Alan Wake

A game about writing? Really? Alright, you have my attention. _Alan Wake_, the long-fermenting game from Remedy, the minds behind _Max Payne_, has finally been released after being announced way back in 2001. Stop me if this sounds familiar; A popular pulp fiction thriller writer loses faith in his creativity, and in an effort to rediscover his art, instead finds himself battling monsters. Ring a bell? That’s right, this is the closest we will ever get to Stephen King making a game.

_Alan Wake_, celebrity novelist and coffee addict, is experiencing his first creative drought. Encouraged by his wife to give himself a break, the couple take time out to holiday at the remote town of Bright Falls, in the hope that he can break his writers block. Alone in a small cabin at the centre of the towns’ (super-haunted) Cauldron Lake, Alan’s tranquillity is swiftly shattered when a dark presence captures his wife, then comes a-hunting for Alan. Alan blacks out, wakes up a week later, in his wrecked car, miles from the cabin. What happened to that week? Can he save his wife? What are these shadows chasing him? Is this all just a dream? The set-up couldn’t be simpler on paper, but Alan’s quest to save his wife grows steadily more complex as it progresses. Throughout the journey, Alan will keep finding torn pages from a book called Departure – a book supposedly written by him, which he has no memory of. Pages which describe the very events happening to Alan, as they happen, sometimes even predicting them. The dark forests, the slightly warped sense of reality, and the sense of light as the only safe thing in this world lend _Alan Wake_ a wonderful, nightmarish quality.

The gameplay itself is familiar but inventive at the same time, finding its own unique balance in _Alan Wake’s_ big selling point of letting you fight with light. Alan and Co. find themselves assaulted from all sides as they pass through Bright Falls and its surrounding forests by ‘Taken’, that is, locals who has been possessed by the dark presence at the heart of the matter. Beyond rescue and driven insane, Alan’s only option is to kill or be killed, but the crux is that they are completely invulnerable until hit with bright light. Like the Irish, Taken don’t tan well, and most combat involves Alan illuminating Taken with his torch until the darkness that protects them is banished, making them vulnerable to death-by-bullets. It’s a fun mechanic that provides a lot of tension as you desperately try to keep a half dozen approaching Taken within your thin torchlight beam, which is itself running low on battery. However, the game is far from unfair in this regard, providing Alan with flares, floodlights, and the (extremely satisfying) flashbangs. Remedy have made light feel powerful, even more so than the firearms you can wield. Alan’s not instantly proficient in a fight either (I’m looking at you, Gordon Freeman). It’s hammered home a lot that he is just a writer; the first time he fires a gun, he gets a mild concussion from the sheer blast of it, and he just cannot run. The guy does not do cardio. They are both nice little character building touches in a game full of such little details. Alan also finds himself attacked by poltergeist objects and possessed flocks of crows, but you’ll spend most of your time being chased by Taken through the numerous dark forests of the game’s world.

The story itself is presented in six enclosed chapters, each of which begins with a slightly over the top voice booming ‘Previously, On Alan Wake!’, desperately imitating a HBO mini series. It’s cute, and the narrative is short but sweet, much like _Portal_; it doesn’t outstay its welcome. Irritatingly, the game strips you of all weapons at the start of each chapter, but otherwise the story itself manages to keep a fast pace, and the gameplay keeps up by providing a lot of variation on the flash & bash system by throwing Alan into a lot of high-tension scenarios. Running through the pitch dark, hounded by possessed locals, toward a small, distant pool of light is surprisingly harrowing, especially when said light flickers out once you arrive and Alan has to manually restart the generator. The game makes a sincere effort not to be boring, even during long talkytalk scenes it provides TV and radio shows, including the frankly brilliant riff on Twilight Zone, ‘Night Springs’. The story in question draws heavily from American creepshow-esque TV; fans of Twin Peaks or Twilight Zone will find much familiar here. It’s also very much influenced and in love with them, and acknowledges these debts it owes with glee.

The writing of the characters is similarly strong, with Alan’s dour narration eventually becomes oddly endearing, although you may end up ‘accidentally’ shooting his Noo Yawk agent tagalong a few times when he won’t shut his trap. The strong characterisation is nice to see in an industry where, writing is second to fighting, but the writing is as strong as _Deus Ex_, _Portal_, or dare I say it, _Planescape_. It’s such an overlooked aspect but it really shines when it’s done this well. However, drawing from its influences of Twin Peaks, be prepared for a lot of confusion and obscurity, especially the final chapter. A lot of gamers will be frustrated at not being mollycoddled by simple ‘Save the President’s Daughter!’ narratives, but I feel this complexity is a great thing.

Ultimately, the best way to describe this game is: It’s a writer writing a horror story about writing, where writers block becomes manifest as possessed silhouettes he has to banish with light. Or possibly not, as the game allows wonderful room for interpretation. This would be fun enough on its own and a lovely, creative twist that adds great subtext to what would be little more than kill-corridors. But the game is self-aware, and manages to undermine any pretention that other, lesser games would have tripped over.

Alan jokes that he loves his metaphors a bit too much, and that he gets a lot of stick for it from his critics. For a game to make fun of itself, narrate itself, and manage to tell a great story without it compromising gameplay is I think one of the hardest, and subsequently rarest thing to see in the games industry. If, indeed, this can be classed traditionally as a game. The standards of writing are as high as in a lot of the better stuff on TV, and _Alan Wake_ manages to layer the whole experience with subtext, metaphor and some A-grade creative angst. Part game, part novel, part TV mini-series, _Alan Wake_ is above all a great story, and deserves to have an audience. Or gamer. Or reader, whatever the hell this damn thing is.