By Azhar on 9 Mar, 2010 at 12:43 AM

Preview: Alan Wake

Alan Wake is a very interesting title from Remedy Games, one that has gathered a lot of attention from gamers for some reason. There’s a lot of hype surrounding it, despite the fact that the game has been delayed numerous times and that there isn’t an enormous amount of information out on it. Naturally, we followed the direction of the hype and took an in-depth look at Remedy’s Alan Wake. After that, well, we certainly began understanding the reasons for all the excitement.

Name: Alan Wake
Genre: Action/Survival Horror
Players: 1
Multiplayer: N/A
Platforms: Xbox360 Exclusive
Developers: Remedy Entertainment
Publishers: Microsoft Game Studios
Release Date: 18-21 May 2010

Alan Wake is a psychological action thriller, where you’re put into the shoes of best-selling writer, Alan Wake – bet you didn’t see that coming! In the game Alan hasn’t written anything in over two years, and so his wife, Alice, decides to take him on a trip to Bright Falls, a smallish town, in order to spark that creative flare of his. However, things soon go from peaceful vacation to living hell as Alice suddenly vanishes without a trace. As for Alan Wake, he soon finds himself trapped in a horrible nightmare. Inexplicably, word for word, his latest work, a supernatural thriller story he wrote – one that he can’t even remember writing – is coming to life in the town of Bright Falls right before his eyes. In a desperate attempt to find out what exactly is going on, or rather, what will happen, and hellbent on staying alive long enough to find his wife, Alan Wake must face the nightmare and find pages of the book in order to succeed. These pages, through clever writing, serve to tease what’s to come in the immediate future just after you find them.

The interesting thing about Alan Wake, regarding the story, is that its told episodically, but not in the conventional sense. Alan Wake adopts the stylisation and pacing of a modern day television series. What this means is that, as you begin a new chapter, there will be, similar to that of TV shows, a “previously on Alan Wake” cutscene that gives you the breakdown of previous story happenings, and that scene will end with a “tonight on Alan Wake”, where the game will then carry on. I think it’s a fantastic way of telling the story, especially since one of the primary focuses of this game is the story. With this structure, not only will you always know what’s happening in the plot, but, with the help of the recaps, you’ll be able to take a second look at things that you might have missed or didn’t think were relevant the first time around.

As you know, typically in TV series’, in the “previously on” recap, sometimes they’ll show scenes from a number of episodes back, which serves to inform you of the relevance of that scene in the episode you’re about to watch. The same thing will happen in Alan Wake, which I believe will make for great and immersive story telling, if pulled off successfully. Added to the fact that Alan Wake himself will be narrating as the story goes, and we might just have struck gold in story telling as far as gaming is concerned. I say that because this game seemingly has all of the ingredients to great story telling, and this is further made more exciting due to the premise of the plot itself. Alan Wake has taken inspiration from many thriller movies, graphic novels and even TV shows, with the developers admitting that they’ve taken some inspiration from the likes of Stephen King and Lost. So if the game can bring all of these elements together and make the best possible use of the story concept that it has, it’s going to be incredible.

The premise to the horror, or rather, the thriller element of the game is that a dark presence has taken over Bright Falls, consuming everything in its path. This dark presence will govern your enemies, the story and the environment itself. Part of the story lies with discovering the true nature of this dark presence, so the developers have been pretty tight-lipped about it. However, we’ve seen this darkness in action, and it certainly provides a powerful atmosphere. Basically, light is your ally and means to which you will survive and fight this darkness. What adds to the scare factor is that when in light or day time, you’re safe, but as soon as night strikes or darkness gets you, they’ll start coming for you. The game features a day-night cycle, but this is controlled by the game to create suspense and drama at any time. Your enemies, known as “The Taken”, are local people and creatures from the town who have been consumed by this dark presence and, to make matters worse, this darkness can control and take over objects in the environment. You’ll see vehicles and objects attempt to attack Alan seemingly out of their own, while in darkness, so you’ll always have to watch your back.

Alan Wake is played from a third person perspective. From what we gather, the game will be linear in its progression, but the developers promise that the town is large and calls for exploration, although it won’t be a free-roaming sandbox environment. The camera puts you behind Alan Wake, where he himself is just off the center of the screen, either a bit to the left or right side. However, the game uses an over-the-shoulder aiming style for when zooming with a weapon. As for movement, from what we’ve seen so far, you’ll be able to sprint when needed and duck and dodge to avoid enemy fire. As previously mentioned, light is your ally, and the means in which you’ll fight. Your enemies are protected by a sort of shield that the dark presence provides, and so you’ll need light to break that shield and then kill the enemy with your conventional weapons. Light forms a key part of the whole gameplay, and you’ll be able to utilise it in many different ways.

The most basic idea would be to use your flashlight to break the protective shield and then blast your enemy away with a gun. Speaking of guns, we’ve seen a revolver, flare gun and shotgun, but there will naturally be a lot more. However, demonstrated by the various demos of the game, there are many other ways that you’ll be getting hold of and using light. Aside from your flashlight, which is an essential battery-operated tool in your arsenal, you’ll use power torches, generators, car headlights, traps that light up when triggered, flares and practically any form of light that you can find, even from something like a street light. The idea is that life is both your safe haven and combat tool, but it also reveals certain things like hidden messages on walls. However, what makes things more thrilling, is that there are certain times in the game where light can even be your enemy. In one demo we saw showcased, there was a scene where the police were on the lookout for Alan Wake, believing him to be responsible for the dark presence in Bright Falls. So you’ll have to use the darkness to escape the police. Unfortunately, the darkness is also when your murderous zombie friends come out to get you, so that scene is very tense, both for you and the police.

Alan Wake will also be able to drive vehicles in the game, to travel to places, escape or even fight your enemies with by use of the car headlights and road kill combo. While the night will bring all of the action, suspense and tension, the day time will serve to be your time out to take it easy, explore and gather information from the locals in Bright Falls. From this, it’s easy to see how players will know when to be on the alert and when to sit back and take a breather. Another point of interest is that, similar to Remedy’s Max Payne, the game will have cinematic slowdowns for certain situations, such as timing a dodge perfectly or lighting up a flare to burn multiple enemies, except that you won’t be able to activate them, they’ll happen on their own. The camera will zoom out a bit in these moments to give you a clear, slow-mo view of the action.

One of the best aspects of Alan Wake is how well the theme of the game is pulled off, and how it’s further enhanced by the fantastic representation of light and darkness. The visuals are great, the effects awesome and the sound and music captivating. Darkness really makes you feel vulnerable and small in the presence of a greater evil and, on the contrary, light really feels like your beacon of safety. The dark presence creates amazing atmosphere and spectacular effects, both environmental and in your enemies. While Alan Wake’s graphics may not be top of the line, such as with the character models and environmental detail, the visual effects, sound work and atmosphere really empower the experience.

As far as gripes and skepticism go, we’re just worried that it might become tiresome to continuously use your flashlight to break the darkness shields before you can attack. We’ve got to hope that Remedy have provided lots of variety as far fighting with light is concerned. We also saw that it might be a bit troublesome to see what’s behind you at times, due to the nature of the camera, but I’m positive it won’t be much of an issue. In any case, if it is, you’d just have to up the sensitivity. Also, while the TV show-like style of the story is a fantastic idea, it might end up detracting from the experience, since it is a little strange to picture an action thriller game with zombies as a season of a night-time TV show. Still, it all will come down to how they pull it off. Effectively, our slight worries lie with potential repetitiveness and story telling methods, which we currently have high hopes for.

There’s a lot of gameplay, mechanics and concepts that we haven’t yet seen in Alan Wake, and that’s partly because the game has been lurking in the shadows the whole time. Still, we saw enough to get a clear indication of what this game is all about. Remedy describes Alan Wake as being “built like a chilling episodic TV series, where your wits and light are your only allies…and will establish a new gaming genre – the gripping psychological action thriller” and judging from what we’ve seen there’s a strong possibility of their words coming true. Also taking into account that Remedy were the guys behind the hugely popular and awesome Max Payne, and we’re pretty much excited for Alan Wake.

Alan Wake will be released in May 2010 exclusively on Xbox360. A note worth mentioning is that, despite the game not being out yet, Remedy has confirmed that Alan Wake is only the first season of a greater story, which leaves room for future sequels.