Alan Wake creators discuss challenges of going multi-platform and multi-project: "It's always going to be tough, but it's also pretty awesome"
Apr. 15, 2024Interview | Play magazine speaks to Remedy’s Sam Lake, Thomas Puha about the evolution of Alan Wake from conception to sequel
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We know what you’re thinking: ‘Last year is neither ‘retro’ nor ‘classic!’’ That’s true, but the story ofAlan Wake 2is a winding tale that begins on a completely different platform, and last year’s PlayStation remaster is far from the end. So, now you’re thinking, ‘Wow! Sounds twisty!’ It is. And now you’re thinking, ‘Wait, how do you know what I’m thinking?’ Well, that’s simple – we know because we wrote it down.
Beautiful friend
“After Max Payne 2, we went through many different concepts. Bit by bit, different elements out of those concepts stuck and Alan Wake emerged from it.”
Pulpy, potentially clichéd summary aside, during the few hours of winter daylight you explore the town and acquaint yourself with its idiosyncratic residents. An idealised vision of America, Bright Falls and the surrounding area were heavily inspired by the Pacific Northwest region. But at night you take on the Taken in third-person shooter fashion. These foes are shrouded in a protective barrier of darkness, which you need to burn through with the beam of your flashlight before you can blast them away. But the Taken aren’t simply mindless drones; the Dark Presence is the Big Bad in town, possessing townsfolk, animals, and, on at least one occasion, a bulldozer.
Following the linear Max Payne duology, it was felt that Remedy Entertainment’s next title should go in a different direction. Lake elaborates, “First, there was an idea of a free-roaming open world and dynamic day and night cycle, where the time of day greatly affected the threat level.” This prototype was far more survival-focussed than the final game, seeing you scavenge supplies during the day. After shoring yourself up with fuel for generators and ammo, you’d defend your little island of light against familiarly shadowy assailants. Lake continues, “Then there was a Stephen King-inspired supernatural horror story set in a small town. Only then came the idea of a writer of horror stories as the main character and light as a weapon against the forces of darkness. The pitch of the concept was already called Alan Wake, and the key story elements and themes were already there.”
It was a much more solitary experience, particularly during the day. One version of the story saw the town’s residents evacuated as an underwater volcano erupted within Cauldron Lake, unleashing the supernatural disturbance you fight against.
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The development leads came together to review every aspect of the project over an intense two-month period. The aim was to lock in features and reform the project into a deliverable game while minimising the amount of already-built work left on the cutting room floor. Lake says, “Along the way, to support the open-world design, the story had gone through many very different drafts, but we returned to the themes and plot elements that were close to the initial pitch when we changed our approach.” The shift ultimately forged, as Lake describes it, the “more linear […] story-driven thrill-ride experience,” we’re familiar with today. Lake tells us, “Even though the path through the game is linear, the original open world can still be seen and felt all around, making the world more immersive and believable [than] it would have been without it.”
The team took the open world and from it crafted broad but linear levels. This approach really sells the oppressive sense of isolation in the levels set at night – you feel it acutely as you pelt your way through shadowy forests. Later levels get impressively wide too, as Wake later has to reckon with evil sets of wheels and hit the road himself.
Thomas Puha, Remedy’s communications director, reflects on the seven-years-long development: “The main takeaway from Alan Wake is that… you can chase perfection forever and not reach it. Alan Wake had that ‘difficult second album syndrome’ where nothing was quite good enough after Max Payne (even if Max Payne was our second game) and it took a very long time to figure out what game we were making.”
“These were a sore point in the original game, and we were able to improve them quite a bit,” he explains. He goes on to say, “We changed the character model of Alan to actually resemble our actor Ilkka Villi, who is the face and mocap actor of Alan Wake. This helped to make the remaster far more consistent as Alan/Ilkka shows up in live-action sequences in the game in various places and the old character model looked very different to the actor portraying him due to technical limitations of that time.”
This feature first appeared in PLAY magazine -Subscribe here to save on the cover price, get exclusive covers, and have it delivered to your door or device every month.
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