If you’ve booted a Remedy game in the past 20 years, you know that all of its items share a trait. No, I’m not talking about the Fallen Poets/Old Gods of Asgard song (at least not this time). I’m talking about reality show.
Think about it: The most obvious live action in a Remedy game comes from Quantum Break, an avant-garde experiment in putting a reality TV show in the middle of a game. It’s received somewhat mixed reviews, but it’s proof that live-action footage definitely has a place in games when done in the right way.
Control – Remedy’s latest AAA release – also incorporates live action footage into the game by fleshing out the storyline and giving you vlogs to watch, helping players understand the weird and wonderful world of The Oldest House. It’s not quite as exciting as Quantum Break, but it’s still a unique and stylized part of the overall gaming experience.
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Before that, though, Remedy began experimenting with live-action in more subtle (and technically limited ways) back in 2001.
“That’s what we did at Remedy,” said Alan Wake 2 game director Kyle Rowley in an interview with iGamesNews. “We used live action a lot in Quantum Break, we used it in Control, we even used it in Alan Wake, right? In fact, we even used it in Max Payne. “I also had such an experience!”
Sam Lake, Remedy’s creative director and lead writer on Alan Wake 2, adds with a laugh: “Well, we have real-world TV shows, but technology doesn’t allow us to use video textures, so still frames and audio tracks have to.”
But the intent was always there; experimenting with the format and using a variety of ways to tell the story has been something that Remedy has always done. “It’s always been one of our storytelling techniques,” Rowley continued. “In Control, live action footage was incorporated into the game world and used for ‘vision’. In Alan Wake 2, we borrowed everything we learned from Control. Also Quantum Break and Max Perkins Well, really — we don’t want to do it again because we’ve done it before. We want to capitalize on it like never before.”
In Alan Wake 2, Remedy used live-action settings to immerse you even more in the minds of the player character and duo Saga Anderson. Anderson is a renowned crime profiler, notorious among her peers for her unrivaled (and somewhat curious) ability to uncover the most obscure cases. To help her achieve her goals, she retreats to her “mind palace” (think Will Graham on the NBC drama “Hannibal”) and helps herself understand the situation by imagining her own case. That’s where the live-action Alan Wake 2 comes in.
“[As the rest of the game is,] It goes back to the idea of stylization; even live-action footage follows the same art direction and is stylized in the same way,” adds Lake. “Our goal was to stylize and interweave game and live elements so that the Everything feels more fluid and part of the same experience. “
Well, the seeds of remedies planted in the Quantum Break era are now bearing fruit. It’s the culmination of 20 years of experimentation and refinement, and the end result looks like it will be very special indeed.
“In Alan Wake 2, we wanted to take some elements of the ‘Remedy games’ in many ways and push them as far as we could imagine,” Lake smiles. You can tell; from what I’ve seen so far, I’m confident that Alan Wake 2 will be something special, and another modern classic from Remedy.
Alan Wake 2 launches on October 17 and will be available on PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.
