Fans of Control’s incredible ‘Ashtray Maze’ setpiece are going to love Alan Wake 2

“In many ways, in Alan Wake 2, we wanted to take certain elements of the ‘Remedy game’ and push them as far as we could imagine,” Remedy creative director and head writer Sam Lake tells me in an interview. .

Specifically, I asked about the reception to Control’s ‘Ashtray Maze’, the studio’s latest major release, and the instantly iconic reputation it earned. If you’re unfamiliar, the ‘Ashtray Maze’ is a late game game that acts as both a fantasy game and a narrative device – a paranormal security device designed to prevent people without proper authorization from accessing the deepest reaches of the Oldest House.

However, how it manifests itself is as a non-Euclidean and changing space, impossible to map and truly know. When browsing, you have to use a cassette player given to you by the concierge and (in my opinion) one of the greatest characters in all of fiction, Ahti. Loaded with the Take Control track from Old Gods of Asgard, an in-game pseudonym for autumn poets – this cassette player allows you to freely traverse the ‘Ashtray Maze’, a peculiar supernatural object that has killed many curious civilians.

How that translates to you, gamer, as you work on this interactive music video, is exceptional. It’s one of the best settings in modern gaming, and Remedy is eager to bring back that music-loving energy for his next game.

“Certainly, we learned that people loved [the “Ashtray Maze’] on Control, as an example of how we use music in our games,” says Lake. “And that idea came from the original Alan Wake with the stage fight in the middle of the field with Old Gods of Asgard starting to play and Alan Wake and Barry fighting Taken, with everything coming their way. It’s something that has always interested us.”

Lake goes on to explain that one of Remedy’s driving forces when developing new games is thinking creatively about how music can be used as part of the storytelling experience, and how the developer can organically and authentically fold tracks from Old Gods. of Asgard in the project in a memorable and unique way. Coupled with a more “shocking, strategic and desperate” tone of the game, it all sounds tempting.

“So it’s been this journey, and without going into anything specific, because we’ve announced something specific, we just wanted to experiment with music and create custom music of different kinds. Even more than ever.”

Lake smiles wryly and tells me that if I enjoyed the ‘Ashtray Maze’ in Control, I’m certainly going to like what’s cooking in Alan Wake 2. That 10-year wait suddenly seems worth it.

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