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Explaining What the Hell Alan Wake Is

Remedy shakes off the hardboiled detective vibe and crafts a fine action-horror-thriller.

May 5, 2010
You won't like this if...

the dark.

Alan Wake
Credit: Remedy

There's a moment in Alan Wake, where the titular protagonist reads a passage that goes, "The new one will be a masterpiece, I know it! You must tell him not to listen to the trolls in the forums saying 'Departure' will never get finished. He should take his time and make it perfect. I can wait." Normally I'd view such a passage as a random piece of filler, but it seems especially apropos in light of the time and the near-vaporware status that Alan Wake has obtained over its long development time. Did Remedy make Alan Wake perfect while taking its time? I wouldn't go that far, but Alan Wake is still a damn fine game.

One question that's popped up whenever I thought about Alan Wake during its development is, "what kind of game is it?" I managed to avoid recent coverage, and started my playthrough only knowing that you wander the Pacific Northwest, and that a tractor tries to kill you at some point. So, after finally finishing it (about 14 hours of gameplay), I have an extraordinarily simple answer to that question: it's a Remedy game. It alternates between standard-shooting-plus-a-central-mechanic (for Max Payne, it was bullet time, for Alan Wake, it's the use of light) and delivering a story through extended dialogue and narration. In comparative shorthand, if Max Payne was Remedy taking The Punisher and turning that concept into a videogame, then Alan Wake is what happens when Remedy takes Stephen King's The Dark Half and tries to make a game out of that (don't worry, that's not a spoiler -- though the two plots share some similarities).

Click the image above to check out all Alan Wake screens.

As mentioned, the moment-to-moment shooting reminds me a lot of Max Payne, and I mean that as a compliment. You can tell that Remedy has spent a lot of time honing and tuning the "feel" of the combat, and for the most part, it's nearly perfect. Alan shoots where his flashlight beam points, there is no lag or interface hiccups when moving or shooting, and the game provides ample player feedback.

However, all of the enemies you face are cloaked in shadows that makes them invulnerable to gunfire; the simple, yet not boring-despite-constant-repetition accompaniment to shooting is using light to "burn" away that darkness. This means that while your firearms are limited to "just" a revolver, two types of shotguns, and a hunting rifle, it also means that light items are much more lethal. Your regular flare is crowd control; your flashbang grenade is a lethal weapon; your flaregun is a freakin' rocket launcher.

When shining a light on your enemies, your controller vibrates, the target(s) sputter with sparks, and there's an otherworldly sizzling sound, all of which do an excellent job of letting you know you're putting on the hurt. The way the gunshots snap in the air plus the additional flutter of embers as your rounds hit their target impresses as well. With light as the central weapon, mundane flares become incredibly potent, and one of the best visuals I've seen in an Xbox 360 game is when Alan lights a flare; the blinding light, the shower of embers, and the colored and billowing smoke all result in a "check out my HDTV" moment. Heck, even the more mundane slow-motion sequence that occurs when dispatching the last foe in an area imparts satisfaction.

For most games, the story is filler in-between combat/puzzle encounters, but it's a pretty key part of Alan Wake. The formula of "lots of dialogue and story in-between moments of shooting and running" has been done in Max Payne, but is better here. The structure substitutes "episodes" (complete with clever "previously on..." recaps and cliffhanger endings) for chapters. The basic plot is, "writer Alan Wake wanders through the darkness in search of his missing wife." If Alan isn't talking with A.I. characters, then he's either narrating via internal monologue, or finding one of the better collectibles I've seen, manuscript pages.

I want to call special attention to these pages: they're tightly integrated with the story (Alan suffers a blackout and wrote a manuscript that he doesn't remember writing), and their placement is a quirky storytelling method. Sometimes, the pages simply reiterate what happened recently. Other times, they provide alternate perspectives or commentary on past events, to help you parse the "what the hell is going on" puzzle easier. And my favorite is when they reveal something that hasn't happened yet -- rather than spoil the gameplay, they end up adding a certain sense of tension. Like when you read that Alan hears the sound of a chainsaw; you know a chainsaw guy is coming, but you don't know exactly when.

Click the image above to check out all Alan Wake screens.

Writing-wise, while gamers still wonder to this day whether Max Payne's liberal use of wrought metaphor and goofy syntax was purposeful or not, I think there will be even stronger arguments about Alan Wake's prose. On an objective level, it's safe to say that prose from Sam Lake (the writer guru at Remedy) is better than in Max Payne. His internal monologue flows better, and the numerous manuscript pages aren't an embarrassment to read like the cut-scenes in Max Payne. Even as such, the prose that's present still isn't very good -- it's more of a "better than last time" rather than "legitimately good on its own."

For me, I'm giving Lake the benefit of the doubt. I look at a sample manuscript page, and the quality of prose is comparable to whatever airport thriller that Dan Brown cranked out. I'm the kind of person who doesn't think Alan Wake suffers from bad writing; I believe the mediocre writing is a purposeful meta-joke from Remedy.

What might infuriate more people is the fact that, like Twin Peaks, there is some flat-out baffling stuff that doesn't get explained. By the time Episode Six ends, you're likely to be as confused as you were when you began. Again, without spoiling, I'll just say that the ending resolves some mysteries while opening whole new ones that are even weirder. In fact, the writing even taunts you by opening with a Stephen King quote talking about how explanations are, "antithetical to the poetry of fear." Basically, the script says, "explanations and resolutions are for wimps," and the whole story seems to embrace that a little too far. While I forgive the quality of prose by rationalizing it as meta-commentary, and am not quite as bothered by some of the unexplained/mysterious plot elements, I have to draw the line at an ending that essentially goes, "Gotcha, there's a lot more wacky where this came from! Buy more Alan Wake as either a sequel or episodic content!"

Twilight Zone analogue that, even though I should be running through a coal mine or a logging camp or a power plant, utterly transfixes me. I crack up when another character uses author names as insults or when your best friend describes his headlamp as analogous to a "flaming eye of Mordor." And I definitely had the biggest, dopiest grin on my face when I encountered the best use of heavy metal in a videogame not called Brutal Legend.

If anything, Alan Wake reminds me of the first Uncharted. It is a great, but flawed work (hello ugly daylight, quirky animations, and a script that mocks the viewer even more than Lost or Twin Peaks) that lays the foundation for what could be an absolutely amazing follow-up. I just hope it doesn't take another five or six years.

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