Alan Wake 2 is a game that wears its influences on its sleeves, yet is simultaneously completely its own thing. I guess you can say that about all of Remedy’s games. The original Alan Wake, plus Control, Quantum Break, and even Max Payne are rooted in specific horror, sci-fi, and noir traditions, and at times even directly reference the games and films that inspired them. But all of those games have also left their own footprint on the industry, and established themes and tones that are now quintessentially Remedy’s. With Alan Wake 2, the studio’s biggest and most ambitious game yet, Remedy is still leveraging a lot of familiar conventions and tropes from popular media. But at the same time, this is easily the most Remedy game Remedy has ever made.
One of its biggest influences is Resident Evil 4, and the survival-horror genre more broadly. Scrounging for ammo or batteries for your flashlight is a bigger focus in the sequel, as is managing your inventory space - though it stops short of referring to it as an attache case. The setting, at least for the half of the game that features Alan Wake 2’s deuteragonist Detective Saga Anderson, is also heavily inspired by Resident Evil. The chapter I played during a recent preview event followed Saga as she explored the rural town of Bright Falls while investigating a cult that worships an otherworldly force and has a proclivity for wearing animal masks. Sound familiar?
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Saga, a new character in the sequel, seems to be following a similar path as Alan Wake in the original. She and her partner Alex Casey (perhaps not coincidentally, the name of the main character in Wake’s novels) are working a True Detective-style case in Bright Falls, but almost immediately discover that things there are not what they seem. The townsfolk all seem to know her and believe she’s a resident there, despite her insistence that she’s never been to Bright Falls. At the point I entered Saga’s story, it seemed like she had already worked out that she’s stuck in a story someone else is writing, and that reality is bending around her in unpredictable ways.
While the tone and narrative are deeply connected to the original Alan Wake, the gameplay has changed considerably. Exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat are all core to Alan Wake 2’s take on survival-horror, while level-design has received some much needed attention this time around. The section I played wasn’t quite as labyrinthine and Metroidvania-esque as Control, but it did have interconnected elements that allowed you to easily return to earlier places in the mission and bypass areas you’ve already explored when backtracking. Though steeped in the supernatural, Bright Falls feels a lot more grounded this time, and subsequently, way scarier.\
While the original took place in what felt like an endless, surreal nightmare in the woods, Alan Wake 2 has a stronger sense of place. The mission I played followed Saga through an abandoned coffee-themed amusement park where cultists and shadow entities stalked her every movement, leading to some harrowing combat sequences. There’s so much more texture to the world now that makes it feel real and lived in - even if you may’t be sure that any of this is actually happening.
One encounter that’s been stuck in my mind takes place around a carnival ride that comes to life as you approach it, controlled by a shadow entity stationed at the center of its whirling coffee cup cars. Each shotgun blast directed at the monster causes sections of the fiberglass coffee cups to explode, eroding the creature’s cover and leaving a permanent mark on the attraction. When you return later and see the damage remains, it’s both a testament to the game’s impressive tech, and a confirmation that the fight actually occurred. Alan Wake 2’s constantly twisting reality will make you question everything.
This is especially true in Alan’s story, which is set in the Dark Place beneath Cauldron Lake where he has been trapped for the last 13 years. Represented as a dark and steamy urban setting all lit with neon, the level design in the Dark Place follows a dream logic that’s constantly shifting and altering the world around you, but as a resident of this place, Alan has the tools to understand, navigate, and even control this space.
One of those tools is a literal tool: a small metal handle that can grab light directly from a source, like a streetlight or a work lamp, and send it somewhere else. Standing in the light protects you from the hoards of dark entities that inhabit the city, but the light also transforms the space around you. A balcony in the dark might suddenly have a staircase attached to it in the light, or a construction site in the dark could turn into a fully constructed building once you move the light over it. The changes happen in the blink of an eye, which is some real ‘power of the PS5’ sorcery, but it’s also a brilliant puzzle mechanic. In the chapter I played, I had to move the light back and forth multiple times between several sources to make progress towards my objective.
Another tool is Alan’s ability to write his own story, reshaping the world around him by writing things into existence. This phenomenon is better experienced for yourself, but in brief, the bulk of the mission takes place in a hotel where Alan is constructing - and then intervening - in a ritualistic sacrifice. The Oceanview Hotel (not to be confused with Control’s Oceanview Motel, or is it?) is a multi-level maze filled with barricaded halls and locked doors. Luckily, each new invention in Alan’s story creates new connections to help your progress through it.
Sometimes you can simply write an obstacle out of existence, but other times you have to find ways to negotiate with the space on its own terms. One hotel room’s bathroom leads you into another room on a different floor. Another room connects to a locked room on the opposite side of the hallways. Like Control’s infamous Ashtray Maze, the Oceanview Hotel is a surreal landscape that demands that you rationalize it. This is not merely a tour through a nightmare, but a maze that must be navigated, its internal logic understood.
There’s a lot more going on in Alan Wake 2 that I can’t say much about yet, both because of Remedy’s strict coverage guidelines, and because I haven’t quite grasped the concepts yet. Much has already been made of the Mind Place, Alan Wake 2’s menu system where you’ll collect clues and assemble them on a cork board to build your cases and unravel the game’s many mysteries. Every time I was directed to the Mind Place to move an objective forward I found the whole thing very confusing. That may be because it wasn’t properly tutorialized during the preview (I didn’t start playing at the beginning of the game) and I didn’t have much time to sit and tinker with it either.
I also don’t know what to make of the plot yet. Again, I was thrown into the middle of the game with this preview, but as much as I was able to follow what I played, Alan Wake 2’s story is decidedly dense, heavily metaphorical, and often esoteric - in a good way. The atmosphere and gameplay are going to be a strong enough hook for any horror fan to enjoy, but just like the original this game is heavy on ambiguity and gives you a lot to digest. Fans of the original shouldn’t worry that the sequel has gone mainstream by adopting so much of Resident Evil’s gameplay. It’s just as abstruse and thematically complex as the first, if not more.
Alan Wake 2 launches October 27, so it’s a perfect time to get caught up on the Remedy Connected Universe by playing Alan Wake Remastered and Control, as well as the latter’s DLCs. In a Q&A at the event, creative director Sam Lake stressed that he didn’t want people to feel like they have to do a lot of homework to enjoy Alan Wake 2, and while I’m sure it will be great as a standalone experience, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not getting the full story. I love Remedy’s games even if I haven’t always enjoyed actually playing them, but Alan Wake 2 feels like the first time the studio has been able to fully realize its world-building and storytelling ambitions with a style of gameplay that feels modern and rewarding. This is the only game that can threaten Resident Evil 4 as my game of the year right now, and I can’t wait to see how it all comes together.
