How the creator of Alone in the Dark came back to games
I remember Alone in the Dark (1992) as having a totally crazy rendering engine.  Looking at footage on YouTube [1], I now see that a lot of the more complex background rendering was probably done offline.The Sierra adventures at that time (Kings Quest V and the like) had painted backgrounds where the actionable items would stand out because they looked like crap.[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsGaVrMr9N8