Alan Wake 2 is coming on October 27 on the PC and consoles, and it was fun to get to play two different levels from the game and then interviewed Remedy Entertainment creative director Sam Lake.
It’s been 13 years since the original Alan Wake came out. That was one of my favorite games of all time. I gave it a 98 out of 100 in my review. That game was mind bending, as it told the story of a writer going insane as the pages of his horror novel came to life — even while he doesn’t remember writing it. While Alan Wake was an action adventure game, Alan Wake 2 is a survival horror title and a psychological thriller.
The same amnesia happening again in Alan Wake 2, where murders are happening in the “real” world as the writer told in his latest thriller novel — a book that he doesn’t remember writing. Amnesia also plays a role with Saga Anderson, a new character and FBI agent who is investigating the murders. The people in the town know her, but she doesn’t remember them as she interviews them.
The graphics of the two levels I played were outstanding. They contributed to the overall spookiness of the game, and you shouldn’t spoil it for yourself.
The game alternates between the two different worlds of Alan Wake and Saga Anderson. You can play as much as you want in each of these levels. I played a level, dubbed The Local Girl, where Anderson investigates the eerie amusement park in a small town. And then I switched Alan Wake, who is stuck in a crime-ridden, graffiti-covered New York City, where ghosts are everywhere, and places aren’t what they seem. Wake has been writing about Anderson, but he doesn’t remember writing the book.
The complexity of the story is that you’ll alternate between characters and be able to manipulate space and time. They’re two single-player stories, but you can play them in any order.
The gameplay revolves around light and darkness. Your enemies are supernatural shadowy figures dubbed The Taken, who have been taken by the darkness. They’re like zombies, but some of them can move fast and maneuver behind you. You can daze them by shining the flashlight on them. Do that long enough and they become vulnerable to your bullets, and you can attack them with a pistol, shotgun, crossbow or other weapons.
It’s most efficient if you can take them down with a headshot or two. This is, after all, survival horror and you don’t get a ton of bullets. The Taken can take you out by landing a few blows. But you can also just run away from them or shoot them at close range. Alan Wake was criticized for being repetitive. So with Alan Wake 2, there is more variety to the types of enemies and their abilities.
Since light is your friend, you need to stock up on batteries for your flashlight, and also find flares or flash bangs. You can find safe havens in cabins with lights, where you can store things or stock up on supplies. Saga has a kind of power of her own in the form of the Mind Place, a kind of memory palace that exists as a bunch of evidence boards where she can place clues and draw links between people. When she finds the right clue, it triggers a cut scene that contains a vision.
In the level The Local Girl, it’s early in the game and Saga goes to a small town to investigate a murder. She finds her way onto a path in the woods and encounters The Taken in multiple fights. It leads her to a coffee-based theme park. This episode illustrates the complexities of the combat, where The Taken can surround you and take you down. Saga has to find clues and solve puzzles that unlock assets that can help her or put her on the path of solving the mystery.
In the later level, you play as Wake in New York City. It’s a grimy and dark city, with tons of graffiti. Wake has no idea what’s going on and he has to develop a logic to the insane city inhabited only by shadows of The Taken. Some of them lunge at him, making the player paranoid while passing by the shadows. But only a few of The Taken move out of their reverie and come after him.
There’s graffiti on the wall that amounts to messages to the writer. It’s not clear who is writing all of it. You’ll run into a character who looks like Remedy creative director Sam Lake himself, as he’s a character in the game. That’s pretty surreal, a writer inside his own creation, just like Wake. Wake’s job is to make it to Room 665 of an old hotel, but in this supernatural space — very reminiscent of Remedy’s Control — it isn’t so simple to find a hotel room. So Wake also has to solve puzzles to get around physical barriers. I won’t spoil the ending of this chapter, but it’s quite jarring and satisfying at the same time.
The game is coming out on the Windows PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Enjoy the videos.