Alan Wake has identity issues. An interpretation of that statement for the game itself or it’s titular protagonist is valid, but in this argument if favors the former. For every legitimate step forward it took toward selling its fiction, there was another step back that reminded me I was on the couch playing a videogame. Such a disconnect isn’t necessarily bad thing, but it did sort of take the wind out of an adventure that, in terms of being a narrative-driven experience, felt primed to be otherworldly and avant-garde. Still, Alan Wake had a few bright spots worth mentioning before I unload on its less attributes
While reviews and podcast chatter were highly critical of Alan Wake’s cast and dialogue, I actually found them both quite delightful. With painfully few exceptions, humor in games is composed of either unintentional hilarity caused by random glitches, or awful “so bad its good” dialogue campiness, but Alan Wake actually contained a significant amount of legitimate humor. Alan’s friend/manager Barry, in particular, was the star of the show. Constantly making light of their seemingly impossible predicaments, his crazy dedication to bringing the Alan Wake cutout everywhere they go, him showing up in chapter 4 decked out in Christmas lights — he was hilarious. Barry could have been a throwaway dipshit like Zeke in infamous (a character who was more of an annoyance than a funny friend) , but his was character was written with precise attention to detail.
Which is in stark contrast to the way the rest of the game was presented. I kind of got the sense that the character of Alan Wake was kind of a hack-writer, not unlike a modern James Patterson or Dan Brown. He writes entertaining material that’s great with the mainstream, but when you boil it down its mostly derivative garbage or a repeat of the heavily abused archetypes that typically dominated the themes in his writing. On one hand this serves as an appropriate defense for the occasional pointless character (Nightingale), random plot holes (again, Nightingale’s purpose/motivation), or subpar text found in the manuscript pages. On the other hand, that defense is kind of an easy way out of any detectable problem one might have with the plot or gameplay. An arbitrary catch-all for any fault is a copout, even if it does fall in line with the fiction. Blaming the fictional writer for the real story isn’t a valid excuse for halfassing something.
The actual fiction, or at least the mood and atmosphere, was scary as hell. Even though the environments were fenced off a claustrophobic, even though I always had plenty of ammunition, even though I knew the game would never spam an absurd amount of opposition, even though I knew the checkpoints were extremely generous, Alan Wake still managed to scare the crap out of my girlfriend and me. I was startled more times than I care to remember, and my girlfriend, who watched every minute I played, frequently screamed or jumped out of her seat. The Taken’s movement and sheer gravity of their actions felt powerful and elicited a real sense of dread every time they overwhelmed Alan. Like Resident Evil, Alan Wake isn’t as much fun as it is fascinating. Like any good horror film, getting scared is exciting on a primal level, and taking part in something (making the experience interactive) heightens the suspension of disbelief, which makes it all the more scary.
Except in situations where Alan Wake went out of its way to remind me it was a game. Collecting a hundred thermoses is mildly understandable; you can’t make a game in 2010 without some sort of bullshit reason to play through it a second time and Remedy isn’t one to make an exception – but one specific instance was completely unforgivable. I was “sold” on Bright Falls. The Pacific Northwest setting was a terribly unsettling place, and augmenting it with radio shows and random Night Springs TV shows was a fantastic way to link the fiction with an alien sense of perverse reality, so why in the hell was there a Verizon ad in the middle of the game? Seriously, you turn on a television, an action you do a dozen other times to watch Night Springs, and rather than play an episode of the fictional ingame Twlight Zone you’re subjected to this happy, jolly, real Verizon television commercial. The billboards were fine, but to throw a commercial at the player in the middle of an otherwise tense sequence, what the shit was that? Who at Microsoft though that would be a good idea? (edit: and after reading Steven’s review, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who found it needlessly out of place)
The actual gameplay was similarly manic, pulling as many new tricks as it did to recycle old ones. Linking light to combat was a fantastic idea and leant itself to a host of cool mechanics. “Breaking” an enemy with light before you could shoot it, maintaining your batteries, using flairs and flash bangs as legitimate weapons, and the spotlight save points were really cool. Alan wasn’t an ace marksman, but I always felt like a badass when I was eviscerating enemy after enemy with a flashlight and a revolver. Unfortunately the rest of the gameplay didn’t go over so well. I loved instances like the concert at the Anderson farm or poking around the small city, but they were the exception. The rule often tasked Alan with flicking a power switch or foot movement toward some far reaching destination. It got old, and all the Resident Evil 4 callbacks (air tram rides, axe throwers, rudimentary puzzles, and chainsaw superbaddies) didn’t help distinguish it from its peers. It also failed to really evolve after the third chapter. Its bag of tricks was used up, so, rather than create something new, everything got bigger and more badass. Not bad, but surprising when you consider how long the game was in development.
Honestly what intrigues me more than the story was the eventual path Remedy took to get there. Alan Wake, back in 2005/6, was originally conceived as an open world game. I’m highly curious as to what sort of game that would have been, or what elements from it actually made it into the final product. The driving isn’t half bad, and you can, especially in chapter 3, see how certain areas of Bright Falls were supposed to be “linked” together in a persistent open world. The narrative definitely favors a linear path to keep Alan on track, but I’m racking my brain trying to figure out the design dock for the same design in an open world. Why are all my weapons taken away at the start of every chapter? Why is there no consistency in regard to chapter length? Why give me a ton of road to drive with nothing (save Nightingale’s hotel room) along the way?
Speaking of brain racking, I have little to no clue where the plot went. I was on board for a really long time, but when it wrapped up I was a little confused. Part of this undoubtedly stems from not collecting all of the manuscript pages(I got almost all of them, except the ones I couldn’t get because I wasn’t playing in Nightmare mode) The downloadable content (the first episode of which is free since I bought it, thank god) might wrap that up, but what does that say about the state of videogames? EA’s online pass is one thing, but buying games new in order to properly finish them is a slippery slope I’m not sure we’re reading to go down. Either way, I don’t want to spoil the ending for those who haven’t played it, but I’m not entirely sure enough pieces were in place to form an accurate conclusion over anything.
