Alan Wake 2 is a 2023 survival horror game from Remedy Entertainment. This long-awaited sequel follows FBI investigator Saga Anderson as she investigates a series of ritualistic murders in the sleepy town of Bright Falls. However, things get even more complicated when her path intertwines with Alan Wake, who has been fighting for over a decade to write a novel to get himself out of the nightmarish alternate dimension known as the Dark Place.
This game is incredibly personal to me as a longtime Remedy fan, especially of the first couple of Max Payne games and the original Alan Wake. There is something about the unique storytelling of director Sam Lake that has resonated with me for years, to the point where many of these games serve as pretty significant inspirations to me as an aspiring writer. With all of that, it’s safe to say this long-awaited sequel managed to do the impossible and make 13 years of starts and stops worth it. While this game has technical issues and wonky creative choices, Alan Wake 2 is a phenomenal survival horror game, and even just a fantastic game in its own right.
One of the strongest elements of Alan Wake is its change in gameplay and genre. The original game was primarily an action game with some horror elements, while this sequel is a full-on survival horror game akin to the Resident Evil series. There’s a much bigger focus on creepy atmosphere, tense combat and a dark tone. The combat and inventory management borrows heavily from the Resident Evil games, particularly from the more recent entries (from 2017 to present), and it works for the overall scarier game.
The strongest element of the game is easily its narrative, largely thanks to Lake and his fellow writers Clay Murphy and Tyler Burton Smith. I don’t want to spoil the directions that this bizarre story ends up going in, but it’s safe to say that it is the most ambitious and bizarre story that Remedy has made to date. I’m not quite sure how they’ll be able to top it. Granted, this game takes a lot of inspiration from a wide variety of pre-existing media. While the original took a lot of clear inspiration from the TV series “Twin Peaks,” this sequel also borrows heavily from “Se7en,” “True Detective,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and even “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
All of this sounds like it should end up being a nonsensical mess, and sure, the narrative is a bit unwieldy. But overall, the story is fantastic, partially because of the ambitious nature of this detective-thriller/cosmic-horror/survival-horror/meta-narrative about the power of art. Maybe the writer in me just felt seen by some of these narrative arcs, and maybe that’s why I’m willing to overlook some moments, but I’m also perfectly fine with doing so.
One of my biggest issues with the game’s horror is the way it utilizes jumpscares. There are an unfortunate number of moments where the player is bombarded with sudden black and white flashes of an antagonist accompanied with a jarring audio cue, and while it’s effective at first, it gets very annoying after a while. I have nothing against jumpscares in horror if they are done well, and again, there are effective ones in this game — but man, some of these are just obnoxious. A bright side to this is present in the New Game+ mode, known as The Final Draft, where the game hilariously changes the timing of certain jumpscares by mere seconds, seemingly just for the purpose of still getting jolts from people who have already played the game. I have played this game three times now, with my third playthrough being on The Final Draft mode, and I’d say that this choice manages to be both creative and goofy, albeit charming enough for me to allow it.
There’s a lot about this game that I haven’t touched on, and that’s largely because there really is a lot to discuss with Alan Wake 2. It was my favorite game from last year, and after playing the great DLC packs that came out recently, I wanted to finally talk about this game and celebrate its one-year anniversary — and hopefully, I can get more people to play one of my recent favorites.
RATING: 10/10
