Eleven years ago, Remedy Entertainment released Alan Wake for PC and Xbox 360. I reviewed it way back then and enjoyed it (despite the state of that old post, I would recommend reading that article as a supplement to this one as the core game is exactly the same). Alan Wake went on to have two story-continuing DLCs (The Signal and The Writer), as well as a spin-off game called Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. Remedy has several other great games in their portfolio as well, including Max Payne, Quantum Break, and more recently, the instant classic Control.
One aspect of Remedy that I like is that there are references to their games within their other games. If you have played Control, the events that take place in the fictional northwestern town of Bright Falls from Alan Wake are directly referenced. In Alan Wake, there is a tip of the hat to Max Payne, including a voiceover from the original actor. It has been long enough now since I played through Quantum Break I don’t recall if it had any references to their other games, but suffice it to say that Remedy makes it a point, and increasingly so, to really develop their own game world and universe.
Remedy games also feature outstanding stories and characters. I believe Control is their best work to date, but Alan Wake is a close second. Sam Lake, who is the creative director behind these masterpieces, weaves mind-bending tales of space, time, dreams, and other mechanisms to really enthrall the player. Even though I had not played Alan Wake in over a decade before receiving the review code for the remaster, I still remembered some elements of the story. This is because even though the story is very complicated, it gets you thinking and it challenges you to keep up, not too unlike a good Christopher Nolan film such as Inception or Tenet.
Long-winded intro aside, Alan Wake Remastered is a timely and welcomed release. It’s a pretty creepy game, being a psychological thriller, and as we’re in October some folks are looking for such a theme in their gaming. This release also marks the first time Alan Wake travels outside of its Microsoft Windows and Xbox confines, too. I played through the game on a PS5, for example. The remaster work was completed by d3t, a co-development studio who have some fine work to their names. This release, priced very reasonable at just $30, includes the original game and the two DLCs, but unfortunately does not include the American Nightmare spin-off, which takes place two years after the events of the original game (and its DLC). Perhaps we’ll see that released separately.
Those tidbits aside, what else does Alan Wake Remastered bring to the table? Well, it has all-new rendered 4K graphics and a cool video commentary from Sam Lake (both in original and remastered quality). The graphics are very good — you can tell this game was originally built on older tech, but it cleaned up quite well and it runs very smoothly. It’s not the most visually interesting game given the setting of a northwestern town, with lots of mountains, trees, and abandoned logging and farm structures and equipment (much of the assets being reused through the story). Still, when the Darkness pours over the landscape, you get a little bit of a chill as the wind howls and the Darkness infested enemies known as The Taken pop out of nowhere. Not to mention objects that get polter-geisted and come flying at you. Lighting is especially important in this game, given that it is what protects Alan from the Darkness, and I thought it looked good in this Remaster. In short, the visual presentation here is pretty much just as effective as it was when I last played the game on the Xbox 360 eleven years ago.
The video commentary is a cool idea, but I wish you could watch this outside of having to be in-game. Part of the reason for this is that I have now played through Alan Wake twice (once with the original and now with the remaster) and I have no intention of playing through it again (simply because life is too busy to carve out another 12-15 hours for it again). I’d very much like to hear Sam’s thoughts on the game, but it’s not convenient to have to do this while playing. Plus, at times, it was hard to hear him because the sounds of the game were too loud anyway.
While my original review covers the game pretty well, there are a few other miscellaneous notes about the game I took this time around that I will share now. First, a stamina gauge, perhaps triggered with haptic feedback, might have been nice. Alan struggles from getting exhausted and out of breath surprisingly quickly for someone running for his life and trying to save his wife’s life. It’s certainly a bit of a nuisance as you play, but a manageable one. There is a bit of haptic feedback when you change batteries on your flashlight (or lantern), something you’ll do quite a few times throughout the game, as well as feedback when you reload your gun, so a way to implement that for stamina might have been helpful.
Another thought would be to develop a way to have the HUD fade out, or only show when toggled, just to help the immersion that much more. I would have liked some way to speed up dialog as well. As is, you have to remain within earshot to hear (or even to read the subtitles, as those fade out when you’re too far away, too) the words being spoken. Just in the interest of time it would be nice to be able to read the words and tap through the conversations at that speed rather than at the audible speed. For anyone replaying the game again, having the option to disable the stamina mechanic in non-combat situations and speed up dialog would be a welcomed feature.
I would also like to have seen a way to unlock the extra fifteen or so pages of the manuscript without having to replay again on Nightmare difficulty. I’m not a completionist when it comes to games, and with Alan Wake (plus its two DLCs) there are some 300 or so collectibles you can find between the manuscript pages, thermoses, stacked cans, etc. I got 90% or better in all of these in this playthough, but I loathe the idea of having to replay portions of each episode to scour for the rest, it just isn’t really worth it. It is nice to be able to at least skip between the six episodes and even in some checkpoint spots within the episodes, but it’s too tall of an ask for me to go back to try to find the missing goodies which don’t offer anything except Trophies. Had there been some kind of new map icon or radar like feature that gets unlocked in the remaster after having completed the game the first time, that could have been interesting — because darn it, I do wonder how and where I missed just five thermoses (I was missing thirty-three when I last played this game!), one radio, one TV, etc. These silly collectibles can be an unfortunate distraction from the core game if you’re not careful. Oh, one interesting note — I found a QR code in the lodge near Cauldron Lake that linked to an unlisted Youtube video, which obviously was something new that was added to this remaster. I assume I missed other ones, but I thought the inclusion of this was quite cool (but again, I can’t see myself playing through the game again to try to find anymore of these, if there even are any more to find).
All that said, Alan Wake Remastered is fine remaster of a great game. Alan Wake has aged well and still offers a compelling thriller story with some fun gameplay to keep you entertained for a dozen or fifteen hours. Whether you missed the game way back when it first came out, or just haven’t played it in a decade, it’s a worthy addition to any collection.
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