Remedy releases Alan Wake footage

When it announced Alan Wake last month, Remedy Entertainment promised that it would be a "psychological action thriller." Today, the Max Payne developer looked like it was living up to that promise with the release of the second trailer for Wake, which shows a visually detailed game with a tantalizingly dark story.

Available from GameSpot in both regular and high-definition video (via the links below), the second Wake trailer begins like the first, showing off the detailed Northwestern landscape, which is the game's backdrop. Over a high-angle crane shot reminiscent of the opening sequence of The Shining, a title card appears reading, "Alan Wake was a bestselling horror writer until he lost his muse and love."

As mentioned in GameSpot's impressions of Alan Wake at E3, this "muse" was Wake's late fiancée--and a dead ringer for a woman he meets after "he comes to the small town of Bright Falls to recover and start anew," according to the next title card. "He writes a book inspired by his nightmares," reads the next card over more shots of the very Twin Peaks-like town.

However, the trailer's tranquil tone soon dissipates. As the words "But something goes horribly wrong" flash on the screen, an ominous, darkened church appears. "His nightmares start to come true," reads the next card, laying out the game's Lathe of Heaven-like plot. The next shot--of a massive rockslide obliterating a construction site--seems to show the effects of one such dream-turned-reality.

Then the trailer gets even darker. "Light is his only ally," says the next title card before a dizzying shot takes the viewer down the side of a hill toward a lighthouse that is connected to the mainland by a dilapidated dock. "When night falls they come for him," reads the shot, which then shows a spooky, sped-up sunset.

Then, a truck pulls into the front yard of a house located on the other end of the dock. A figure--presumably Alan Wake--jumps out of the truck and then runs out onto the rickety structure. Leaping over some large holes in slow motion, he reaches a locked iron gate in front of the lighthouse. As Wake struggles with the gate, the sun sets completely, plunging the surrounding area into darkness. As a spooky voice says "Waaaake," the camera dollies away from Wake to the other end of the dock. Then the trailer's last shot shows a half-dozen figures cloaked in black waiting for him.

Alan Wake is currently being developed for "next-generation consoles and PCs." Neither a publisher nor a release date for the game have been announced.