Why Sam Lake is happy that Alan Wake 2 took over 10 years and “four failed attempts” to get right

Alan Wake 2 looks good. Really good. Good enough to rival even the stellar Resident Evil remake series in terms of its survival horror cachet. The original Alan Wake has been written on the hearts of horror fans and narrative game lovers alike over the 13 years since its release, effortlessly making it to Xbox 360 best cheers from consumers and critics alike. . So why did it take over 10 years for a sequel to manifest, at least a proper sequel?

“Alan Wake always felt like a special project,” Remedy Entertainment creative director and head writer Sam Lake tells me. “We always had plans to do more. We had a concept right after the first one, and the timing was clearly not right. We ended up taking some of those ideas, in a much smaller scope, and using them in American Nightmare.”

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare was a downloadable sequel and spin-off of its predecessor, much smaller in scope than the original game and featuring an experimental, wacky story. Par for the course with this developer, then. But it wasn’t a proper sequel, and in the years since it came to the Xbox 360, fans have been clamoring for something more comprehensive. And, at the Game Awards 2021, the fans got their wish.

But behind the scenes, Sam Lake had already tried to get Alan Wake 2 off the ground three other times. “In the vein of Alan Wake, back then, after American Nightmare, there was this idea of ​​using live-action middle episodes to tell the story,” Lake explains. “That’s something that Microsoft, back then, was really impressed with. But Microsoft wasn’t that interested in more Alan Wake. So that idea became Quantum Break, instead.”

There’s another Alan Wake 2 connection to Quantum Break, too, in the form of Kyle Rowley, the game director on the latest Remedy and lead designer on the controversial cult Xbox One game that experimented heavily with live-action interludes. But, even after making this new IP and satisfying Microsoft’s desire for multi-format media, Lake was still eager to make Alan Wake 2. According to Rowley himself, “[Lake’s] I’ve been wanting to do this for 13 years!”

But then came something more action-focused and more open. Alan Wake fans went into despair when Control was announced in 2018 and Remedy (eager to experiment with time and cost saving development techniques with this ‘New Weird’ curio) brought the game out in 2019.

“After Quantum Break, we created a version of Alan Wake 2 that was more action-focused and less linear, and we ourselves ended up thinking that this approach didn’t feel quite Alan Wake either,” says Lake. “So we took some of these design ideas and built a new IP around it, which is Control. And because that connection to Alan Wake already existed, we wanted to place both games in the game universe.”

Control was a success, and you would never say that this triple A hit was developed in three years with a relatively modest budget of 30 million euros. With little references to Alan Wake scattered throughout The Oldest House’s towering brutalist trappings for the eagle eyes, it was clear that Remedy was up to something, laying the groundwork for something big. Something characteristically rare.

“All the pieces came together, bit by bit: Control had Alan Wake elements, it had a connected universe, we got the publishing rights back to the original game, and we were able to create a remaster for a wider audience. And we knew we were doing a sequel. All these things really set him up. That’s why that second DLC [for Control] it was quite a crossover; We knew we were working on a sequel and we wanted to prepare it.”

Remedy has learned a lot in the intervening 13 years between Alan Wake games. He’s learned to cut production costs, he’s learned to shorten development times (Alan Wake was seven years, Quantum Break five years, Control three years), and Lake has had time to really reflect on what he wants Alan Wake 2 to be. .

“I have to say that I am so happy that none of those [initial four] Concepts we had for Alan Wake 2 ended up being a complete game,” he laughs, after taking us through this labyrinthine timeline. “Because I think with this we found so many new ways, so many new, exciting, interesting ways to tell the story and create this game. I am happy that we have to wait more than 10 years to start!”

From what I’ve seen so far, Alan Wake 2 will deliver on everything I want from the series; Part Scandinavian crime thriller, part Midsommar mind-fuck and 100% Remedy ‘New Weird’ is ready to deliver on a promise the studio has been trying to keep for 13 years.

Alan Wake 2 is out on October 17 and will be available digitally only on PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.