After Half Decade, What Are Your Thoughts on Alan Wake.

History

Alan Wake, started as a sandbox game. It was showcased on a high end PC back in 2005, and was described as a game that will take full advantage of latest quad core processors, and will be ported to Consoles. Remedy Entertainment, the developers of the game tested different prototypes for years, and concluded that the type of story they want to tell, will not be possible in a sandbox or open world game.

Remedy decided to stick with their specialty and work on a linear story driven game. After it was showcased on PCs for quite some time, it was officially confirmed that the game will be coming out on Xbox 360 as well. Both PC and Xbox 360 versions were being made in parallel. The game was called a Psychological Action Thriller (with horror elements).

Due to Remedy Entertainment's deal with Microsoft, the focus shifted and they started to advertise Xbox 360 version entirely, during final stages of development. Instead of saying that a "PC game" or "PC and Xbox 360 game", websites started to call it "Xbox 360 game with PC port" due to Xbox 360 version's advertisement.

During the game's production, Remedy lost the rights to publish Alan Wake. It was up to Microsoft to do whatever they want with the franchise. Microsoft decided to kill the PC version to promote Xbox 360 Console. Before Alan Wake, Remedy had created 3 games and all of them were released as PC exclusives and two of them got terrible Console ports later (ported by Rockstar). So, it was obvious that most of Remedy's fanbase was on PC.

Another poor decision that Microsoft had made with Alan Wake was to then release it on same day as Red Dead Redemption, for PS3 and Xbox 360. Alan Wake could've sold more on PC due to it being a bit different from other horror games available on the platform (horror games were pretty popular on PC back then and Red Dead wasn't released on PC as well). Due to poor decisions from Microsoft and due to Xbox 360 fanbase being pretty popular for liking Modern Military Shooters, Alan Wake under-performed, despite being a fantastic game.

Not only that but the game was pretty underrated at that time, and barely received 80+ on metacritic. Remedy had plans to work on a sequel right after the release of the first game but no one was willing to fund the project because financially, it didn't live up to its hype. The franchise started to fade away and people started to forget the game.

Meanwhile, Remedy was trying to buy the rights for the game back from Microsoft and after several months of struggle, they finally got the rights to publish the game. This was the time when Remedy started to work on PC version of the game and revive the franchise. Instead of coding the PC version from where they left, they decided to port it from finished Xbox 360 version but decided to make it look and play better than the Console version as much as possible.

Most of the work was done by Remedy's external partners in Finland, known as Nitro Games and the game looked and played fantastically when it was released on PC, after 1.5 years of Xbox 360 version back in 2012. Remedy was pretty happy with the sales of digital only PC version and decided to release the game on disc as well, after few months of PC release.

Even though the game under-performed in the beginning, it already had gathered some cult followers when it came out on Xbox 360, and PC version gave it even more dedicated fans. The game slowly but surely became a cult classic and people started to request a sequel. Today we have several hints here and there that Alan Wake 2 is a strong possibility and might happen someday, after the release of Quantum Break.

The Game

Now let's look back and the judge the game itself. Alan Wake was Psychological Action Thriller with horror elements. The game had dark and immersive atmosphere. You can easily loose yourself into the game's world because of its atmosphere, soundtracks and great sound quality,,, all of them work together perfectly to bring the game's world to life.

The weather effects were also top of the line. Foliage looked great and simulation was fantastic. Stuff like TV shows and Radio channels added more to the game's lore and made it even more immersive. There was a lot of attention to detail and since I lived near a hill station and played the game during cold winters, I loved the game even more. I was stunned by all these small details like placement of trees, different signs for tourists, local myths and legends and so on. Just beautiful.

On other hand, story was also really engaging and it was always fun to read script pages before events surrounding that script take place. You always wonder, how that is going to happen, whatever you read on the page.

Storytelling was great too. It told the story like a TV show and blurred the line between reality and nightmare. Sometimes you think that everything that you are experiencing right now is just a bad dream, and sometimes you think it's reality. Every time when Alan takes one step forward, he is sent two steps backward, just like a nightmare,,, then he tries harder.

The entire game is about light and darkness, where darkness is main villain. Not only story but entire game design revolves around that. You are safe near light, you can hurt enemies with it, you can refill your health while standing beneath a bulb or you can save the game by doing the exact same thing, OR you can use flare gun as a rocket launcher.

Gameplay was great too. You never felt over powered but at the same time, it was always fun to encounter enemies and fight them back with limited amount of bullets. You really had to explore the environments to find different items and weapons to prevail. It really felt that you are experiencing the story of a writer, trying to survive dark forces, instead of a hero, who is trying to save the world.

Yes there were some flaws like stiff platforming sections, or straight forward driving sections that are all about experience of a travel and not some thought provoking gameplay mechanic but these are small issues. Rest of the stuff including AI, that is fast and very clever on higher difficulties (at least on PC), is top notch.

So, in the end I'd say that Alan Wake was a fantastic game, an overlooked gem of last gen. And whenever you want a sequel badly, and remember a game or a movie after finishing it, for a very long time, then you know you just played or watched something very special. And just like how Alan Wake quotes Stephen King in the beginning that a horror story that leaves a room open for a lot of possibilities and leaves some questions unanswered is the one that stays with us forever and Alan Wake and its ending are just that.

Share your thoughts.

Alan Wake was one of my favorite games from last gen. The atmosphere was flawless, and at times the game was genuinely creepy. The story and storytelling were top notch as well. The DLC that released afterward was great. I guess the combat encounters could get repetitive, but I didn't think so, I didn't love the characters all that much, but at the same time I couldn't imagine it working well without them. The writing, oh lord the writing. It was just so well done. The twilight springs TV show was incredible and added to the eeriness. And the way the forest and machinery turned against you with the shadow people or whatever made you feel constantly threatened. The gunplay and const worked fantastically. And the most important part, it was fun. 9.5 out of 10.

When it was originally announced, I was pretty hyped for it, but the game we ended up receiving I didn't think was anything special. I did at least find it hilarious how your character exploded by touching water though, lol.

a great underrated game.

Loved the atmosphere and story.

A great game with a great story , great narrative , great characters and a stale gameplay

Loved the first 3-4 chapters, then it just turned into a shooter and the pacing was dropped. Still was a fun game though.

Never played it.

I enjoyed it very much, it was something radically different and did what it set out to do very well.

One of my 2 most disappointing titles of 7th gen (with RAGE). AW used to be my most hyped title for over 2 years back when it was first announced. What a failure.

Awesome game... loved it! One of the best atmospheres in any game I've played (right up there with Bioshock).

Pros:

- It runs good

- Flashlight mechanic interesting

- Looks like Twin Peaks

- No wall cover

- Limited resources on higher difficulty

Cons:

-The protagonist is boring, realistic, but that doesn't automatically equal fun. Resident Evil has a roid rage man who punches rocks and women with bits.

- Don't care about his wife

- Tries to copy the quirkyness of Twin Peaks without properly understanding why it worked.

- Story seems to rip off "In The Mouth Of Madness"

- Much like Max Payne, very repetitive

- Monsters lack variation

- Driving seems out of place

- Almost no black characters

What lol?

Sorry Jada Pinkett Smith.

Agree 100%. Playing that on harder difficulties was so rewarding when you could survive being surrounded by taken.

@Cloud_imperium what are these Remedy PC games that got bad console ports?

Best game last gen, bar none.

what makes you say that?

Your posting history. You can't escape that.

@dynamitecop: Games are notorious for not being ethnically diverse. Very little has changed. Comparatively movie and television has evolved significantly. e.g. I'm watching 24 on demand and it has tons of Arabs.

Alan Wake slightly above average as an action game. The basic mechanics feel pretty good, there is a nifty dodge move, and the light and shoot gameplay while easily dismissed as a gimmick worked both contextually and in general as a neato little twist on a third person shooter mechanic. The atmosphere is pretty good, and when the game is doing the swirly wind thing in the forest it's probably at its best. Plus bitchin soundtrack.

Everything else in the game is questionable at best or fucking poorly designed at worst. The biggest offenses to me were how contrived the game is and the panning out stuff. The former is annoying, because it becomes comical how Alan Wake can end up in an area without any guns (after having guns, and knowing full well what he is dealing with), in a forest, (because somehow this setting only has woods, and barely anything else, i mean even the construction site and asylum give way to, yep forest, you break out a prison cell and directly into a forest). It's like they didn't really know how to pace any other type of set up, it was always a "start this level with nothing, end it with an arsenal", and that's just not interesting to do 5 fucking times.

The panning out is bullshit, just because the game calls itself a psychological thriller, doesn't mean I'm not dealing with supernatural enemies that should in some way intimidate or at least keep me on edge. Yeah can't fucking do that when everytime there is a major stretch of gameplay, the game pans out in slow mo, to show you exactly where people are. Resident Evil 5 and the most recent Dead Space game, 2 poor "horror" games don't make that mistake, but Alan Wake is given this weird stupid pass for it, when the game takes so many cues from horror movies/tv shows. The Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks were above that shit.

I'd also double down on what uninspired said, aping a bunch of Noir flicks for some meta stuff with Max Payne worked, because Max Payne had no pretense of actually being up to snuff with noir flicks. It wore its inspiration on its sleeves, and it worked in a stylized manner. But, the Stephen King boner? Only to say "don't explain shit" to then "explain shit" and thus make it all uninteresting was hilarious, and not intentional. Twin Peaks might have a sloppy second season, but Alan Wake on its best moments doesn't stack up favorably, and it doesn't help that it takes too many cues from it, it's something Deadly Premonition does way the **** better, not to mention Francis York Morgan is actually charismatic, mean while Alan Wake is lacking in that department.

As an action game it's really repetitive, and devoid of any elaborate or well thought out high action moments, while being an action game. Possessed bulldozers is all they could come up with? And it took until the DLC for them to get smart about maybe combining the birds with standard goons. Ending the game on a tornado? Yeah **** off.

As a third person shooter last gen it's outclassed by better action games last gen: Vanquish, Binary Domain, Gears of War, Uncharted 2, and The Last of Us, even lesser titles like Resident Evil 5 and Dead Space 2 have more to offer, **** if it wasn't for Rockstar Max Payne 3 clowns it (it's certainly not close in the shooting mechanics department). As a Remedy title, it isn't as well thought out as Max Payne 1 and 2 were, it also doesn't play as well as Max Payne 1 and 2 do.

Addition: making me play through the game multiple times to get all the letters is a cheap way to add replayability to a game.

one of the worst,most repetitive and boring games i've ever played

One of my most anticipated games all last generation (link to one of my posts from 6 years ago where I continually praised the game). Any time the game came up in discussion, I was always supporting it. I waited over five years as I knew about it before the Xbox 360 even released (one of the major reasons I spent $400 on a launch Xbox 360). While the game was good and decent, it didn't blow me away like I thought it would.

The gameplay did get repetitive shortly after starting, with the big boy Luigi's Mansion gameplay. Point light, shoot, rinse, repeat. It was easy to master once you started.

It still had the time elements from Max Payne, but as a slow motion dodge.

The atmosphere was novel, but the story got super silly fast. Decent game, but I enjoyed Max Payne more in the end.

I was always curious how Alan Wake would have turned out if Remedy had kept their original design.

Metacritic has the game at 83/100, which was close to my feelings on the game after two completions and five years later (C+ / B-).

Ohhhhh so that what it is. Very interesting.

All I have heard was they were planning for it. I believe there was a smidgen of demo to MS that was put out to be seen last year finally as well. But according to Sam Lake at Gamescom last year, MS said they would love to fulfill his dream of a hybrid Live action story with a game. The Remedy team just didnt think AW2 could be done in this format. So they came up with QB.

It's still a mystery...

why this game sold so bad.

Wow the bad taste in games is real in this thread.

It didn't sell bad, maybe slow. Being delayed does that to a product.

It's a mediocre game with bad gameplay

Found it mediocre and completely forgettable.

It had an unlikable protagonist that couldnt sprint for more than 2 seconds and was unresponsive. It relied on an awful lot of side-tracking of locked doors in-between unremarkable action moments. There was so much padding (that last chapter was such a drag in particular) in a game that didnt have much enemy variety. It had Flying enemies in a shooter that are annoying than most flying enemies in other games.

Also, **** that outward camera pan. It killed the tension/surprise of its already repetitive encounters and was pretty disorientating once it snapped back in.

Alan Wake was and still my favorite game on Xbox 360, at it's time, Alan Wake felt like it really push the Xbox 360 hardware as far as it could in my opinion. I truly love what Remedy did to this game, even the great Stephen King himself said that he was impress with the game, even though he is mention in Alan Wake. I actually enjoy the music when you beat the chapters at the end of the sections. I just wish it didn't release on the same day with Red Dead Redemption, RDR totally overshadowed Alan Wake and didn't sell well because of it.

I thought the first game was great. I still haven't played American Nightmare.

Actually it was Red Dead Redemption that overshadowed Alan Wake when both of those games release when it was just Xbox 360 [before PC release] vs multiplatforms was doomed from the start.

best game on the 360

One of my favourite games of all time.

Probably my favorite xbox 360 game.

Great game, fun mechanics, good story, though American Nightmare spoiled me being all action packed, made the regular Alan Wake game feel really slow.

It's just aight.

Easily best game on 360

Well, it didn't sell great either. Since there is no sequel...

It's about a writer struggling with writers block. I'm sure I've read that in Stephen Kings books :D

Alan Wake was an "OK" game, that is all. American Nightmare wasnt very good.

Gameplay strongly benefits from contrast of dark and light. Light sources become entirely critical. Seeing one in the distance gives you a feeling of safety, as monsters can't harm you there. But then you get there and the light goes out. Instant panic! The game also had tons of diverse environments, nice voice acting, and the story itself was good and psychedelic. There were definitely flaws; the repetitiveness, limited items & enemies. One thing though: I didn't care for the ending itself. It was too abstract, both visually and as a conclusion of a good story (I didn't even understand it properly). Flashlight was also a major element of the game, which I miss in so many other games (Stalker and Metro series did this part well too). As long as you use the flash light, it concentrates on a smaller part of the view, making everything else appear darker. It's very immersive and keeps you on the edge trying to turn the light everywhere, trying to create an illusion that you are safe, but never quite getting there.

PoP: The Forgotten Sands released on the same day & it came out a week and a half before the movie. Actually it was Amnesia: The Dark Descent/ Metro 2033. :D

I liked the little TV series they put into the game.
And the styIe kinda. Reminded me of The Darkness 2 a little (which had a better styIe tho).

Alan wake and Lost Odyssey are the only games which justified getting Xbox360 last gen for me.

@kvally: This is system wars. trolling is the norm

Its best horror game of all time

I'm the exact opposite. RAGE and AW have to be two of my favourite games from last gen.

RAGE has amazing shooting mechanics, I love how the enemies react to gunfire. And the knife boomerang is one of the best weapons I've ever used in a shooter.

AW has a great atmosphere, great soundtrack and an interesting story. And it can be really tense at times.

I've finished this games countless times. And will play them lots more times.

It was a good game but maybe more a spectacle than a game. The story was really vague, even pretentious without any real substance and the action was just okay but more a means to an end to get to the next part of the story. It looked really good though.

I liked it but never understood why it got such a cult following. It was better than the sequel.. American Nightmare at least it lived up to its name good God that was bad.

Still excited for QB though the combat looks really mindless and chaotic from the clips I've seen. Hopefully they're just showing that to make it look action-packed and not a true reflection on typical gameplay.

I still can't believe they took the mechanics from Obscure.

loved the atmosphere and narrative was neat, shooting mechanics worked well in small bursts but it became too action-heavy later in the game. Still really enjoyed it overall