Multi Alan Wake II
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Thread started by cm2
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Fans of the series should be happy.
I hope it will be scary enough and with good combat and survival mechanics
Read an update:
“Everything with Alan Wake II development is going really well,” said creative director Sam Lake. “We are deep in production, have a lot of material, and a great deal of the game is playable. But we’ve been talking for the past couple of months and have come to the decision here at Remedy, along with our wonderful publisher Epic Games, that we will not be showing anything big this summer.”
Lake continued, “To create a proper, polished demo or a trailer takes a lot of effort, and it’s several months of work that could take away from development. We feel that we have momentum going, and we want to make sure we are creating the best, and first, survival horror game for Remedy. We don’t want to take the team away from that focus, so we’re going to keep going and making a great game experience, and unfortunately, you’ll have to wait a bit longer for a demo and trailer.”
“Everything with Alan Wake II development is going really well,” said creative director Sam Lake. “We are deep in production, have a lot of material, and a great deal of the game is playable. But we’ve been talking for the past couple of months and have come to the decision here at Remedy, along with our wonderful publisher Epic Games, that we will not be showing anything big this summer.”
Lake continued, “To create a proper, polished demo or a trailer takes a lot of effort, and it’s several months of work that could take away from development. We feel that we have momentum going, and we want to make sure we are creating the best, and first, survival horror game for Remedy. We don’t want to take the team away from that focus, so we’re going to keep going and making a great game experience, and unfortunately, you’ll have to wait a bit longer for a demo and trailer.”
Read more from tweaktown:
"It feels very familiar but at the same time it feels very fresh. We are breaking new ground. It's a new genre and we are pushing further into the horror aspect, but also exploring the depth of the character," Sam Lake said in the recent anniversary video.
"In this game it's like you're really seeing who Alan Wake is. You're getting an idea of his personality, you're seeing more emotion from him. We're getting the humanity," Alan Wake voice actor Matthew Porretta said.
"I always remember when doing Alan Wake 1, we always said the catch phrase was 'terrified but cool,' that was the essence of Alan Wake. Now I feel like there are so many more layers more to him. He's a very deep and interesting character,"Ilkka Villi, who portrays Alan Wake's likeness in the games.
"Yeah, we're pushing him further than ever before. That's part of the horror story as well. We're putting the character through a ringer," Lake said.
Lake also confirmed Remedy would not be showing more Alan Wake 2 footage this summer.
"Unfortunately you will have to wait for a proper demo and trailer a bit longer."
"It feels very familiar but at the same time it feels very fresh. We are breaking new ground. It's a new genre and we are pushing further into the horror aspect, but also exploring the depth of the character," Sam Lake said in the recent anniversary video.
"In this game it's like you're really seeing who Alan Wake is. You're getting an idea of his personality, you're seeing more emotion from him. We're getting the humanity," Alan Wake voice actor Matthew Porretta said.
"I always remember when doing Alan Wake 1, we always said the catch phrase was 'terrified but cool,' that was the essence of Alan Wake. Now I feel like there are so many more layers more to him. He's a very deep and interesting character,"Ilkka Villi, who portrays Alan Wake's likeness in the games.
"Yeah, we're pushing him further than ever before. That's part of the horror story as well. We're putting the character through a ringer," Lake said.
Lake also confirmed Remedy would not be showing more Alan Wake 2 footage this summer.
"Unfortunately you will have to wait for a proper demo and trailer a bit longer."
Game will launch in october according to the Va, read from gematsu:
Matthew Porretta, Alan Wake Voice Actor: “I’ve been working on it—that’s supposed to come out in October. We’re in the middle of working on it now. In fact I was just in Finland last week. That’s where the company’s from—Remedy—amazing people.”
Matthew Porretta, Alan Wake Voice Actor: “I’ve been working on it—that’s supposed to come out in October. We’re in the middle of working on it now. In fact I was just in Finland last week. That’s where the company’s from—Remedy—amazing people.”
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Man I gotta finish the first game.
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I really thought it was a john wick game at first lol.
Same thing here and it would have been super cool if it was lol.
Read Dev Interview by VGC:
Remedy feels like such a well-oiled machine now, when it comes to making these sorts of narrative single-player games. Could you give us an idea of how long it’s taken to put Alan Wake 2 together, because externally, it feels like it’s come together really quickly? How many concepts were ready to pick up off the shelf?
Kyle Rowley: Obviously, we did Alan Wake 1, and straight after that we really wanted to do Alan Wake 2. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and we ended up taking all the ideas that we had for that – I think we showed a video a long time about what a potential Alan Wake 2 would look like – and a lot of the ideas for that went into Alan Wake’s American Nightmare.
And then, basically, every game since then has started off almost as Alan Wake 2, so we’ve had many different ideas over the years about what it could be.
But I think that we learned a lot making Quantum Break about how we can do interactive storytelling, we learned a lot in Control about how players like to consume content, how much agency we want to give. So I feel like, actually, the concept we’ve ended up with now is definitely the best version of what Alan Wake 2 could be.
When I joined the project, which was in 2019, it was just me and an executive producer working on the project, Sam was writing Control. But that’s when we started to ideate. There were a lot of ideas that we had through the years on what could it potentially be, that’s when we started to ideate on ideas like ‘okay, how can we improve on Alan Wake 1’. That’s where the survival horror genre shift started to occur.
We were looking at issues that we felt were in the first game, such as a bit of a dissonance between what the story was trying to do versus what the gameplay was trying to kind of push you towards. So we wanted to kind of counterbalance that. So yeah, it’s kind of been a long process, so I would say this concept really kickstarted in 2019 when I came back to Remedy from where I was before.
I think the biggest question that everyone’s asking at the moment is how exactly does the character switching work?
Molly Maloney: So the way it works is, of course, we’re debuting Saga right now and the focus is on her, we’re going to talk about Alan more later in the summer.
But basically the structure of the game is you open up with Saga. She arrives in Bright Falls, she’s investigating these ritualistic killings.
As you can imagine things spiral from there, she gets in over her head a little bit and at a certain point you unlock Alan. And then after that point, you can switch between the two paths, the two stories.
They are unique stories to both characters, they highlight different mechanics, they have different tones. Alan represents approximately 50% of the experience.
And then but a lot of the reasoning behind this is a couple of things. One, Alan has been involved in this for 13 years, he has his own perspective. Saga, as a newcomer, provides a very different perspective.
Both sides of that story have their own tone, and that kind of provides a refresh.
KR: Yeah, basically, we want to make sure that if you’re overwhelmed with the fear – you know, we don’t want to create one-note horror all the time, but I think part of the Alan Wake IP is definitely quirky characters, small town Americana, daytime scenes.
So one of the parts of that was to allow the player to decide ‘okay, Alan’s stuff is a bit overwhelming, maybe I’ll go play in a daytime sequence as Saga. So it’s giving the player a bit of choice about how they experience those two stories.
MM: With Alan it’s understandably a darker side, he’s in the dark place. So the approach to switching is you can play it in whatever order you prefer. It allows you to kind of pace it in the way that you’d like. But when it comes to the narrative, the narrative was actually designed to do that.
So it involved a lot of iteration, playing it over and over again, making sure that, if I play a lot of Saga and then jump to Alan, is that rewarding? If I [alternate] between them, how does that feel?
So no matter how you play, you kind of get different context and different rewards for doing that. And then you will hit a point where, basically…
KR: You’re forced to go to a character. It’s like, you start off linear, we introduce Saga, we introduce Alan, we introduce their concepts and at that point, it’s kind of like two parallel stories.
It’s an overarching story that connects them both, but they’re two parallel ones so I can decide which I order I play in, until the point where it’s like ‘okay, now you have to go play here’ and then we conclude basically.
MM: So once you get to a certain revelatory moment, basically, then we put it back in our control.
I’m guessing, narratively, bringing in Saga sounds like a good way to introduce players who perhaps have forgotten the events of the first game, or didn’t play it at all?
MM: Yeah. And I think, of course, it’s a fantastic POV for players who have never experienced Alan Wake, but also even fans of the franchise – it’s been 13 years, so it’s really nice to have that.
But also, a core theme of the game is duality – two worlds, two characters, fact and fiction. So Saga and Alan have very unique perspectives on the situation, and I actually think agnostic to her being an excellent entry point, she also provides really valuable context as to what’s going on, whereas Alan is very much immersed in what’s going on.
What I found really interesting was the Mind Place. I wondered how deep that is mechanically? You mentioned during the demo that you guys spent 18 months fleshing that out and changing things and trying stuff.
KR: Our starting point with almost all our games is, you know, we have a story and we have a character, and then we try and build both the narrative arcs for that character and the journey they go through from a narrative side, but also from a player experience perspective.
So, for example, with Saga, she’s an FBI agent, she’s a profiler, she’s coming to investigate things inside the Pacific Northwest, so we wanted to make sure that we built game mechanics that supported that power fantasy.
So we wanted to basically allow the player to investigate crime scenes, pick up clues, but we wanted that to be an actual gameplay system, where the player was interacting with themselves.
So then we were like, okay, how can we make that? We don’t want them to be walking back to an office or something, so how can we make it meaningfully interesting? So that’s where this idea of a Mind Palace technique came from.
And because with the new hardware we have access to SSD drives so we can load stuff super fast, by the touch of a button we could take you to this new place. And then we could start adding gameplay mechanics which directly connect to her power fantasy, like the case board, and the profiling.
And for sure, as Molly can attest to, we have been through many iterations on how that could actually work.
Remedy feels like such a well-oiled machine now, when it comes to making these sorts of narrative single-player games. Could you give us an idea of how long it’s taken to put Alan Wake 2 together, because externally, it feels like it’s come together really quickly? How many concepts were ready to pick up off the shelf?
Kyle Rowley: Obviously, we did Alan Wake 1, and straight after that we really wanted to do Alan Wake 2. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and we ended up taking all the ideas that we had for that – I think we showed a video a long time about what a potential Alan Wake 2 would look like – and a lot of the ideas for that went into Alan Wake’s American Nightmare.
And then, basically, every game since then has started off almost as Alan Wake 2, so we’ve had many different ideas over the years about what it could be.
But I think that we learned a lot making Quantum Break about how we can do interactive storytelling, we learned a lot in Control about how players like to consume content, how much agency we want to give. So I feel like, actually, the concept we’ve ended up with now is definitely the best version of what Alan Wake 2 could be.
When I joined the project, which was in 2019, it was just me and an executive producer working on the project, Sam was writing Control. But that’s when we started to ideate. There were a lot of ideas that we had through the years on what could it potentially be, that’s when we started to ideate on ideas like ‘okay, how can we improve on Alan Wake 1’. That’s where the survival horror genre shift started to occur.
We were looking at issues that we felt were in the first game, such as a bit of a dissonance between what the story was trying to do versus what the gameplay was trying to kind of push you towards. So we wanted to kind of counterbalance that. So yeah, it’s kind of been a long process, so I would say this concept really kickstarted in 2019 when I came back to Remedy from where I was before.
I think the biggest question that everyone’s asking at the moment is how exactly does the character switching work?
Molly Maloney: So the way it works is, of course, we’re debuting Saga right now and the focus is on her, we’re going to talk about Alan more later in the summer.
But basically the structure of the game is you open up with Saga. She arrives in Bright Falls, she’s investigating these ritualistic killings.
As you can imagine things spiral from there, she gets in over her head a little bit and at a certain point you unlock Alan. And then after that point, you can switch between the two paths, the two stories.
They are unique stories to both characters, they highlight different mechanics, they have different tones. Alan represents approximately 50% of the experience.
And then but a lot of the reasoning behind this is a couple of things. One, Alan has been involved in this for 13 years, he has his own perspective. Saga, as a newcomer, provides a very different perspective.
Both sides of that story have their own tone, and that kind of provides a refresh.
KR: Yeah, basically, we want to make sure that if you’re overwhelmed with the fear – you know, we don’t want to create one-note horror all the time, but I think part of the Alan Wake IP is definitely quirky characters, small town Americana, daytime scenes.
So one of the parts of that was to allow the player to decide ‘okay, Alan’s stuff is a bit overwhelming, maybe I’ll go play in a daytime sequence as Saga. So it’s giving the player a bit of choice about how they experience those two stories.
MM: With Alan it’s understandably a darker side, he’s in the dark place. So the approach to switching is you can play it in whatever order you prefer. It allows you to kind of pace it in the way that you’d like. But when it comes to the narrative, the narrative was actually designed to do that.
So it involved a lot of iteration, playing it over and over again, making sure that, if I play a lot of Saga and then jump to Alan, is that rewarding? If I [alternate] between them, how does that feel?
So no matter how you play, you kind of get different context and different rewards for doing that. And then you will hit a point where, basically…
KR: You’re forced to go to a character. It’s like, you start off linear, we introduce Saga, we introduce Alan, we introduce their concepts and at that point, it’s kind of like two parallel stories.
It’s an overarching story that connects them both, but they’re two parallel ones so I can decide which I order I play in, until the point where it’s like ‘okay, now you have to go play here’ and then we conclude basically.
MM: So once you get to a certain revelatory moment, basically, then we put it back in our control.
I’m guessing, narratively, bringing in Saga sounds like a good way to introduce players who perhaps have forgotten the events of the first game, or didn’t play it at all?
MM: Yeah. And I think, of course, it’s a fantastic POV for players who have never experienced Alan Wake, but also even fans of the franchise – it’s been 13 years, so it’s really nice to have that.
But also, a core theme of the game is duality – two worlds, two characters, fact and fiction. So Saga and Alan have very unique perspectives on the situation, and I actually think agnostic to her being an excellent entry point, she also provides really valuable context as to what’s going on, whereas Alan is very much immersed in what’s going on.
What I found really interesting was the Mind Place. I wondered how deep that is mechanically? You mentioned during the demo that you guys spent 18 months fleshing that out and changing things and trying stuff.
KR: Our starting point with almost all our games is, you know, we have a story and we have a character, and then we try and build both the narrative arcs for that character and the journey they go through from a narrative side, but also from a player experience perspective.
So, for example, with Saga, she’s an FBI agent, she’s a profiler, she’s coming to investigate things inside the Pacific Northwest, so we wanted to make sure that we built game mechanics that supported that power fantasy.
So we wanted to basically allow the player to investigate crime scenes, pick up clues, but we wanted that to be an actual gameplay system, where the player was interacting with themselves.
So then we were like, okay, how can we make that? We don’t want them to be walking back to an office or something, so how can we make it meaningfully interesting? So that’s where this idea of a Mind Palace technique came from.
And because with the new hardware we have access to SSD drives so we can load stuff super fast, by the touch of a button we could take you to this new place. And then we could start adding gameplay mechanics which directly connect to her power fantasy, like the case board, and the profiling.
And for sure, as Molly can attest to, we have been through many iterations on how that could actually work.
Game is delayed by 10 days to October 27 2023:
“October is an amazing month for game launches and we hope this date shift gives more space for everyone to enjoy their favorite games,” Remedy Entertainment said in the announcement. “We can’t wait to show you what everyone’s favorite novelist is up to in the Dark Place [at Gamescom 2023] next week. Thanks for your patience!”
“October is an amazing month for game launches and we hope this date shift gives more space for everyone to enjoy their favorite games,” Remedy Entertainment said in the announcement. “We can’t wait to show you what everyone’s favorite novelist is up to in the Dark Place [at Gamescom 2023] next week. Thanks for your patience!”
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A slight delay is no biggie, but at the same time, why so little?