ALICE: MADNESS RETURNS
by spicy horse.
The aughts saw a sudden, loud burst of The Mall Goth come stumbling back into the public view, re-delivered to suburbia primarily by Hot Topic. Though it’s influence in pop culture is always in the background of media at large, goth mostly saw it’s re-emergence through teenagers buying band tees, striped tights, and tripp pants at the mall. This later trickled into the emo subculture (which is a whole other topic), but Hot Topic Goth was and still is a Thing, as far as I’m concerned. A great example of what I’d brand Hot Topic Goth (hereby referred to as HTG) is Emilie Autumn, who has made a career out of catering to young girls whose self-expression was given manifest in 2002 to 2005. Arguably her most popular and well received album, “Opheliac” dropped in 2006, at the very tail end of the Hot Topic Goth boom.
madness returns' main menu.
Madness Returns dropped four years after “Opheliac”, which marked the end of that chapter of goth’s history for me. As a result, the game felt dated. Perhaps it entered production during HTG’s initial boom in an attempt by ElectronicArts to capitalize on teenage girls’ renewed interest in ripped, striped stockings and poetry. Maybe it also ended up somehow releasing just when that particular subculture was getting to be less mainstream. Either way, because of HTG, the aesthetic of Madness Returns was of huge appeal to many of the outlets reporting on it. I remember carefully crafted layouts of deep dives on the game’s development that magazines indulged in, how interviews on G4TV would focus on the lusciously dark art style, and how every peek into the game’s development seemed hyper focused not on Alice and her journey as the heroine, but on the artwork within. Everyone wanted a piece of The Aesthetic™.
alice engages in combat with a number of creatively designed enemies through out the game.
Make no mistake, Madness Returns is beautiful. Art Director Ken Wong was contacted by American McGee to join his development team Spicy Horse before production had started. Wong had drawn Alice for a fan zine called “Mercury Girl”' back in 2001, which caught McGee’s eye. It’s easy to see why he was so drawn to Wong’s work. The attention to detail his artwork houses leans morbid and visceral, a perfect complement to McGee’s roots as a level designer for 1993’s’ Doom. Composer Jason Tai certainly had some big shoes to fill. Trent Reznor worked on the first game’s soundtrack, and while this is a completely different tone, it’s still just as catchy. Some of Madness Returns' music is iconic to me, defining the duology even more than Reznor’s soundtrack. Reznor shapes the mood and style, but Tai crafts the story with his compositions. They’re haunting, melodic, and just as likely to burrow into your brain’s crevices so that years down the line, you’ll immediately recognize the menu music.
Alice’s journey through Wonderland is narratively complex but straightforward. She is a fully realized character, fleshed out beyond the bones given to us and snappy one-liners, though I’m pleased to say they made a comeback. Her empathy for others is given center stage in Madness Returns, and it’s possibly the strongest point in the story. As Alice travels through her broken mind, she pieces together her past and discovers what the future holds for herself and the children at their sort of half-way home. It isn’t quite an asylum, but instead something like a rehabilitation center for unwell children— Alice, an adult, is there because of her extreme circumstances, to be clear.
part of living in houndstitch home for wayward children is regular therapy sessions with dr. bumby.
Madness Returns is a game with a story to tell, and it sets the stage up beautifully to do so. The design, music, and style of the game seem to be perfectly held together, like seeing a play and admiring all the fixings. I do feel this is largely in part thanks to Susie Brann’s performance as Alice. While the material is engaging, it’s so easy to perform it as doldrum, hokey and uninspired. Brann indulges, adopting a snarky curiosity that is both unconventional and relatable.
At its heart, this is a game about exploitation and grooming, the abuse women and children are forced to endure, and what it does to our minds as we grow old. It is about the responsibility we, as survivors, feel towards those who are abused in the same ways we were. Themes of abuse have been a constant throughout Alice’s journey. In the first game, we see whispers of it in the ways she interacts with NPCs, in the menu screens, and in one-off comments she makes. McGee and the team he’s selected are aware of the brutalities suffered by the mentally ill then and even now by the system. While American McGee’s Alice had only painted a sheer image of it, Madness Returns is comparatively eager to join the conversation with a megaphone.
alice's default dress is associated with the vale of tears, the first world in game. each world gives her a new outfit to match.
Towards the end of the game, Alice wanders into a procession in which she is derided for never speaking up about the abuse her older sister lived through, and the ultimate cause of her family’s deaths. Lizzie’s trauma became Alice’s, handed down to her through a violent loss of childhood. Now an adult, here she walks from metaphorical pew to pew on what's dubbed the Infernal Train, where she searches for forgiveness in echoes of parts of herself she's lost or buried, in the damned and forgotten. It's somber, it's heavy, and terrifyingly human. Alice, too, is a victim in this atrocity. Accountability is just as consistent a theme in this version of Wonderland. It isn’t enough that “how” is explained. The “why” must be answered for, and for every flap of a butterfly’s wing is a loss. Madness Returns is not just content with discussing the aftereffects of abuse, but it delves into discussing how we can move forward in a way that protects those of us who deserve and need that protection. It is not a shock Alice holds such contempt for herself, for her actions— as the sole survivor of the fire, she is forced to live with the memory of her family and the knowledge she will always be the sole survivor. Empathy is the blood-pulse of McGee's Alice. Her family's pain is her own, is the children's pain, is her sister's pain. There, she finds her strength and personhood, reclaiming it from those that would see her as property and little else.
the infernal train is designed with opressive and sharp, gothic architecture.
Madness Returns could easily feel exploitative, but never veers into the dehumanization of the mentally ill. It is, after all, about a mentally ill woman fighting to protect the vulnerable. It’s a game about empowering Alice through exploration of herself. An exploration of her trauma, a coming of age story for The Hot Topic Goth. The game does take a long time to get towards this narrative turn, and the journey to it might not seem worth it, though.
It isn’t hard to tell this is an incomplete game that wasn’t given all the time it needed in the oven. Repetitive gameplay could be a symptom of this, and maybe the (in my opinion, merciful) lack of boss fights is, too. McGee’s own admission to EA not allowing them enough time with the game is hardly surprising; while Alice’s story will stay with me forever, I can’t say I’ll miss the combat.
I can’t deny this is my favorite game, a comfort food I come back to when I feel I need to remember that it’s possible to see media that reflects your experiences. I can’t score it well, but I can recommend it if you, too, were called a precocious child by nosy, cruel adults, and found yourself darkly inclined in your teens afterwards. It’s a game for us Hot Topic Goths.