Alan Wake (Part 5)

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

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.