Alice Madness Returns Ymmv

1. Alice Madness Returns Levels

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WMG/AliceMadnessReturns

Madness Returns implies that this is actually a fabricated memory brought on by Alice's mental trauma, and the point of the game is to find out what actually happened that night before her repressed memories drive her insane again. Not to mention the fact that there is no mention of a sister in the first game.

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The general consensus from playing this game is that all of the 'Wonderland' segments (I.E most of the game) is in her head. That might not entirely be the case. Why does Bumby see Alice in her blue dress before he is killed? Because her 'Persona', which previously only existed inside of her psyche, has now has now emerged. Instead of common psychic powers, she can manifest weapons out of thin air, transform her body into blue monarchs, etc.

• Then again, Bumby may not be seeing Alice as she appears to us, since generally what we see is what Alice sees. He could have just been surprised at the Death Glare she gave him and the fact that she was standing up to him at all, but still only seeing her as the real world Alice.

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• Now that you mention it...if she gain her Wonderland powers in real life, then why didn't she use her vorpal blade, pepper grinder, hobby horse, or all of the above? Maybe she figured she wouldn't need to use any of those things. Or maybe she wanted him to die by train. It's not entirely clear...
• American McGee'scommentary seems to support the original argument.

In the first game, Alice was mainly fighting herself; the Jabberwock was the belief that she could have done more for her parents, the Hatter was her warped train of thought and distrust of doctors, the Cheshire Cat her superego and drive back towards sanity. From there, it can be assumed that the Queen of Hearts we fought was the 'malignant' part of her 'shadow', the part that has ceased to be a healthy container of repressed feelings and now the embodiment of self-loathing and self-pity. Her form reflects this; it's the central body of a mass of tentacles that weave throughout Wonderland, dragging it down much how like chronic depression takes over a person's life.

When Alice actually recovers a bit, symbolized by destroying the 'corrupt' Queen, it is marked not by the Queen's destruction, but her purification into a new form-what a shadow is supposed to be, rather then the cancerous growth that destroyed Alice's psyche. She's not friendly, by any estimation, but that's normal' the shadow very much is an Enemy Within, helping one define one's identity by being what one wishes to avoid. It also serves as a catalyst of evolution-the drive to be more than one's flaws.

Thus, when Bumby attempts to turn Alice back into a pliable wreck, the new, psychologically healthy Queen fights back, as the Train threatens the dissolution of the psyche-something that the shadow is supposed to prevent.

That's why he has that peg leg instead and why he's trying his best to keep him away from the Wonderland and feed him the inhabitants of Deluded Depths.

Lizzie is angry against Bumby for raping and killing her, and possesses her still-alive younger sister Alice to get her revenge against Bumby. It is clearly evident as the Queen of Hearts herself has the appearance of Lizzie. After her death, Lizzie has become angry and bitter with the knowledge of what happened to her, as well as the threat Alice is facing.

The Queen of Hearts gets angry at Alice and scolds her when Alice is unclear about things, asks her questions or tries to insist that she is not insane. The Queen criticizes Alice by saying 'You don't know your own mind' as well as Alice's denial, 'What you claim not to know is only what you've denied'. When Bumby tries to make Alice forget her memories, and after Alice has collected them back, the Queen asks 'What are you doing with them?' She also gets angry at the thought of Alice being defeated by Bumby and asscociates him with unpleasant terms 'You'd prefer the hot, stinking, breath and unyielding attention of a potent, unreasoning, unfeeling hell-raiser? I don't think so.' she reminds Alice of the train and what it is trying to do, especially that it is destorying her memories, of the fire in particular. When Alice insists that she is not mad and not guilty, she says, 'The truth you claim to seek eludes you because you won't look at what's around you!', angry that Alice cannot figure it out that Bumby is the cause of her madness. And before Alice's encounter with Bumby, when she asks the Queen what the Infernal Train's destination is, she says 'madness and destruction.' hinting that if Alice should be defeated by Bumby then Alice is doomed to insanity and physical decay due to her fate as a prostitute. She continues with 'You shouldn't ask questions you know the answers to, it's not polite. And that noise wasn't Lizzie talking in her sleep.', again agitated that Alice would ask questions to things that are obvious to Lizzie, that this is all Bumby's fault, and venomously reveals the truth of her own fate to Alice.

Alice Madness Returns Levels

Alice, satisfyingly horrified, overcomes her fear of Bumby and escapes of his control to gather enought courage in real life to kill Bumby by pushing him across the train track, hence avenging Lizzie.

• According to the art book, the Queen's face is supposed to be young Alice, not Lizzie. Lizzie was several years older than Alice, presumably a teenager at the point of her death, not a little girl. The Queen appears to be the part of Alice that isn't in denial about what happened in that faithful night this time round.

A girl (with long hair and not lacking at all in the beauty department) struggles to regain control over her world, destroys monsters and overcomes daunting obstacles while wearing a dress, ribbons, stockings, gloves, a necklace and an apron. What does she fight with? A knife, a pepper grinder, a teapot (items used in cooking), a clockword rabbit, a hobby horse (toys and hence taking care of children) and dodges with a parasol. She manages to triumph over a man, regain control of her world and herself, avoid a fate as a prostitute by bringing the man (who is a rapist and a pimp) to justice by killing him and avenging her family and unfortunate previously-raped sister. Doesn't that just sound feminisitic?

• Victorian London was not a pleasant place for a vulnerable teenage girl like Alice. It isn't too feministic with the prostitution and rape because it's Truth in Television. The knife is, well, a knife; the Pepper grinder is an allusion to the pepper mad cook of the Duchess and the teapot references the Hatter's tea party.

Put simply, she let herself think she didn't know what happened because she (justifiably) didn't want to deal with witnessing what happened to Lizzie, or indeed the fact that the one responsible is now 'helping' her. By extension, this would mean that she probably also knew what Bumby was doing with the orphanage kids, and the dollhouse level is a representation of her repressed guilt, particularly the part where she has to walk between the giant doll's legs, symbolizing how she allowed such things to happen. While concious-Alice has repressed this to the level where she thinks she doesn't know, the Wonderlander's represent her subconscious, so they do, hence the Red Queen ('What you claim not to know is merely what you've denied'), the Hatter ('Forgetting is just forgetting, except when it's not. Then they call it something else. I'd like to forget what you've done. I tried. But I can't.') and the Caterpillar ('You may not yet have paid enough for witnessing the pain of others'). Yes, this WMG is very Silent Hill-esque.

• I always thought this was the intention in the first place.

It sounds a bit strange at first, but think of it like this: the reason why Pinkie is so bubbly and surrounds herself with so many friends is because she knows how destructive her loneliness and sorrow can be. She's trying to prevent Wonderland (and her sanity) from being ruined again. The party she throws for her family that earns her a Cutie Mark was merely her trying to spend as much time as she could with them before something bad happened to them again. In 'Party of One,' she thinks that no one wants to be her friend anymore, so she begins to relapse and starts having hallucinations.Cheshire is playing everyone in Wonderland. Despite being cryptic and vague, he always seems to know more than he let's on. Cheshire is the only one who actually gets Alice to the places she has to go and meet with certain characters but he never really explains why (unless someone is suggesting Alice is really gullible). There's also the one moment at the end of the first game where he was going to reveal thesecret about Alice and the Queen before his temporary death. There's also the fact that no one knows where he disappears to. I figure that he's scheming off camera. Let's not forget that Cheshire never gets lost and happens to know exactly where everyone is without having any method of tracking them other than possibly pure happenstance. Essentially what i'm getting at is that Cheshire is up to something and I doubt it will benefit Alice in any way.

• As for caterpillar, he serves as the wise hermit but there's reason on the basis of suspicion that he's working for/with Cheshire.
• Let's not forget in Queensland that eat me cake conveniently sitting on a table. Who left the executioner's weaksauce weakness there in the first place? The Red Queen wouldn't've left it there, unless...
• Well, the Cheshire Cat is infamous for useless - I'm sorry - cryptic advice but also for being Alice's best friend and moral support. It would make sense for him to use his teleportation to help her in small ways. Not to mention that he is just as terrified of the Train as everyone else and has a sense of self preservation, him leaving the cake might not be that far off.

The start of chapter 5 wasn't a flashback. Alice ended up back in the asylum, possibly as Bumby realized how bad a job he was doing of making her forget and didn't want her to tell anyone what he was doing. She was either lobotomized (hence why she was bald for that segment?) or just having another one of her Wonderland hallucinations (but one that carried over to the 'real world'). So, she remembered what happened to her family, sussed out that Bumby was pimping the orphanage kids, and avenged Lizzie, but justice was never served in reality; the 'doctor' is going to carry on with what he was doing and Alice is going to be incarcerated in Rutledge for gods know how long. How's that for a Downer Ending, eh?Because there will be someone new helping Alice in the real world to separate Londerland back into its original forms(but with London looking more bright). This person will also be able to see Wonderland and will look like a normal person to the player but whenever Alice sees him he'll appear as the white knight. The name of this man helping Alice well it's not that hard to figure out but it's Charles Lutwidge Dodgson(the real name of Lewis Carroll).

• I would have to disagree. The alicewiki page for this suggests that Alice's father wrote the stories for her. Lewis Carroll is never mentioned in-game. If you want to go based on history Lewis was the Liddell family friend for a few years leading up to the fire. The problem lies with the fact that the year before the fire based on a few missing pages in Lewis's diaries that something happened to make the Carroll-Liddell friendship to become unstable. The friendship became distant and then nonexistent. Besides I would think he would've stepped in as Alice's legal guardian thus avoiding Bumby completely. No, if the White Knight does appear he would be... someone else completely different.
• She had been suffering horrible times since her house was burnt down. She didn't has anybody to take care of her, nor an uncle or aunt, nor grandparents. She have to ressort to Wonderland, because the world has been so harsh to her for ten years, more than half her life. If this story is going to have a happy end, it must have a Real World Person that cares about her. And I say Person, not a Complete Monster! I would be glad to see Lewis, as a white knight, helping her.

*Bumby is just trying to heal Alice. The fact that he killed Alice's family is nothing but Alice's delusions. She did not kill Bumby, either. It's all in her mind.

• The whole story seems to make more sense if you bring this monster to the equation. She spent her whole life in an asylum, so her only memories and experiences would be her happy infancy with her parents and the horrible time with the psiquiatrists, who commited her to tortures. In the last episodes, there are sexual themes that only a Complete Monster could have put in a child's mind.
• Her mind was already shattered. She just added another layer of delusion on top of what was already going on there - Bumby was the only person who managed to get close to her to let her open up a little, and then proceeded to poke around in her mind. Regardless of his intention, at that point, Alice's mental defense kicks in - he's in her mind, doing things, he doesn't belong there, there's no way he's anything other than a monster according to her broken psyche. And seeing as we're in Victorian times, times of public sexual repression that often resulted in private debauchery, those scenes and themes aren't something a child couldn't have stumbled upon, so the images might have been there from before. Needless to say, this interpretation is so downright depressing and horrible that it needs to be killed with fire.

Wonderland hints at the true nature of her Witch's Labyrinth. Somehow she retains enough control over her emotions to avoid a lethal dose of Corruption. The reason she does not remember making a Wish with Kyubey is that the hypnosis therapy she took has made her forget this important fact, but as she acquires weapons and powers in Wonderland it all seems too familiar to her somehow. At the end of Madness Returns, Wonderland appearing to merge with the real world implies that she has somehow transformed beyond a normal Magical Girl without becoming a Witch and acquired some powers normally only accessible to Witches, and she can now exist both in the real world and in Wonderland at the same time.If the had more than one actual boss, the Final, the following would be how each of the fights would go in all first five chapters:

Hatter's Domain: This could either go in one of three ways. If the boss fight does happens, it would be a simple arena fight with the boss at the center of platform rings, with Alice firing the Pepper Grinder into various targets in order to overloads its systems and causing damage. Overall a slightly more complicated and far easier version of the final boss from the previous game. The second would be the boss trying to smash you while on a single square platform, with you attack both target and the robot's hands. Basically an easier and FAR less creepy version of the final of this game. The third way is exactly like in the final product, probably for laughs. No matter the direction, all three battles end with Hatter finishing off the boss with a giant tea pot.

Deluded Depths: You'll be obviously fighting against the Walrus in this fight, commencing before the scene in the final game when the train comes in. While mostly immobile, only capable of shuffling around, he's able to jump very high and perform powerful bellyflops on top of you and be able to spin around in a ball to flatten you. The only way to actually damage the walrus at this stage is with either the hobby horse or the teapot since his blubber protects him from anything else. The way to achieve maximum damage is to get him stunned or distracted. TO stun him, Alice must hit him with the hobby horse while he's rolling or planting a bomb under him while he's bellyflopping. The former is higher risk but deals more damage while the latter is safer but wields less damage since he's normally immune to bombs. The fight will play out on the stage, with the audience tossing in health items for Alice and occasionally garbage to temporary stun or distract him. Walrus would also be distracted by trying to eat the oyster performers and/or any audience members that somehow wide up on stage. Eating causes him to regain health, so Alice would need to lay on the hurt before he can regain the health lost. Once you defeat Walrus, the game would then saw Alice about to deliver the killing blow when the Train finally arrives.

Oriental Grove: After you enter the Caterpillar's inner chamber, the Wasp Shogun enters the chamber, demanding audience with the Caterpillar. He explains that his own homeland, including his Queen, was previously destroyed by the Infernal Train and he invaded the paper ant realm as basically his peoples' new home. He seeks the Caterpillar to find out how to stave off the train. The Caterpillar refuses to give the Shogun any answers, stating they are for Alice only. Angered, the shogun challenges Alice to a sword duel and Alice, begrudingly, accepts. In this fight, the ONLY weapon Alice can use is the Vorpal Blade, since this is supposed be a sword duel and the Vorpal Blade is the only weapon Alice has that's a blade. If she uses anything else, the Shogun kills her INSTANTLY. The battle then ends with the Shogun battered and beaten, and knowing there's no way he can help his people, perform hara kiri and kills himself. Alice doesn't give a damn and then converses with Caterpillar.

Queensland: When you enter the throne room, the Queen tries one more time to get rid of Alice, seeing herself as the one who would ultimately save Wonderland. You then fight a skeletal, decaying version of the Queen's true form from the previous game, showing how much influence she had lost in the time between games. The fact that the Queen is quite a distance away from Alice, the only way to damage the Queen is with projectile weapon entirely. Since this is merely a decayed undead version of the Queen, this fight will be MUCH easier than the first game. After defeating her, the Queen yields and the rest of the cutscene plays out like in the final game.

The Dollhouse: Like in the final game, there is no boss for this chapter. Considering the somber mood, the creepy atmosphere, and the increasingly unsettling imagery, an actual boss would seem completely pointless.

An observant player may notice that some numbers are found on more than one child, even in the same room. This leads me to believe that the purpose of the plaques is to rate them. Whether Bumby rates them himself or gets 'customer feedback'...

• The plaques weren't used as a rating system. There's an animation sequence that shows after Alice has went through the dollhouse section, (as she's starting to piece what's really happening together) of the kids going through a factory line and having the plaques placed on them. When this is being done, the numbers are chronological in order as each new doll/child comes through. Also, if you walk through the Wayward Youth orphanage center you see that no number is repeated and in a sequence.

I know it may seem like it: The Cheshire Cat tells her to find the Hatter, who points her to the Mock Turtle, who directs her to see the Carpenter (albeit ostensibly for entertainment), who has her looking for the Caterpillar, who has her heading in the direction of the Queen, who pretty much tells her she has much to do, and swallows her. And all along the way and thereafter, she have to fight Ruin and other evils, like the Daimyo Wasps. Seems like it would be better in some ways just to go to the Queen (if she didn't need those weapons and want those upgrades both weapon and health, that is).

But wait, this isn't reality, this is taking place in Alice's head. It follows that, under the guise of sending Alice to someone more helpful — or entertaining — these manifestation's of the parts of Alice's psyche are sending her around to parts of her mind that are particularly infested with Ruin in order to expel it and therefore, perhaps, bring her that much closer to sanity.

It's... hard to say if it worked at some point after the end of the game, but that makes the most sense to me as the intent.

• The whole journey could be to get Alice to collect all the memory pieces. While the Caterpillar and the Queen know what's going on, Alice won't believe them if they told her straight that her own doctor is the one who killed her family and raped his sister, or that he's pimping brainwashed children. They're her subconcious, they're by nature inclined to being criptic, surely the naked truth would have caused Alice's mind to collapse. Alice needed to collect all those memories first in order to remember her sister's past with Bumby, his own thoughts about what he was doing and some other memories of others to understand and fill minor holes (like Radcliff saying he would burn an awful hat if he ever gets one to destroy the evidence).

Around the parts of the dress where it's thinner (her left arm for example has a thin strand) it looks like it's flowing seamlessly into her skin. It's not actually a dress, it's all her.

Think about it: she's able to travel within a mental world that's all inside her own head, upon which her own clothes change into something more fantastical and reality defying, and she can even access weapons she does not carry over into the real world.

Maybe Alice is actually a Phantom Thief of Hearts without even being aware of it. The reason she never manifests a Persona or a mask representing that is because Wonderland is really her own Palace, and her distorted desires is her own Survivor's Guilt (from the first game) and later denying the truth of whats going on around her (the second game). She still has the clothes and fantastic abilities because she has the potential to have a Persona, like Haru did.

Her Cognitions are reliably distorted by her own insanity and childishness. The Griffin could be how she sees her Father, The Mad Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse as her father's friends, the Cheshire Cat as Diana (her own cat), The Duchess as Pris Witless, the Orderlies as Tweedledee and Dum, the Caterpillar as Mr. Radcliffe, the Carpenter as Nan Sharp and the Walrus as Jack Splatter, and possibly the White Rabbit to Lizzie. The Jabberwock is a Cognition of her own Family in general, that symbolizes her survivor's guilt much like Futaba's cognition of Wakaba did so as well.

Her Shadow, the ruler of said Palace, is none other than the Queen of Hearts. The Cheshire Cat does somewhat allude that they're connected, being 'two parts of the same whole', and the Queen says in the first game 'If you destroy me, you destroy yourself!'

As Alice goes through the place the first time, she rids herself of her distorted desires to not face reality and defeats her own Shadow (but not killing it completely as the sequel shows), removing most of her own insanity. The second time around, it starts reappearing partially because of her distorted desire to not see the truth (who killed her family, what's going on around her and whatnot). The Queen of Hearts is even helpful in the latter, trying to get Alice to confront the root of the problem. This somewhat mirror's Futaba's situation, whose Shadow is her repressed positive traits.

When she does start realizing the truth, she stops going into her own Palace and goes into Dr. Bumby's Palace, the Dollhouse. There, she kills the Dollmaker, who is Bumby's Shadow, which means she kills Bumby as well via Mental Shutdown and throwing him into an oncoming train.

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• And the Fandom Rejoiced: In 2009 EA announced that they were releasing the sequel, Alice: Madness Returns. Guess how happy the fans were.
• Awesome Music:
  • A good majority of the soundtrack, thanks to the musical talent of Chris Vrenna (who now plays with Marilyn Manson). The best example would have to be either 'Village of the Doomed' or 'Flying on the Wings of Steam', the latter of which had a remix that was put on the album.
  • Not to mention, Time to Die and Battle with the Red Queen.
• Complete Monster:
  • In the first game, Jabberwock was so cruel, sadistic and outright hateful that he's literally the only character who died that wasn't resurrected in the ending.
  • Angus Bumbly rapes a young girl and then burns down her house, killing her and her parents just because her little sister (Alice) happened to witness it, leaving Alice insane from the survivor's guilt caused by the fire, tries to 'help' her by Mind Rape getting her to forget her memories so that he can pimp Alice as a prostitute. Not to mention all his other patients.
  • His Wonderland counterpart, The Dollmaker, is naturally just as bad, to the extent even the Big Bad of the first game despises him.
• Goddamned Bats: The Snarks that jump out of lava to spit fire at you. They're very hard to kill without homing weapons like jacks or cards since lava is life-draining to the touch. The regular Snarks are pretty annoying too, frankly.
• Game Breaker: Once you get the Jacks, they'll pretty much be your most-used weapon. That is, until you get the Jabberwock's Eye Staff, which works wonders on larger groups of enemies.
• Memetic Mutation: '
• Nightmare Retardant: Ok, probably is unsafe to state, but you must admit that the not-too exceptional graphics detract something from the Horror, especially since the game is 11 years old.
• That One Boss: The Jabberwock in the second battle. He attacks from the air, directly from above you (which is nasty enough in TPP shooter) and his primary attack sets you on fire, causing Alice to flail and scream.
• Rated 'M' for Money: Apparently, Alice's insanity means violence, bloody decapitations, sorts of stuff Alice probably wouldn't have imagined by that point in her life (considering she was catatonic after all), and the ads seemed to merely show that this is not the family friendly Alice in Wonderland that Lewis Carroll gave us. Apparently, Executive Meddling is to be blamed for this, since American McGee himself has stated in an interview that the developers were pushed to make the game a lot Darker, Edgier, Bloodier and Gorier than they had originally envisioned it. But then again, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
• What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: Although it's based on the relatively tame Alice In Wonderland books, the game's rated M for a reason.
• The Woobie: Pretty much anyone that isn't violently insane applies, namely Alice herself, The Mock Turtle, and The March Hare and Dormouse.