Alan Wake has been tirelessly tapping away at his typewriter for over a decade in an effort to pump out the perfect follow-up to his hit Alex Casey series. A sophomore slump would do more than sink his career since it, thanks to the Dark Place, would also doom everyone he holds dear.

Following up on success is a tough responsibility and something that developer Remedy Entertainment knows all too well with Alan Wake 2. Alan Wake has been trying to develop his new series for as long as the studio has been trying to make Alan Wake 2, creating a fairly obvious and meta-parallel between creator and creation. But 13 years was not enough time to polish off a fitting sequel, as Alan Wake 2 is a buggy and frustrating title that falls well short of what Remedy is capable of.

Remedy’s experience making action games has unexpectedly not translated well to Alan Wake 2 in its descent into the action horror genre. Alan and Saga, the other protagonist, move and shoot like they are in a Resident Evil game but without the nuance and fluidity that make those Capcom-developed titles adept shooters. Dodging is not reliable and often fails to effectively weave through shovel swipes and flying sickles (the latter of which can fly through solid objects and can’t be shot out of the air). Readying items and switching between them is a sluggish process that seems even more sluggish when trying to frantically heal in the midst of combat, a futile task that often ends with being pounced on by a blade-wielding cult member.

Aiming at these enemies is also a chore because of how often they fly off-screen or warp forward to get in a cheap slash or three. It’s doubly frustrating in the game’s many pitch-black areas where darkness and its many effects obscure the action and twist tension into tedium. Burning away a foe’s outer layer of darkness is also meant to build tension as it tacks on one more step to worry about in the middle of combat. However, it’s just another repetitive aspect that never grows or changes and only demonstrates how shallow it all is. 

Alan Wake 2 fumbles the “action” part of its status as an “action horror” game, yet its failures in the horror department are far grander. Its penchant for darkness spotlights how incredible Alan Wake 2’s lighting is — it’s a stunning mix of moody neon signs, reflective surfaces, and natural sun rays — but it doesn’t utilize that tech to ratchet up the terror. The horror is only implied through the narrative and doesn’t show up in the gameplay since it doesn’t use the environment or enemy spawns to frighten players. Instead, almost all of its scares are hacky live-action clips that sharply blare the audio and take up the whole screen in a desperate attempt to catch the player off guard. 

Alan Wake 2 prioritizes these embarrassing, Bloober Team-esque jump scares instead of creating an atmosphere where unpredictability naturally evokes dread. The ghosts that show up in Alan’s half of the campaign that have players second guessing which ones are harmless and which ones are hostiles seem like a decent realization of this notion but are overused and never change, thus dulling their impact. Not even its infrequent checkpoints can sow fear in the player since losing 15 minutes of progress is only infuriating when bugs or unfair deaths are the cause.

Remedy has almost always been able to use its storytelling abilities as a shield against lackluster gameplay, but Alan Wake 2’s narrative can’t bear that load. The studio’s affinity for absurdity and mystery shines in the early stages, though, as off-kilter talk show segments and a constant barrage of new questions leave a breadcrumb trail that’s impossible not to follow. Its use of live-action scenes not only accentuates the team’s style but also helps reinforce how silly it all is and ties into the meta layers of the story. Writer and director Sam Lake’s roles in the game strengthen its metaphors for the ups and downs of the creative process and how art is both a struggle and a healing power, all of which is beamed through a twisted Lynchian lens.

Alan Wake 2, however, lacks follow-through. It uses Dark Place magical bullshit to explain away more than a few of its mysteries instead of properly building up convincing justifications. Not everything in Alan Wake 2 needs to make perfect sense; that’s not what Remedy’s brand of weirdness is about. Control — the team’s magnum opus — and Alan Wake gave players incomplete pictures and were not always chained to logic. 

Alan Wake 2’s Sam Lake on the Importance of Sticking Out, Remedy’s Growth

Alan Wake 2 is shaping up to be something special, and, according to creative director Sam Lake, that’s exactly the…

News Michael Leri 5 months ago

The main difference here is quantity. Alan Wake 2 presents all these enigmas and then is unconcerned with giving satisfying answers to most of them. It loses its bearings as it ventures deeper into the depths of its riddles and sinks when it becomes clear in the last act that it isn’t concerned with anything but vibes and setting up a future game. Its finale is emblematic of these shortcomings since it offers no cathartic release and only raises more questions, a bold move for a sequel that took 13 years to come out.

Alan Wake 2 Review: Final Verdict

Those 13 years should have led to something better, and it’s surprising that they haven’t. Alan Wake’s gunplay has gone from dull to frustrating in the sequel, while its venture into true survival horror has been plagued by predictability and amateurish jump scares. Its narrative has a few memorable moments and is able to periodically use its outlandish antics to its advantage, yet it is still dragged down by its refusal to provide enough rewarding resolutions to its litany of riddles. Alan Wake 2 doesn’t improve on what made the original such a cult hit and is instead an uncharacteristically rough draft that needed more edits. It’s not a lake or an ocean. It’s a disappointment.

Disclaimer: This Alan Wake 2 review is based on a PS5 copy provided by the publisher. Played on version 1.000.005.

The post Alan Wake 2 Review (PS5): Lost in the Dark Place appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Remedy Entertainment is not only on the cusp of releasing Alan Wake 2. That is seemingly just the beginning, as the team has multiple titles in production from a cooperative Control game to a free-to-play multiplayer title. It’s a lot for one studio, but creative director Sam Lake spoke about how Remedy is tackling all of these projects.

Alan Wake 2 Preview: Waking Up

Alan Wake, the writer, has been trapped in the Dark Place for 13 years. Alan Wake, the series, has been…

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Remedy has been growing over the years

These projects include another Control game called Codename Heron, a cooperative game in the Control universe called Codename Condor, a free-to-play multiplayer game codenamed Vanguard, remakes of Max Payne 1 and 2, and DLC for Alan Wake 2, all of which sit on top of Alan Wake 2 itself, which is in its home stretch. Lake stated in an interview with PlayStation LifeStyle that the studio has grown to about 400 of people, 130 of which were on Alan Wake 2. He said it was complex and spoke a little about the process.

“There are other teams at Remedy working on other projects, and Alan Wake for a while now has been the one that has been in full production mode,” said Lake. “The others are still in concepting, pre-production, or in other phases where the team size hasn’t been built to the maximum production level yet. The plan is to have them in different phases and so when people get off from this, they go to other teams to help them out as well.”

When asked about how that applied to himself, he said he’s been “fully” on Alan Wake 2 and will go on a break sometime after it hits digital storefronts. He noted that he was going to try to avoid burning out and will assess what his next project is after his return, but he will be involved in the upcoming Alan Wake 2 DLC.

“I’ve been really, really fully on [Alan Wake 2] for multiple years,” said Lake. “I have loved working on this. I’ll be involved in the DLC coming up, and then I think I’m going to take a bit of a vacation. It’s been a lot of work for quite a while. And then coming back, we’ll see what makes sense. I’m trying to [avoid burnout].”

Remedy hasn’t spoken much about Alan Wake 2’s post-launch roadmap, only noting that it would get free DLC and two premium expansions called Night Springs and the Lake House.

The post Alan Wake 2 Dev Explains How Remedy is Making So Many Games appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Alan Wake 2 is shaping up to be something special, and, according to creative director Sam Lake, that’s exactly the point. Lead gaming editor Michael Leri spoke to Lake about the game, how it benefited from coming out now, why being different is paramount of Remedy Entertainment, the metaphors in Alan Wake, and more.

Michael Leri: Is it hard to take out time at the very end of development to market a game?

Sam Lake: Getting a game done is always — and certainly now — a mad rush. This is bigger than any other Remedy game. This is 20 plus hours and bigger than Control. A lot of polish, a lot of fixing, a lot of optimizing; that always is a crazy rush at the end. Then, on top of that, of course, it makes sense to go around and show the game and talk about it.

I hope the game sticks out. That’s a big part of how we approach these. We feel that we need to do something that looks like us, stands out, is unique, and is something different because there’s a lot of competition out there and we can’t do the same thing that somebody else is doing. A lot of thinking goes into how we can make this exciting and something that people will go in and go, “I have never experienced something like this before.”

So what makes Alan Wake 2 stick out?

I think it will be a very unique balance. It is a survival horror game. Obviously, you can see an echo of Resident Evil there, like in resource management and all that. But at the same time, it is still an Alan Wake game in the sense that it’s not just all-out horror, as many horror games tend to be. It’s dark and horrifying from the get-go and all the way true [to Alan Wake].

And for us, it was important to have all of these different sides to it. You get to explore Watery and Bright Falls during the daytime. Deer Fest is about to happen, so there are locals setting up their banners. The game takes place this year in 2023 in September because that’s what we set up to be the annual date of Deer Fest. And here we are again only 13 years later and things have changed along the way quite a bit in many different areas.

But this is a balancing act. There is the idyllic small town, beautiful vistas, quirky larger-than-life locals, and plenty of humor. And at the same time, it is a horror game and when the night falls, and when we go to the dark forest or in the Dark Place, there is definitely horror there.

That kind of a balancing act is very important for us. It has all of these different sides to it and then we think how we can be as ambitious as possible with interactive storytelling. And a big part that is new to us here is bringing the story closer to gameplay, which goes to the Mind Place and profiling and the case board, writers room, and plot board. These are actual mechanics that have you interact with the story. 

I feel that we couldn’t have done this [before now], like if we had been lucky with our wish to do Alan Wake 2 and it would have ended up going forward, all the earlier concepts were very different from this. I don’t think that we could have made this game before we made Control.

Lessons learned from Control affected this quite a bit. Tonally in some ways but also how we build the world and the progression through it. 

Remedy is making a ton of games, right? How does that even happen within one studio?

With a lot of complexity. Remedy has been growing a lot. We are 400 or so people. With Alan Wake, it’s been around 130 working on it. There are other teams at Remedy working on other projects, and Alan Wake for a while now has been the one that has been in full production mode.

The others are still in concepting, pre-production, or in other phases where the team size hasn’t been built to the maximum production level yet. The plan is to have them in different phases and so when people get off from this, they go to other teams to help them out as well.

What about you?

I’ve been really, really fully on [Alan Wake 2] for multiple years. I have loved working on this. I’ll be involved in the DLC coming up, and then I think I’m going to take a bit of a vacation. It’s been a lot of work for quite a while. And then coming back, we’ll see what makes sense. I’m trying to [avoid burnout].

You’ve come a long way from writing like text and Death Rally. And the team’s writing has gotten so much more complex. How do you feel about that growth?

It’s worth underlining that it’s always a collaboration. Making games is a team effort. We do have a writing team and narrative team looking at the story and thinking about it.

There have been a lot of learnings along the way and growth, and it’s important to tap into that and take all of those learnings and put them into action. Maybe it was partly because this was so long and kind of a dream of being able to come back to Alan Wake 2, but when it was finally happening, there was almost this feverish push to do more and do everything. 

There was this excitement and many elements that we have dabbled with in earlier games. Here it was like, “How can we make this bigger and cooler and turn the knobs to the max?” Certainly, under the hood and when you start exploring and go deeper, it has a lot of the weirdness from Control, but pushed into the direction that fits with Alan Wake’s story. We use different mediums, like in the first game. There were manuscript pages and pages of a novel.

We brought them back and have fun with them in various ways, like the live-action scenes. But with the Dark Place being a dreamy reality, we had to figure out how we can stylize it so that it’s a more seamless part of the experience and makes you feel unbalanced in some ways so you don’t know what’s going on.

We have projectors and TVs in the world and you can interact with them. And we are pulled in and Alan Wake is pulled in and he finds himself in this scene and he’s confused, but then it plays out, and at the other end, we have a similar transition where it’s back to the world or into a deeper level of the Dark Place. Music is also something that we have and custom songs.

Now, this time around with something like that, we are doing more than ever before. We are taking all of these elements that have excited us and figuring out how we can push them further. 

The Ashtray Maze in Control feels like it was also part of that mindset.

Not saying that this is in any way confirmation, but we are trying to top ourselves, which is a nice interesting challenge. 

Alan Wake has always been a metaphor for the creative process. Was that a conscious thing bred from the stress of creating games? And how much of yourself do you see in Alan Wake?

I think it’s a fact that everyone who writes or creates draws from their experiences and emotions. To me, the first Alan Wake felt like a metaphor of having to follow up success. He reached huge success writing crime books with Alex Casey and Remedy reached huge success with May Payne. Needing to find a new direction is always a struggle.

On that level, I always felt that there was something interesting here. Alan Wake being a writer’s journey, in some ways, felt that it could pull from the idea of the creative process overall and that ended up being part of it.

If we look at Alan Wake and the fact that we are proceeding in real time through our connected universe, at least after this point, he has been stuck in the Dark Place for 13 years and we’ve been trying to make the sequel for 13 years. And he’s been writing and writing and doing drafts of the story to escape, but it keeps failing and he keeps starting again. So certainly there is a kind of a twisted mirror there to have fun with. There are quite a bit of meta elements in Alan Wake 2. 

Control had a little bit of ambiguity in it, where it left just enough out. How does Remedy balance that here in Alan Wake 2 so players are intrigued but not too confused?

Yes, that was really important in Control. It’s always been in my mind when writing stories. Like the original Alan Wake starts by saying unanswered mysteries are what stays with you the longest. To me, that is an important part of it. 

Because we have these two narratives floating side by side with Saga in the Pacific Northwest and Alan Wake in the Dark Place. They’re very connected, but you are free to proceed as you choose and nothing is spoiled. You get a different perspective and some things are foreshadowed differently, and some are called back to in a different way, but it requires a certain sense of ambiguity and dream-like understanding or not understanding certain things that are not spelled out. In a linear story, it would be you playing Saga up to this tricky cliffhanger, and then you would move to Alan Wake. 

But Alan Wake 2 isn’t set up like that. They connect in many places, and if there are cliffhangers, they are in their own paths separately, but never across [the two campaigns] because that would force us into a linear approach. It just feels like a fresh angle of interactive storytelling and experimental enough for us to try out different things and iterate.

I do feel that his opening statement in the first Alan Wake has not gone anywhere. It’s an opening statement of Alan Wake as a franchise, and so we are definitely going to keep on doing that.

The post Alan Wake 2’s Sam Lake on the Importance of Sticking Out, Remedy’s Growth appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Alan Wake, the writer, has been trapped in the Dark Place for 13 years. Alan Wake, the series, has been trapped in a dark place for almost 13 years. After an underwhelming spin-off, it stayed dormant in the void as Remedy Entertainment continued on with other projects, only poking its head out in an unexpected backdoor way with the studio’s 2019 hit Control. Despite all that time toiling away on his cursed typewriter, it seems like Alan Wake is stepping back into the light in a major and wholly deserved way with Alan Wake 2.

Even though it’s been a long wait, this version of Alan Wake 2 probably could not have happened if the gap between games had been shorter. According to creative director Sam Lake — a gifted writer known for his scripts as much as his likeness to the original Max Payne — Alan Wake 2 is an amalgamation of what Remedy has learned over the years. The Alan Wake 2 that could have probably happened a decade ago if the first game had become a smashing success is not the Alan Wake 2 that is coming out in 2023.

“I feel that we couldn’t have done this [before now], like if we had been lucky with our wish to do Alan Wake 2 and it would have ended up going forward, all the earlier concepts were very different from this,” said Lake. “I don’t think that we could have made this game before we made Control. Lessons learned from Control affected this quite a bit.”

A lot of these Control inspirations are not subtle, either. Wake’s levels inside of the Dark Place are ever-twisting as if they were inside the confines of the Oldest House. Stairs leading down into a basement can send Wake to the rooftop of a building. A room can change entirely if looked at from a certain angle or lit with a special light. There’s even a special class of enemies that appear as ghostly apparitions until the last second and force players to treat each wispy specter as a threat. All of these trippy visuals are meant to make the player question what’s happening as they delve into the psyche of a tormented man who’s about to break.

This surreal approach more cleanly matches Alan Wake’s aesthetic while giving it a more interesting base. Creeping through a world that’s darker and transfixed on spooking the player is more engaging than the action horror trappings of the first game, which was not great at action and light on horror. There’s Resident Evil-style shooting and resource management, but also puzzle solving and level design that begs players to search around and backtrack for items more valuable than thermoses. There’s just simply more meat here.

Having to shoot at evasive shadows is more thrilling and tense — thanks to the tighter controls — and demonstrates how Remedy has refined its combat chops in the ensuing years. This is concisely shown by how peeling shadows off enemies now works. Instead of laboriously whittling down the darkness with the flashlight, it comes off in just one quick burst; the challenge comes with tracking the threats down and keeping an eye on them. Foes seem much more aggressive now, too, so hopefully, the controls can keep up in the long run.

While it remains to be seen how scary the game will be, it is more fitting that Remedy is trying to make it scarier, given its many horror and horror-adjacent inspirations like Twin Peaks and Stephen King’s novels. Remedy is also trying to imbue more of the atmosphere in other places, as well, which explains the existence of the new Mind Place. This secluded mental space gives players the chance to sift through clues and suspects and pin them together on a corkboard. Doing so will open up new dialogue options and let players more clearly see how everything is linked. While Saga, the new playable character, has a Mind Place that has players tying together clues, Wake’s is all about players connecting together a storyboard.

However, it is more of a guided experience since clues can’t be pieced together incorrectly — every player will be led to the same conclusions. Not being able to fail might suck out some of the potential satisfaction that would come from successfully piecing together a case, but director of communications Thomas Puha explained that this proved too difficult and confusing during development. To remedy this, it was made to be more linear after a lot of deliberation and testing. Wake’s half of the campaign is a little more open, though, as players combine different plot elements to create new “stories” in the world, which appear to be used for puzzles. Regardless of how on-rails it is, it’s still an appropriate way to frame the story for both of its characters and their wildly different professions.

Alan Wake 2 also has its share of silly moments. Ahti, the janitor from Control, can be seen belting out Finnish ballads on a stage in a dingy karaoke bar in Watery, one of the new Pacific Northwestern towns. Players can stumble across a number of live-action scenes, one of which is a humorous commercial about a coffee-based theme park called Coffee World. It still seems darker than the first game, but not without its lighter moments. Lake said this was all on purpose and something Remedy took seriously. 

“I think it will be a very unique balance,” said Lake. “It is a survival horror game. Obviously, you can see an echo of Resident Evil there, like in resource management and all that. But at the same time, it is still an Alan Wake game in the sense that it’s not just all-out horror, as many horror games tend to be. It’s dark and horrifying from the get-go and all the way true [to Alan Wake], and for us, it was important to have all of these different sides to it.”

Lake also said that there was excitement to come back to Alan Wake and had the team wondering how it could make this sequel “bigger and cooler and turn the knobs to the max.” This is why there are so many unique elements to Alan Wake 2 and why it isn’t just another traditional Alan Wake game. 

It’ll need those different factors since it’s releasing in the middle of a packed release schedule, almost echoing how the first game came out on the same day as Red Dead Redemption. Lake unabashedly noted that Remedy wanted to “get out of Spider-Man 2’s way” with its 10-day delay, but Alan Wake 2 is still just weeks from titans like Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Lords of the Fallen, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Ghostrunner 2, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, just to name a few. Alan Wake 2 is nothing like those games, though, and Lake explained how that is what the studio is banking on. 

“[Sticking out] is a big part of how we approach these [games],” said Lake. “We feel that we need to do something that looks like us, stands out, is unique, and is something different because there’s a lot of competition out there, and we can’t do the same thing that somebody else is doing. A lot of thinking goes into how we can make this exciting and something that people will go in and go, ‘I have never experienced something like this before.’”

Alan Wake 2 is obviously drawing from the Resident Evil 2 remake and Control, but it still looks to have enough of its own identity with that signature Remedy flair that fully blossomed in Control. Combat looks to be more fluid and tense, while its storytelling has appeared to have gotten more complex and strange. So while the wait for Alan Wake 2 has been especially long, it seems like it’s only benefiting from Remedy’s experiences and justifying its long bout in the Dark Place.

The post Alan Wake 2 Preview: Waking Up appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Alan Wake 2 creative director Sam Lake discussed the new game’s length in a recent interview. According to Lake, developer Remedy has felt pressured to make longer games. The studio is finally doing that with the upcoming Alan Wake 2, whose 20+ hour runtime makes it Remedy’s longest game ever.

Alan Wake 2 will be over 20 hours long

As summarized by Rock Paper Shotgun, Lake recently went on an episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily. The hour-and-a-half-long conversation touched on a variety of topics, not all of which are immediately relevant to the Alan Wake sequel. However, he did have an opportunity to talk a little about the upcoming title. This includes Remedy’s efforts to make a much longer game than it usually does.

“I think that with Remedy games – if we go back through the whole history – being very story-focused games, have traditionally been quite short, like 10 hours or so,” Lake explained. “And we have always internally felt that we need to find ways to do longer games because it’s just like, people are looking at it from a value of money perspective as well – to get enough.” He explained that Control, which takes 11-20 hours for a non-completionist playthrough, is the company’s longest game so far. However, the upcoming Alan Wake 2 will surpass that with a 20+ hour runtime.

Lake explained that part of this may come from the game’s slower pace. While the first Alan Wake was a horror-themed action-adventure game, the sequel leans more toward survival horror. “With that comes somewhat slow pacing for the overall experience,” said Lake. However, he indicated that the new game isn’t too out of line with Remedy’s other works. Fans will have a chance to see for themselves when Alan Wake 2 launches this October.

The post Alan Wake 2’s Length Makes It Remedy’s Longest Game Yet appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

There’s not much longer to wait until Remedy Entertainment’s Alan Wake 2 finally drops, but in the meantime, there’s been some exclusive footage uploaded that shows off more gameplay from the anticipated sequel.

It’s been a long wait

After 13 years, horror fans are keen to see what’s in store for the follow up to 2010’s Alan Wake. This latest video published on IGN’s YouTube channel previews 11 minutes of play from the game itself.

This segment follows FBI Agent Saga Anderson in the earlier parts of Alan Wake 2. Over the next ten minutes or so, you’ll get to see some of the combat, puzzles, story elements, and, of course, the unsettling atmosphere of Bright Falls.

The upcoming sequel takes place nearly a decade and a half after the disappearance of the first game’s protagonist, the titular Alan Wake.

This installment has been in development for some time, with Remedy only acquiring the rights from Microsoft in 2019. This effectively paved the way for the second game, which is probably one of the most eagerly awaited horror sequels of this generation.

Sadly, Alan Wake 2 was delayed earlier this year, but not by much. Initially scheduled to launch on October 17, the studio pushed the date back ten days. This is perhaps due to the month’s busy schedule, with many games due to come out around the same time.

Alan Wake 2 releases just in time for Halloween on October 27 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

The post Alan Wake 2 Reveals 11 Minutes of Gameplay Footage appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Alan Wake 2 will only be released digitally, which is quite unusual for a big game from a notable studio. Remedy Entertainment spoke to some of the qualities of not making a physical version and how that benefits the horror sequel.

Alan Wake 2’s digital release will be cheaper and more polished, Remedy claims

Game director Kyle Rowley spoke to Eurogamer about these advantages and praised the extra time it affords the team.

“As creatives obviously, by going digital-only it does allow us more time to polish the game,” said Rowley. “Like, a significant amount of weeks actually. Because otherwise, the game that goes on the disc, obviously it has to be playable without a patch. We didn’t want to release something that we weren’t proud of basically, and that we didn’t want players to play. So hopefully this way we can give you a better version of the game.”

This is a slightly different reason from the one listed in the official FAQ, which noted this digital-only method would keep the price down. As such, Alan Wake 2 is launching at $49.99 on PC and $59.99 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, steering clear of the $69.99 price point that is quickly becoming the standard.

Not having to print discs (despite the offers) gives Remedy, as Rowley noted, more time to add polish since going gold typically means a game needs to be completed much earlier than its release date would imply. For example, God of War Ragnarök went gold on October 7 with a release date of November 9. Some gaps can be quite long, as The Last of Us Part I went gold on July 11 and wasn’t slated to release until September 2. This gap is often why games have day-one patches that fix a bunch of bugs since that period of time between going gold and release lets teams add more polish, a practice Remedy seems to want to not continue here.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 was an extreme example, as most of the game was included in its day-one update. Rowley, while not using this extreme example, said Remedy didn’t want to do that.

“Finally, we did not want to ship a disc product and have it require a download for the game,” said Rowley. “We do not think this would make for a great experience either.”

The post Alan Wake 2’s Digital-Only Release Allows for More Polish, Says Remedy appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Alan Wake kicks off with a memorable quote from noted horror author Stephen King. In a game with Energizer batteries and Verizon ads (which were stripped from the 2021 remaster), this real-world crossover made more sense, given its subject matter. And it turns out that quote license only cost Remedy a single dollar.

Sam Lake said he “really, really, desperately wanted” the quote

As reported by Eurogamer, creative director Sam Lake said he “really, really, desperately wanted” to start the thriller with one of King’s quote. King was reportedly on board, too, hence the small price.

“Creating the original Alan Wake, I really, really desperately wanted a quote from him to start it off,” said Lake. “It’s my understanding he wanted $1 for us to get the rights to use it. [It was] so very generous.”

King has seemingly not mentioned Alan Wake publicly or at least tweeted about it in any fashion.

The quote, spoken by protagonist Alan Wake, is as follows:

“Stephen King once wrote that ‘Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear.’ In a horror story, the victim keeps asking ‘why?’ But there can be no explanation, and there shouldn’t be one. The unanswered mystery is what stays with us the longest, and it’s what we’ll remember in the end. My name is Alan Wake, I’m a writer.”

The quote is not from one of King’s books, but an EW article King penned about why he thinks Hollywood can’t do horror. In it he talks about the 2008 thriller The Strangers and argues for smaller horror films are generally better because they don’t demand big explanations that can suck the energy out.

The post Stephen King Sold Opening Alan Wake Quote to Remedy for Just a Dollar appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Alan Wake 2 may have made an appearance at the PlayStation Showcase, but the upcoming horror title also showed up at Summer Game Fest. The new footage had unedited gameplay featuring Saga Anderson, the other playable character.

Everything Announced at Summer Game Fest 2023

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Extended Alan Wake 2 gameplay trailer shows horror gameplay

The gameplay demo was only a few minutes long, but set the tone and gave a small glimpse of the gunplay. It’s much like the intro to the Resident Evil 4 remake in a few ways, mainly the buildup, forest setting, and over-the-shoulder shooting.

Creative director Sam Lake talked more about the game on the stage, including Saga’s role in the story. She takes up around half of the game and is there to investigate a string of ritualistic murders. Players can even switch back and forth between Alan Wake and Saga’s chapters. Lake also said it was both a sequel and stand-alone experience.

The post Alan Wake 2 Gameplay Trailer Shows Survival Horror Gunplay appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.

Alan Wake 2 release date window has possibly been leaked by none other than the voice of Alan himself. Voice actor Matthew Porretta was recently interviewed by YouTube channel Monsters, Madness and Magic, during which he spilled the beans.

Alan Wake 2 release date is reportedly set for late 2023

According to Porretta, Alan Wake 2 will be out sometime in October 2023. He says he doesn’t know an exact date, but that’s when the game is “supposed” to release. You can hear Porretta’s comments around the 16:50 mark in the video below.

Porretta further mentions that he’s still working on Alan Wake 2, and took a trip to Finland — where developer Remedy Entertainment is based — very recently. Porretta spoke highly of the development team before reminiscing about his audition for the role of Alan Wake.

Publisher Epic Games has listed Alan Wake 2 for a “2023” release.

Alan Wake 2’s release window “leak” comes a month after Remedy Entertainment confirmed that the game is in its “last major phase of full production.” “Alan Wake 2 is on its way to becoming a great game and has everyone excited at Remedy,” CEO Tero Virtala said during a financial presentation in April.

Alan Wake 2 is in development for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

The post Alan Wake 2 Release Date Window Leaked by Voice Actor appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.