Alan Wake (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Spooky season is coming. It’s a bit early… Okay, fine, very early, this is September. I’m gearing up for the next set of Quick Reviews. There’s a handful of titles in the selection this time that are horror titles, including the sequel to this game. I figured it would make sense to cover the original Alan Wake first, before I go into Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. That one, along with other horror games from the list, will be covered throughout October.

Alan Wake was developed and published by Remedy Studios, and released first on Xbox 360 on May 18th, 2010, and to Steam on February 16th, 2012. At its core, it’s a loving tribute to several horror- and supernatural-based media, be it a big chunk of Stephen King’s bibliography or the classic seasons of Twin Peaks, with some Twilight Zone and Cthulhu Mythos sprinkled in. I actually remember purchasing this game, along with its 'sequel', at a time where the license to some of the music featured in the soundtrack was expiring, in May 2017. They were sold at a huge discount due to that issue. The game has since returned to digital storefronts, with the licensing issue resolved. A remaster of the game will also be released this fall to the Epic Games Store and for PS4/PS5 and XBox Series S/X, including the DLC episodes

It contains elements of horror, action, adventure and thriller, set within an episodic storyline delivered through a third-person shooter setup. I’d say more, but I’d be getting ahead of myself, and any good writer knows not to reveal their hand too soon. Let’s just say, shit gets weird.

Although, if you're waiting for the Remastered to experience this game for the first time, be warned: I reveal most spoilers in te review, so skip my articles if you want to keep some surprises fresh.

Fear of the Dark

The story begins as Alan Wake recalls a bizarre nightmare he’s had. It begins with him driving hurriedly towards a lighthouse, only to hit a hitchhiker on the road. He inspects the corpse, but the surrounding lights turn off for a moment and, when they’re back on, the body is gone. Alan thus goes exploring, by foot.

Cutting the pictures for this review is going to
be a tough job. It's all so dark!

"The blade of the axe glimmered in the rare shine
of the night." Damn, I should put that in a book.

This is a tutorial explaining the controls; move the camera with the mouse, walk with WASD, run with Shift. Get far enough, and Alan realizes that the body is back and standing, covered in a shadowy aura. The player can choose to Focus, using the F key, at precise moments of the story, in order to see plot-relevant scenes that may be just out of the player’s sight. Further down the path towards the lighthouse, Alan confronts the undead guy, and has to dodge an axe swing, using Shift and a movement key. This creates a short scene of Alan escaping in the nick of time. Similar actions from Alan will move the camera around and/or create a slow-motion effect. There is a very cinematic feel to this game, and the people at Remedy wanted this to show in gameplay. Does it lead to issues at times? A few. For one, you don’t always have control of the camera. Also, dodging and running both use the Shift key, so when Alan runs from enemies, he’ll first stumble about before actually taking off.

The writer recalls the hitchhiker as a character from a story he’s working on. He is led into the safety of a shack, only to become trapped. Alan hopelessly looks for a way to escape, until a blast of light breaks a wall open and, through a beaming voice, instructs him to go towards it. This benevolent presence resumes the tutorial. As Alan’s health decreases, the colors fade on the screen, almost to black and white. Alan’s health regenerates slowly, but it’s restored quickly if he stands in a “safe haven”, a patch of light in the darkness (usually a light pole with a lit bulb). These havens also repel the monsters, so Alan can run to one of them for protection. The light being manipulates the world to create a staircase, allowing the writer to move forward.

Refill your inventory at every chance you get.

He soon meets the hitchhiker again, but is told by the light how to defeat this monster, and every other one that will follow: A light must be shone on them in order to dispel the darkness that shields them; after which, they are weak to bullets. A flashlight and a gun: These will be your best friends. I feel like a security guard on graveyard shift!

The shrinking circles are the closest this
game gets to using health bars.

The flashlight shines brighter by holding down the right-click button, but this will empty its battery faster; like Alan’s health, it recharges slowly, so it will be usually less dangerous to put in a new battery with the Q key. Careful, though; you’ll have to make do with however many you’ll find. The flashlight’s beam also serves as a crosshair for the gun, allowing you to shoot with decent accuracy. You will find ammunition scattered around (don’t ask why just yet) for the weapons you have at the moment. Reloading is done by holding the R key, but tapping will let Alan reload more quickly.

The author goes through the woods and defeats more enemies, but a tornado strikes as he gets close to the lighthouse. He runs to the supposed safe haven, but after getting inside, the light vanishes and something attacks from above.

Welcome To Bright Falls

Alan awakens from his nightmare, with his wife Alice by his side reassuring him; they’re on the ferry headed to Bright Falls, where the two hope to spend a couple's vacation together. There’s other folks on the ferry, like Ben Mott, a hunter (I think?), but most notably Pat Maine, host of a nighttime radio show in the area. He explains that the town is preparing for the yearly Deerfest, which will take place in two weeks. There’s an air of mystery and secrets to this town. Bright Falls: The Pacific Northwest’s answer to Derry, Maine.

 Some characters, like Pat Maine here, are so
lifelike that you'd think they're live-action...

...others, like Alice Wake (ironically), veer so
often into Uncanny Valley territory that you'd
think they're androids wearing masks of flesh.

There's only one I'd like to have a conversation
with in this diner, and it's the cardboard cutout.

Our protagonist, now on land, has to meet Carl Stucky, the landlord of the cabin they rented, to obtain the key. He walks into the local Diner and immediately meets Rose, the waitress… a huge fan of his books. She better not go full Wilkes on him. She even has a life-sized cardboard cutout of him in the diner; it’s like wherever he goes, this damn promotional thing follows him. He sees that grinning face in his nightmares. His agent Barry Wheeler would be happy to see it here, though. Also at the Diner are Rusty, a park ranger; Odin and Tor Anderson, aged rock stars who no longer seem all there (which rockstar would listen to the Coconut song willingly?), mistaking Alan for some Tom guy; and Cynthia Weaver, an elderly woman strangely obsessed with the broken lights in the dark hall that leads to the diner’s bathrooms. Stucky’s over there, so Alan heads down the corridor.

Instead, outside the washrooms, he meets a widow all dressed in black, who hands him the key to a lodge on Diver's Isle over Cauldron Lake. She claims that Stucky asked her to hand the key over for him. This has all the markings of a trap, yet Alan takes the key anyway. And so he and Alice drive off, with Carl Stucky hurrying out of the diner, too late, with the key to the actual lodge. The darkness’s plan has been set in motion.

Well, at least one person here is having fun.

There’s a reason I’m name-dropping everyone we meet in this “introduction”. This scene is a prime example of conservation of detail: There’s not a single NPC who appears in this sequence who isn’t relevant at a later point of the story. It’s explained by the sheer amount of work necessary for even a single one of these characters, from sculpting, animating, scripting and voice-acting, but I also think it’s great that we’re shown the folks in a way that feels genuine and, most importantly, innocuous. Before encountering these folks during playthrough, I didn’t think they would have greater roles.

There’s also something very… “Stephen King”-esque to this sequence. It’s an impression that I get while reading a King novel; characters tend to be introduced in a manner that isn’t pleasant. Some are fools, some are jerks, some are obnoxious, and some are just odd. Very few, if any, give a decent first impression. The descriptions, while the world is still ‘normal’, follow that sentiment, sounding full of disdain and spite towards each one of them. This changes as the chips come down. The tone in the description of King’s characters differs noticeably and moves to being more positive once horror strikes. I’m getting that exact kind of vibe here.

So beautiful, it's like straight out of a dream.

The couple reaches Bird’s Log Cabin and explores. Alice has a fear of darkness, so Alan goes in first and has to turn the cabin’s lights on. It’s not long afterwards that he finds a typewriter sitting on a desk, and realizes that this couple’s retreat has turned into an attempt from her to break through his writer’s block… On the one time he doesn’t want to think about work, his own wife wants him to sit down and type! The impulsive writer goes to the pier to mope, but turns on hearing her scream. He runs back to the cabin but Alice has fallen into the water. She’s deep down. Alan instantly dives into the lake, intent on saving his dear…

Colony of Birchmen

That's a face that will look better with a
bandage over the bridge of the nose.

No, Alan can't take a shortcut by scaling down
the mountain. He's the sort to break his
leg stepping off the goddamn sidewalk, FFS.

…and wakes up, dazed with a head injury, at the wheel of a car crashed into a guardrail by a cliff, with no clue of how he got there or how much time passed. In the trunk is a book by a Dr. Emil Hartman, a psychologist who specializes in helping artists through uncreative times. Far away in the distance is Stucky’s gas station, as marked by the light of the Gasoline sign. Alan’s cell is dead, too, so his only chance to call for help is a phone over there. Merely a few steps into this trip, he sees the dangling car fall into the abyss.

Further on the path, after a blast of light, the writer sees a solitary sheet of paper fall to his feet. Even though he doesn’t remember writing any of it, the text is his; and it describes an attack by an axe murderer. Manuscript pages can be found scattered around the chapters of the game, sometimes a little off the beaten path; most will be on Alan’s path. Some of these will foreshadow future events, so it’s good to give them a read through the menu that opens by pressing F5. Of note, some pages can only be found on Nightmare difficulty. This is the most notable collection quest in the game, as it’s plot-relevant. The other collection quests are extras.

For the record: I will usually cut out the text
so as to focus on the cutscenes, whenever there's
one going on. Just showing here both the
scene and the text beneath it.

"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Stucky!"

The author comes across a logging area and sneaks in over a tree found fallen over the fence. He walks among the piles, seeking someone to help him. Hey, is that… is that Stucky over there? What’s he doing here, shrouded in darkness… wielding an axe? ...Oh, shit. Alan flees towards a construction cabin that has its lights on inside, and hides in, avoiding by inches a swing of an axe through the door. Ah, they couldn’t help themselves slapping a little homage to The Shining here, huh? Stucky has cut the cabin’s phone line, but our protagonist finds something better: A flashlight, a revolver, batteries and ammo.

He can fight back now.

Or rather, he could, were it not for a bulldozer now pushing that cabin into a pit. He runs out and meets some workers who are also shrouded in darkness. Thankfully, he remembers that nightmare that sounded oddly like a tutorial, and battles. These “Taken” must all be defeated the same way: Focus the flashlight on them to disperse the darkness that makes them invincible, then shoot till they’re destroyed. There are multiple types of Taken, but here are the main three:

Once the Eldritch invincibility is gone,
it's time to shoot.

-Flankers, speedy little fuckers who love to sneak up behind Alan to get some cheap hits in. Thankfully, they go down in only two bullets of the revolver;

-Tossers, with average speed and health (three bullets to kill). They use their axes as projectile weapons, so you must be wary of them especially at a distance;

-And the tough Taken, which are very slow and require six bullets to go down, but will damage Alan badly if they reach him. They also have a mean ramming attack.

When teh world is gone to black and white,
it's time to worry.

To top it all off, your weapon loadout will frequently change due to events happening in cutscenes, so you must always be careful of what you do. Don’t waste ammo; there are several situations in which every bullet will matter. So will every battery you'll get your hands on, really. No extra batteries left? I hope you can survive long enough…

A weakened Wake flees into the forest, running towards the station. Among the things he sees, some strange words and arrows painted yellow on the walls, visible only when he points his flashlight at them; that paint is also used to indicate secret stashes of batteries and ammunition. Someone is helping him.

While the game is mostly a horror adventure, there’s always a bit of exploration that’s encouraged by the environments as well as a portion of puzzle. There are several moments where Alan has to flip switches or start a generator (that last one involves a quick-time event), either to create a safe haven or make a path towards his current goal.

The Twilight Zone

Man, I love when the stuff on TV serves as
commentary to what I'm going through.

In another cabin, Alan finds more items as well as a functional TV. There are televisions scattered around the game, and on which we can watch episodes of “Night Springs”, this world’s “Twilight Zone”. It’s part of a number of extra content that can be viewed. Also a fun creative decision: The clips we see on TV are done in live-action. What else is in here? Oh, just a shotgun that deals double the damage of a revolver, at the cost of holding only two bullets at once. The shotgun will often be swapped for similar weapons, like a pump action shotgun or a hunting rifle, which both hold more bullets.

We find this at the right time, too, as our hero is ambushed by multiple Taken, with Stucky at their helm. This first “boss” of the game, Stucky the Elite Taken, has a much stronger shield of darkness that takes longer to disperse, and he takes a lot more bullets before going down. Elites also run around the stage, leaving a blur in their passage, and can flee after being struck by the light, so they’re a pain to fight. They can be flashed whenever they try to sneak a hit on Alan.

See that weid blur? Yeah, that's what you're
supposed to flash. Good luck.

Alan sees himself in live-action.
I did say that shit would get weird.

With this obstacle defeated, Alan makes it to the gas station. He finds a working phone, which he uses to call the Sheriff’s department. A TV attracts his eye, however, showing… himself? In live-action??!? He sees this Alan of the past in Bird’s Log Cabin, sitting down to the typewriter and choosing to write a story in which he rescues Alice. This is interrupted by Sheriff Sarah Breaker’s arrival on the scene, who takes Alan into her car. The writer tries to explain what’s going on, the cabin, the Taken, the island on the lake, but she insists that there is no island on Cauldron Lake. To hammer her point further, she drives by the lake on the way to her office.

No cabin; in fact, not an island in sight.

There's a lot of story beats to every chapter of this game; chapters are quite lengthy and busy. I'll try my best not to do a complete play-by-play. I'll still need 5 parts for this. How lengthy are the chapters? Past the second, you'll need roughly two to three hours to finish one. To go through one chapter start-to-finish, book yourself a free evening.

See you in Part 2.