Alan Wake (Part 2)

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

No time to waste, let’s jump into the story.

A Remembrance and a Kidnapping

It's good to remember what we're fighting for.

Chapter 2, "Taken", begins with a scene of happy days of yore in the Wake apartment, where Alan comforts his wide in her phobia of darkness during a power outage. He tells her how, as a child, he was given an item with a button on it, a “clicker”, that he could press to dispel the dark and its nightmares; he still has it as a keepsake.

Don't you think I have enough crap to deal with
at the moment? Like, a monster from beyond?

Cut to the present day: Alan Wake is checked by a doctor at Sheriff Sarah Breaker’s office. He wonders how to explain his situation without sounding like a complete lunatic; if he’s sent to the madhouse, there’s no saving Alice. He gets a call, within the office, from an unknown source. The caller presents himself as Alice’s kidnapper and instructs Alan to meet him at Lovers’ Peak, within Elderwood National Park. Then, just as he's about to leave, Alan meets Dr. Emil Hartman, the psychiatrist from Alice's book. Hartman admits to giving Alice the idea to bring her husband here for a couple’s retreat so that Alan could seek help for his writer’s block and Alan, always the hotheaded and impulsive guy, promptly serves the guy a knuckle sandwich.

...Alan’s kind of a dick, isn’t he?

It sounds crazy until you live it, Barry.

In walks Barry Wheeler, Alan’s literary agent and childhood friend, who’s usually there to pick up the pieces in his client’s… heh… wake. He has all the lines of the type of sleazy character he is, threatening lawsuits if anyone lays a hand on the thriller writer. He hasn’t heard from his buddy in a whole week, hence why he showed up to Bright Falls out of worry.

On suggestion from an agent at the station, Alan and Barry rent a cabin in Elderwood National Park from the park’s ranger/caretaker, Rusty, who was seen at the diner in Chapter 1. Barry still doubts his friend’s story, thinking he’s gone crazy. Even crazier are the writer’s plans to meet a supposed kidnapper in these woods in the middle of the night, when the so-called monsters are on the prowl!

Ironic, considering how Chapter 3 starts...

But Alan feels that he has to go, and alone. Barry stays behind, in the lit cabin. Equipped with a basic flashlight and a revolver, Alan behind walking but hears screams from the visitor center. It’s Rusty, attacked by the Taken. After beating these things, Alan’s short conversation with the ranger reveals that Rusty had found some manuscript pages, and knew that he was going to be killed by the shadowy monsters. Worse even; moments later, Alan has to fight Rusty, now an elite Taken. Geez, it’s early in the Chapter for a boss.

Help From the Kidnapper

No batteries, not enough bullets.
Yep, he's in trouble.

The next part is very tough, as resources are rare and, as a result, the player must carefully save their ammo and batteries, as running out of either is a genuine risk. The game encourages Alan to run towards the next safe haven instead of fighting the swarms head-on. This ends as Alan, while fleeing, trips and loses his gun while Taken are homing in. They’re about to strike when a red blast pushes them away and a hand reaches down to help the writer up. It’s Ben Mott, that suspicious guy from the ferry – and considering where they are, he’s most likely Alice’s kidnapper.

Mott doesn’t take risks; he never gives Wake a gun, only supplies him with flares. On top of the firearms, Alan can find other weapons to help him dispel the darkness around Taken, and sometimes kill them outright:

Against these monsters, flares can mean the
difference between life and death.

-Introduced here, flares (used by pressing the middle button of the mouse) create a blast of red light that hits every nearby Taken. Extremely useful against swarms, and will create a cinematic moment if you activate one while surrounded by 3+ Taken;

-Similarly, the flare gun (introduced earlier) will shoot flare-like bullet directly at your enemies, guaranteeing an instant kill on anything directly struck that isn’t a boss. The issue? Its ammo is rare and it can hold only one bullet at a time, forcing reloads.

-Last but not least, flashbang grenades are powerful explosives that dispel the dark and kill most Taken in their radius. Two issues: They explode a few seconds after being thrown, and since they’re so useful, they’re crazy rare.

Well, at least this asshole knows how to
deal with the monsters. If only he wasn't
also a kidnapper...

The two get to Lovers’ Peak and help each other against waves of Taken; Alan uses flares while Mott shoots. And, in all fairness, this NPC’s AI is smart enough to shoot the right Taken at the right time. It’s the impression I got, anyway. Once the danger has passed, Mott explains: He will free Alice in exchange for the complete manuscript of the story they’re currently living. For some reason, he knows that Alan Wake has written what’s currently going on, and thinks that the novel contains the solution to this clusterfuck.

YET AGAIN, Alan’s temper gets the better of him and they brawl, and Alan escapes with Mott’s gun while Mott repeats his ultimatum, setting their next meetup two days later at the coal mine. Two days to finish a manuscript? Asshole! Alan returns to his cabin, but that involves walking on a path covered in bear traps, going through a saw mill and fighting a Taken wielding a chainsaw. He can also dispel patches of liquid darkness on the floor with his flashlight, like Mario does to seas of goop with the FLUDD in Sunshine.

The road back is long, however, so Alan steals takes a car. While looking for the keys nearby, he views another recording of himself blabbing about plot holes and why he must avoid them at any cost, or else Alice will die. Once he has the keys, it’s time for some vehicular Takenslaughter. Alan can use the headlights of a car like a flashlight's beam, dispelling the Taken's darkness before running them over. Very fun… if you can drive well.

"Vehicular Takenslaughter" is one of the best
phrases I ever came up with on this blog.

Humans aren't the only ones to fear here...

Alan gets to the cabin and Barry calls him. The cabin is attacked by birds, re-enacting one of Hitchcock’s greats! Alan, assaulted by flocks of crows, can thankfully deal with them like any other enemy. The flashlight's beam can kill single birds and, with the beam hitting them long enough, entire murders. Alan enters the cabin to meet a converted Barry; the agent has seen enough weird shit this night to believe his client. On the following day, Alan attempts (and fails) to write, while Barry investigates Mott and why he would have kidnapped Alice; however, Barry gets a call from Rose, the waitress, who claims she has found Alan’s manuscript…

The Drunk Arm of the Law

Nice monotone, Rose.

Chapter 3, "Ransom", begins in the afternoon, with the two heading to Rose’s trailer to get the pages. Barry explains that he found records of a writer named Thomas Zane, who disappeared in Cauldron Lake in 1970, a week after his girlfriend Barbara Jagger drowned in it. Everything he has read about Zane and Jagger was written by the same person: Cynthia Weaver, the woman in the diner who was obsessed with lightbulbs. They walk into Rose’s trailer and chat with the girl. There’s a weird air to her, a lack of life behind these eyes, but she’s nice enough to serve them coffee.

Spiked with sleeping pills. Alan and Barry fall. While asleep, Alan dreams of the light with a voice, the being that helped him during the tutorial. It says that the darkness lives within his love Barbara. Gee, good thing we just heard that name five minutes ago, makes it easy to connect the dots. He wakes up six hours later, the entire day wasted, and no manuscript to hand over.

And flashbacks on air.

This guy is a walking, talking argument
for the ACAB movement.

What’s worse, an FBI agent has arrived on the scene, ready to arrest Wake for… for what, exactly? It’s never said. The agent, Robert Nightingale, has unclear reasons: seems to think that the writer was the one to drug Rose, but that would not warrant intervention from something a big as the FBI. The multiple disappearances and turmoil caused by the Dark Presence in Bright Falls? There’s no way one can pin this on Alan without invoking paranormal activity, so they wouldn’t have a case! Conspiracy to murder him, based solely on the parts of the manuscript that he has found? Why the fuck would an author write about his crime before committing it? Nobody's that stupid! I’ll be honest, his inclusion in the plot feels extraneous. To top it off, Nightingale is a drunk, trigger-happy asshole who will endanger civilians as he attempts to capture the writer. He seems to be here for only two reasons: He was written into Alan’s story, and the Dark Presence has already impacted his life in major ways (which we don’t learn about outside of bonus media).

I am not going anywhere near THAT light!

Nightingale fires at his target while innocents are in the way, and Alan escapes. No gun and no flashlight at sundown, hunted by the FBI, all he can do is flee. The Dark Presence doesn’t discriminate, and goes after his assailants too. Bad news: This means new Taken to take out. Good news: In the abandoned cop cars, Alan finds plenty of flashbang grenades.

I’ll admit, while it can be annoying at times, I actually quite enjoy the “gameplay roulette” here: Alan’s arsenal changes frequently, sometimes to make the next part harder, and sometimes to provide unique challenges or scenes. The flare-only escort mission in Chapter 2 is a great example. The flashbang-only part here is another. It makes sections of a chapter feel distinct, and brings variety to what would otherwise feel repetitive.

Poltergeist

Lights in the distance. The radio station. He’ll be safe there. However, there's a new obstacle. Say hello to another type of enemy: Poltergeists, objects possessed by the darkness, harmful to Alan on contact. Their saving grace is that you don’t need to shoot at them; just disperse their darkness entirely and they vanish. Without a flashlight, Alan uses a nearby spotlight to break the Poltergeist gate. Alan gets to the radio station in time and gets to chat with Pat Maine, the host of the all-night program. But Nightingale is quick to find him, and is also quick to FUCKING SHOOT, the maniac.

Everything in Alan's face here screams
"I don't wanna."

Stay away from me, you goddamn steel beam!

Alan flees again, and that’s when he finally gets firearms. From there, he crosses a railway bridge, leading into the first real fight against Poltergeists – steel beams and barrels. Non-stationary items possessed by the darkness like to rise from the ground and then fly at Alan’s head, making them very dangerous in large numbers. Thankfully, they also tend to fly in a straight line, so Alan can hide behind a column to be protected. The AI of floating Poltergeists is... not that great. Past this point, the hero finds a stronger flashlight. And he’ll need it, as the next fight past a warehouse is a battle against a Poltergeist bulldozer. Yep, large vehicles can be possessed too. In fact, they make for excellent bosses.

Pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen, but
since it did, I'm not going to complain.

(Although, in my case, the fight wound up anticlimactic. The bulldozer is huge, drives around, and Taken spawn during the fight, but I defeated the vehicle after it flipped and got stuck on its back like an upside-down turtle. Hey, gotta take advantage of glitches when they happen.)

Alan reaches a functional car and drives off as the sun rises. Short night, that one. Instead gathering or finishing the manuscript, he heads directly to the meeting point and waits for the kidnapper. All afternoon. Into nightfall. And that’s when he gets a call from Mott, saying that there’s been a change of plans. Mew meeting point: Mirror Peak, mountainous area next to Cauldron Lake. This will require more nighttime hiking in the Taken-infested woods. Yaaaaaay.

The Long Walk

My time playing GTA has served me well.

After a stroll in a wagon graveyard, Alan has to defeat Taken and Poltergeists while driving a car. I didn’t say it in Chapter 2, but cars are troublesome to drive. They tend to drift a lot, which makes killing enemies tricky, and are a pain to steer properly. Cars can withstand a finite amount of damage before they break, which may cause Alan to continue on foot a fight in which he’s outmatched.

The writer goes through the woods, then crosses a “ghost town”. Literally; Poltergeists everywhere. Throughout, he realizes that there’s something abnormal in him constantly finding batteries and ammunition. He also sees recordings of him that talk about writing a novel, taking inspiration from papers he has found that were written by the mysterious Thomas Zane. Alan has written everything he’s living right now, and the Eldritch horror within Cauldron Lake is making it happen.

Shit's getting meta.

Am I gonna have to walk over every single
fucking square foot of Bright Falls?

Our hero does an unexpected detour through the coal mine, then rides a cable car, then crosses a wooden bridge, then goes through ruins on top of the mountain… are we there yet? Almost, almost. The folks at Remedy tried to have their cake and eat it too, by featuring as many landscapes and situations as they could fit, but considering how long the chapters already are, I can’t help but feel that some of these scenes are padding, no matter how challenging or interesting the end result is.

Alan is now near Cauldron Lake and hears, in the distance, Mott talking to the darkness, swearing he never actually had Alice. He was bullshitting Alan throughout so he could have the manuscript and hand it over to… his boss? Great. Someone else is involved. As Alan approaches, Mott is lifted by a tornado and killed. Before the same fate befalls him, the writer cracks open a flare, and the Presence drops him in the lake, where he is rescued from drowning by a mysterious hand…

The light... the dark... The never-ending struggle...

Let’s continue in Part 3, which will go through Chapters 4 and 5.