Alan Wake 2 builds on GTA 5 with its risky narrative format

From the unconventional detectives to the time-consuming storylines, Remedy Entertainment has a long history of breaking the rules. With Alan Wake 2, the upcoming dual-protagonist survival horror game with an unusual double-narration, creative director Sam Lake and his team wanted to keep the tradition alive. And it has proven to be a tricky process.

“We’re stepping out of our comfort zones in a lot of ways,” Lake says while sitting in a New York City coffee shop as rain smashes against the windows. The night before, he caught up with horror director Mike Flanagan at the 2023 Tribeca Festival to talk about the nerve-wracking process of writing a horror story where the player has so much control. “I was breathless on the way. I think there was this pent-up urge to just push everything. With the depth and the complexity of the story – how it is structured and how big it is …” Swimming pantomimes in the lake. “I feel like my feet didn’t touch the ground.”

It’s been 13 years – in both the real world and Alan Wake’s – since the first game ended with the eponymous novelist trapped in the Dark Place, an ethereal, never-ending nightmarescape of time loops and malevolent enemies. Lake and game director Kyle Rowley didn’t want players to have to “do their homework” before playing the sequel, and early on embraced the idea of a two-protagonist cast. As an FBI agent sent to investigate riots in the Pacific Northwest, Saga Anderson is ideal representation for newcomers and veterans alike – she has as many questions about the world (and the way it’s changed) as she does the players. Based on what we saw of her half of the story at last week’s Summer Game Fest, we’re already being strongly reminded of that Resident Evil 4

And True detective Season 1 which also saw law enforcement investigating occult killings in rural areas.

In Alan Wake 2, Alan Wake investigates an urban New York City section of The Dark Place in which he has been trapped since the end of the first game

The other side of Alan Wake 2The narrative coin takes the form of an ominous, surreal New York, in which players explore and escape the dark place as a tortured writer. That’s what Lake Flanagan told taxi driver had a major impact on Wake’s dark journey. “The neon-tinged, borderline gothic vibes” of Martin Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece captures the urban isolation that Wake, as a New Yorker himself, exploited in his in-universe crime novels. “As a kid, I absorbed American pop culture, and New York was its beating heart.”

However, we have seen games with multiple playable characters. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

The film wowed audiences back in 2001 when it introduced Raiden after just two hours in Solid Snake’s shoes. The original Assassin’s Creed kept the current chapters and the second protagonist secret until launch day. grand theft auto 5 In 2013, the idea of multiple playable characters was all but blasted, allowing players to switch between Michael, Franklin, and Trevor at will. Crucially, however, they had to advance the men’s individual storylines to simultaneous “story gates” before they could proceed.

Alan Wake 2 is an attempt at something different: a double story in which the player can not only switch between characters at will, but also see through a character’s story nearly to the end – without even going back to the other.

“Once you’ve unlocked both characters, you don’t have to go back to the other until very late in the game if you don’t want to,” says Lake. “In any game, you put the pace mostly in the hands of the player. [With Alan Wake 2

], we wanted to go much further. Once we open it, you’re free to choose which side of the story to follow and how far. You are connected. There are many premonitions, many reflections among themselves. They practically float next to each other.”

Saga Anderson consults her wall of evidence in her

Lake says players can even abandon investigations and missions mid-way through when they get stuck, and come back hours later and find things right where they left them. Borrowing from several recent role-playing games, Anderson, as a “brilliant criminal profiler,” has access to a metaphorical “mind place.” This is a room complete with clues, photos, clues, and a red string that players can enter at any time. However, it’s best to do this when the FBI agent is in a safe environment – time expires normally outside of Mind Place, meaning nearby enemies can do as they please.

“Sometimes when you’re playing through a character, you see some kind of vision and you have absolutely no idea what it means,” says Lake, shaking his head and raising his hands. “Then you play the game again and jump between characters more often or stay with one character for a longer period of time, and the same vision makes a little more sense. As players and actually as people, we’re always trying to find meaning. And we’re trying to take that idea up here. It’s our longest game ever and I’m sure players will make connections between Saga and Alan that we haven’t even fully considered. It is exciting.”