Category: September

Recently a Kickstarter to fund two JRPGs from veterans of the JRPG industry was launched with the intention to provide spiritual successors to both the Wild Arms series as well as the Shadow Hearts series. When I told this to someone the other day, their question was “What does being a spiritual successor mean?”. This made me wonder how many other people are unaware of the meaning when a video game is called a spiritual successor. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what a spiritual successor is when it comes to video games.

The first thing we should discuss is what the term “spiritual successor” actually means. A spiritual successor is a work that employs the style, themes or, in the case of video games, gameplay of a prior piece of media while being separate and legally distinct with none of the characters, creatures, world etc. that made up the previous work. There are many reasons why this may be the case and we’ll go through these reasons while also providing examples.

When it was announced that Microsoft was going to be acquiring Activision-Blizzard, I remember a lot of discussion surrounding how many gaming studios Microsoft would have after the deal went through. Within this discussion, there were a few people who stated that Microsoft would still pale compared to the Embracer Group. As you can imagine, I was quite surprised that there was such a massive publisher of games that I was unfamiliar with. However, upon researching the subject, it quickly became apparent why I had not heard of them. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the Embracer Group and why I consider them to be the hidden giant of video gaming.

Let’s start with the origins of the Embracer Group. Originally starting as a Swedish game retailer before expanding into game publishing, the success of We Sing for the Nintendo Wii allowed the company, at that point called Nordic Games Publishing, to begin their rapid expansion. The first of their now numerous acquisitions began in 2011 when JoWooD Entertainment declared bankruptcy and were bought by Nordic Games. This was followed up in 2013 when Nordic Games acquired the vast majority of THQ, another game publisher who had declared bankruptcy. Interestingly, they rebranded years later as THQ Nordic before finally settling on the name Embracer Group in 2019.

I recently saw an announcement stating that THQ Nordic are producing a new Alone in the Dark game. Upon seeing that announcement, my first thought was “I wonder if the other Alone in the Dark games are available on Steam”. Taking a look, I saw that they were heavily reduced and quickly picked up the first five games for a little over €2. As a fan of the Resident Evil franchise, it surprises me that I’ve yet to play any of these games but I’ve learned enough about these games now that I thought it would be interesting to provide an overview of the Alone in the Dark franchise which is both incredibly important in the history of video games but is also very inconsistent in quality.

Of course, it makes sense that we begin with the game that started it all, the 1992 Alone in the Dark video game. Originally released for MS-DOS and developed by Infogrames, Alone in the Dark has you select either Edward Carnby or Emily Hartwood to explore a mansion which ends up being supernatural. The game laid the foundation for what would become the survival horror subgenre by establishing fixed, claustrophobic camera angles, finding items to solve puzzles and defend themselves from the monsters that inhabit the mansion etc. which was later popularised by the Resident Evil franchise. The game proved to be so successful that the idea of producing an anthology of horror games, called Virtual Dreams, was scrapped in favour of producing sequels to Alone in the Dark.