As this later episode beings Alan stands alone in the woods near a mountain
range. Lighting up the world with a beam from your powerful flashlight
it’s hard not to be stunned by how amazing the lighting is in the game.
Your beam is a constant companion, and one of the most useful weapons in
your fight against the darkness.

Walking around you soon run
across a page from your manuscript and pick it up, reading it as Alan
narrates. The short page tells about your friend (and literary agent) Barry who has
crashed in a helicopter, and rounding the corner from where you found
the page you find that once again your story has come true. An abandoned
wreck of a helicopter sits smoking in the grass before you, and as you
call out for your friends you hear a commotion ahead. Running up around
the corner you come across two of your companions- the sheriff of the town and
Alan’s agent Barry, who are about to be attacked by the shadowy locals. You stride Alan into their midst like a badass, popping a flare as the
world slows down around him and the shadows recede from their figures,
allowing your friends a shot at them.

This is how the enemies
work. Wreathed in shadow they appear invulnerable, but shine a light on them (you can equip various flashlights with different
abilities) and you’ll weaken them up for bullets. You also have a focus
move at your disposal which makes the flashlight
more powerful, at the expense of battery power. Flashlights take
batteries, you see, which are in short supply. Of course, you can simply
use a more deadly weapon, like flares, a flare gun or flashbang grenade, to
take them out much more easily.

You join your companions
who are headed to the top of a giant dam in the river, hunting down a
mysterious figure that claims to have important info for you. Barry is
the comic relief, and at this point in the game he’s taken to wearing a
string of lighted Christmas lights for protection, as well as a head
lamp to shine his way. He compares it to the eye of Mordor, and then
gets embarrassed when his companions stay silent at his enormous
dorkery. The voice acting in the game can seem a bit out of place at times, but the back and forth between the characters is entertaining enough.

As you venture up the hill you fight more and more
enemies, till you come upon an elevator you’ll need to ride to get to
the top of a structure. As you might expect, the elevator’s slow descent
attracts more shadowy creatures and this time your flare gun comes into
play, dispatching a couple of enemies with each shot. The famous bullet
time from Max
Payne somewhat reappears here as the world slows down to show the shadowy
creatures burning with the light and falling apart like a vampire from Blade. It’s quite
satisfying, but you don’t exactly have a lot of flare gun
rounds. The elevator finally opens and you all run onto it, closing the
gate behind you as even more enemies come.

Along the path you
find messages written in light-sensitive paint that other folks have
written for you, and you’re led to a room that’s completely lit up- a
safe room, if you will. Barry and Alice run inside and immediately the
lights go out and the door slams shut, objects smashing down in front, effectively cutting you off from them. They yell from the other side
and you all agree to meet up at the top of the dam.

Once again,
you’re on your own.

As you make your way around trying to find a
way to rejoin your friends you run across some more terrors in the
night- it’s not just the villagers that have been affected by the
darkness. Wildlife also comes at you, such as the shadowy bird figures
that fly at you from the air, and objects also attack you as if thrown
by some telepathic creature. At one point giant cable spools threaten to
smash you into the ground, till you break them apart with light.
Fortunately you find some new weapons to play with, once coming
across an incredibly useful giant spotlight that you use to fend off oncoming hordes.
 

Near
the end of this section Alan comes to a wide open area and things
immediately go to hell. Cars slam into the ground all around you and
trap you off, as a whirlwind swarm of flying cars and debris rises up
into the air and slowly advances on you, a giant creature of metal and glass…. and then the episode ends.

It’s
thrilling, exciting, and exactly the kind of thing you don’t want to end a demo on. All it did was want me to play the game right now, to
find out what happens in this mysterious story. But I guess I’ll have to
wait like everyone else…

I chatted with Sam Lake briefly
afterwards about the game, and he mentioned that was exactly the kind of
feel he was going for with the cliffhanger ending, something that
reminded you of old tv shows. They claim to be influenced hugely by pop
culture (books, films and tv shows more than video games), with Stephen
King, Twin Peaks and Lost labeled as some of the biggest.

While the game
was originally planned to contain an open sandbox world that let you
explore everywhere, Remedy has chosen to focus on the story and close
the borders a bit. Lake is quick to point out that there are huge
sections of the world to explore at parts, including some driving
sections (the headlights making a good weapon against the darkness), but
they found an open world distracted you from your mission. Not that there aren’t things to find for the more explorative among us- you’ll find manuscripts that reveal more of the story and other useful items hidden all over the world. Once
in a while you’ll have companions to help you along but for the most
part this is a solitary affair- there’s simply nothing like being
abandoned to test the nerves.
 
I ask him if he’s worried that
people will see portions of this game and not be able to separate it
from its influences, but he isn’t. It’s its own game, he says, and while
people in the know will appreciate the references and inspirations it
will stand up on its own. I’m inclined to agree and quite simply can’t wait to get my hands on it, to explore this strange and shadowy world, to experience it as it’s meant to be experienced- in the dark. But it’ll probably be a good idea to keep a flashlight nearby… just in case.

---

Alan Wake is now
confirmed for a May 18th release
date. It’s going to have a Teen rating that really betrays how scary it
looks at parts, and there will be a limited edition set that comes with
exclusive in-game audio commentary, a 144 page book that contains an
Alan Wake short story, an audio disc, and some a coupon for future
downloadable content. For now, enjoy this brand new trailer for the
game!

This week Microsoft and Remedy Entertainment came down to the fancy Bryant Park hotel in NYC to show off two new sections from Alan Wake, their upcoming action/horror title. The first game from the studio since 2003’s Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Alan Wake is hugely anticipated, and I’m here to tell you that it looks well worth the wait.

I met briefly with Remedy owner Matias Myllyrinne before sitting down on the couch to be talked through a demo of the game by Head of Franchise Development Oskari Häkkinen and writer Sam Lake, who most gamers would probably instantly recognize as the face of Max Payne. Despite a long week full of travel and appointments the guys seem wide awake at this early hour, and really excited to be finally showing a near-final build of the game to press. Being the horror guy that I am, I got settled in and was pleased to see that the surround sound in the room was absolutely pumping- the better to be fully immersed in this creepy world.

The backstory- Alan Wake is the lead character of the game, a famous novelist who heads to a remote town called Bright Falls with his wife, hoping to combat some crippling writer’s block. It’s at the beginning of the game that our demo begins, with Alan’s wife dropping him off in front of a diner.
 
Immediately after entering the diner you’re assaulted by the waitress, who
is a huge fan of yours, as evidenced by the life-size standee of Alan
that greets you by the door. After the cutscene, control moves over to
the player. Walking around the room shows off a plethora of stuff to
interact with, everything from coffee to a jukebox to other customers in
the diner. But you’re there to meet with the owner of the place in his
back office, as he has the keys to the house you’ve rented.

You head to the back of the diner and come upon a hallway that’s sheathed in shadows, a solitary flickering light your only source of illumination. An old woman stands at the edge of the light, flicking the switch in vain, clutching a lamp in her wrinkled hands. As you go by she warns that you’ll hurt yourself in the dark, so you should be careful.

Foreshadowing? Indeed. Light is everything in this game- your livelihood and your greatest weapon. In the daylight you’re safe, but when the sun goes down (or you’re forced into a dark area), you must use all of your tools to illuminate your way and keep yourself alive.
 
As you walk through the darkness Alan narrates his own story, revealing his thoughts and concerns. It’s a trick that Remedy used to great effect in Max Payne but here it feels even more natural, the writer jotting down the story in his head. When you finally get to the back and let yourself into the office it appears empty, but suddenly an apparition appears in front of you. A cutscene kicks in as you find out that it’s the owner’s wife, face hidden behind a veil, standing in the dark. The mysterious woman hands you a key and directions in her long, pale fingers and you take it, exiting the room and dark hallway. As you walk past the old lady (who’s still fiddling with the light switch) she mentions how happy she is that you got out ok.

That was the end of the short scene, an example of what the gameplay will be like during the daytime sections. The game is broken up into numerous “episodes” and each one will offer a different challenge, especially depending on whether it’s day or night. Daytime gives the game more of an exploratory adventure game feel, while the night brings out the creatures in the dark, and the horror and action thrives. There are even episodes that seem to be boss battles (more on that later) which makes sense, since Lake tells me that the game steadily ramps up during the game, turning from suspense to more of an all-out action title.

Lake guides us to the second section of the game, one that’s much later that has ever been shown before. As with every episode there’s a little “Previously on Alan Wake” preview that shows important plot points to the specific episode, and we see that Alan has lost his wife and is in the middle of finding pages from a novel that he doesn’t remember writing. The craziest part is that everything he wrote down seems to come true. The world around him is changing and going crazy, shadows consuming the locals who attack you and your friends, and Alan’s starting to lose his grip on reality…

Head to part 2 of the preview for more, including a new trailer!