Who is Edward Carnby? Well, in the past few years, there has been some confusion on that matter. I remember being fifteen years old and thinking that any guy who could out swashbuckle ghost pirates, draw faster than undead gunslingers, or headbutt a flesh-eating zombie in the face was someone worth my admiration. If he ran out of ammo, he tossed his empty 38’ at his enemy, grabbed a cutting board off the counter or a pot off the stove and beat his machine gun wielding foe to death before he could even aim. He was like Steven Segal, Charles Bronson, and MacGyver wrapped neatly into one epic trilogy. That was the kind of guy I wanted starring in my video games.

In 2001, I was in my early twenties and stoked that The New Nightmare had returned Carnby to the gaming screen that was until I started scratching my head and wondering how the game was set in modern times when Carnby was clearly born before the start of the twentieth century. Would this fourth installment feature a one hundred year old Carnby beating zombies over the head with his walker and running over hellhounds’ tails with his wheel chair? That probably would have been a better idea than the crap they pulled.

Instead of good old Carnby, Alone in the dark fans got a wise cracking, sarcastic, Fox Mulder-want-to-be. The Game’s Website had some really long explanation about some society of “Demon slayers”, “Light bringers”, (or some other garbage like that) and they had passed down the name of Edward Carnby like a torch to all their warriors, hence this Carnby was a different person who was trained by the same people. Translation: Infograms and DarkWorks SA didn’t think contemporary gamers would buy a game set in prohibition-era- America; instead, they cooked up this marketing scheme to modernize the game and left us, the fans, with a cheap imitation of our beloved character.

The scariest moment in The New Nightmare that still haunts me to this day wasn’t one of the cheap jump scenes, or those retarded looking faceless zombies. It was the first time my gun went click and I scrambled to figure out how to toss something, or throw some fists, and maybe even deliverer Carnby’s patented crescent kick. I remember even tearing through the manual, hoping that it could not be true, that there was some mistake, but atlas there was not. New Nightmare had robbed Carnby of his ability to fight Melee battles. I guess that "Secert Society's" training practices have gotten lax over the years. Tsk freaking Tsk. My grandmother could have been tough with a triple barrel shotgun, but no one is calling me for the rights to put her in a game. If this Carnby can’t even throw one lousy punch, he’s not the type of guy I would want to follow on an adventure for several hours.

Well, here I am pushing thirty, and the Alone in the Dark franchise decided to take another crack at it. Now, I recognized that Alone in the Dark (AITD5), “the New New Nightmare,” (or known by most critics as “That Train wreck” Atari and Eden threw together this year) tried to go to some lengths to fix the Carnby Identity Crisis. Carnby got back some of his craftiness. He can beat a zombie to death with just about anything he can get his hands on again, burn them to death with homemade flame throwers, run them over with a car, or just plain shoot them in the head, but it won’t be with Carnby’s infamous 38 Special. They nixed that for some reason. New Nightmare wouldn’t even cross that line.

AITD5 also did away with any references to the fact that the character was a different person then the hero of the original trilogy. What happened to that secret society crap? Instead, we have a character with amnesia, who can’t remember his past, (Or apparently where his 38 is) and curses like drunken sailor for no good reason the entire game. Although after spending an entire game with Sarah, AITD5’s heroine, I can empathize. She makes Aline Cedric seem appealing. (I really miss the original trilogy’s blonde, Emily Hartwood. Even she could kick a hellhound in the face if she was cornered.)

So will the Carnby of my youth return? Will “The Reptile” (anyone remember that nickname?) ever take up his 38’ again, put on a snazzy suit, and whop some zombies with a little style? Probably freaking not. Instead, the gaming community will probably be handed whatever trendy archetype the developers decide to smoosh together for Alone in the Dark 6, the type of guy even Christian Slater would not make the mistake of portraying twice.