Which Character Should You Pick? – Alone in the Dark

After watching the opening cutscene in Alone in the Dark, you are given the choice of who you want to play as: Edward or Emily. The character you pick will become the main character for the entire game, with the narrative revolving around them and their search for Jeremy. But who should you pick? In this guide, we will go over who we feel is the better character to start with, and why.

Which Character to Pick

Narrative

From a narrative standpoint, your choice will mostly come down to preference. As Emily is Jeremy’s niece and she knows people at the manor, she feels more connected to the overall story and most of the side characters. Edward, on the other hand, has a very interesting personal mystery he has to figure out while on the case, and him being an outsider means you can learn about all of the side characters alongside him.

Emily does have a slight advantage here, however, as she is the only one that gets access to the morgue, meaning she does get a bit deeper into Derceto’s lore.

Gameplay

When it comes to gameplay, the two characters are mostly the same, but Emily again has the slight edge here. This is because of the difference in their starting pistols. Emily has a pistol that holds 7 rounds per clip, while Edward’s revolver only holds 6 bullets. Additionally, when Edward reloads his revolver, he puts each bullet in individually — Emily on the other hand simply puts in a full clip.

With the extra bullet and faster reloading, this does make it a little easier for Emily to handle enemies, especially in the early parts of the game when you only have the one gun.

Overall

With Emily having an extra area to explore, and her having a superior starting weapon, we believe that Emily is the better choice for your first playthrough. If you do decide you’d rather start with Edward, however, this isn’t a wrong choice by any means.

The Full Story

It’s worth mentioning that, regardless of who you decide to pick, you will eventually need to play as both characters if you want to get the full picture of the story. There are two reasons for this:

• Both characters have a story segment that is completely unique to them.
• If you want to get the true ending, you will need to collect all of the Lagniappes, which requires using both characters.

Collecting all of the Lagniappes is the key to unlocking the game’s true ending, but there are some Lagniappes that can only be found by either Edward or Emily. This means that it is impossible to find them all in a single playthrough, and you will have to find the remaining pieces with the character you didn’t choose the first time.

Regardless of who you ultimately decide to pick as your main character, we hope you enjoy your visit to Derceto Manor!