I didn’t get to play Alan Wake when it first came out on the XBox 360, in fact I didn’t get to play Remedy's survival horror until much later when it launched on the PC and I bought it on Gog.com, along with its downloadable standalone game Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. I’d heard interesting things about it since previews started appearing around the internet, but at the time I had a PS3 and not a 360, so I waited. When it finally appeared on PC I pounced, expecting an interesting though ultimately mediocre game. Boy was I wrong.
Alan Wake is about a writer who takes a trip with his wife to a small lakeside mountain town, hoping to relax and allow Mr. Wake the chance to write his new book in peace. Alan’s wife is kidnapped shortly after they arrive, but that quickly becomes the least of your worries as the townspeople are taken over by some shadowy force. Darkness is the true enemy in the game and when night falls, the shadows posses the normally peaceful denizens of Bright Falls. Becoming Taken, they are now humans not just possessed by the dark, but protected by it. You have a small assortment of weaponry throughout the game, but Light is your only real defense against the night and you’ll find yourself hoarding batteries for your flashlight, or running from streetlamp to streetlamp when you run out.
Although good, the combat was not what made me love Alan Wake; It was the setting, the story, and the atmosphere. While playing, I was in a constant state of anxiety over the batteries for my light source, the number of bullets I had left, how deep the shadows were, and the ever declining mental state of Alan. What put it over the top was the episodic style that the game had where each segment started with a “previously on Alan Wake…” concluding with “next time on Alan Wake…” and this just kept me attached to my controller until I finally beat it. Then it didn’t really end. I’ve been waiting for an Alan Wake 2 ever since, and now the below has happened thanks to Polygon.
In case you can’t watch the video, it is a concept and prototype video with a high degree of polish. It’s everything Alan Wake 2 could have been, and possibly still could be. There are two main talking points brought up by the video though, the first of which is the reality altering puzzle mechanics. In the original game Alan would find pages from a book that would be highly accurate predictions of what was about to happen, or what had just happened. Even more strangely, it appeared that they were written by Alan Wake himself. In this video we see that he now understands what is happening and is using his writing to alter reality.
It’s unclear exactly how this mechanic would have worked, but it appears that you’d find pages in certain areas that would describe something happening, and it would be your prerogative to alter the reality so that it would closely resemble the fiction in order for the story to take hold and ultimately manifest, much like in American Nightmare.
The second point I wanted to talk about was the high level of interactivity the enemies had with the environment. Early in the video an enemy falls off a roof, lands on an SUV and damages it. The enemy then rolls off the car, rips off the back door on the driver's side, and uses it as a shield. Shortly before that an, enemy throws an axe at Alan Wake, who dodges just in time and watches as the axe imbeds itself into a fire truck. A second enemy comes around the side of the fire truck and rips the axe out, using it to attack Wake. It’s nothing ground breaking and obviously scripted, but it’s the little things that add much to the suspension of disbelief. In a game like Alan Wake, immersion is king, so I’m all for adding little effects that really make me feel like I’m in a living world. Of course a lot of the interesting things in the video were touched on in Alan Wake's American Nightmare, but nowhere to the degree that they could have been.
Remedy is still shopping Alan Wake 2 around, trying to find the right publisher, but they’re also working on Quantum Break for Microsoft, a game which may do well and beget a sequel, or otherwise do poorly and destroy Remedy entirely. Either way I fear for the fate of Alan Wake 2, but I am hoping that Remedy’s love of the setting and character will bring them back to one of my favorite gaming franchises in recent memory. Plus, the knowledge that they’ve got plans and story ready well past what would be Alan Wake 2 is extremely exciting!
What did you think of the trailer? What are your thoughts on Alan Wake in general? Let us know in the comments section below.
