Game Review: Alan Wake II

After recently playing and reviewing Remedy Entertainments initial entry into the Alan Wake franchise, it was easy to see the ocean’s worth of potential the series had to proceed on.  Despite its age, it did an excellent job in establishing a unique narrative and furthering it with creative formats of gameplay. What really stuck with me from my time playing the game the most though was the story.  Alan Wake’s effort to solve the mystery behind the Dark Presence’s infestation of the rural, lake-side town of Bright Falls and save his wife was done in such a captivating way.  It was layered with subtext and clues to keep the player engaged to try and solve the mystery.  When the game ended, it did a great job in wrapping up the core story very neatly but it left a nice bit of ambiguity for fans to cling onto in hopes of a sequel.  Well 13 years later, Remedy Entertainment finally committed to answering what Alan Wake meant when he said that mysterious line “It’s not a lake, it’s an ocean.”

Developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Epic Games Publishing, Alan Wake II is a third-person, survival horror game which was released across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC on October 27^th 2023. Upon release, the game received critical success with an aggregated score of 89 on OpenCritic and selling over 1.3 million copies by February 2024.  While it reviewed well and sold a substantial amount of units, it’s worth recognizing the game has still yet to turn a substantial profit.  That is due to the fact that the game is reported to have cost Remedy 75 million dollars in total to develop and market and is recognized as one of the most expensive cultural products to come out of Finland.  While serving as a direct sequel to the original 2010 title, Alan Wake II makes a point to integrate the events of Alan Wake into the shared Remedy Connected Universe with their other video game franchise; Control.

The narrative of Alan Wake II follows not only the titular character as he still struggles in his attempts to escape the Dark Place but it also follows a new central character, FBI agent Saga Anderson. Saga, along with her partner Alex Casey are tasked with investigating a series of ritualistic murders up in Cauldron Lake. The murders end up taking the agents on a winding trail that brings them back onto the case of Alan Wake and the mysterious events which took place in the local area over 13 years ago.  As the agents dive deeper into the case and the sinister Cult of the Tree, it becomes all too clear that the Dark Presence is slowly seeping its way back out from Cauldron Lake and soon enough Alan Wake comes face to face with his dark doppelganger; Mr. Scratch. Wake soon learns that Mr. Scratch has used Alan’s ability as a writer to create a story that will allow him to escape into the real world and change reality as he see’s fit. As both Saga and Wake progress through their own individual storylines, their paths will converge in unexpected ways as they both seek to solve the case and stop the Dark Presence from re-manifesting into reality.

The narrative scope of Alan Wake II is to take inspiration from Alan’s phrase from the original title is as wide and as deep as an ocean. The narrative clearly continues to take inspiration from televised mystery shows but there’s a great emphasis on horror here. The deeper both Saga and Alan dive into this case, the more volatile the threat of the Dark Presence puts them in.  There’s so many clues and red herrings littered around the story and the way it all combines together near its climax is incredibly satisfying. I also really enjoyed the approach to Alan and Saga’s parallel narratives.  Saga’s segments take place in the real world and you see how the Dark Presence has sadly infested the town of Bright Falls once again.  Her pragmatic and no-nonsense approach to her detective work makes her segments fun to follow as she tries to solve the mystery behind the Cult of the Tree, Alan Wake and the Dark Presence.  Alan’s narrative in turn plays more into the supernatural and metatextual elements of the game.  As he’s trapped in The Dark Place, there is no standard rules of reality and the world shifts and changes around Alan like a living nightmare.  It all serves as a deep, tormented dive into Alan’s psyche and the game takes full advantage of its setup to provide the narrative a lot of thematic flavour. I love the way both of their narratives work to reflect separate perspectives on the shared story, it’s synchronised in an incredibly clever way.

The layered and interconnected narrative is given even more definition through the gameplay portion of the title as well. Both Saga and Alan’s playstyles are predominately the same, with the gameplay taking place over the shoulder from the third-person perspective.  Both Saga and Alan are given their own unique arsenal of weapons to utilize on their journeys, and there’s a fair range of options for upgrading the weapons through collectables you’ll find throughout the world.  It’s a good thing too, as the Taken enemies in the game pose a far deadlier threat this time around too. It’s still in essence the same approach as it was in the original game, using light to weaken Taken enemies and then shooting them dead. There’s a better variety of enemies to face in this game too, each offering their own unique challenges to overcome.  Combat feels a lot more fluid and responsive in comparison to the original game too, there’s a lot of maneuverability to dealing with encounters too.

Navigational and explorative gameplay is also fleshed out nicely too.  Saga’s mission to explore Bright Falls and its wider area is littered with mysteries to solve and clues to find.  The environment rewards you a lot for going off the beaten path and exploring every nook and cranny.  Items and collectables you pick up will help Saga piece together a lot of the answers to the numerous questions you’ll uncover throughout your time in the game.  In Alan’s situation, the Dark Place likes to shift reality constantly and there’ll be little cohesion or structure to the environment Alan’s plucked into. Alan’s unique functionality over his environment is to re-write select scenes he finds himself in.  Through story echo’s, Alan will get inspired with new scenes to write and by doing so the environment he finds himself in will shift and change to allow him to progress further.  It’s such a unique gameplay function and it works so well to reflect the skillset Alan has to hand as a renowned writer in a supernatural environment.

In terms of world design and visuals, the game is rife with detail and color that really benefits whatever themes and tone the sequences require.  Saga’s sections exploring the forested areas of Cauldron Lake and Bright Falls are especially noticeable for their visual design.  The way the game engine is able to render light and shadows through the depths of the trees and terrain is just incredible and really showcases the graphical fidelity and capability of Remedy’s Northlight engine.  Audio wise, the game has some excellent sound design, I really recommend wearing surround sound headphones when playing the game. On top of that as well, the game touts an absolutely incredible soundtrack.  Both it’s original score and licensed songs showcase some real depth of quality.  Like they really didn’t need to go so hard on the music choices in this game, but they really help give the game a lot more atmosphere.

Alan Wake II is an incredibly competent sequel when all things are considered. It’s unique approach to storytelling is phenomenal and deserves as much praise as I can afford it.  It’s gameplay only serves to highlight the engaging functionality that ties all of the games core components together.  Playing Alan Wake II is an experience I implore everyone to have at some point or other.  Again, it only continues to emphasize why Remedy Entertainment deserve to be paid attention to, they are really working overtime to provide truly immersive gaming experiences.