Alan Wake 2 Review: 4/5 The Road to Darkness…13 Years Later
The Preamble
Remedy Studios, created by Sam Lake, the long creative developer of its studio for twenty eight years, has brought us many legendary franchises, Death Rally (1996), Max Payne (2001), Max Payne 2 (2003), Alan Wake (2010) and Alan Wake American Nightmare (2012), Quantum Break (2016), Control (2019), Alan Wake Remastered (2021), Crossfire X (2022), are a world of its own making. A cadre of games that prove that without the name, all of Remedy knows that one game, in particular, breathes through the undercurrent of Remedy’s studios. Alan Wake. The writer of crime fiction, takes a vacation in Bright Falls, to get away from his New York life, pursuing his wife into the dark place, while pursued in real life by Agent Nightingale, (a cop who always calls him by different writer names), leads him through a world of self deception, and a lake house that holds him hostage.
For thirteen years, the troubled history of Alan Wake, as Remedy Studios themselves, couldn’t actually use Alan Wake as a character because Microsoft studios, owned the rights since 2010. For many fans of Alan Wake, it’s like waiting for David Lynch to make the next season of Twin Peaks. The game shares similar influences, so far as to include their own version of the Log Lady. Sam Lake is influenced by Stephen King, too. The ideas of a writer trying to rescue his wife after the world of his old has been literary career took a nose dive. The world of Bright Falls is about to get dark once again, as Alan Wake 2, releasing on October 27th, 2023 for the XBOX Series X and PlayStation 5, follows the writer back into the dark place, as the world itself, will enter Bright Falls Washington, once again. Welcome to Night Springs.
. If you need a refresher on the entire story, look no further. This will help anyone understand it before diving straight into the review.
The Story
Alan Wake 2, as a story, is divided between two main FBI characters, Saga Anderson and Alan Wake (who also were teased through internet led movies regarding their prescence throughout Remedy’s creations, but also , who is responding to Detective Nightingale’s death by a mysterious cult. The first chapter takes place with Saga Anderson, and Alex Casey, as the player is introduced to the story where Saga Anderson is examing clues to help her find out who killed Agent Nightingale. Casey reveals that “Nightingale” was kicked out of the agency, chasing after “ghosts.”
Forcing Saga into finding clues means the player has to help profile the case inside a “Mind Safe.” A place where she can be quiet and think. Placing clues on a board, she narrates it as she helps it piece it all in her mind.
But she interviews the only two people, the Bookers, who saw Nightingale murdered, but the Bookers are writers, investigating Alan Wakes disappearance. Only through her intuition, she finds out that they held onto a necklace.
Only examining Nightingale at the Morgue, she finds a missing page left inside his body. Only blinking lights take over the precinct, and Saga and Alex are both thrown off by the heartless Nightinglae. Only the light still pushes back the possessed Nightingale, and getting to her gun, the player aims for the head, and he disappears.
Chapter 2 brings us back after the intermission, where the Cult of Tree is creating monsters out of murdered victims. Finding another manuscript page our new goal is to find Nightingale but also learn about the cult of the trees, too. His heart is missing, too. Saga faces off against the Taken, possessed town members. She retrieves Nightingales heart, gives it to the witch of Cauldron lake, by putting it in a small little geographical map. Aquiring the shotgun, she faces off against Nightgale, who is still walking around naked, and swinging a big tree trunk at her. Dodging his attacks, Saga uses her flashlight to blind him, to make him weaker, and unloading bullets into the frothing mad Nightingale, who keeps shouting, “Nightingale is hunting Saga” and once he’s finally defeated, Alan Wake arrives on the beaches of Cauldron Lake, only to realize he has been gone 13 years. And so ends Chapter 2.
Chapter 3 follows up with Saga deciding to look around for anything they might have missed. Luckily you can solve a nursery rhyme riddle at each house, but also discover that the FBC (the Federal Bureau of Control) is trying to experiment on kids, as it might have some link between how nightmares are made through children. Saga finds a camera and chalk board drawings that she must match dolls with. Only once finishing the puzzle, she returns back with Casey to talk to Alan Wake. He has a title page that says “The Return” with a name scratched out. He starts to remember: a crazy cyclone of dark swirls fills the screen. He’s brought back to a room, touching his forehead, trapped in a room.
Late Night Initiation 1 appears across the screen.
When you watch the television, you enter an interactive movie where Alan is on a talk show. The show host asks about his new book. “An autofictional thought experiment” and he says, “I haven’t written anything.” After the interviewer almost describes the game in question, “very meta” the interviewer says, and then the entire room goes dark, “I’m about to disappear after this scene.”
“I had to get home,” he remarks, “get home to Alice.” But he’s attacked as we are introduced to his writer’s room. “I write to escape” as he’s brought back to the studio. Almost as if it was a game over, and he’s re-writing the story as he goes. In the interview, Sam Lake is next to the character, but he’s shown a film adaptation, “Murder Case Casey.” And Casey narrates, but with the light flashing and his face covering the screen. No lips moving.
Alan has to retrieve his first item, as the janitor, Ahti, who resembles the janitor from Control, gives him a key, remarking, “a man with a tool makes two,” and it’s a lamp. An angel statue with a bulb on top. His lamp, the clicker, and he sees a tv, as he sees himself writing in a television and says, through what sounds like insane babble, “I have written countless stories, and I keep failing. I must escape.” And it ends.
In Initiation 2, we’re still following Alan Wake. With all the televisions aglow, he has to find his way out of the studio, again. Travelling through New York in the dark place. A mysterious man on the payphone tells him to go to Caldera Street Station. Only Alex Casey confronts him about creating the murders himself. But Casey is distracted by the Taken, and the gunshots reveal the outline of his body. Only Casey’s ghost talks as he becomes a shadow, as if written from Wake’s novel. “I kept dying here in the alley, loop by loop.” But Alan takes the gun and flashlight. “Picking up Casey’s gun meant I was assuming the role of the detective.”
Breaker, the character who disappears in the beginning, is humming a song, and offers to help Alan. Using the map, and the gear, he returns with two lightbulbs. One from a taxi which turns into a cop car, and he runs away, grabbing the second bulb he uses. Using the subway pass he enters Caldera Station. He learns through shadows that the cult leader, is Alan Wake. Only with each clue, he has to write, and if he’s the cult leader, he can write a new entrance. But he learns that the Booker’s are trying to find him, because they believe he’s the cult leader. Regretting, “it felt right for the story.’
The Caldera Station, in its own right, is equally impressive, as trying to move through abandoned subway has the feel of a Metro game, but somehow, so technically brilliant that its immersion becomes second hand. Alan journeys further to find the Cultists, but is stopped by the Dark Presence. But it has legitimately stumped me more than ten times, and no matter what I kept dying. And it was because of a QTE, quick time event, where the player has to mash a button in order to get the character to safety. It’s easy to pretend this doesn’t bother me, but it really fucking does. I am on Story mode, the easiest mode possible, but somehow, the QTE resembles a scene from 2010. Like either the button won’t respond. I’m just slow, or it’s a glitch.
It makes the scene rather frustrating because I need to advanced past the Dark Presence scene, but somehow, I want to change it, but the game won’t let me just go around the Dark Presence scene. Somehow, after a few minutes of recuperation, taking some time for myself, but somehow, after two more tries it happened. I was astonished. I yelled, “Yes, oh god yes. Fuck Yes.” Like I just had amazing sex.
I managed to allude the dark presence and all was safe until the bastards at Remedy had the Dark Presence chase me down the open tunnel, as the walls collapsed over Alan’s head. He finds Nightingale’s heart but it disappears, and he sees Saga Anderson, as they trying to communicate to each other in the dark shadow. But we end it with Alan noticing that the outside changed, and at Parliament building, where Alice, his wife lived. “But it’s out there, waiting for me.”
In Haunting: Initiation 3, we open immediately with Wake returning to New York, with no Dark Taken in sight, but after a careful examination of my surroundings, I didn’t need to do anymore digging. I was ready to enter Parliament Plaza, but Casey is sewing doubt: “She had seen things,” and when he takes the elevator, the door opening mysteriously, and reaching the level, a grey jump scare blob fills the screen for less than 1.3 seconds, and disappears, just like with Saga.
He sees her photo equipment, “meant to go off when you open the door.” Only he hears Alice screaming and I searched through the apartment, only to find a USB card and a camera. As Alan puts in the USB disk, he watches. We watch. I hear a woman talk about a man she once loved. What pained me and cause me to cry was when she said, “Alan’s art sold, mine didn’t. Of course he let me take the book cover, at his expense.” I really did feel something that only someone emotionally invested could feel. As she explained: “About six years ago, I heard things in the night. Typewriter keys clacking. But this would be the focus of my next piece. The Dark Place.”
My mouth literally dropped when I heard this, and then I focused on the screen, and watched as Alan explained how he walked into the writers room and nobody was writing. Signifying that a trap had been laid. And he took the bait.