Alan Wake preview

Alan Wake is a renowned horror author. His stories are dark, combining the vivid and the wonderful with the psychological and the macabre. For a while Alan was met with nothing but success – only to come face to face with a hard case of writer's block.

Alan used to draw his visions from his wife, his muse. Whenever he dreamed next to her at night, he dreamed horrible, scary scenarios that provided fuel for his fiction. But when she up and disappears without an explanation, Alan fails to pick up the pieces.

Without her he can’t write, and without her he can’t dream.

Darkness Falls*

Alan takes a road trip to Bright Falls, a small town outside of Washington. There is a clinic there capable of treating his condition. After checking himself in for some well needed medication, Alan meets a young woman who looks strikingly similar to his missing wife.

Furthermore, when Alan sleeps with the young lady those horrible visions begin to emerge again. But as he quickly discovers, those nightmarish images and monsters aren’t just confined to his dreams. They are every bit real, and they are slowly taking over Bright Falls.

Alan Wake presents a popular story device often used by renowned author Stephen King: the "writer's horror". That is, the horror a genre author encounters in the real world – which may or may not be a part of the fiction he creates (see Misery, The Shining, Secret Window, Secret Garden and The Dark Half for good examples – particularly the last).

Sleeping Days

As Sam Lake, lead writer at Remedy (and the guy who played the constipated Max in the first Max Payne title) explains, "Alan Wake is a psychological action thriller. We use the blurring line between dreams and reality as a theme. The familiar setting is the idyllic American small town with something threatening waiting under the surface.

“The main character and the premise, the horror writer whose life turns into a nightmare comes straight from a Stephen King novel, and we used all of those elements and put them within the framework of a Hollywood blockbuster action type game."

As the recently released trailer clearly shows, everything Lake says bares truth. Bright Falls and the surrounding fauna look appropriately beautiful – an intentional design choice to echo the starker tones the game inhabits when night comes. One aspect Lake alludes to which is still a mystery is what form combat will take.

The Max Payne games were renowned for its bullet-time feature, a perfect inclusion to a Matrix-like John Woo action style of the game. This time we’re dealing with a whole new kettle of fish. Bullet-time will not be returning. Remedy has nonetheless remarked Alan Wake will have exciting action – something we’re eager to witness.

Working Nights

What we do know is light and dark factor into Alan Wake immensely. As the trailer clearly detailed, when the sun goes down, the horror happens. In this case we bear witness to several cloaked figures watching Alan from a distance as he curls up beneath a lighthouse.

As the trailer also depicted, despite being financed entirely by Remedy itself, Alan Wake will not lose any of the Hollywood panache its Max Payne titles featured so prominently. For one thing, the music in the trailer is as orchestral and strong as anything they’ve conjured up yet.

Naturally, Bright Falls looks breathtaking. With the sun shining on the desolate streets and buildings (which will be populated when the game ships) this looks as serene and idyllic as it gets. In fact, it almost borders on cliché – but that’s some Lake isn’t quick to deny.

"The game is set in an old American small town, an almost iconic symbol of American culture. It's a setting that hasn't been used that often in videogames, but it's familiar to anyone from countless movies and TV series.”

He continues, "As the cliché about small towns goes, they are lovable on the surface, but they always have dark terrible secrets lurking underneath just waiting to burst out with horrible consequences, and that's where Alan Wake comes in."

Wide Awake

Remedy has already proven itself one of the premium PC developers with only three games under its belt. Particularly with the Max Payne games, Remedy shows it knows how to handle plot-driven action titles in a way which often finds the developer compared with Monolith.

And like Monolith’s F.E.A.R. and Condemned: Criminal Origins, Alan Wake looks to be one of the year’s better alternative titles. Its release date is still unknown, but it’s slated for release on the PC and next-generation consoles. Just remember to keep checking Boomtown for more info.

*Craig Gilmore offers his sincerest apologies to all readers for including as sub-header the title to one of the most lame, pathetic and genuinely asinine horror films to emerge from Hollywood in the last fifty years. He still maintains however that the actress from Buffy who stars in it is hot.