Alan Wake: The Light and Dark

Signs of impending battle are obvious; piles of equipment, a large enclosed area, interactive terrain, like lights to turn on or off, or a button to activate machinery. Alan triggers a battle when he moves into a specific location. The view point zooms out from Alan, showing the Taken approach in slow motion. The music ramps up as they run at Alan. Alan Wake also indicates when the battle is over. The last foe is dispatched in slow motion as the music recedes. Combat is a core mechanic of Alan Wake but it varies wildly in quality. Spread across the episodes are many small encounters, and a few larger set pieces. The smaller battles are boring attempts to wear down the player. The lack of variety of foes weakens their effectiveness.

Alan Wake only contains four main enemies, who are repeatedly hurled at the player. They include a quick enemy that attacks with a melee weapon, a regular enemy that throws axes from afar, and a heavy enemy that wields large weapons like a sledgehammer. These require two, three, and four pistol shots respectively to vanquish. Remember, all enemies can only be shot if Alan first removes their shadows. The final repetitive enemy are birds. These black embodiments of the Darkness swoop at Alan. They are defeated by holding the flashlight beam on them. Some levels also have inanimate objects that throw themselves at Alan. These are fought in the same manner as the birds.

When Alan meets the kidnapper on the way up Lover's Peak, it's shortly after a story event deprives Al of his weaponry. In the combat to follow, the player peels the shadows away with their flashlight and a few flares, while the kidnapper shoots the Taken. Technically Alan doesn't know the man who is also hiking Lover's Peak in the middle of the night is the kidnapper, butAlan Wake lacks subtlety. Other similar set pieces feature Alan in combination with some NPC, like Barry or the Sheriff.

Alan Wake is a story, like a book, so in this meeting with the kidnapper, the player has no choices. The player never has any choices. It isn't that type of story. Gameplay is confined to traveling along paths, fighting Taken, collecting objects, and watching the story unfold through cinematics and dialogue. The story is explained through narration, dialogue between characters, the manuscript pages, the radios, and the TVs. While most TVs show episodes of Night Springs, some feature Alan talking from the past, or a trapped Alice pleading for rescue.

While traveling, the player will notice a few things. Alan is not a nimble adventurer. He can jump, but it is more like a pathetic hop. The jump is functionally useless. There are almost no spots where jumping is required. He can sprint, but only for a short time. Alan has a limited stamina, but there is no bar to show its limit. During combat Alan expends stamina to run or dodge. This system emphasizes Alan as a professional writer and not an acrobat. He displays awkwardness during athletic activity. Still, he manages to move around the world. Levels are huge areas, with enough variety to feel alive. The ambient noise of water, wind, plants, and eerie sounds, combined with the ups and downs of the music is calming and unnerving in equal measure. When the area isn't shrouded in darkness and mist, Alan is granted excellent views from vantage points like fire towers, cliffs, clearings, and bridges. Despite this, it is better to stay on the path to avoid wasting time.

These large areas hide the many conflicts with the Taken. As combat approaches the air around Alan gains a pervasive, gritty misty, almost like smoke. The graphics seem to blur and twist. The question is; run or fight? Initially I judged that enemies along paths, but not big battles, were unlimited. In these areas I fought to protect myself, running when I could. I later came to believe that all areas have a limited quantity of enemies. Still, in some locations it is worth running. What is Alan running to? Overhead lights. These are placed periodically. They offer sanctuary from the darkness. Enemies can't touch Alan. They fade into the darkness, disappearing. If Alan retraces his steps the enemies reappear, but the lights prevent them from chasing him onward. Standing underneath an overhead light both heals Alan and autosaves the game. Alan heals while not under lights, but slowly. Alan Wake doesn't include a save option. All saves are autosaves; at lights, during cinematics, and between episodes. These are spaced adequately, every fifteen to twenty minutes.

After escaping the Taken, the kidnapper demands the finished manuscript of Alan's newest book in exchange for his wife. A cinematic separates the pair, and Alan steals a Park Service car to return to Barry. The player actually gets to drive. It's a welcome change from running around in the woods. The car is nearly invincible, and its headlights function like a super flashlight. Running over the Taken, after running from them, is a gleeful reversal of circumstance. Alan is allowed to exit the car and explore, steal other cars, and fight Taken on foot. Returning to Barry ends Episode Two with another twist.

At this point the story is still straightforward, with hints of strangeness. Also, I've exhausted most of my gameplay discussion. But episode three, Ransom, starts complicating the story. It adds a previous writer, who contacts Alan through the power hidden in Bright Falls. Thomas Zane was remarkably similar in circumstance to Alan. He meddled with powers too great, suffered tragedy, and tried to make amends. He appears in an old fashioned diving suit, with a blinding light shining through the face hole. The player never sees his face, but he talks to Alan, with a voice that I thought sounded a lot like Alan's.

Alan's story, aside from these intervals, still follows his attempt to rescue Alice. The kidnapper is still at large, but complicating Alan's search is a suspicious FBI agent and the Darkness. Chasing the kidnapper, but chased by the Darkness and the FBI agent, Alan enters an abandoned mining town on the edge of Bright Falls. He encounters clues that hint at the roots of his situation, his lack of memory and the Dark Presence which hunts him.

Episode 4 complicates the story, but only temporarily. Waking up in a psychiatric facility that overlooks the lake where he thought he had stayed in the cabin with Alice, Alan questions his reality. The caretaker, Emil Hartman, claims Alan has been in the psychiatric facility since Alice died at the lake a week ago. Alan Wake wants the player to ask, what is reality? What is an illusion? Has everything so far been a delusion? But it isn't a convincing deception, and Alan Wake isn't invested in convincing the player of Hartman's reliability. Alan is pretty certain that this is all a trick. There were only two reasons I remained unsure as long as I did. Hartman seems to know everything that has happened. And in one of his rooms, Hartman has a collection of tapes of conversations between himself and Alice. These have Alice's voice describing Alan's problems. She says he is; out of control, angry at the world, violent (but not with Alice), refuses to talk, doesn't sleep, and frustrated at his inability to write. Hartman asks Alice to bring Alan to the facility. It sounds convincingly like it is Alan, not the world, which lost its bearings. But this evidence for Alan's insanity is undercut in the same room. On the wall hangs a picture of the kidnapper standing next to Hartman. Hartman is part of the problem.

In the facility, before chaos reigns, Alan meets the Old Gods of Asgard, the band which I mentioned at the beginning of the article. Tor and Odin, the Anderson brothers, own a farm nearby. Their madness causes them to mistake Alan for Tom Zane. It's all connected to Tom Zane. Alan's enemies locate him at the facility, arrive in a whirl of destruction, and he flees, searching for the truth.