Alan Wake

I'm a big fan of Stephen King: I’ve always enjoyed his style of writing and the mix between the mundane and the bizarre that King managed to bring to life. I am also a big fan of Twin Peaks: arguably one of the best written tv shows of all time that both kept you guessing and on the edge of your seat the entire time. It was the type of tv show that gave you as the watcher enormous credit while it explored the unfamiliar. These two things would’ve given me enough of a cv to work at Remedy back in 2010 while developing Alan Wake, where it seemed everyone on the design team had a hard on for both King and Twin Peaks. 

 

Alan Wake is an action adventure game that takes inspiration from both the literary stalwart and the cult tv hit mentioned above, in the same way you would take inspiration from a friends homework at school 5 minutes before it had to be handed in. 

Set in Bright Falls, a remote town location in America which is both very Stephen King and a snappy two word name that when I heard it my brain immediately autocorrected with Twin Peaks, and centres around Alan Wake - a struggling writer, though two years of writer's block is probably long enough for struggling to have changed to struggled and quit. The story is very straightforward for anyone who has even glanced in the direction of a Stephen King property: remote town, naive population, undercurrent of nefarious goings on, etc. 

Upon arriving at Bright Falls, Alan’s wife reveals she has brought him a typewriter in an attempt to get him writing again. This sends Alan into a frenzy for some strange reason, which results in mrs Wake getting kidnapped and drowned by a water-dwelling women, dressed more for a funeral than supernatural horror-mystery knock off. I feel like I’ve made that sound more interesting than it actually was, I don’t want to get your hopes up now. Alan blacks out and when he comes to he’s unknowingly written a story and it’s coming to life, woooh ‘scary ghost noises’. From here on out you play as Alan traversing Bright Falls collecting pages of the manuscript that’s manifesting weird marmite renditions of people tying to murder you. 

The main mechanic of Alan Wake is a torch. Innovative I know, but what I mean by that is the use of light to fight the dark: when in the dark Alan is subject to the aforementioned marmite murder mambo, in the light everything’s perfectly fine. As decent, though unoriginal, as this mechanic is, it did leave me with the thought “why move?”. Not in the way the game wants, where I’m too terrified to move a muscle in case a local murderer jumps out with an axe, thoughts on relocating my head and some primo fishing advice. More in the way of, it’s obvious the gooey goons are after me and only me and if I stay in this light they won’t show up, therefore the fear evaporates. 

With the very “The Dark Half” story functionally covered, I’ll move on to the characters. 

Alan’s wife, though she’s only present for roughly about 5 minutes, is played so unemotional and her writing is so middle of the road that I found myself wondering what Alan sees in her, especially to the point of jumping into a lake and attempting to pull her from the maw of a nefarious, unknown evil. 

Alan himself is a dick. I’d think of a better way to word that but his overwritten, overly sarcastic narration has enough descriptions, references and run ons to fill my next 10 articles quota worth of similes and metaphors. He always seems to dislike the person he’s talking to who are, most of the time, trying to help him. Though I do understand why he isn’t his agents biggest fan, when his agent is the type of person to suggest getting black out drunk in a remote farmhouse while these shambling horrors are trying to kill you. 

Barry - the alluded to agent - plays the comic relief to Alan’s attempt at a straight man, in the sense that his agent will is always looking for a way to make a buck and usually has some quirky idea to achieve this, mostly off of Alan’s back for example. His stupidity knows no limits, aside from the aforementioned getting drunk with horrors all around, he goes to the extreme of wrapping himself in Christmas lights to avoid any conflict and runs off doing his own thing quite a bit, alas usually with annoying success. 

There are a smattering of background characters, like the funeral lady that snatches mrs Wake. I got slightly creepy overtones mixed with cartoonish Saturday morning cartoon villain from her: funeral get-up and somber look but with a booming, over the top voice that’s throwing vague threats your way unless you write a story for her. 

The waitress - Polly I think her name was - is literally the first character you meet and is the typical super fan type. She waffles on about Alan to Alan almost the minute you start up the game. I would almost say it’s masturbatory but he doesn’t even dismiss her in a nice way, in typical fashion Alan sarcastically mocks her in his narration. 

The Light Lady - for anyone who has seen Twin Peaks she’s just The Log Lady but with a lamp. She comes into play during the finale of the game but mostly she’s just around for creepy foreshadowing. 

Finally, the FBI agent. I’ll say straight away that he is not Dale Cooper, he has no quirks other than being an arsehole and taking advantage of contrived scenarios in which to justify shooting Alan. Seriously, at one point this guy pulls his gun on our troubled writer just for looking at him...friend behind bars...where Alan is not a threat. 

There’s a handful of puzzles throughout Alan Wake. I say puzzles, it’s more like press button to open door coupled with survive for a few minutes while waiting for the elevator. The combat isn’t stellar: point your torch at the shadow monster until it becomes corporal, shoot it in the face a couple of times. Pretty simple, except the batteries you find for your torch must be mostly used when you find them because it goes from full to empty in about 9 seconds. Its awkward and trivial, some of the enemies later on are faster and can catch you from behind but by that time you have flash-grenades - one of the more suspiciously convenient items you find dotted around the town. 

The story is weird and slightly inconsistent but overall it’s passable and It just about pays homage to the source materials if you’re feeling charitable. As a fan of both Stephen King and Twin Peaks I was curious to see if a game like Alan Wake could capture the essence of the two. Both tell in depth stories and have rich character and location design, ones that tend to get revisited a lot. A game wants you to progress and give you a sense of the story building to a culmination but has to balance that with gameplay. This results in the story the game is trying to tell getting broken up by interactive sequences that, for all intents and purposes, have no real bearing on the cutscenes. 

I wasn’t unhappy with Alan Wake but I did feel it could do more than just outright ripping off its idol - the diner you enter at the beginning of the game being an almost perfect replica of the R’n’R from Twin Peaks and honestly that’s what gave the game away. 8-10 hours of a half decent story slightly hampered by pretty much everything else, Alan Wake is playable and kinda funny at times, worth a go.