Time to finish this with the final DLC chapter, “The Writer”.
Bridges in the Sky
History repeats itself, even on Eldritch lands.
Alan, desperate for a way out, hallucinates mashups of Emil Hartman and the imaginary Barry, until the latter takes control and the Dark Place becomes clear again. The writer is now in a copy-paste of the gardens outside of Hartman’s lodge. Heavy-duty flashlight, weapons, we’re good to go. A stroll through the hedge maze lets Alan get his hands on the first item of this episode’s collection quest: Night Springs video games. …I legit struggle to imagine how a video game based on The Twilight Zone would actually work, not gonna lie. The writer finally reaches the imaginary Barry, who points to a bright light in the distance. Thomas Zane isn’t too far away.
Unfortunately it looks like we’re not done with Insane Alan just yet, as he unleashes new waves of Taken around a field near a rock stage. Like that badass moment from earlier… but this time, we’re in a position of weakness. We don’t have much in the inventory, the battlefield is donut-shaped and makes it hard to see every incoming enemy. Meanwhile, a distorted, creepy version of “Children of the Elder Gods” plays.
"Children of the Elde-the Elde-the Elde-the Elde- the Elde-the Elde-the Elde-" WHAM! "-r Gods..." CD players are goddamn junk in here.
I have to jump on this now? You're serious? I'm not friggin' Mario Mario.
Past that area is Hartman’s lodge, where Alan meets Zane and learns that in order to escape, he must reach the cabin and “wake” himself up. This won’t be simple. The path passes by a lighthouse, identical to the one Alan had dreamed of when he arrived in Bright Falls, but he’ll need to navigate through the seemingly-endless ocean of flowing nothingness. And yes, that will involve mild platforming… which is what’s most likely to kill you. The tornado also makes a return, but this time it’s useful: You can create new floating platforms around it, a bridge to cross the gap.
The world gets more alien, which Zane explains is due to Alan's own mind fighting against his progress. The chapter has been light on Taken so far, but that changes soon. However, one common twist on the regular formula here is that Alan usually can flash at helpful words that create weapons against enemies. Summon an explosive barrel that will roll down the incline, or flash at a "Boom!" to cause an explosion. Hell yeah. Alan then goes through a giant steel pipe and sees his insane self on TVs again, talking about “sprinting in the wheel”, about being stuck in a maze. Alan enters a wooden house.
The house shakes.
The house starts spinning on itself.
This is not a perspective trick. You are literally walking around a wheel.
The "spinning wheel" also includes some good old-fashioned symbolism.
The next part is one of the most brilliant gaming segments I have ever seen; this part of the level is literally a giant wheel turning, and you have to navigate through this with your perspective of gravity constantly shifting. It is, simply, amazing. Hard and even unfair when you don’t know what to expect, but amazing. It does end eventually, landing Alan into Stucky’s gas station, outside of which he must once more fight Taken, then it’s through a field reminiscent of the lumbing company. It’s during that trek that Zane, in voiceover, explains that the Alan we’ve been controlling is the rational half, and that it needs to regain control of the emotional side if the whole of Alan wants to escape from the Dark Place.
Fighting didn't work, so the Dark Place now attempts emotional manipulation.
Through a bridge, over tight passages, and then into… a therapist’s office? After trying to kill him directly, the Dark Place tries to break his spirit with images of Hartman psychoanalyzing Alan, airing words that Alice no longer loves him… These visions tug at his heartstrings, but his own rationality and Zane’s help allow him to progress. The next part is another very cool moment: Alan on his way to the lighthouse, with too many Taken spawning. However, those are instantly destroyed by the beam of the lighthouse, so the puzzle aspect here involves flashing the word “clear”, which clears boulders out of the way and lets the light through. You can finish that part without shooting a single bullet; there’s even an achievement for that.
A beam so powerful it insta-kills, as shown by the Taken vaporized on the right. "Scourge of light upon the dark", indeed.
Death on Two Legs
(As soon as I thought “Hey, let’s use song names for my subtitles”, I knew I had to use this one for the final confrontation.)
Where it all began.
The real Barry is way better than you anyway!
At last, the lighthouse. Alan climbs up the stairs, then up a ladder… and emerges from a well in the area that leads to Diver’s Isle and Bird’s Leg Cabin. The writer flashes for a bridge to appear, which summons a twisty one rather than a straightforward one. And as Alan walks through, the imaginary Barry reappears, realizing that this means the end for him. If Alan has to ditch the fantasies to reconnect with his real body, then this fake Barry’s minutes are counted. And he doesn’t intend to go down without a fight, ditching the headlamp and lights and equipping an axe to cement his passage to the Dark Side.
I've never seen the Old Gods use their axes like this before...
Imaginary Barry has four phases. In the first, you just shine the flashlight on him to deplete his darkness till he retreats. For the next two phases, he sends Elite Taken to fight... But not anybody: Familiar faces. Namely, you spend Phase 2 fighting Dr. Emil Hartman himself. So hey, if you wanted to bash his smug face in because he was dumb enough to believe he could control an otherworldly abomination without issue, here’s your chance. Phase 3, however, is a heartbreaker. The two Elites are none other than Odin and Tor Anderson. Yep, you fight the rock stars. That one hurts.
After this, an exasperated fake Barry steps down to battle, and as you can imagine, he’s tough. He plays just like the speedy Elites fought so far, using the same tactics, but his shield takes a lot more time to deplete and it refills itself if you spend too long without shining a light on him. Against all the Elites in this fight, you also have to battle swarms of crows.
To be fair, I didn't expect Barry would turn out to be the final boss.
Oh, and then there’s Barry’s quips during the fight. “You create an imaginary friend and then you can’t even get along with that guy! People skills, Al. You’re a master!” Oof, I know Taken can only attack with darkness, but that one was a severe burn.
I’ve realized something while writing about this fight: The last boss battles of the game (namely, The tornado, the televisions showing Insane Alan, and Imaginary Barry) perfectly encapsulate all of the themes of the story, and also feature every type of enemy and trap that the adventure has thrown at you. It’s brilliant, and wraps everything up in a very clever manner.
The halves, reunited.
This story is a work in progress.
After defeating Barry, Alan’s rational half enters the cabin and reunites with himself, a whole again with a clear mind. He still doesn’t know if he can escape the Dark Place… but there’s no harm in trying. Decided, Alan sits at the typewriter, feeds a sheet in the machine, and begins a new manuscript: “Return”, by Alan Wake…
The end. But we already know that this story isn’t over, as Alan makes a return and the events of his story are also referenced in later Remedy titles… Still, this one is done, so… what did I think of it?
Final thoughts
I really liked this game! I originally started playing it but stopped somewhere into Chapter 3, probably because I didn’t have time to focus on what was going on. I’m glad this review got me to play it to the end.
One of the most gorgeous moments of the game. And it's in the first hour!
The story is very cleverly written. Most of the characters are endearing and I love the attention to detail on all of them – not just in how they look, but also how they’re treated by the plot. Introduced a bit foolishly only to be given their due respect in the end. Barry Wheeler (the real one) is probably the shining example of that. The plot also makes great use of dramatic tension, working wonders when horror strikes. In spite of that, moments of sheer awesome are present, and there’s a lot of times where I also genuinely laughed at the jokes during lighter scenes. The use of the F key to Focus on important events allows the player to see relevant things they could miss otherwise, so it’s a good touch. The various topics covered by the game (horror, writing, fame, relationships) are all given a lot of care.
I love the use of medium blending where live-action makes surprising appearances whenever televisions are involved – it’s applied to great effect, whether it’s Alan’s past as a writer, his predicament in the cabin, Insane Alan’s flashing grin or any episodes of Night Springs you may catch. Speaking of, Pat’s nighttime radio shows are also a step beyond that we did not need, but are we glad they can be heard; they offer fantastic worldbuilding. The soundtrack is also incredible, with music from Poets of the Fall and Old Gods of Asgard.
Sometimes, you have nothing and must flee. Some other times, you have more ammo than you'd ever need, and then you need all of it.
Gameplay-wise, the game is very tough, but overall fair. Then again, I played the game on Normal; I’ve heard that on Nightmare difficulty, you run out of ammo so often that fleeing is frequently a better option than fighting. Speaking of options, I appreciate that the developers at Remedy attempted to play with the otherwise fairly basic formula, by featuring plenty of options to fight back (various firearms, flares, flashbang grenades, cars and other traps you can lay to kill Taken) as well as multiple scenarios. I may be erroneously calling it “gameplay roulette” (that term normally refers to a game that radically changes genre several times through its story), but it sort of applies: In some situations, your inventory is forcefully changed or you’re put in a state that’s different from anything you’ve seen before, so the gameplay feels fresh. Otherwise, sticking to the basics would get boring fast. Whenever you have allies, their AI is fairly decent, and they tend to be useful (Sarah Breaker especially, Ben Mott a little less so but he’s still manageable). And, finally, the sheer number of collection quests to complete and side-goals means that you always have something to do, with replays encouraged as a result.
Yeah, fuck that guy.
The game is mostly good, but I did note a handful of issues with it. Although it’s part of the point about him, Alan himself isn’t the most likeable character and his anger outbursts tend to put him in bigger trouble than he already has. I also fucking hate Agent Nightingale – but in this case, it was the intention. The “kidnapping arc” (Chapters 2 and 3) is one of the weaker parts of the plot for me; although the weakest is Chapter 6, which barely has any story to speak of, and only really has Alan against everything the Presence can throw at him. In comparison, Chapter 5 was far more interesting, involving interactions with Sarah, Barry and Cynthia, and several engaging plot beats.
Speaking of, chapters are very long – I can understand why they would be, but a point comes where the scenes in a chapter, no matter how pretty or challenging they are, can end up feeling tacked on. Did we need to walk across the rope bridge in Chapter 3? Did Hartman’s lodge need a hedge maze? And, once more, a large chunk of Chapter 6 feels like that: A long series of scenes to lengthen the experience but doesn’t really add anything meaningful.
My quip about dying to the tornado because Alan slipped off the platform, fell and died? It happened to me.
Alan loses his weapons a lot; which I get, and in fact I’m not too angry as it can lead to new, special situations, but the way it happens at times is rather forced. I wasn’t a fan of using the Shift key to both dodge and run, I think it’s caused me issues at points. In fact, Alan is most definitely NOT a platforming character (understandable for the setting and the genre), so a lot of dumb deaths during playthrough happened solely because he could barely jump far enough and fell off an edge, an issue that’s particularly noticeable as he goes through the shattered world of the Dark Place in the DLC chapters. Last but not least, while most characters looked good even outside of cutscenes, one character frequently fell into uncanny valley territory: Alice Wake.
So, that covers everything. I do have a handful of critiques, but I really liked the game and recommend it. If you want to buy the Remastered version when it comes out, go ahead – you won’t regret it.
On this, I now have to get ready for the next three months. That’s gonna be a lot of games to play.
On the road to the final confrontation. Today: Chapter 6, “Departure”, and the first DLC chapter (as they’re a significant part of the series’ plot), “The Signal”.
Into Darkness
You know the saying, "the camera adds ten pounds?" In Alan's case, it adds an entire extra dimension.
Another moment of Alan’s life before some otherworldly thing turned it upside-down. A rough afternoon, waking up after the umpteenth party of his book tour. The sun burning his retinas makes the hangover worse. After getting pills and a pair of sunglasses, Alan realizes how late it is, and finds a disgruntled Alice bemoaning his nightly celebrations. She recorded his interview from the night before, so we can see Ilkka Villi fully in the role again, at a talk-show where the second guest is… Sam Lake?? (For the record, Sam Lake was the performer for Max Payne in the first game of that series, and is also the writer of this game. In case this entire thing wasn’t meta enough already.) Alan, sick of the touring, decides that he needs a good couple’s vacation with Alice as soon as possible.
"You better come back as yourself, and not as some sort of evil version!"
If only we could actually visit this place during daytime... it looks nice.
Back to the present day: The last page is in the typewriter in the cabin, wherever it and Diver’s Isle may be. Alan is determined to finish the story, but cannot without reading said page. the Dark Presence will take any plot holes it finds and twist them for its own ends, like it did with Barbara Jagger when Thomas Zane tried to bring her back to life using the powers of the lake.
And he has to do this alone. Darn, this means we won’t get some levity from Barry’s quips. Alan exits the dam and drives off in broad daylight. However, this doesn’t last – out of nowhere, night falls again. The Presence is no longer playing; the writer has become a threat to its existence and it’s pulling all the stops.
Everything trying to kill me? It's been a week, I'm used to it.
Our protagonist stops by a motel and finds out that Robert Nightingale has stayed there. His room is littered with beer cans and photos of the author; an obsession we knew about already. Alan continues down the road, facing Poltergeists and Taken all the way to a closed bridge, which he must cross. A tough task, as the Presence is breaking parts of it and creating enemies out of everything around. Including a crane.
Past that point, another stretch of road, and too many enemies for the few bullets we find. Thankfully, there are functional cars for that flashlight+ramming combo . As we approach Cauldron Lake, we walk through a junkyard, the perfect scene for a rather fun demolition derby against a bulldozer. Man, the Dark Presence really likes construction equipment, doesn’t it?
Uh oh, here comes the bulldozer.
As he fights through, Alan knows that his plan could very well fail; he doesn’t know if the Presence will let him enact it. He reassured his allies, but didn’t know whether it’d work. The most annoying section here is a sequence in the woods where each new encounter has one speedy Elite Taken, with the last one featuring two at once. Checkpoints are also fairly rare at this point.
I hate when these guys sneak up on me!
This chapter has a couple issues: By this point, there’s hardly anything the game can throw at us that we haven’t seen before, aside from new hard encounters. Alan once again visits multiple setpieces once again, some of which feel tacked-on for the sake of having them and lengthening the experience. And this time there really is nothing to detract us from that tediousness, since Sarah and Barry aren't tagging along. The gameplay roulette aspect feels absent here as well. Just “move forwards, kill everything, move some more, kill everything, here’s a few tools, solve this puzzle, kill some more, progress”. It's not "bad", but some of these flaws were easier to accept earlier.
"Destroy the tornado". Yeah. Just that. Just another night in Bright Falls.
Straight to the heart!
As if out of desperation, the Presence piles on the encounters. A boat in the way? Sure. Steel beams popping out of walls? Sure. And the final “boss” of the game: A tornado with flying Poltergeists protecting its core. To beat it, Alan has to destroy a number of those animated objects before getting to an endless supply of flare gun bullets. It’s the only weapon that can shoot far enough to disperse the darkness around the weak point, but the writer has to remain careful of other flying objects. Oh, and the fight takes place over stone formations, so Alan can fall off. Imagine fighting an Eldritch horror in the form of a natural disaster and you die... by falling.
Power Words
Meanwhile, Zane in the back is all "just floating around, don't mind me..."
After the tornado is defeated and implodes, Alan jumps into the water, clutching the clicker tightly. After the cold of the water, he comes to in bed, his wife Alice next to him, saying it was but a nightmare. She’s not freaking out, yet it’s pitch-dark. It’s blatantly off. Alan has lost the clicker, but it appears in the living room, as a darkened word floating above a table. Alan aims the flashlight’s beam at it and, shock! This makes the little item appear. The illusion breaks when he shines the light on the fake Alice, revealing the empty void of the Dark Place and Thomas Zane, still in diver’s suit circa 1970, clueing the writer on what to do next. The biggest surprise is the appearance of a second Alan, a creation of the Dark Presence, an evil version that will roam free in the real world, a being that Zane calls Mister SFRSCHHTh.
Okay, that's weird. There's static noise in my text.
Either this is a thematic choice relevant to the plot, or the studio REALLY ran out of budget.
In the darkened Diver’s Isle that appears, floating words replace notable elements of scenery, and Alan makes these items appear by depleting the darkness around each word. With the right words, Alan opens the path, and moves onwards in spite of strange overhead voices of himself and Alice as if they were breaking up. The Presence is trying to demoralize him, and failing.
*click*
Alan makes Bird’s Leg Cabin appears and goes in, coming face-to-face with Barbara Jagger. Her voice of the legion claims that she cannot be stopped. Alan takes her in an embrace, shoves the Clicker into the hole where her heart should be, and presses the button. This vaporizes the Presence’s avatar and drowns the cabin in a blinding light that emits even beyond its walls. Alan then sits at the typewriter and finishes his story. He corrects Zane’s mistake by proposing an equivalent exchange; Alice goes free, but he stays.
Cut to Alice appearing in the depths, emerging, swimming back to the shore. With the Dark Presence eliminated (for now), Deerfest goes without a hitch, and the denizens of Bright Falls party with no worries. Well, except Rose, holding a lantern, and Nightingale, looking on from the shadows... And Alan, meanwhile, trapped within a lake of darkness…
It's not a lake; it's an ocean."
But this is not over! We’re moving on to the DLC chapters.
The Dark Half
Okay, who turned the lights off again?
On to “Special Feature 1: The Signal”. Alan finds himself in the streets of Bright Falls. It feels… off. He walks into the Diner, to the familiar scene of Rose greeting him, with Rusty, Odin, Tor and Cynthia also present, but words of their speech is garbled, and they fade in and out like static. The juke box won’t even play The Coconut Song… Thank God for that! The author heads to the bathrooms, in which the voice of Thomas Zane suddenly resonates. Alan remembers that he’s stuck in the Dark Place. Thomas shows a live-action Wake on the bathroom mirror, babbling about the situation being hopeless and inescapable. Zane asks the player character to find a better point of contact, then manifests a flashlight and a revolver through the mirror, leaving Alan to do what he does best.
Wakes goes back, to see everyone gone and replaced with TVs where the insane Alan talks about enemies attacking. As if on cue, Taken to smash into the diner. Due to the cramped space and your very limited arsenal, this battle is very tough. In fact, take the base game, crank up the difficulty, and you get a pretty decent summation of this DLC. The Insane Alan keeps setting up difficult scenarios from which the player character Alan escapes, but only barely.
I hate that guy on TV.
Now flashing at "Recharge" to summon batteries into this mad world.
After leaving the diner, our protagonist escapes, and runs through a graveyard and into a house. In it, he finds a page of his writing, where everything is jumbled and nonsensical. Words appear around him. Words with realities that can be flashed into existence. Words that are harmful while shrouded by darkness, but useful once freed. Through this, Alan gets his cellphone back, with a functional GPS (somehow). Zane even calls him through it, saying that the writer is only going deeper into the Dark Place, before asking him to follow the GPS’s signal. Nothing else will be expressly handed to the writer; he’ll have to summon everything into this weird reality first, aiming for words like “flashlight”, “recharge”, “tools” or “flaregun”.
Jesus, how many Alans are there in this damn place?!?
Past the Poltergeist-riddled Main Street and a Taken-infested General Store, Alan steps onto a road torn apart like a powerful earthquake just passed by. Through the street, into an alley, past a playground, Alan flashes the word “memory” and sees himself talking to Sarah Breaker before they found Barry in Chapter 5, “The Clicker”. The Dark Place is re-manifesting scenes from Alan’s memory, explaining why this chapter and the next are mostly composed of stitched-together setpieces from the main game: It's crafting teh world from his memories. When Alan gets to the church, he defeats a parade float to make the word “Key” appear, summoning a memory Sarah who unlocks the door.
Even the church is different, with a new basement containing dozens of furnaces with the word “Blast” before them. When Taken appear, Alan can flash the word “blast” to cause furnaces to, well, blast their fire at the enemies. This is the first instance of the words themselves being a weapon against the monsters, but there will be many more – the developers at Remedy got creative and put Alan in situations where bullets won’t suffice, but Taken can be killed by alternate means made available by flashing precise words.
"The holy light of the Christ's boilers compels you!"
Build Me Up, Break Me Down
Meet the new Barry, less fun than the old Barry.
Past the church, a page left by Zane reveals new words. Alan focuses on “friend” and... makes an imaginary Barry appear, still with headlamp and Christmas lights equipped. This one is a figment of Alan’s mind; not Barry, only what Alan thinks of Barry… annoyances included. This version tends to be more of a dick, but still brings jokes to this dire situation, on top of making the hero feel less lonely.
Side-note: Collection quests from the main game do not continue here; no thermoses, no pages. The one new collection quest involves finding alarm clocks, which can be detected through their ticking.
“Barry” suggests that Alan should head towards that sawmill in the distance. The way is paved with encounters with Taken and, most bizarrely, murders of crows that have been replaced by Alan’s “Alex Casey” books, flying at him. I didn't bring it up much, but on top of its commentary on horror and writing, the game also comments on fame. Alan is clearly sick of it, incapable of escaping his own fame, even while on vacation. Even the people around him want him to stay famous. His repeated appearances on TVs throughout the game solidified that metaphor in my mind, since none of the appearances are connected to happy moments of his life.
These books think they're birds.
So the Dark Presence likes heavy construction machinery and demolition derbys. Noted.
We go through a field of broken street lights that periodically turn on, giving a bit of random help to kill the hordes of enemies. Ah, we’re getting the gameplay roulette back a bit. This is enforced by the next part, in which we must flip a switch to open a warehouse, but said switch is on the other side of a junkyard that becomes another demolition derby against two Poltergeist monster trucks. Taken also spawn here. This was one of the toughest segments for me, but the worst is yet to come.
Past the sawmill grounds, Alan lands in a building that houses a memory: His wife Alice, photographer, taking snapshots of her husband for the tour accompanying the release of the next adventures of Alex Casey. It’s equally creepy and genius to feature a memory version of Alan as a grey, texture-less model. The writer walks through and ends up in a shady version of his apartment.
I want to punch that grinning face.
In the living room, at last, we rejoin Thomas Zane, still in a diver’s suit. He explains that Alan is in a sort of nightmare for which the Dark Presence is not responsible; Alan is merely fighting himself. (We later find out that the player character Alan of the DLCs is actually his rational half, which attempts to find a solution even as it looks hopeless. The Insane Alan is his emotional half gone mad from not perceiving an escape and looking for one, whatever it is – including suicide, hence the attempts at killing the rational side that’s still fighting.)
Insane Alan pushes Zane out of the area before becoming the chapter’s boss: A construct of Poltergeist TVs put together. See what I was talking about? TVs, the recurring motif! The first phase is easy, but the second takes Alan to a warehouse in which awaits a much bigger construct, constantly talking about giving up.
Stop shaking, you stupid TVs!
I really fucking hate this thing... ...But I respect the challenge.
This freaking fight was the hardest for me. It provided a real challenge, one like I haven’t had in a long time. It was infuriating, but engaging! It took me over an hour to beat this thing! The boss is a number of Poltergeists put together, but it has access to debris it can turn into more Poltergeists to attack, all while summoning new Taken regularly. You have to take everything into consideration. The devs also made sure you couldn’t cheese this fight. Use a flare to deplete the darkness around multiple TVs at once? Bad idea; new Poltergeists come to life when a TV is destroyed, so you can get overwhelmed. Phase 3 of the fight is identical, just with more debris and the construct is farther.
Then there’s a FOURTH phase where the last TV, in a last-ditch effort, puts a Poltergeist boat in Alan’s way to crush him. That's easily dealt with, but the Insane Alan’s screams brings the Rational Alan to his knees. On the floor of Bird’s Leg Cabin, within the Dark Place, another Alan is writhing on the floor from this pain and insanity, letting out a scream.
Damn, this was a long one. See you in Part 5 for the grand conclusion of this story.
You know the drill: No time for intro, let’s jump in, starting with Chapter 4, “The Truth”.
Diary of a Madman
Can't say that I am feeling better, no.
At sundown, this place will go up in flames.
Alan… heh… wakes… Okay, I’ll stop.
Alan wakes in a lit room, with Doctor Emil Hartman looking over him. I did say he looked better with a bandage on his nose. Was all this a dream? A psychosis during his stay at this guy’s facility? …which, for the record, is located right next to Cauldron Lake? And what about Alice? Hartman claims that she drowned in the lake and died, and everything Alan has ‘lived’ since is a schizophrenic breakdown caused by that fact. His claim sounds so… hollow. He tries, but he's not credible.
This is a game dev. He's not the least bit threatening. And look at how he apologizes; he's probably Canadian.
Due to their musical genre, I am inclined to believe them. If they did country music, on the other hand...
The psychiatrist takes Alan around to visit the clinic. Its wooden architecture has a rustic charm to it, but it doesn’t wash off the feel of those classic white walls and padded cells that regular mental hospitals have. Other patients include a game dev who has broken down into insanity and muttering nonsense about mullets (don't ask), as well as Odin and Tor Anderson, the aged rockstars from the Diner. These two are the last living members of the Old Gods of Asgard, a heavy metal band that had enough fame to tour the country. The two, who make more sense than everyone else in spite of their oddities, even invite Alan (whom they still mistake for Thomas Zane) to go to their farm.
Of note, some music in this game was provided by the Finnish alternative rock band Poets of the Fall, and attributed in-story to the fictional Old Gods. In fact, some songs Poets of the Fall provided for this game have video clips featuring Ilkka Villi, the model and mo-cap performer for Alan Wake, reprising the role once more in live-action. This one is called "War".
Enter the Storm
I am living a nightmare, and this cardboard cutout is in it.
A storm is brewing overhead as evening comes, so patients are returned to their rooms. Alan attempts to write, but fails to produce a word. A commotion outside brings him back. The captives are taking over the facility. Using this to his advantage, the writer can retrieve the pages of his manuscript from Hartman’s office and flee. However, what he finds there instead is Barry with a… *urgh* another cardboard cutout from Alan’s book tour.
In the room, we also see, plain as day, a coffee thermos. I said in Part 1 that, aside from the manuscript pages, there were several other collection quests; coffee thermoses are one of them. Hey, Alan spends his nights walking the wilderness, he has to stay awake somehow. On top of that, you can: Shoot and knock over can pyramids; look for every radio so you can listen to Pat Maine’s nighttime program; find every TV to watch either Alan discuss his predicament or another episode of Night Springs (the game’s homage to The Twilight Zone); and spot every informative sign that teaches more about the history of Bright Falls. DLC episodes have their own collection quests. You can also try to kill a certain number of Taken with every means made available to you. That’s a lot of stuff to look out for.
Alan retrieves his manuscript but is confronted by Hartman. This guy has been trying, the entire time, to harness the power of Cauldron Lake and its Eldritch inhabitant. For profit? For fame? For power? Hell, HE was the one trying to get the manuscript, which explains the “false kidnapping” arc from the previous two chapters.
Hartman, how the ever-living Hell can you actually believe that you could assert control over a being straight out of Lovecraftian horror?
Did this facility really need a hedge maze?
The Dark Presence attacks and gets Hartman, but Barry and Alan make it out in time. The agent had a head start, so he manages to leave the premises, but his client is stuck inside, fighting Poltergeists and fending off an advancing wave of darkness. He does make it out alive. Barry is on the other side of the entrance grid, but it’s locked. Alan has to make a lengthy detour through a hedge maze and across the lodge’s gardens (including a fight against a boss-level Taken protected by crows). We reach Barry, who has a car and… No, we’re not bringing along the goddamn cutout! When I said this thing follows Alan everywhere… I didn’t mean it literally! But his friend insists.
Children of the Elder Gods
At least Barry knows how to use flares.
Alan remembers the Old Gods’ offer. Yeah, the Andersons’ farm seems like a good place. And although Barry objects to that, he agrees that something weird is going on and that, if they can stop it, they might as well. However, the Dark Presence causes a landslide and crashes their car down a cliff, with Alan falling, landing on a different level of land, and losing all of his gear. The next segment has Alan getting back to Barry and heading to the farm. You actually can witness Barry using flares and other tools to beat enemies on his own. Oh hey, my opinion of the guy is improving.
...who was recording these by the way?
After a long detour, the author reaches the empty farms. One thing he sees as he explores is another recording of himself talking about how his story has gone from a thriller to horror, with all the deaths it can cause, and how he wrote himself as the protagonist, always giving himself an edge. A story in which Thomas Zane lends a hand at key moments, where he always has an edge over the horrors, where he can vanquish this entity. Past this, Alan takes a car to the Andersons’ field…
…Only to witness Barry, attacked by Taken, rescued by a lightning bolt striking the dragon’s head atop a massive rock band stage equipped with fireworks and pyrotechnics, activating the structure and vaporizing the assailants.
Oh yes, we’re going there. Time to rock out.
This nightmare has taken a turn towards amazing.
Alan takes centerstage, filling his inventory to maximum capacity from the full caches of weapons at the wall, and Barry gets behind the control booth, manning the spotlights and explosives, while the Old Gods classic “Children of the Elder Gods” booms over their heads. Agent and client team up in one of the game’s coolest moments. You’ve got the largest arsenal you could ever wish to have, so the devs throw several waves of Taken at you and expect you to survive. Oh, it’s not an easy moment; but damn, it’s so awesome. The ‘gameplay roulette’ aspect of the game shines through by featuring sequences like this, where the set-up is different enough from everything else seen so far to feel fresh.
I wished I could ruin this cutout with a bullet.
Beyond this ambush, the two have to go through the Andersons’ barn and… Barry! Stop carrying that cutout around! Can I just shoot the damn thing? No? That’s no fun. (For the record, I tried.) So yeah, through the barn, then through a distillery. The Andersons were making their own moonshine, using water from the lake as an ingredient. Sure, let’s drink the abomination, what could go wrong? There’s a ton of encounters that I’m not describing, but the most notable one is when a combine harvester becomes a Poltergeist. Good thing we swapped the flashlight for a heavy-duty lantern just before that fight.
"'Cause I've got a brand new combine harvester and I'll give you thekey..."
It's the first real sleep they're getting in forever.
At last, the Andersons’ house. A safe haven (well, once the fuse box is fixed, of course). Instantly, music resonates from the ground floor: “Find the lady of the light…” Alan and Barry spend the rest of the night in the house, drinking the rockstars’ moonshine, having drunken conversations, and finally getting some sleep. In his dream a scene that you watch through a third-person camera, Alan suddenly remembers everything: He was stuck in the Dark Presence’s world, the Dark Place, for a whole week, writing a novel under the eye of Barbara Jagger. She took on the role of editor, directing him so that the entity would grow powerful through the story. Alan wrote himself being rescued by Thomas Zane, only ever seen in a diver’s suit, and Zane rescued him. Thomas took the manuscript, as written, to sprinkle the pages through Alan’s subsequent quest. The author tried to escape in his car, but was weakened by the previous week, hence the crash.
Alan comes to with a gun cocked at him, face-to-face with Robert Nightingale.
Night Springs
Sheriff Sarah Breaker’s station. A jail cell. Hungover. Barry puked. Chapter 5, “The Clicker”, starts on the right foot.
Alan has a name, you know, asshole.
Nightingale is stepping over the Sheriff’s legal bounds, disrespecting all due process, once again claiming an attempt on his life from that tweed jacket-wearing nerd of an author. When Alan drops from a vision involving the Presence, the FBI agent thinks it’s a ruse. The jail’s lights flicker and fail, and Nightingale realizes that what’s going on is identical to the page he has found, that described him living the current situation. Before he can read that page again, the Dark Presence bursts from the temporary darkness and snatches him.
Ah. Good riddance.
At least I'm not fighting alone anymore.
Sarah is quickly briefed on the situation, and offers to help the protagonists get to Cynthia Weaver, who lives at the power plant, in a rescue helicopter. Barry is left behind to call everyone in town who knows about the ongoing weirdness (using the password “Night Springs”) while the writer and the sheriff go through the town. A highlight of this sequence involves a Deerfest parade float Poltergeist that parallel-parks like a boss. This entity kills, maims, possessed and traumatizes, but traffic violations? That crosses the line!
The team faces multiple ambushes on their way, but come out alive. The Sheriff is a very good shot with her infinite-ammo shotgun. While they pick up the helicopter’s keys in the city hall, they see Barry running at them, chased by the darkness. He’s almost struck by a Poltergeist but survives by diving into a general store. Through a library, into the local church and its basement (leading to more ambushes), and when they come back out they find Barry, flares in hand, bandoliered in Christmas lights, with a big lantern attached to his head.
His idea is silly, but it works. Can't argue with results.
Man, Barry is rising like a rocket to the top of my list of “Characters I was certain I’d hate but who redeemed themselves as the story progressed”. I need a less clunky title. He’s still a coward, but he has risen to the challenge, made some smart decisions, and still cracks jokes in spite of everything! See? That’s what I meant by the “Stephen King” type of writing: Characters who are annoying or unpleasant when introduced, who reveal their true colors (generally for the better) when the chips are down.
War
Nothing like a song for dramatic effect.
The helipad is just around the corner. Another ambush must be pushed away, and then the three fly off towards the power plant. Their trip in the helicopter is cut short by a murder of crows, causing Alan to fall off (again) without his equipment (again). From here, Alan has to get his hands on weapons, then cross a transformer yard. Inside a garage, Alan turns a radio on. Pat Maine’s comforting voice resonates, announcing the next song, “War” by Poets of the Fall.
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned them and linked to the song earlier! Hey, if I can indulge in foreshadowing, you bet I will.
It feels like the stage sequence from earlier, yet it hits in another way. The slower, emotional song gives an entirely different weight to this fight. Plus, you have very limited resources and the room is cramped. And yet, it’s just as powerful. Like a sense of dread, that this fight is never going to end, that this one tough battle is but a tiny piece of this war. I love it.
I really should remember reloading more often.
Can't I just stay here? No? Darn. Being a hero is tough, I should stick to writing.
Past the transformer yard, across a rotating bridge, then up a hill with the helicopter returning, its light weakening the Taken. Alan makes it to the plant, and is greeted by an angry Cynthia Weaver. Mister Wake, venturing at night is dangerous here! The Lady of the Light has just what it takes to defeat the Presence. She has obtained it from Zane and keeps it in the Well-Lit Room, a place she has arranged within the dam. But there’s no going there at night. She has a passage through a water pipe, also lit. But first, Alan has to cut the power in the transformer yard as something broke and is sapping out the electricity within the plant.
Guess we needed to squeeze in another 10 minutes of gameplay, huh? Like these trips aren’t already long enough!
Paradox
Phew! They're okay.
With the power cut from the yard and kept to the plant itself, Weaver opens the path for the pipe, and Alan calls his friends to tell them where he’s going, only to hear their helicopter crash. Against Cynthia’s pleas, he leaves the pipe to go check up on them. He finds the wreck empty, then sees a flare nearby. They’re alive and kicking! I had a thought: Alan wrote himself to be the protagonist, so everything both bad and good in the quest happens to him. Barry was written as the comic relief deuteragonist, the kind of character that dies fast in horror, but he’s surviving like a champion. He doesn’t have Alan’s “author immunity”!
Imagine spending an entire game being a team of three fighting in this scenario. If they kept the level of smart AI shown here, it would be awesome.
I know the entire point of this plot is that "shit got real" (the pages written by Alan came true after all), but... a TORNADO now? Shit. Got. REAL.
The power trio goes through the woods some more, reaching an elevator, beating another ambush, and getting to the top of the dam. After which Sarah and Barry get inside just fine, but OF COURSE, a giant metallic tube falls, blocking the entrance and forcing Alan to go around. The hike just never ends! So, the usual: Poltergeists, crows, Taken… oh wait. Now, an entire tornado of darkness is coming. The writer can only run from it through the traps laid around the passage above the dam.
At last, our protagonist gets to the elevator where Barry, Sarah and Cynthia wait, and all four get to the Well-Lit Room. Lightbulbs everywhere. Not a single trace of shadow here. Inside a shoebox laid upon the table in the center, Alan finds two very bizarre items. The first is a page written by Thomas Zane, detailing Alan’s childhood and some of his life up to that point. Wait. Did Alan write Zane into existence, or did Zane write Alan… into…
I just spen an hour running through the woods. This room is too bright! Ack, the contrast!
Ack, I’m getting a headache trying to make sense of this. A full-on “chicken or egg” situation. A paradox of writers. Any attempt at putting logic into this will only make your brain hurt more. Allegedly, Zane wrote Alan as a back-up plan if he failed to beat the Presence, but then Alan used Zane as a back-up plan, too, so... er... Ouch. I'm gonna need some aspirin.
The second item, the one rumored to have the ability to destroy the Dark Presence or, at the very least its avatar Barbara Jagger… Is the Clicker that Alan once gave his wife. There is no logical way through which it could have ended up here, either, and yet… Here it is.
He can finish this.
…In Part 4. Did I mention that I love to have cliffhangers in my multi-part reviews too?
