It will be less than ten days until a new Alan Wake game will hit consoles is something I’ve wanted to say since finishing the original back in 2010, and now the launch of Alan Wake 2 is less than ten days away. Remedy Entertainment has been hard at work, crafting memorable titles complete with standout storytelling, such as Quantum Break and Control.
We at CGMagazine were able to catch up with Alan Wake 2 Game Directors Sam Lake and Kyle Rowley to discuss their thoughts on the sequel, the challenges of storytelling with dual protagonists, and how a genre shift can help fit a directorial vision.
First off, I have to say playing Alan Wake 2 is a lot different than seeing the videos of it. This feels like we moved away from the genre of the last game. We went from an action game–
Kyle Rowley: Yeah, for sure. This is survival horror.
That’s what I was going to say—but you said it, not me. Did you guys find that switch difficult?
Sam Lake: No, it’s interesting because, obviously, we’ve been trying to get the sequel made for years and years. And now, finally, being able to do that, that was one of the first thoughts on the concept. Let’s change it to be a survival horror game. It just felt like horror as a genre across all mediums is doing really, really well, and when we got that idea, it just suddenly made so much sense.
One thing that we struggled with, with the first Alan Wake or got a lot of criticism for, is that there is a lot of combat, and it just stays the same throughout the whole experience. So that we wanted to fix, and Horror as a genre is where I kind of felt that’s the right way to go, LESS combat.
But Alan Wake 2 is more intense with resource management, and we get more layers to combat on a strategic level. But also, the other side of it [gameplay], we really wanted to be as ambitious as we possibly could with the interactive storytelling. And by slowing down the pacing to a horror experience, there is more room for the story.
Exploration is a natural part of gameplay and gameplay mechanics in Alan Wake 2, and for us at Remedy for the first time, exploration is connected to the story. Saga’s investigation is all about stringing together the plot and understanding it. With Alan Wake 2, the story is put together to affect the world. All that gameplay is married to the actual story. This way, we could make more interactive action that meshes with the story.
More on that, did you find it challenging to go from just playing as Alan Wake to a dual protagonist situation? There the things that Saga does can influence Alan Wake’s part of the story. If so, what was most challenging?
Sam Lake: Well, it was certainly challenging. And more ambitious on a level than anything we’ve done before. But, it was something that gave us two points of view, and the characters see things differently. As Alan Wake 2 plays, it’s interesting. In a game where we are questioning what’s true and what’s fiction, do we remember things accurately? Having two characters with different perspectives in the narrative gave a lot of room for storytelling and thinking about how the story would unfold.
What we really wanted to achieve with two characters is it would give more tools to the player while also having the player dictate Alan Wake 2’s pacing. You get to choose whether you are playing further along as Saga or hopping to Alan Wake, where you are getting further in the story with him. The whole story has extreme vision-like elements, and there are a lot of connection points between the characters.
More connections are made to the story as you go further, but you still get to choose, and it works either way, whatever way you choose to play. Alan Wake 2 has been crafted in a way that kind of works and makes sense the more you play.
So, Cauldron Lake, an unknown specified point in Arizona, and obviously the Ocean View Hotel, they all have connections to the Dark Place. Are there more?
Sam Lake: Maaayyyybe.
Judging by the gameplay and the posters, it seems fans will see Alex Casey for the first time. What role does he play?
Sam Lake: Yep. Well, I mean, Casey is a key character in Alan Wake 2. In some ways, different versions of Casey exist. At the beginning of the game Saga Anderson arrived in Bright Falls to investigate murders with her FBI agent partner, Alex Casey. Then again, Alan Wake, having written about this detective Alex Casey for years and years, there’s this kind of feeling of a setting of the Dark Place where you have more Alex Casey’s there, and he kind of haunts the player in certain ways.
In the original Alan Wake, there were three difficulty settings. The Nightmare difficulty gave players a bonus of extra manuscript pages from “Departure,” which added an extra layer to the overall experience. Will that be present in Alan Wake 2?
Sam Lake: Well, without going into details, I can tell you that there is going to be a new game plus free downloadable DLC down the line and that does contain a narrative layer as well.
Kyle Rowley: So, we’ll have three difficulty things also on release for this game and then we’ll probably add in another one post-release.
After this question, Sam Lake made his departure from the interview, but Director Kyle Rowley continued the interview from this point forward.
I noticed while playing as Saga in the corner dive bar the singer was singing in Finnish.
Kyle Rowley: It was, yeah. We obviously did have the Tango back in Control. And this was a new song. Sam wrote the lyrics with Petri Alanko, so there’s a new Finnish song in the game.
In the original Alan Wake, it followed along like episodes of a series. Does Alan Wake 2 follow the same structure? Will chapters get exclusive music like in the original?
Kyle Rowley: Yes, for both characters. Return, which is Saga’s story and then Initiation, which is Alan’s side of the story. Both are broken up into chapters for Saga. We call them parts for Alan. But yeah, and each one, we just announced that we have chapter songs that are being custom-made for this game, and they’re all themed around core themes and characters in the game. We released the first one last week, Following in the Dark. So, we’re going to have custom songs for each chapter.
Alan Wake 2 releases for Xbox Series S/X, PS5, and PC on October 27, 2023.
