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Alan Wake II

⛹🏼 J · 🎮 PS5 · ⏱️ 32h

Box art from Alan Wake II. FBI agent Saga Anderson walks through blood red Pacific Northwest forestry with a flashlight in hand at the bottom of the image. An overlaid portrait of a disheveled Alan Wake looms large over the scene at the top of the image. The title of the game is set in a bold tall sans serif font that visually separates the two protagonists in the center of the image.Alan Wake II (2023)

FBI agent Saga Anderson is searching for the missing writer Alan Wake. He disappeared over a decade ago in the mysterious Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls. Alan’s old books are bleeding into reality. Federal paranormal agencies are very interested to find out why.

Alan Wake shines his flashlight onto a distorted road closure barricade at the end of a dark city street.Alan is trapped in a nightmare city of his own creation, where the darkness has taken over.

Saga Anderson stands at the edge of a dock in the small town of Bright Falls. The town is preparing for its annual community party called Deerfest. Parade floats, banners, and makeshift structures can be seen under construction in an otherwise sleepy Pacific Northwest Town.Saga roams free in Bright Falls, where light and dark exist in perfect balance.

A legal pad and pencil rests on top of a desk next to a tape recorder. On the legal pad a large clumsy spiral is drawn. A box and arrow annotation reading “You are here” points to a random point on the spiral.Is this story going in circles or spiraling out of control?

Alan stands before Ahti, the janitor, at the end of a dark hallway. Both men stand before a door with a spiral glyph emblazoned on it. Ahti says to Alan, “What water brings, it takes away.”Callbacks and cross-references from Alan Wake, Control, and the Remedy expanded universe are littered throughout the game.

A flashlight illuminates a traffic cone leaning against a metal barricade surrounded by overgrown grass in the pitch black darkness of night.Every single object oozes with texture and tactility.

Alan stands at the end of an industrial loading dock. His flashlight illuminates three signs overhead that read “No Steering,” “No Words,” and “No Control.”Everywhere Alan looks he is haunted by his own creations.

Alan stands in a disheveled dark room with film strewn about the floor. His gun drawn, he faces an apparition of a person called The Grandmaster in a deer mask. The Grandmaster says to Alan “But first, here’s an unanswered mystery for you: if Casey was fictional, and you assumed his role as the detective, are you now fictional too?”The game is so layered with fiction that it starts to bleed into the non-fictional world.

Alan Wake II (2023) and the Night Springs DLC (2024) is my favorite game so far this year.

I recommend this game for fans of In the Mouth of Madness, Twin Peaks, Steven King novels, and the first season of True Detective.

If the first Alan Wake is a love letter to Twin Peaks, Alan Wake II follows right along with the logic of Twin Peaks: The Return. What happens when you turn the TV back on over a decade later? Something very, very bad.

Tags
Games J
Author
Jonathan Splitlog
Date
2024-07-16
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