Review- Alan Wake 2

 

Part 1: Intro

Just as I was reconsidering my Game of the Year list after playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Alan Wake 2 hits the entire list like an earthquake and plants down its flag right at the top of an already stacked list, during an incredibly stacked year. I could say that “Alan Wake 2 feels like *this movie director* or *this author* made a videogame”, but to do that would be a disservice to the folks at Remedy Entertainment, who’s only real point of comparison is their previous work, since no one is really doing what Remedy does at Remedy’s level of quality. Alan Wake 2, with its narrative complexity, gorgeous environment design, seamless inclusion of live action sequences, and thrilling gameplay, feels like a final form for how Remedy makes games. If it wasn’t already obvious, I was blown away by Alan Wake 2, and I’d like to explain why.

 

But first, a brief recap… The first Alan Wake ends with Alan trapped in the Dark Place, sacrificing himself to save his wife. For those that did not play Alan Wake, the Dark Place/Presence is this malicious entity that feeds upon art and artists and can turn art into reality. So, when Alan, the best-selling novelist, was trying to fight against the Dark Presence, he did so through his art, and the original game leaves the audience with Alan writing his escape out of the Dark Place. It seems that he was unsuccessful so far, as 13 years have passed between that original game and Alan Wake 2, and he is still trapped. The biggest difference in this game is that Alan is no longer alone in his fight. Alan Wake 2 sports two protagonists: Alan Wake, and newcomer Saga Anderson, FBI Agent. Saga and her partner Casey are visiting Bright Falls, investigating murders, and missing persons all relating to the Cult of the Tree, but once they arrive, they stumble onto pages of a manuscript from someone that has seemingly written them into this “horror story” they find themselves in. No spoilers here, but this trajectory sends both Alan and Saga into a winding and looping plot as they both try and escape this horror story intact.

 

The biggest upgrade that Alan Wake 2 has in comparison to its predecessor, are the upgrades in gameplay and game feel. These upgrades that I’m talking about are the shift in camera controls, updates in encounter design and improvements to old mechanics. The original Alan Wake’s camera perspective gave the player a view of Wake’s whole body, but here in the sequel Remedy has adopted the classic over-the-shoulder camera placement. This shift makes combat much more straightforward and adds a bit of tension since the camera is now showing far less than it did before. The update to encounter design is thanks to the change in genre, as Alan Wake 2 is now full on survival horror, instead of action with brushes of horror painted on. This means that there are fewer enemies overall and enemies are more resilient, creating smaller scale encounters, but that tradeoff in scale is balanced with the increased tension now present in most every encounter. The best upgrade has to go to the refreshed mechanics, those being the dodge and the flashlight. The flashlight was one of my biggest annoyances with the first Alan Wake, since it felt like it needed to be handled with more finesse than the controls of the game allowed for, making its main use, destroying shadows off of taken enemies, feel spotty and unsatisfying. Here in Alan Wake 2, the flashlight is very snappy, locking onto targets with accuracy and ease, and now the batteries store charges to take off a shadow, so the battery economy is much more of a known quantity now than it was before which is huge. The updates to the dodge are updates by osmosis, since a lot of the improved feel comes from the updates to the camera and encounter design. Here in Alan Wake 2, encounters have far fewer enemies, making dodging much less chaotic than it could have been previously, and the updated camera positioning makes it much easier to know what you’re dodging and where you’re dodging to.

 

Part 2: Saga Anderson

Saga was the biggest surprise in Alan Wake 2. I never expected her story to be of low quality, but her half of this game was far more endearing and captivating than I was expecting. So captivating in fact that I just HAD to finish her part of the story as soon as possible, so instead of flipping back and forth between Saga and Wake I did their playthroughs one at a time. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend doing that, but I had a great time, nonetheless. What makes Saga so interesting from a narrative perspective is how much her story in the game mirrors Wake’s story from the first game. They both arrive at Bright Falls and act as an audience surrogate, blissfully unaware of what they truly just walked into. Both of their lives get tangled up in the Dark Presence underneath Cauldron Lake, and they both work to untangle their increasingly strange situation as the world around them slowly but surely begins to be influenced by that Dark Presence. Like Abby in the Last of Us Part 2, Saga’s story is purposefully similar to Wake’s story from the first game to endear the audience to her, and to give her story connective tissue to the whole package.

 

The best features of Saga’s portion of the game, and the features that are unique to her portion, are the environment she spends time in and her powers of deduction. Briefly touching on the geography, Bright Falls and its surrounding forests are absolutely beautiful. The vistas, the lighting, the graphical fidelity, and the detail of it all is insane. I don’t typically highlight the look of a game, but Alan Wake 2 is one of the most graphically and artistically impressive games I have ever played. It’s fairly obvious from the geography of her locations and her occupation that Saga’s story is inspired by both True Detective and Twin Peaks, but the impressive part of this is that it actually commits that inspiration instead of taking insignificant window dressing from it. Here in Alan Wake 2, you’ll be moving through lush forests and small towns, actually piecing together clues and evidence by using Saga’s Mind Place. Saga will collect evidence and then go into her Mind Place to either profile someone or examine evidence. Her deductive powers put Sherlock Holmes to shame, and while the discoveries she makes in the Mind Place can feel a bit convenient at times, it’s really nice to play a game about clues and mystery and actually be surprised at the twists and turns, rather than spotting the ending from a mile away and just waiting for the detective to catch up.

 

Saga’s story is also where the player is first introduced to how Remedy will be using live action in Alan Wake 2. While there will be far more to talk about in Alan Wakes portion of this review later, the live action inclusions in Saga’s story are a nice appetizer of what is to come. There are two ways that Saga’s story includes live action: Commercials and Mind Place profiles. The commercials are Remedy’s bread and butter, having already existed in some form in their previous games like the Night Springs episodes in Alan Wake or the informational videos in Control. Here they give flavor to the Bright Falls community, showing off their local Amusement Park, Coffee World, or highlighting the local Oh Deer Diner. The other live action inclusion are these background flashes of real life people that Saga see when she’s profiling someone in her Mind Place. Saga will be trying to piece together information, and behind her and, for a brief moment, the live action version of that character will show up on screen. What separates Alan Wake 2’s live action elements from other Remedy games is that these characters that are made live action are already in the game, so it’s not a real person the player is watching in a videogame, but it’s a character they are already familiar with just being shown off in a new way, a way that makes them more memorable. Control was my first Remedy game, and obviously my first introduction to their type of game, and while I got used to it, I was never fully sold on their inclusion of live action elements in it. It always felt like a loose thread that was part of the full package but was never seamlessly interwoven. Alan Wake 2’s live action inclusions was exactly what I was wanting this whole time, and I truly cannot fathom how they were able to make live action feel completely flush with the rest of the game.

 

Saga’s part of this game feels like the first Alan Wake was upgraded and on steroids, sporting interesting mechanics that really lean into her role as a detective. But that’s just it, she’s just a part of this game. So, let’s examine the other part of this game, that being titular character Alan Wake.

 

Part 3: Alan Wake

If Saga’s part of Alan Wake 2 feels like the original Alan Wake on steroids, then Alan Wake’s part feels like Remedy as a whole on steroids. Here is where Remedy really pulls out all the stops with complex puzzle encounters, the best inclusion of live action I’ve ever witnessed, and some of the most gorgeous environments I’ve walked through in a videogame.

 

 Getting straight to the point, Alan Wake 2 has Wake trapped in the Dark Place, trying to write his way out so he can be reunited with his wife Alice. This loop he’s stuck in has him trapped in the Dark Place’s rendition of New York, unable to simply escape, as he needs to construct a narrative that follows the rules of a satisfying horror story. Just as he is the author of the story, he is also a potential victim of his art, since, as he states at the beginning of the game, “In a horror story, there are only victims and monsters”.

 

First off, this rendition of New York City is just as beautiful as Bright Falls, just in a different way. Instead of lush forests and quaint towns, the streets are rain-soaked and lit up by neon signage. It’s reminiscent of a hard-boiled detective story, which fits, as not only is that the type of story that made Alan Wake successful as a writer, but it’s also that same detective character that Wake created that’s there in the Dark Place with him, sometimes chasing him, sometimes being the subject of inspiration for what Wake writes.

 

The puzzle writing encounters were a particular highlight of the game, as Alan walks through environments, getting inspiration both for locations to include in the narrative as well as plot points to progress the story. The puzzle encounters make use of two new mechanics: The Lamp of Light and Alan’s Plot Board. The lamp captures light and allows Wake to transfer it to different locations, either allowing for new passageways to open or creating small zones of safety, as the player is safe from the taken enemies while in the light. The other mechanic, the Plot Board, is Wake’s version of Saga’s detective board, where he is piecing together a horror narrative, mixing and matching different scenarios with premises he finds around the location. One that has been shown off in the marketing is a subway car that Alan needs to get through, so, with the new premise he discovered of these people called the torchbearers, he writes that they set fire to the subway car, allowing for him to crawl through the burnt wreckage so he can progress through the level. It’s a game of twisting and turning with both the lamp mechanic and the plot board mechanic that really make these puzzles engaging, although it can be more than a bit frustrating if you don’t seem to understand what to do next, which did happen to me more than once. Nevertheless, these puzzles were both fun and tense to walk through, as you slowly watch Wake write himself into more and more trouble, just trying to find a way out of this horror story.

 

By far my favorite part of Alan Wake 2 was Alan’s live action inclusions, as I’ve never seen it done so seamlessly, and executed at such a complex level. Alan Wake’s entry into the Dark Place almost always begins in Mr. Door’s television studio. Here is where most of the live action sequences are done, where Videogame Alan Wake wakes up in a studio Green Room, looking at a tv with himself on the screen. After clicking the button prompt to focus on the television, the live action sequence begins, and what follows is likely is either Alan Wake just being constantly confused at what’s going on around him, or the greatest set piece I’ve ever seen in a game ever, no spoilers (but if you know, you know). The other aspect of Alan Wake’s story that uses live action elements is arguably the most interesting inclusion. While trying to piece together a narrative to forward his plot, Wake will come across these orbs, one made of light, the other made of shadow. By aligning them he is able to gain inspiration for what to write about next, being told about this developing plot by his creation, Alex Casey. These small sections have a real human silhouette in the game, as well as a translucent projection of one of the characters in the sky, not dissimilar to the Wizard of Oz. It’s not the most bombastic inclusion, but it’s such a creative one that I wanted to mention it because it deserves recognition.

The Big Picture

Both Alan and Saga’s stories are great in their own right, making use of interesting and novel mechanics, but what puts this above its contemporaries is how their stories are woven into one another. That’s how it is for the whole game really. The gameplay, the narrative, the meta flair, all of it is great in its own respect, but it’s looking at the whole package, with all these pieces moving in tandem at full speed, that shows off just how special of a game this is. I'm so glad I decided to pick this up last minute, and thank you for taking the time to read my review.