Alan Wake lives! I think? (Alan Wake II in review)

    Hey friends, the time has come for another wild game to come onto my radar, one that I've been looking forward to basically since I finished Control in 2019. If you recall, that was my favorite game of that year, and right after I finished it, I was immediately excited for whatever game Remedy put out next. I'm very happy to say that Alan Wake II is exactly what I was hoping it would be. I was honestly worried after playing Alan Wake Remastered which was put out last year and I honestly didn't love. It was a fine enough game, the story was great, but the gameplay I felt didn't mesh with me as much as Control did, which makes sense, given that the game originally came out in 2010 and they were still trying to figure out how the game should work. There have been some talks about there becoming like a "Remedy-verse" which carries over story between Alan Wake and Control's different storylines, as well as a few others, so I was looking forward to some connections between the two games to create something even more special. I can honestly say that this game floored me quite a few times throughout the duration of the run, and I'm so happy to talk about this today. It's time to enter Bright Falls, Washington once again, as terrible things are starting to happen again about 23 years after the titular author mysteriously vanished. Be warned, reader. This is not a story for the faint of heart. This game is a survival horror game for sure, and the story that it contains is not intended for children.

Writing has power!

    Now, I won't spoil too much about the original Alan Wake, other than to say that the game begins with Alan and his wife on vacation in the small town of Bright Falls, Washington. The town is getting ready for its annual Deerfest, the biggest celebration of the whole year, and Alan and Alice Wake come to town so that Alan can concentrate on his latest book, which he's been stuck on for some years, and the publishers are at the end of their rope being lenient with the author. The Wakes arrive at the place where they're supposed to be staying for their short vacation, when Alice is dragged into the lake by some mysterious entity, and Alan dives in after her. Alan Wake is reported to have drowned in 2010 following this. Fast forward to 2023 and Alan Wake II begins. I don't know if I'm smart enough to explain all of the storylines and everything from the original game or the sequel, of which I'm talking about today, but I'll begin with Saga Anderson and her partner, Alex Casey (a man who interestingly enough shares the name of Alan Wake's most famous detective from his novels). These two are FBI agents who come to Bright Falls after two hikers to the area witness a gruesome murder near Cauldron Lake. Saga has a wild power of intuition, and uses it to solve her cases, so she has little doubt that this situation in Washington will be resolved quickly and quietly, but some strange things begin to happen to Saga. Upon arrival into the town, a lot of the locals welcome her and tell her how good it is to see her after so long, despite her claim to never have been there before. Everyone is sorry for the death of her daughter, who drowned in Cauldron Lake some years ago. Saga thinks this is some sort of sick joke, since her daughter is safe at home with her husband, but quickly it becomes clear that something is very wrong.

    Alan Wake is the other character that you play as in this game, and he has been trapped in a dark and twisted alternate world called the Dark Place since the first game, which took place 13 years ago from when this one occurs (also fitting with real time, since the original game came out in 2010 and this game came out in 2023). Alan has been trying to get out through all sorts of different means, but the narrative of this section of the game is so bizarre that I think it would be better if I just recommended that you play it for yourself if you're interested. It's so off the wall that there's not much way that I can talk about it in any sort of meaningful way. I think the best thing that I can talk about here is that this Dark Entity that resides in the Dark Place derives some power from artistic minds and the art that they write, meaning that Alan's writings even in this twisted dimension have some effect on the outside world, as well as the world that he's been trapped in for this whole time. To go back to Control for a moment here, the Federal Bureau of Control has been monitoring Bright Falls following the Altered World Events (or AWE's) that happened in 2010 which revolved around Alan, and there's even a DLC for that game which revolves around what happened in that game and what is to come next for this character, hinting slightly that they were in fact going to make a sequel, which was pretty wild at the time! I have done enough circular talk about the story of this game and the games surrounding it though, let's talk a bit about the gameplay, and what about it makes the game really stand out.

Are you a writer or a detective?

    As I stated earlier, Saga Anderson works for the FBI and has an excellent sense of intuition. She taps into this skill in her "Mind Palace," where she can instantly transport her mind to, giving her nearly unlimited space to spread out the events of the case on a case board, profile the suspects of various crimes, etc. and this is where the game is the most interesting in my opinion. All throughout Saga's portion of the game, you're finding new pieces of evidence to put onto the evidence board, which will color how much you understand about the wild and often wacky world of Alan Wake II. Of course, the game could just tell you things, but there's something really satisfying about putting a few leads together and allowing Saga to come up with a deduction based on the other facts of the case! This is a good case of the newest hardware and short load times really helping the gameplay, since you can now press a button on the controller and instantly go from the woods of Washington into the Mind Palace. It could have just been a menu, and it but the fact that they made it a physical space that Saga can walk around in adds a lot of charm and personality to it. It gives some added context to the things that matter the most to Saga, such as a birthday card from her mom, and a "World's Best Mom" mug, which was given to her by her daughter, Logan. Also, I don't know why, but the simple act of pinning a new piece of evidence to the case board was so satisfying that a lot of times, I would go back and check if there was anything new to do on it, even if it wasn't going to solve any major mystery happening in the town.

    With Alan's sections, as I stated earlier, his writings can impact the world around him, and this is done not just for the narrative, but there are whole sections of the game that revolve around puzzles using this mechanic. Alan's counterpart to the mind palace is the Writer's room, and since his part of the story involves him writing himself into a story to allow him to get out of this writer's room, he isn't just going to a place in his mind, his levels constantly involve him standing up from the typewriter and walking over to the storyboard of the room, then changing some event happening in a certain place, which changes how the room that he's in will appear in a way that allows him to keep moving forward. It's a mind-boggling mechanic, but it's so cool in practice that it really makes the player feel good every time you finish one of these sections. As you keep going, you'll find different narrative elements that you can use in different locations, which can definitely get a little confusing sometimes, but the way that it's all handled is really incredible.

    Now, I'm not going to say that the combat is the best I've ever played or anything, but it is definitely better than the gameplay of the original. This game feels much better to play pretty much all the way around, to the point where the gunplay does kind of remind me of the recent Resident Evil remakes. It's maybe not quite as good as that, but I will say that it feels like Remedy learned a lot about gunplay during the process of making Control. We still have the same gun and flashlight gameplay of the original game, but things just feel much more fluid here, with the health system being a more traditional way of keeping track, inventory management makes much more sense, and also you don't have as many instances of random objects becoming possessed by the Dark Entity and knocking you around before you have any chance of fighting back. I think something deserves to be said about just how different the combat is for Alan and Saga. With Saga, every now and then, you'll see a blurry person running through the forest, and then they get solid once you shine your flashlight at them for long enough. With Alan, there are many places where the world will become filled with shadows, and you don't really know which ones are enemies, and which ones are just illusions. Many times, the only way to tell is just to wait until one comes charging at you. It's really crazy, and another instance of this game doing something that I'm not sure if I've ever seen before now.

The Wow Factor!

    Honestly, just by me talking about this, if you know anything about Remedy games, you'll probably know what I mean. In so many of these games, there are sections where the traditional gameplay stops and you start doing this weird other thing for a few minutes. If you've played Control, the Ashtray Maze is still to this day one of the coolest sections of maybe any game I've ever played. In Alan Wake 1, the stage fight outside Tor and Odin's house is incredible. I'm so happy to report that this game actually has two of these moments, though I don't want to spoil anything that could ruin anyone's fun with playing this game. I just want to say that this game does indeed meet the "weirdness factor" that has been contained in some of this developer's previous titles, and I'm so happy about that. For Control fans, I'm sorry to keep harping on that game, but Ahti the janitor is a majorly important character in this game, and I was genuinely so happy every time he showed up. In addition to Ahti, the Federal Bureau of Control appears many times in a lot of ways, many of which I didn't expect!

    All of the factors in this game, from the gameplay to the music to the just general weirdness of the town and the woods that surround it really add up to an incredible title, and one that I'm so happy that I've finally played. When I rolled credits on the game, I told some of my friends that a developer talked about making a game that takes place in the world of Inception a long time ago, but that team needs to pack up their stuff, because I can't imagine that a game like that could tell that weird type of paradoxical story in a better way than the team at Remedy did here. I absolutely loved this game, and while I think I still prefer Control just because the action is a bit weirder because you're able to see a lot of supernatural incidents, this title offered such a cool perspective on someone on the inside of an event like this. I started this review off by saying that after finishing Control, I was immediately excited for whatever Remedy has in store next, and I'm happy to say that when I rolled credits on Alan Wake II, I immediately thought "I can't wait to see what Remedy has in store next." They have quickly become one of my favorite game development studios, and I'm so curious to see what is coming next for this wild universe of supernatural threats.

    Thank you so much for reading this review of Alan Wake II, friends. I hope something that I've written about today will encourage you to check the game out, since I feel like it has flown under the radar, despite getting quite a few Game Awards and nominations at The Game Awards back in December. It's an extremely weird and trippy game that constantly kept me guessing as to what was going to happen next in the best way possible. I'm also looking forward to seeing the expansions and DLCs that have been talked about for the near future! I hope you all have a great week, and I'll talk to you again soon! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed writer, and always remember that there is light even in the deepest darkness. It's up to us, whether we're the writer or a character in the story, to find it.