the levels, its wings cut off and replaced with jagged metal shards, strapped to the wall with barbed wire. I just marveled at how crazy it looked. This game is "edgelord" A.F., but also really sincere about it. There is a real heart inside it. it cares about Alice, the horrible things done to her, and by extension, it cares about the player. the people who made this game really felt what they were making. I think the later levels show a bit of fatigue on the part of the designers. I think people say it "overstays its welcome" because the later levels are a bit sparse, less opulently detailed. Especially the playing card level. it was interesting, but really boring to look at. I think the combat also suffers from Platinum Games and Devil May Cry obliterating every other 3D combat game ever made. The fact that Alice's weapons do not combo chain into one another really grates if you have ever played a minute of Bayonetta. Still, I love this game. This is the kind of brilliant, if slightly cracked, experience that I usually only find in indies, not mainstream releases from EA. We need more of this

This game is one of my all time favorites, the art keeps being gorgeous and the game play is great. I didn't had a issue with the end, abusive people usually don't stop and many look into profit into it. And I'm honestly wasn't sure he actually say that or was what Alice believed he admitted before pushing him, after all the next scene Wonderland and the real world fusion together. It was nice to see Alice embrace Wonderland at the end.

Thank you so much for this! I Loved and still love this game to this day. I'm actually one of the "insane children" supporting American on Patreon for the 3rd installement. I sent the link to this video on this patreon page.

I kind of hate myself for this, but almost each and every time Bumby catches the train I have to let out a little snortle. It's messed up, but that mean side of me (and many others I'm sure) finds it satisfying but also just a weird skit of instant karma. Like a mix of a jumpscare with a punchline.

I love MR, looking at this game through the lens of a person who has been abused Bumby laughing about the evil things he has done cemented to me how evil he is and holds no regrets about the lives he has ruined. It showed how disgusting of a human being he was and it seemed realistic to me about how many abusers get away with their crimes. Seeing him crushed by the train was something I loved because justice was seen.

I played many games my whole life but this game stand alone , the art the story the way they introduced mental illnesses as characters when ppl didnt even care about mental illness I love this game the art is DIVINE , I waited for alice asylum the most awaited game for 2023 to sadly having american mcgee saying EA GAMES didnt wanna release the game (mcgee made the game it only need to be 3d developped since he made the story the monsters stages and background and actually the whole gale is ready it would take just few months to be developped the alice asylum art concept is available online for free ) and ea games doesn't wanna sell the IP back to american mcgee who is the creator of alice madness series he is the genius behind alice , btw yall need to know that the story is so deep as it deal with children abuse (r*pe ) committed against orphans you can see that in the last chapter of the game where the monsters are babies destoyed and stained by the horror done to them theres also a disturbing tunned where you enter the private part of a doll that is also destroyed which is a direct refrence to se*ual abuse truely its impactful and gosh the narrative is perfect each characterS DIALOGS isJUST PERFECT AMAZING

Edit now that I've finished the video: I'm glad that you talked about having generally positive feelings towards the games you review, and wanting to focus on that. Your passion for these games is greatly appreciated. To be honest, your reviews are far more likely to encourage me to give something a go. You don't ignore flaws, but you enjoy these games for what they are, which is a breath of fresh air in the game analysis landscape. (Also love that you point her amazing costumes. If only more games had this kind of costume design!)

I know this isn't very related to the game but i always like to share it with others: A long time ago, a girl added me on Facebook. She liked to draw and would usually upload a comic she was making on her profile and tag A LOT of people. It featured many characters from all media, one of the main characters was this Alice, although I don't remember the setting i do recall it being really interesting; the story was very dark too but not too edgy. The comic was very large, with thousands of pages she drew and coloured by hand. I guess she was autistic or something like that, i really didn't got to know her, she just tagged us on her album and pictures and explained the plot so far, i gotta say she seemed like a very nice person very polite all the time and always accepted criticism. Thanks to the Facebook algorithm thing, sh stopped appearing on my profile and lost all contact with her, which got me a bit sad to be honest. I hope she got to continue or finish her comic.

This game is like Bloodlines for me. Every time I see it I get the urge to replay it.

Alice the Madness returns became my bible. When American McGees Alice came out I was 17 and not so much of a gamer, I played it, because I really enjoyed the atmosphere and because I love Alice in Wonderland. My real name is similar to Alice and I also use my imagination to escape. When I was 17 with drawing comics. When Alice the Madness returns came out, I was 27 and I moved to a bigger apartment. Everything about this game caught me. At the age of 25 I realised I was r*ped when I was 16. I was burried it down in my head and it came out durring cleaning my small apartment. At first I felt ashamed and didn't knew what to do with it. I also sometimes felt like it would be better to forget it again. But then, I was 27 and lived actually in the new apartment, I sat in a train and wanted to go home from a really hard day of work and I saw him. The man that r*ped me... He stood outside and was looking for someone. He was 37 when it happened and only ten years turned this man into something weak and pitty full... The train moved and with it also my shame. Looking back, I am 38 years now, I think it was a men, who never understood what love is. As he had to force a young girl to give him something he though it might be love... I can explain this now to you due to my memory loss for 9 years... If I would remember what he had done to me as a teenager, I probably wouldn't be here anymore. The fact that I was cleaning my apartment at the age of 25 and remembered it all, was very weird to me, until I came to the conclusion, that since I was working for this man and cleaned the small restaurant he owned it must have happened that way... You see how many similarities my story has with Alice in Alice the Madness Returns. But that's not all. After playing this game, something clicked. I loved the last chapter so much, that I somehow tried to be in this game. I didn't try it on purpose, it was more something from inside. Perhaps I wanted my own wonderland... Last year I saw my favourite lets player play Alice the Madness returns. I looked around in my apartment and there were horror dolls, teacups, weird plushies and I even have the Vorpal Blade. I didn't realise that I managed to copy her world into my apartment. It a real home for me now, where I feel happy and save.

Ya know, what you said about critiques influencing a gameplay experience? It's true. And for a long time it kept me away from games I ended up enjoying and sent me to games that I ended up not liking. I've been trying to get a bit better, more "me" focused, on what games I was looking for. Good example is my playthrough of Subnautica and Below Zero. The first took... Forever. Mostly because I kept not liking how the run was going and starting over. Now that I'm so familiar with it though, I got to have a whole new dimension of fun with it, including wrangling a dragon leviathan! For Below Zero, I went in with low expectations due to all the negative feedback I'd heard about it. So, I struggled at first. The environment and greater focus on land exploration, the talking protagonist, the new PDA voice... But then I found things I loved. For one thing, the accessibility options. The ability to have interactive objects highlighted with a chosen color as you approach saved my poor ADD brain. I grew to love the new PDA voice and got used to hearing Robin, fell in love with the cast of characters and interactions, and have the distinct pride in hatching a Rock Puncher and naming it Chris Redfield. So... Yeah. It's a skill to hear criticism over a game you haven't played or finished yet and try to keep it objective and separate from your tastes. But it's a worthwhile skill to hone.

Nice but I don't know if it was a specific thing in Germany, but "before the Internet" it was even worse in that regard. You had a few printed gaming magazines and their word/ratings were basically the Gospel. That also led to some magazines intentionally taking counter-positions to each other. So there were 1-2 magazines that intentionally gave "popular" games pretty low ratings, despite the quality of the game. This also led to a cult of personality in which some writers became the de-facto expert for entire genres.

I have such mixed feelings about MR. I played it when it came out and it always felt like it suffered from sequel syndrome. The original alice had "that spark" that passion projects usually have. The creators were inspired and that inspiration comes through to the audience taking us along for the journey. You can tell that mcgee was invested in MR, (hence, why I managed to finish it in spite of my complete lack of follow through on games) but lacked the almost fever dream quality of a new IP being realised without cronstraint, preconception or limits. Its something we see so often in art. The original album is incredible and the second falls victim to the success of the first. Great artists usually manage to survive the second album and come back even stronger in the third or fourth. Taken on its own merits, MR is a solid entry of its time. I agree that it may have twisted an ankle on the landing, but it sure wasn't for a lack of trying. MAalice feels like it draws from personal experience and catharsis while MRalice feels like an honest attempt at empathy and compassion while lacking the bone deep understanding that comes from having been there. It's like someone who has experienced bullying and being the true underdog all their life trying to comfort a sexual assault victim. The heart is in the right place, they understand so much of the pain, stripping away of agency and psychological harm done, but cannot connect with the context, with the visceral violation of self. And that's why mcgee flubbed the landing. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. Maybe this will make it through the RU-vid filter.

Alice Madness Returns was a game i really liked the first time i played it because of its abstract sumbolic stye and focus on the human mind, i did end up feeling like the game play was a bit janky and that the story was a bit out of focus from time to time, but over all my feelings of the game was that it was a unique and captivating world in a slightly flawed game.

i genuinely really enjoyed alice madness returns. i played it at 16,/17 when i was somewhere stuck between school, anxiety and depression, and it was a really cathartic experience for me. sure it's got its flaws, and the 'all abusers look and act like villains' vibe at the end is definitely smth i'm more critical of now than i was at the time, and yeah the far east level is a tad longer than it really needed to be, but they're not game ruining by any means. i also came at it from the weird place of having not played american mcgee's alice, so i had no attachment/standard i was holding it to. i knew nothing much about it - i think i bought it purely on the strength of a couple of pieces of fanart and a vague recommendation from a friend - so i could just, play. good times. the only, and i mean ONLY major negative impact it had on my life was that it basically ruined darksiders for me cos i started playing that immediately after and the combat system and level structure (open world-ness aside) was basically identical asdfghjkl