Change is good: It is the first link in the chain of forgetting
The cinematic trailer for Alice: Madness Returns came online today, and it was a whopper. The Spicy Horse Team already let us know that cinematics that advance the plot have been given a Victorian-woodcut/shadowbox aesthetic, so it all looks super-cool.
What I think has been lost in the gleeful anticipation for this game is the fact that A:MR is based on a person coming to terms with horrific trauma within a deranged imagination. It's not always going to be a fun hack-and-slash to victory. In the first game, Alice witnessed the death of most of her allies and was confronted about her culpability in her parents' death. The original Alice was basically How To Overcome Survivor's Guilt: The Game.
And this cinematic trailer touches on a lot of that. Alice is unwilling to go back to Wonderland because her Wonderland has changed, gone. It's now a hellish battleground between her consciousness and vicious super-ego. The Doctor is trying to guide her through her memories and imagination to come to terms with her trauma, and it's not always going to go well. In fact, in the trailer it all goes to hell. Wonderland kills her only friend and then tears her apart. You know, fun!
I do think the sequel is going to uncover something about the fire - it has to as the focal point for the game. Also, I think the words "pollution, corruption!" spoken by Alice are significant. In the first game Alice was fighting a tangible enemy - The Queen of Hearts. In this sequel she's searching so I think it's going to have more of a detecting quality. The deeper she goes, the more Wonderland is going to fight her. Just like last time.
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I like that the Alice team harked back to this promotional wallpaper from the first Alice game.
Little Alice with her one-eyed stuffed, rabbit, AKA the physical incarnation of
The White Rabbit.
I don't know if the minotaur and the clockhead have anything to do in-game, but they're certainly interesting. Now what's more interesting is the acknowledgment that Alice's sister also died in the fire and the vision of the Jabberwock in the flames. In the first Alice, his domain was the smoking ruins of Alice's house where he enumerated her faults and took her to task for abandoning her family to the fire.
I think this is the moment I enjoyed the most in the cinematic trailer. We don't usually get to see the idyllic wonderland as it once was and why it was such a haven for Alice.
Of course, then it all goes to hell and The White Rabbit dies horrifically... again.
And so Alice is left alone in a Wonderland that wants to murder her. Fan-tastic.
Also, there's apparently a Storybook app coming out that if you complete it, it will give you $10 off the actual game. That's only reasonable if the app itself is moderately priced.
The other good news is a pre-order perk where you can get music from Alice: Madness Returns and an HD download of the original American McGee's Alice. It's hard to keep my head straight with all these perks, but I'm saving my pennies.