Alone in the Dark is a series of survival horror computer games from Infogrames. In most of the series, the gamer plays as private investigator Edward Carnby, who usually goes to investigate a haunted mansion or town that is full of undead creatures. The story is based on the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, although later games in the series drew inspiration from other sources including Voodoo, the Wild West, and the works of H.R. Giger.
The three original games took place in the 1920s and depicted the paranormal cases of a private eye called Edward Carnby. In 1924 (Alone in the Dark) he was comissioned by an antique dealer to investigate a piano in the loft of the Louisiana mansion Derceto, which was abandoned since its owner Jeremy Hartwood had commited suicide. In 1925 (Alone in the Dark 2) Carnby went on to solve a case involving the kidnapping of young Grace Saunders after the investigating procedures of his deceased partner Ted Stryker, with all the clues leading to an old mansion named Hell's Kitchen and a infamous gangster gang which inhabited it. In 1926 (Alone in the Dark 3) he was called to investigate the disappearance of a film crew at a two-bit ghost town known by the name of Slaughter Gulch located in the Mojave Desert in California. The first game shared the protagonism role with Jeremy Hartwood's niece, Emily Hartwood, who also took a role of damsel in distress in Alone in the Dark 3.
When Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare was made, the setting was moved from the 1920s to the year 2001, and a background legend was made up in order to explain that Edward Carnby belonged to a lineage of Shadow Hunters which were born the 29th of February of every 40 years and raised as orphan childs in St George's Oprhanage, all of them going to the name of Edward Carnby. The name was depicted as a literal anglicized form of El War Qarn'bi , which meant the one who battles evil incarnate and hunts out the shadows . According to this legend, the original Edward Carnby was born in 1888 and went out of record after engaging several strange affairs in the years 1920 to 39. The Edward Carnby that played the main role in Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is a different and younger character which was born in 1968.
The Alone in the Dark (2008) game reinterpreted once again the series storyline and while it kept being canon to the original trilogy, its revised storyline resulted to be unfitting with Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare due to the fact that this game's plot, which takes place in 2008, claims that there has only ever been one Edward Carnby which was asleep since the late 1920s, therefore assuming that the main character is the original Edward Carnby despite bearing little to no resemblance to him. This contradicts the previous game legend background which established the lineage of Edward Carnby shadow hunters. The 2008 game scraps any reference to the other Edward Carnby characters resulted by the Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare background, including the main character of that particular game and which is supposed to still be alive by the date of the 2008 game.
