Oct 31

Oct 31 Review | Alan Wake 2 - A Writer's Nightmare. An Editor’s Dream.

It took eight years for Remedy to release the first Alan Wake, and the expectations for the next game from the creators of Max Payne couldn’t have been higher. However, when Red Dead Redemption was released the week before the writer's first nightmare, it was relegated to a cult classic before it even had a chance to prove itself to a wider audience.

Now, after 13 years of fans asking when Wake would return – and after the highs and lows of Remedy’s last decade of games – Alan Wake’s nightmare continues. The problem is, he has yet again landed a week after not one, but two incredible blockbusters (in Mario Wonder and Spider-Man 2) and at the tail end of a year including what is already one of the most beloved Zelda games of all time, a genre-redefining CPRG, a new Street Fighter, a remake of one of the most beloved horror games of all time, and at least a dozen other bangers. That’s why it's so much more remarkable that despite this, Alan Wake 2 manages to stand out as one of the best games of the year and mark itself apart as a piece of art that could only be brought to life by the video game medium.

Alan Wake 2 is a survival horror game in the style of Resident Evil 2 Remake’s tight, over-the-shoulder, claustrophobic action, in stunningly realised environments. But it's also so much more. It bears the weight of a studio’s 13-year-long struggle to get funding and embodies the lessons Remedy learned from Quantum Break and Control. It is an ode to the American fiction of Stephan King, David Lynch, and Nic Pizzolatto, while also telling its own story steeped in Finnish culture. It’s a horror game that wants to make you chuckle just minutes after it makes you shit your pants. It’s an episodic procedural that highlights the methods of both detectives and creatives. It’s all of this while also hybridising live-action storytelling with video game mechanics and technology. Alan Wake 2 is weird and messy, a hodgepodge of inspirations and art forms – and it all, somehow, works.

The game focuses on co-protagonists Alan Wake, a writer brought to life by Ilkka Villi and Matthew Porretta, and Saga Anderson, an FBI agent played by Melanie Liburd. Alongside these two, a plethora of side characters provide the lifeblood of the Twin Peaks-ian town of Bright Fall and the unreality of The Dark Place. These characters include the Koskela brothers, played by Peter Franzén and Peter Franzén with a bad fake beard, a sheriff played by Shawn Ashmore, an otherworldy talk show host played by David Harewood, an agent from the Federal Bureau of Control, a multi-dimensional Finnish Janitor, a film star from the 60s, two octogenarian rockstars, and the highlight of the bunch, Alex Casey/Max Payne/James McCaffrey/Sam Lake, as an ever-shifting character in someone else’s story.

I did not expect to see a topless Sam Lake at some point when I started this game…

These characters, and the act of slowly unravelling who they truly are, what they are doing, and whether they are even real, is what makes Alan Wake 2 so hard to put down. Slotting together characters’ motivations and whereabouts as Saga is what makes her sleuthing around so engaging. While discovering the true nature of things like the talk show outside of space and time slowly starts to make some sense out of this place that defies the laws of reality. These answers and the new questions they pose make Alan Wake 2 feel like a great TV thriller where you just have to watch “one more episode.”

The gameplay and combat feel snappy but deliberately restrained. When it happens it is frantic and chaotic, but you can go long periods without any shooting at all as you solve puzzles and traverse creepy areas. It’s like a mid-point between the survival-horror of Resident Evil 2 Remake and the more action-focused Resident Evil 4 Remake. Most enemies move faster than you and can kill you in a few hits, but your weapons and flashflight are powerful enough that you feel capable of fighting back, making these short encounters feel brutal and impactful. However, combat is usually only the punctuation to scenes of puzzle solving or the procedural work by either protagonist, showing Remedy’s confidence in the story and world being the thing that will carry you through the game. The team balanced these puzzles well with most of Saga’s focusing on real-world logic, including making you do long division for the first time in years, while Alan’s problems in The Dark Place often operate on a dreamlike logic that requires either cerebral thinking or shifting the reality around you.

These thoughtful moments are Alan Wake 2’s strongest. For Saga, you enter The Mind Place, somewhere in her head where she can piece together clues and make deductions. Alan goes to his Writer’s Room, a place where he can construct scenes and plot points to shift reality around him. You go inside your mind in an instant, while the world continues around you, but they are a quiet place where, for Alan, you change large areas in a moment to set a different scene in this distorted reality. While for Saga, you can figure out not just what your next step in this confounding case could be, but also figure out more about who each character is and what is actually going on. These pauses in the action both allow you to take in the absurd things going on in the story, while also allowing the creepiness of the horror to manifest as you realise just how bad things really are in Bright Falls. Both the Writers Room and Mind Place are vital to not just give you direction in what to do next, but to allow you to stew on the events that have just happened.

Saga’s position as someone who has never dealt with the mindbending nature of Remedy’s universe before makes her not just a great vehicle for new players to get to grips with the nature of supernatural forces at play, but also as an in-game encyclopedia that will help you keep track of what is happening. You can switch between these two characters as their stories occur simultaneously. While Alan’s INITIATION might provide the most memorable and stand-out moments, it is Saga’s journey, and the unravelling of mysteries will keep you engaged and add structure and logic to the supernatural happenings. It’s a smart balance that allows you to go between surreal set-pieces and thoughtful examination of clues, at a pace that suits you.

Maybe the best set-piece in any Remedy game to date.

Saying too much about Alan Wake 2 and what makes it so special would be to rob you of the experience of witnessing it yourself for the first time. However, the way Remedy has layered video game mechanics, the cinematic tropes of film, and written storytelling narratives while infusing it with musical punctuation, all through a lens of a culture and experience unique to the team is nothing short of remarkable. Despite Alan Wake 2’s love for modern American classics, it is the game’s Finnish influence that makes it feel like something much more than just a retread of True Detective or Twin Peaks with monsters. The injection of music, characters, and fake product placement from Finland adds a unique unreality to this sleeping Washington town that is wholly unique.

There are minor flaws, including a progress-halting glitch that we had to wait for a day-one patch to fix and some puzzles and signposting that are a bit too esoteric for their own good. Depending on how you feel about shared universes, you might even roll your eyes at the frequency of references to Remedy’s work and legacy. However, none of that can take away from Alan Wake 2 being a game that feels essential to be experienced. In a year where countless games are vying for your time and attention, Alan Wake 2 stands out as something different. It's an ode to cinema, writing, photography, and music but is an experience that only could have been a video game. Whether you are a fan of the work it draws inspiration from, horror games, or the medium of video games Alan Wake 2 is worth your time.