Alan Wake: Only the Beginning of A Dark Story

Alan reconnects with Barry. At a concert stadium outside the Anderson farmhouse, they fight a massive battle against the Taken. Barry manages the lights and sounds of the stadium while Alan shoots the horde of foes. It's a spectacle worthy of the best fight in Alan Wake.

Alan continues gathering clues. The blinding light apparitions, which talk in the voice of Zane, explains the manuscript. Zane claims to be delivering the specific manuscript pages at specific points to reveal information at the correct time. It is trying to defeat the Dark Presence. Clues are given to Alan in TV's showing events that he has forgotten during his seven day amnesia. Writing is power, and Alan is writing his own escape. Alan acquires clues through yellow paint that can only be seen with a flashlight, though “In light you can hurt them,” is an obvious idea by the fourth episode. Alan sees clues in his dreams. When he inexplicably decides to get drunk with Barry at the Anderson's farm (see horror doesn't need to make sense above), he dreams of what actually happened when Alice fell into the lake. He sees the truth of those seven days he can't remember. And he wakes up to an arrest by the FBI agent.

The situation worsens as the Dark Presence grows desperate. Alan Wake swiftly writes off the FBI agent. He was a plot device, a story convenience. Alan teams up with the Sheriff. She leads a group of Bright Falls townsfolk who comprehend the threat. They've been preparing for the Dark Presence for years. At the very least, they have a vague inclination about the truth of Bright Falls. Alan follows the Sheriff through downtown. Despite the swarm of Taken, the player doesn't have to do anything. The Sheriff has a high powered flashlight, and a pump shotgun with unlimited ammunition.

Alan, Barry, and the Sheriff team up with Cynthia, the woman focused on lights. She knew Tom Zane. She protects the Well Lit Room, which contains a secret from Zane, a shoebox with a single page. It explains everything, or adds some ambiguity to the story, depending on the player's interpretation. What is real? What creates reality? Some players think the page conclusively proves something, while others believe it further complicates the story in ways that can't be explained.

Episode Six concludes Alan Wake with a straightforward finale. But it starts to implement unique game mechanics. Alan is in a dark reality, and he sees words in white, hanging in the air. Concentrating the flashlight on them turns them into real objects. Alan uses this to create ammunition, weapons, and solve environmental puzzles. While the story appears simple, good guy defeats bad guy, the last scene shifts the story into an ambiguous cliffhanger.

“Alan, wake up,” says Alice.

At first I thought the game ended in an unsatisfactory spot. But looking online led me to discover the two additional episodes. I outlined earlier how to access them.

The best episodes of Alan Wake are One and Seven. While the first episode introduced Alan Wake, featuring the tense traversal from the crashed car to Stucky's gas station, Episode Seven feels like a revival. Alan wakes up in a diner, but the world is a mess. Episode Seven is more ambitious. It uses landscape shifts to change the world, keeping the player off balance. It has crazy level designs. Despite the same enemies as the first six episodes, it features tougher battles with less respite. It includes additional dialogue between Alan and Zane injecting needed ambiguity into the plot. It adds additional elements that elevate the psychological tenseness. 

Episode Eight: The Writer, continues the trends of Episode Seven. But instead of Zane, Alan is stuck with an illusionary Barry, a mockery of the dude from New York. This one is snide, but at Alan's expense. Alan passes through a host of environments at warp speed: underground pipes, a maelstrom, a rotating house, Stucky's gas station, a massive tower. For the first time the player feels uncertainty about their experience. Despite Alan's troubles he has remained reliable until now. Has he become an unreliable narrator? In one room Alan observes a therapy session between a psychologist and a version of himself with a TV replacing his head.

Throughout this review I've mostly referred to the character as Alan, instead of saying the player. This is because the player never feels that they are Alan. Alan is a well defined character that can't be manipulated or shaped by the player. The player experiences what Alan experiences, and sees how others feel about Alan, not about how they feel about the player. It is difficult to feel like Alan, because of the recurring issues of his past. Was he cruel to Alice? The player has only a limited perspective from the past, so it is difficult to know. Similarly, characters like Alice, the Dark Presence, Thomas Zane, Cynthia, Barry, and Hartman, feel well defined, beyond the player's control.

I said the ending of Episode 6 was too ambiguous to be satisfactory. The new ending offers some clarity, but still doesn't offer much closure. It's surprising it took this long for Remedy to produce Alan Wake 2.

One final element I want to touch on is the quality of the writing. Alan Wake is a simple tale. The main story leaves a lot to be desired. The general conflict between Alan Wake and the Dark Presence isn't complicated, it is straightforward.

This fits with how Alan Wake describes Alan. Friends and foe alike imply that Alan is a poor writer. They say, “Who wrote this crap anyways,” or that “He is a little heavy on metaphors.” The impression is that he writes popular schlocky horror fiction. A page turner for the beach. This is how the game feels. Except that it has subtler elements that differentiate it. The main contrast revolves around the Thomas Zane element of Alan Wake. It mixes ambiguity and depth into an otherwise boring book.

The other strength is in the character interactions, especially Alan and Barry. The friendship, expressed through conversations and shared difficulty, illuminates Alan Wake.

In Conclusion,

Alan Wake is an action game in a setting that the player experiences as dark surrealism, but the protagonist sees as horror. Alan faces dark demons of his own making, which he fights with the power of light. Unfortunately, the combat, which constitutes most of the game, hasn't aged well. Alan Wake has too few enemies, and only a limited number of ways of dealing with them. The story, which sees Alan's wife held hostage so he can write a story for the villain, follows predictable beats, littered with foolish actions by the characters. The redeeming features of Alan Wake are threefold. The banter between Alan and his allies, especially Barry, along with narration, provide a strong grounding for the bland plot. The additional minutiae, introduced later with the integration of Thomas Zane uplifts the mundane story. Finally, the level design has the same feel as a FromSoftware game. While the areas are actually narrow, they have a feeling of great breadth. The player is able to see distant landmarks, and arrive at them entirely without the use of cinematics. These large areas make Alan Wake feel alive and wondrously dark.

Whether any of these are enough to save Alan from the Dark Presence is up to the next installment, Alan Wake's American Nightmare.