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What’s better: a level 1 rat, or Alone In The Dark’s jacket inventory?Vote now as we continue deciding the single best thing in games
Vote now as we continue deciding the single best thing in games
Last time, you decided thatnude mods are better than going into meats and guts. Oh sure, you’re brave with your votes, but not one single commenter was brave enough to address the subject of honking their pud. Cowards. If you won’t expand, we have to move on. This week, I pose a question of squeaky critters versus a squeaky coat. What’s better: a level 1 rat, or Alone In The Dark’s jacket inventory?
A level 1 rat
You stride up to the tavern counter, head held high, fresh leather armour still squeaking.
“Innkeep! I require board for the night, two weeks' provisions and your finest low-end horse to leave in the morn, and pray tell: whence mighst one earn coin in this dark region?”
“Two days to pull all that together. For now, aye, I can offer you a ‘quest’.” She snarls that last word, not that you notice, then jerks a thumb towards the cellar door. “Rats. Bring me ten rat tails and you’ll earn room and board until your order’s ready.”
A lovely little rat in Old School RuneScape, though I must disclose that it is level 2
Could you kill a rat? Can you look at a glossy little lad, grown fat on brewer’s barley and dropped pork scratchings, and put a blade between his bright eyes? I’m asking both physically and emotionally. Have you seen how fast rats move? Have you seen how cute they are? Can you kill one and then keep on killing after the first fleck of blood hits your face? Can you heave aside the sacks of neeps and tatties his family will flee behind? If you can, hey, maybe you’re ready to carve a bloodsoaked path across the land in search of fame, fortune, vengeance, or whatever the hell it is you think you deserve. But if this first step causes you to stumble, Judith knows where you’ll be two days from now. She can’t keep doing this.
At first, she tried to warn your type. She learned this only encourages you. “Worrymongering,” you often call it, “superstition” and “old wives' tales” that won’t keep you from “wielding the gleaming light of justice to banish darkness from this fallen land.” She sighs to herself.
She has learned, too late, to spot dangerous customers with a glance. She’s now fairly confident she can spot a killer. She keeps an eye on those she sees closely watching your type (you, of course, notice neither surveillance). But heroes, ah, that’s trickier to tell. Maybe you have that ineffable ‘it’. Maybe you don’t.
She won’t know who you are—and mate, truly, you won’t know—until you rise from the cellar after your encounter with level 1 rats.
Alone In The Dark’s jacket inventory
Recent news thatTHQ Nordic are “reimagining” Alone In The Darkmade me think, as I often do, about a previous time someone tried to revive the seminal 90s survival horror series. 2008’s Alone In The Dark is set in modern-day New York City and features the most delightful visualisation of a character inventory I have ever seen: a first-person view of opening your leather jacket and looking down at items held in your many pockets and pouches.
Alone in the Dark - Inventory and mini flamerWatch on YouTube
Alone in the Dark - Inventory and mini flamer
Our man is dressed like a drug dealer or a hawker selling Polex watches in a 90s sitcom.Resident Evil 4’s merchant might be more of an inspiration, given the genre, but I can only see him on A Very Special Episode. Perhaps Melissa Joan Hart or Jonathan Taylor Thomas is hanging around some cool older kids, about to learn an important lesson about personal boundaries, stranger danger, and just saying no.
I would very much like to see similar ideas in more games. Immersive sims in particular have slept on this for too long. It’s like “I can see my legs” game design but even better. And even though it can be maddening, I’m thrilled that the game world doesn’t pause when you open your jacket, leaving you scrabbling to craft items without fumbling the wrong key and dropping and shattering vital ingredients.
Thinking about inventory as actual physical objects you carry is mostly confined to serious sims and survival games. Escape From Tarkov splits your gear across many individual bags, cases, wallets, keychains, and so on, nesting storage in storage. And I am delighted that Neo Scavenger lets you carry a plastic carrier bag full of scrunched-up spare carrier bags. But aside from a vague memory of having possibly once played another game which had a similar idea (god, what was it! some other noughties Eurojank?), Alone In The Dark is the only game I can think of which so explicitly visualises it this way. This jacket inventory is good enough that I am willing to propose it as a possible best thing, despite it appearing in maybe only one game.
But which is better?
I like a level 1 rat so much. I really do. I like their little eyes and their little noses and their big ears and their fat bellies and their long tails and their twitchy movements. But that jacket… I can’t resist that jacket.
Disclosure: A pal worked on the 2008 Alone In The Dark, I only learned after spotting several copies on her shelf.
