Alan Wake II

''Alan Wake 2'' is a 2023 survival horror video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Epic Games Publishing. The sequel to ''Alan Wake'' (2010), the story follows best-selling novelist Alan Wake, who has been trapped in an alternate dimension for 13 years, as he attempts to escape by writing a horror story involving an FBI Special Agent named Saga Anderson.

''Alan Wake 2'' was released for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on 27 October 2023. The game's development and marketing budget reportedly was €70 million, making it one of the most expensive games to develop and one of the most expensive cultural products from Finland. ''Alan Wake 2'' received generally positive reviews from critics, praising its story, graphics, and atmosphere. The game was also nominated for multiple Game of the Year awards. It had sold over 2 million units by December 2024, making it Remedy's fastest-selling game. A downloadable content (DLC) expansion titled ''Night Springs'' was released on 8 June 2024, while a second expansion titled ''The Lake House'' was released on 22 October 2024.

Gameplay

Compared to the original ''Alan Wake'', which is an action-adventure game with horror themes, ''Alan Wake 2'' is a survival horror game, although it is still played from a third-person perspective. Players play as Alan Wake or Saga Anderson in two separate single-player stories, which can be played in any order the player chooses, although the opening and ending sequences of the game are linear.

Wake and Anderson traverse environments and fight enemies using various firearms and a flashlight, the latter of which can be "focused" to render enemies vulnerable to firearm attacks. Focusing the flashlight drains its battery, and players need to strategically use a limited amount of batteries and ammunition in order to survive. When enemies are close, Alan or Saga can perform a dodge maneuver.

''Alan Wake 2'' incorporates detective elements: when playing as Saga, players can access an enemy-free space dubbed the "Mind Place". Described by Remedy as a "3D menu", the Mind Place is a visual representation of Saga's thoughts. In the Mind Place, players manage a pin board in which they can connect clues to piece together the main mystery, as well as profile characters to gather clues. As Alan, players have access to the "Writer's Room", where they can see the outline of a novel he is writing. By adding and changing plot details on the outline, they are able to manipulate the space around Alan. Both the Mind Place and the Writer's Room do not pause the outside world.

A returning element from ''Alan Wake'' is finding manuscript pages that foreshadow upcoming events in the story.

Plot

Saga Anderson, an accomplished FBI agent who is known for her unusually accurate intuition, is dispatched with her partner Alex Casey to Bright Falls, a small town infamous for being the site of the disappearance of famous novelist Alan Wake in 2010. Saga and Casey are tasked with investigating a series of ritualistic murders performed by a group calling themselves the Cult of the Tree. They identify the latest victim as FBI agent Robert Nightingale. Saga also finds a mysterious typewritten page that seems to predict their arrival in town. They go to the Sheriff's station to perform an autopsy on Nightingale's corpse, but it reanimates, attacks them, and escapes the morgue. Guided by more manuscript pages she finds, Saga chases Nightingale into the forest surrounding Cauldron Lake and kills him. She then finds Alan Wake washed up on the lake's shore, warning of a man named Mr. Scratch who shares his face. Saga and Casey take Alan back to town, where he recounts where he's been since his disappearance.

For 13 years, Alan has been trapped in an alternate dimension known as the Dark Place, which is accessible via the lake. The Dark Place is home to the Dark Presence – a malevolent supernatural force that can manifest as Alan's doppelgänger, Mr. Scratch. He attempted to escape by utilizing the Dark Place's capability to turn fiction into reality, writing countless stories which always lead him to a dead end – an apparition of his old apartment in New York City, where he's lived with his wife Alice. As he attempts to write a story titled ''Initiation'', Alan discovers video diaries from Alice documenting her experiences being haunted by a man with Alan's face.

Eventually, Alan successfully writes a story titled ''Return'', which details the events of Saga's investigation into the Cult of the Tree, but finds that it has been edited, presumably by Mr. Scratch, into a horror story. Alan warns Saga that Scratch is searching for the Clicker, a powerful supernatural artifact that can be used to free the Dark Presence from the lake or defeat it. Saga decides to follow its trail and realizes that in ''Return'', her past has been rewritten so that her daughter Logan drowned in an accident. Saga recovers the Clicker, but before she can get it to Alan, agents from the secretive Federal Bureau of Control led by Agent Kiran Estevez arrive and apprehend him as well as the Cult leaders, revealed to be town entrepreneurs Ilmo and Jaakko Koskela.

Saga tracks down Odin and Tor Anderson, who she learns are actually her grand-uncle and grandfather, respectively, and passed on their seer abilities to her, allowing her to discern the changes to reality ''Return'' is causing. Saga then heads back to Bright Falls to get the Clicker to Alan, but Ilmo and Jaakko warn that he is a monster, prompting Alan to kill Jaakko and attack Saga. Saga, reasoning that he must have been Scratch pretending to be Alan, fends him off him with the FBC's light technology. A grieving Ilmo explains that the Cult's purpose was to protect Bright Falls from the Taken (people possessed by the Dark Presence) that emerge from the lake. Saga enlists the help of Casey, Estevez, Odin, and Tor to summon the real Alan out of the Dark Place using the Clicker.

Back in the Dark Place, Alan receives a phone call from his future self, explaining that his repeated attempts to write himself out of the Dark Place are causing him to experience temporal loops. His final journey to Alice's apartment reveals that the hauntings eventually caused her to take her own life. The infuriated Alan kills who he believes is Scratch, but is actually his past self editing ''Return'', perpetuating the loop. Realizing there was no Scratch and he is responsible for Alice's death, Alan's despair allows the Dark Presence to possess him.

Saga realizes the summoning ritual successfully brought Alan back to the real world, but brought him to an earlier point in the story, with the Dark Presence already inside him waiting to take over. The possessed Alan arrives and attacks the group. Saga and Estevez are able to banish the Dark Presence from Alan's body, only for it to possess Casey instead, steal the Clicker, and throw Saga into the Dark Place.

Alan returns to the Dark Place to try and write a new ending to the story. Saga learns to navigate the Dark Place, retrieving the Clicker and a Bullet of Light, and reuniting with Alan to help him write an ending to save Casey and Logan.

With the Clicker and the revised ending, Saga is able to banish the Dark Presence from Casey's body. Alan goads it into possessing him again, and Saga shoots him with the Bullet of Light, seemingly killing him and destroying the Dark Presence. As the bullet passes through Alan, he sees clearly for a moment, and realizes that the whole story has been looping endlessly and he will return to the beginning without his memory. As Casey recovers from his possession, Saga calls Logan to see if the ending worked, but the scene cuts to black while the phone rings.

A final video diary left behind by Alice reveals she knew Alan was trapped, and used her videos to trick Alan into thinking she committed suicide, explaining that the only way he can escape the loops is through either "destruction" or "ascension". Alice is now in the Dark Place too, helping him and Saga through the story. Alan must continue the loop and keep going through destruction until he's ready for ascension. Alan then revives from his gunshot wound and says, "It's not a loop, it's a spiral."

The New Game Plus mode, ''The Final Draft'', presents a different ending, implying that the player's repeated playthroughs have brought them to the end of the spiral. As he hands Saga his revised ending for ''Return'', Alan realizes that the Dark Presence was born from the darkness that was shot out of his skull by the Bullet of Light, and it has been influencing him all his life. The link between it and Alan was severed after he finished ''Return'', but the Dark Presence remained as Alan was missing the part of himself it was born from: Alice. Realizing that he and Alice are still connected through his writing and her photos, the Bullet of Light finally succeeds and destroys the Dark Presence for good, breaking the loop. Logan answers Saga's call, and Alan revives soon after, no longer returning to the beginning of the loop. He thanks Alice, then declares himself the master of not just two worlds, but many.

Development

Pre-production

Remedy Entertainment released ''Alan Wake'' in 2010. Learning from ''Max Payne'', they wrote ''Alan Wake'' in a way that allows additional story to be told through sequels and further installments. The team began discussing sequel ideas after ''Alan Wake'' was shipped, which would continue to star Alan Wake as the protagonist, but also explore the stories of the supporting characters including Wake's friend Barry Wheeler and Sheriff Sarah Breaker. A prototype was created to show off the gameplay of ''Alan Wake 2'' when the studio was showing the game to potential publishers. The game would have been a direct sequel to ''Alan Wake'', featuring new enemies and new gameplay mechanics, such as being able to rewrite reality, which were showcased in the prototype. Ultimately, Remedy pitched the project to ''Alan Wake'' publisher Microsoft Studios. Microsoft, however, at the time was not interested in a sequel and instead, tasked Remedy to create a new game. This ultimately became ''Quantum Break'', released in 2016. It included, alongside other easter eggs to ''Alan Wake'', a short live-action film, titled ''Alan Wake: Return''. It features two FBI agents, one named Alex Casey, investigating the reappearance of Wake, which had been created by Remedy as to help promote a sequel to publishers. The other FBI agent was Saga Anderson, who was portrayed by Malla Malmivaara. She was later recast with Melanie Liburd. Most of the ideas for ''Alan Wake 2'' were implemented in '' American Nightmare'', a downloadable follow-up to ''Alan Wake''. Remedy CEO Tero Virtala stated that any further sequels to ''Alan Wake'' would require Microsoft Studios' approval as the publishing rights holder, though Remedy otherwise owns all other intellectual property rights to the series.

When ''Quantum Break'' was announced, Sam Lake explained that a sequel to ''Alan Wake'' had been postponed, and that ''Alan Wake'' was not financially successful enough to receive the funding they needed to continue developing the sequel at the time. Director of communications Thomas Puha stated in April 2019 that Remedy had briefly returned to work on an ''Alan Wake'' property about two years prior, but the effort did not work out, and the company was booked for the next few years, between their own new game ''Control'', supporting Smilegate on its game ''CrossfireX'', and another new project. Puha said that the only limited factor for them to work on an ''Alan Wake'' sequel was "time, money, and resources". Despite that, Lake continued to be part of a team in Remedy to brainstorm ideas and work on different incarnations for ''Alan Wake 2''. Internally, the project was code-named "Project Big Fish", which represented its importance and significance to Remedy. In the second downloadable content pack for ''Control'', Remedy's next game following ''Quantum Break'', Alan Wake was featured as a character. According to Remedy, ''Control'' established the "Remedy Connected Universe" which is shared by both ''Control'' and ''Alan Wake'', and that the next game released by the studio will also be set on this universe.

Remedy fully acquired the rights to ''Alan Wake'' from Microsoft in July 2019, including a one-time royalty payment of about for the game series' past sales, which helped pave the way for a sequel. Remedy had signed with Epic Games Publishing in 2021 for the release of two games. Remedy released '' Alan Wake Remastered'' in October 2021 as the first game of this partnership, while the second, larger game, ''Alan Wake 2'', was announced at The Game Awards 2021. Remedy's communications director Thomas Puha said that Epic allowed Remedy to create the game they wanted to make with minimal publisher interference, while providing extensive feedback to help improve the game.

Production

With Epic as their publisher, Remedy began production on ''Alan Wake 2'' in August 2019. According to Sam Lake, the game would be powered by Remedy's own Northlight Engine, which they used for ''Quantum Break'' and ''Control''. Lake also stated that ''Alan Wake 2'' would be a survival horror game, as opposed to ''Alan Wake'', which Lake said was "an action game with horror elements", though he did not explain the difference between the two. Lake further added that players will not need to play the previous games in order to understand ''Alan Wake 2''. The sequel continued to draw inspiration from the works of David Lynch, particularly ''Twin Peaks''. According to Lake, he sought influence specifically from the third season of ''Twin Peaks'', whereas the first entry was influenced by earlier seasons. Also influential were more detective themes from works like '' SE7EN'', '' The Silence of the Lambs'', and ''True Detective'', while literary influences included ''House of Leaves'' by Mark Z. Danielewski, ''Lunar Park'' by Bret Easton Ellis, ''The New York Trilogy'' by Paul Auster and Stephen King's '' The Dark Tower'' series, as well as his memoir '' On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft''. Lake said that his approach to ''Alan Wake 2'' was bolstered by the success of the film ''Everything Everywhere All At Once''.

Remedy confirmed the game would remain in the third-person perspective despite the switch to survival horror, and that both Ilkka Villi and Matthew Porretta would return to provide the appearance and the voice of Alan, respectively. Other cast include Melanie Liburd as the live-action and voice of Saga Anderson, David Harewood as both the live-action and voice of Mr. Door, James McCaffrey and Lake as the voice and live-action appearance of Alex Casey, respectively. Further, ''Alan Wake 2'' includes cameos from characters in ''Control'', including Jesse Faden (voiced by Courtney Hope), Dr. Darling (Porretta) and the mysterious janitor Ahti (Martti Suosalo).

Alan's mission "Initiation 4: We Sing" has the player guide Alan through a surreal set while the character Mr. Door and others sing "Herald of Darkness", a musical summarizing Alan's story to that point with music provided by Poets of the Fall (playing as the fictional band "Old Gods of Asgard"). Lake said the idea for the musical sequence was inspired by ''Alan Wake'' concert standoff as well as the Ashtray Maze level in ''Control'', both set to Poets of the Fall's music. Lake also knew that Porretta (Wake) and Harewood (Mr. Door) could sing, and Poets of the Fall were able to help with choreography. Frequently through development, some of the developers questioned the need for the musical sequence due to both the strangeness of the sequence in the horror game and the difficulties in executing it. However, Lake insisted that the sequence must be kept. The song was played live at The Game Awards 2023 by Poets of the Fall, along with Villi, Porretta, Harewood, and Lake reprising their roles.

Overall, the game took 13 years to develop. In an interview, Sam Lake said this was because "The sequel contains many characters and locations, as well as a continuation of the supernatural lore established and introduced in the original Alan Wake."

The budget for the game reportedly stands at €70 million, with €50 million in development and an additional €20 million spent on marketing. This is considered to make the game one of the most expensive cultural products in the history of Finland.

Post-launch updates

In October 2024, Remedy Entertainment released the free anniversary update for ''Alan Wake 2'', adding accessibility options like infinite ammo, one-shot kills, and gameplay assists. The update added DualSense motion control support and enhanced haptic feedback on PlayStation 5, along with expanded axis inversion options.

Graphics technology

Prior to the release of ''Alan Wake 2'', Remedy Entertainment had earned a reputation for pushing visual boundaries and graphics technology with releases such as ''Control'' and ''Max Payne 2''. ''Alan Wake 2'' was developed with ninth generation consoles in mind. For its traditional graphics rasterization, ''Alan Wake 2'' harnesses mesh shaders that are only supported by the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nvidia's GeForce RTX 20 and 16 series or AMD's Radeon RX 6000 series of GPUs and later on PC. The game was the first to be released with native support for mesh shaders. As opposed to older vertex and geometry shading techniques, mesh shaders try to reduce the bottleneck from rendering a large number of fixed vertex triangles by instead flexibly rendering large groups of triangles. Developers are given greater control over rendering complex geometry as mesh shaders can be segmented into smaller meshlets that can be re-used and rendered in-parallel while making less calls for data from memory. The graphics pipeline is also shorter with mesh shaders as opposed to a traditional vertex and tessellation pipeline. ''Alan Wake 2'' running on hardware without mesh shader support, such as Nvidia's GeForce GTX 10 series or AMD's Radeon RX 5000 series of GPUs and older, results in poor performance and visual errors. However, an optimization patch released in early 2024 improved performance on GTX 10-series GPUs.

Ray tracing is extensively used in ''Alan Wake 2'' to better simulate how light realistically behaves in the real world. Scenes are lit using global illumination and the light provided by the global light source bounces off surfaces and diffuses depending on the materials present. The use of ray tracing is particularly important for adding ambience to dark scenes in the game that feature flashlights as a sole light source. ''Alan Wake 2'' even goes beyond ray tracing to incorporate path tracing where diffused light will also bounce across duller surfaces in addition to reflective ones. Path tracing's computational demands means that it is not available on the limited console hardware. ''Alan Wake 2''s extensive use of ray tracing made it a promotional vessel for Nvidia's graphics technologies such as supporting DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction. On Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics cards, it seeks to improve ray tracing visual quality and performance by not performing calculations on multiple rays per pixel and instead using machine learning to fill in the gaps.

Music

The original score for ''Alan Wake 2'' by Finnish composer Petri Alanko was released via Epic Games and Laced Records on 14 May 2024, the 14th anniversary of the first ''Alan Wake'' game's release. Alanko returns to the role of composer from the first ''Alan Wake'' game with his approach to composing for ''Alan Wake 2'' "akin to reuniting with an old friend, discovering both familiar and new elements to play with".

Alanko first began recording ''Alan Wake 2''s original score in 2011, and in the years since then, it became a "very different entity". The biggest change that occurred since Alanko began work on the score was the addition of the game's second protagonist Saga Anderson. In the years since beginning work on ''Alan Wake 2''s score, he also composed the score for Remedy Entertainment's 2019 game ''Control''. To create some of the sounds for ''Alan Wake 2'', Alanko used unconventional means such as dropping pianos off forklift trucks.

Release

Remedy announced in May 2023 that ''Alan Wake 2'' would be a digital-only release, rationalizing that many players had already shifted to only buying games digitally, so they wanted to ensure the game maintains a low price, and they didn't want it to require a separate download even if a physical version was released. Originally planned to release for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on 17 October 2023, Remedy delayed the game by ten days to 27 October to avoid competition from other major triple-A releases. The PC version is exclusive to the Epic Games Store for "a long time". Free downloadable content packs and two paid expansions titled ''Night Springs'' and ''The Lake House'' were announced. Remedy later announced that physical editions of the game would release in October 2024, including a limited collectors edition produced with Limited Run Games.

Marketing

An Alan Wake cosmetic outfit was added to ''Fortnite'' as part of the "Fortnitemares 2023" event and a retelling of the first ''Alan Wake'' was available within ''Fortnite Creative'' in the weeks prior to the sequel's release to help new players come up to speed on events from the first game.

From 10 October to 13 November 2023, a free copy of ''Alan Wake 2'' was included in a promotional bundle with the purchase of certain Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs. The eligible GPUs for the bundle were the RTX 4070, RTX 4070 Ti, RTX 4080 and RTX 4090.

Alan Wake was added to the video game ''Dead by Daylight'' in January 2024. Additional cosmetics were included with his release, including skins that turn the character into either Saga Anderson, Rose Marigold, and Mr. Scratch.

Downloadable content

The first downloadable content (DLC) addition, ''Night Springs'', was released on 8 June 2024. It contains three episodes, featuring echoes of existing characters in the Remedy shared universe in "what if" type scenarios within Bright Falls. These include "Number One Fan," with the player controlling the Waitress, who is based on Rose; the second is "North Star," which features a protagonist based on Jesse Faden, the main character of ''Control''; the third is "Time Breaker," which features the Actor, real-life actor Shawn Ashmore appearing as himself as well as Sheriff Tim Breaker (whom Ashmore also voices).

The second DLC expansion, ''The Lake House'', was released on 22 October 2024. This expansion is a crossover with Remedy's ''Control'' series. In ''The Lake House'', players take control of FBC agent Kiran Estevez. While the events of the expansion take place towards the beginning of the main game's plot, players are able to access the expansion from the main menu at any time, or during the mission "Return 6: Scratch", in a similar vein to the ''Night Springs'' DLC, which players could enter by finding various television sets around the Dark Place. The game also saw the release of new tracks from Petri Alanko and Poe, as well as a new in-game outfit for Alan, the "classic outfit".

Reception

Critical response

''Alan Wake 2'' received "generally favorable" reviews from critics for the PC and PS5 versions, while the Xbox Series X/S version received "universal acclaim", according to review aggregator website Metacritic. OpenCritic determined that 93% of critics recommended the game.

Andrew Farrell of ''PCGamesN'' in his ''Alan Wake 2'' review awarded the game 9 out of 10 saying, "''Alan Wake 2'' is a marvel, serving up intense gameplay, a twisty, dark story, and more secrets and surprises than you could possibly imagine. Remedy has outdone itself here, delivering a truly remarkable experience."

''Alan Wake 2'' was ranked first on ''Time''s top 10 best video games of 2023 list.

''Night Springs''

''Night Springs'' expansion received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to Metacritic. OpenCritic determined that 79% of critics recommended the expansion.

''The Lake House''

''The Lake House'' expansion received "mixed or average" reviews from critics for its Windows version and "generally favorable" reviews for the PlayStation 5 version, according to Metacritic. OpenCritic determined that 66% of critics recommended the expansion.

Sales

By the end of December 2023, ''Alan Wake 2'' had sold over 1 million units, and by February 2024, had sold over 1.3 million units, making it Remedy's fastest-selling game. It sold more units and over three times more digital units in its first month than ''Control'' did in its first four months. As of late April 2024, the game had not recouped its development and marketing costs. In its January–June 2024 financial report, Remedy confirmed that the game still had yet to turn a profit for the company. In the quarterly earnings report on 1 November 2024, the company announced that while the game has not yet started generating royalties, it is close to fully recouping most of the development and marketing costs with ongoing sales. On 19 November, Remedy announced that the game had sold over 1.8 million units. By the end of 2024, it had sold over 2 million units, and started generating royalties for Remedy due to development and marketing costs having been recouped.

Awards

Notes

References

External links

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