Alan Wake 2 | |
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Developer(s) | Remedy Entertainment |
Publisher(s) | Epic Games Publishing |
Director(s) |
|
Programmer(s) | Antti Kerminen |
Artist(s) | Janne Pulkkinen |
Writer(s) |
|
Composer(s) | Petri Alanko |
Engine | Northlight Engine |
Platform(s) | |
Release | 27 October 2023 |
Genre(s) | Survival horror |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Alan Wake 2 is a 2023 survival horror video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Epic Games Publishing. The sequel to Alan Wake (2010), the story follows best-selling novelist Alan Wake, who has been trapped in an alternate dimension for 13 years, as he attempts to escape by writing a horror story involving an FBI special agent named Saga Anderson.
Alan Wake 2 was released for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on 27 October 2023. The game received positive reviews from critics and was nominated for multiple Game of the Year awards. It sold over 1.3 million units by February 2024, making it Remedy's fastest-selling game.
Compared to the original Alan Wake , which is an action-adventure game with horror themes, Alan Wake 2 is a survival horror game played from a third-person perspective. Players play as Alan Wake or Saga Anderson in two separate single-player stories, which can be played in any order the player chooses, although the opening and ending sequences can only be played as Saga and Alan, respectively. [1] [2]
Wake and Anderson traverse environments and fight enemies using various firearms and a flashlight, the latter of which can be "focused" to render enemies vulnerable to firearm attacks. Focusing the flashlight drains its battery, and players need to strategically use a limited amount of batteries and ammunition in order to survive. When enemies are close, Alan or Saga can perform a dodge maneuver. [3]
Alan Wake 2 incorporates detective elements: when playing as Saga, players can access an enemy-free space dubbed the "Mind Place". [3] Described by Remedy as a "3D menu", the Mind Place is a visual representation of Saga's thoughts. In the Mind Place, players manage a pin board in which they can connect clues to piece together the main mystery, as well as profile characters to gather clues. [2] As Alan, players have access to the "Writer's Room", where they can see the outline of a novel he is writing. By adding and changing plot details on the outline, they are able to manipulate the space around Alan. [4] Both the Mind Place and the Writer's Room do not pause the outside world.
A returning element from Alan Wake is of finding manuscript pages that foreshadow upcoming events in the story. Alan Wake 2 features a dialogue tree system. [2]
This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed.(November 2023) |
The game starts with a monologue by Alan while showing him with a glowing hole in his forehead. A naked man emerges from the dark shores of Cauldron Lake, experiencing visions of a man violently screaming before he is found and has his heart cut out by a group of men wearing deer masks.
FBI Special Agent Saga Anderson and her partner Alex Casey are dispatched to the town of Bright Falls to investigate a series of ritualistic murders. They investigate the latest victim, the naked man, who is revealed as former FBI agent Robert Nightingale. It is believed he was murdered by a group calling themselves "The Cult of the Tree." In addition to Nightingale's corpse, Saga finds a mysterious manuscript page that seems to predict the future. While in the town, they encounter Sheriff Tim Breaker, who promises to assist their investigation, as well as waitress Rose Marigold, who recognizes Saga and acts like Saga was a local of the area, despite this being her first visit to the town. Saga then performs an autopsy on Nightingale's corpse, but it suddenly reanimates and escapes the morgue after Breaker mysteriously vanishes.
As they pursue Nightingale to Cauldron Lake, Casey says he had investigated a murder cult in New York dedicated to bringing back the missing author Alan Wake by reenacting the murders described in his books, and that Nightingale came to Bright Falls to pursue Alan thirteen years prior. Saga encounters Nightingale, now converted into what the manuscript called a "Taken", and is forced to kill him. Saga then finds a very-shaken Alan Wake washed up on the shore of the lake and takes him into custody while also discovering evidence that an organization called the Federal Bureau of Control has a presence in Bright Falls. Saga and Casey take Alan back to the inn, where he recounts how he escaped from a dream-like dimension called the Dark Place.
While trapped in the Dark Place, Alan continually tried to find a way to escape. After appearing in a mysterious talk show called "In Between with Mr. Door," Alan found an angel-shaped lamp that, in combination with his writing ability, allowed him to manipulate the Dark Place to better navigate it.
Alan began navigating a dark, twisted version of New York City, following the trail of Alex Casey's investigation of the "Cult of the Word" led by Alan's evil doppelganger, Mr. Scratch, who survived his erasure from existence, which brought him through the various scenes of the murders committed by the cult. Along the way, Alan also encountered Breaker, who was searching for the talk show host, Mr. Door, believing him to be responsible for trapping him in the Dark Place. Alan also occasionally made brief contact with Saga, the two of them trading vital information when they could. After believing he had killed Tom Zane, who had gone insane from his captivity inside the Dark Place, Alan was contacted by an alternative version of himself, explaining that his repeated attempts to escape the Dark Place are causing him to experience time loops.
Back in the present, Alan explains that he wrote a new novel, Return, that helped him escape the Dark Place. However, Scratch re-edited the manuscript into a horror story now taking effect in reality. Alan warns that Scratch is searching for the Clicker, which is the key he needs to free the malevolent Dark Presence completely, but also the key to permanently defeating it. With one of the manuscript pages mentioning the Cult of the Tree possesses the Clicker, Saga decides to follow its trail and realizes that Return has rewritten her past so that her daughter Logan drowned in an accident. Angered that Alan wrote her and Logan into his story, Saga recovers the Clicker from Taken deputies Mulligan and Thornton, but before she can get it to Alan, agents from the FBC led by Agent Kiran Estevez arrive and apprehend him as well as the Cult leaders, revealed to be town entrepreneurs Ilmo and Jaakko Koskela.
With no other options, Saga tracks down Odin and Tor Anderson, who know more about the Clicker. As she communicates with them and rescues Tor from a Taken Cynthia Weaver, she learns that Odin and Tor are actually her grand-uncle and grandfather, respectively, and she inherited their seer abilities, allowing her to discern the changes to reality Return is causing. Odin and Tor also explain that the Clicker does not do anything by itself but instead dramatically enhances the creative power of the person using it, which is why it is important to Alan and Scratch. Saga then heads back to Bright Falls to get the Clicker to Alan but finds out that the Alan who escaped Cauldron Lake wasn't Alan, but Scratch. With his identity now exposed, Scratch kills Jaakko and escapes from captivity, attempting to take the Clicker from Saga. He is temporarily thwarted and banished, thanks to the FBC's light technology, leaving Saga wondering what to do next.
Ilmo reveals that he and Jaakko formed the cult in order to scare townsfolk away from the dangers of the lake, while they perform their 'ritual killings' on whatever Taken emerges from it, such as Nightingale. Realizing that Alan is still trapped in the Dark Place, Saga enlists the help of Casey, Odin, Tor, and Estevez to carry out a ritual to summon him to the real world. Meanwhile, Alan continues to try and find a way out of the Dark Place, eventually making his way to his old apartment. There, he discovers his wife Alice had been tormented with visions of Scratch, which she photographed and turned into an art exhibition called "the Dark Place", hoping to find Alan through them. However, her obsession drove her to despair until eventually she photographed her own suicide. In anger, Alan kills who he believes is Scratch but is actually a version of himself attempting to fix Scratch's ending of Return, perpetuating the loop. Realizing that he was the one terrorizing Alice instead of Scratch, Alan lets the Dark Presence possess him.
Back in the real world, the summoning ritual fails to summon Alan in the current time and instead was responsible for his initial appearance earlier in the story. Both Saga and Alan come to the realization that Alan and Scratch were always the same person, with Scratch being Alan, who is possessed by the Dark Presence at the end of every loop, which Alan later realizes became weakened from crossing into the real world, forcing it into dormancy while regaining its strength. Scratch arrives at the summoning site and Saga is able to banish him from Alan's body, only for Scratch to possess Casey instead, steal the Clicker, and throw Saga into the Dark Place.
With Scratch in possession of the Clicker, Alan concludes that the only way to stop him now is to find the manuscript and write a completely new ending for Return. He returns to his Writing Room and tries to work out how to write a perfect ending that saves everybody while staying consistent with the horror genre, realizing that Saga is his co-author to help write the ending together. Meanwhile, trapped in her mind palace, Saga fights off the Dark Presence's attempt to overwhelm her with her own negative emotions and self-doubt. Now in the Dark Place, she reunites with Breaker, who remains there in his search for Door, heavily implied to be Saga's missing father. She then receives aid from an anonymous woman, implied to be Alice, who directs her to the Clicker and a Bullet of Light. Saga takes the two items and escapes back to the real world by mimicking Door's actions on a manuscript page. Connecting to Alan through her mind palace, they realize they are the heroes of the story, but for the ending to save everyone, one of the heroes needs to pay a heavy price. With the Clicker and Alan's revised ending for Return, Saga is able to banish Scratch from Casey's body. Alan goads Scratch into possessing him again, and Saga shoots him with the Bullet of Light, seemingly killing him and Scratch but looping his monologue back to the beginning of the game, creating a time-loop for each playthrough. As Casey recovers from his possession, Saga tries to call Logan to confirm her safety, but the scene cuts short before any answer can be heard.
In a post-credits scene, a recording left behind by Alice reveals that after speaking to the FBC at their offices(as mentioned in Control), she had managed to fully regain her memories of what happened to Alan and her time in the Dark Place. She used her exhibition to trick Alan into thinking she committed suicide but instead chose to return to the Dark Place as part of a plan to help him eventually escape, explaining that the only way he can escape the loops is through either "destruction" or "ascension". Alan must continue the loop and keep going through destruction until he's ready for ascension, with Alice's words and love as his light preparing him bit by bit. Alan then revives from his gunshot wound and says, "It's not a loop, it's a spiral."
The New Game Plus mode, The Final Draft, has a different ending: as he hands Saga his revised ending for Return, Alan remembers that the Dark Presence has caught them in a time loop that makes them forget right until the end, and that choices in the Dark Place can affect both the future and the past. He realizes that the Dark Presence was born from the remains of darkness from Alan after he was shot by the Bullet of Light. The Dark Presence eventually found Alan in the past and influenced him, kick-starting the plot of the first game. The link between it and Alan was severed after finishing Return, but the Dark Presence remained as Alan was missing the part of himself it was born from: Alice. Realizing that he and Alice are still connected through his writing and her photos, the Bullet of Light finally succeeds and kills Scratch for good, breaking the loop. Saga's call connects, confirming Logan's survival, and Alan revives soon after to the surprise of her and Casey. Confirming the ending worked, he thanks Alice, then declares himself the bearer of the light and the master of not just two worlds, but many. A video Alan can find in the Final Draft shows an earlier version of himself that theorizes that the notes, clues and writings that guide him on his journey, which he thought were from himself in previous loops, may also partly be from a future version of himself from beyond the loops –"some elevated, enlightened version" –using the current Alan as a pawn to create his own apotheosis.
Remedy Entertainment released Alan Wake in 2010. Learning from Max Payne , they wrote Alan Wake in a way that allows additional story to be told through sequels and further installments. The team began discussing sequel ideas after Alan Wake was shipped, which would continue to star Alan Wake as the protagonist, but also explore the stories of the supporting characters including Wake's friend Barry Wheeler and Sheriff Sarah Breaker. A prototype was created to show off the gameplay of Alan Wake 2 when the studio was showing the game to potential publishers. The game would have been a direct sequel to Alan Wake, featuring new enemies and new gameplay mechanics, such as being able to rewrite reality, which were showcased in the prototype. Ultimately, Remedy pitched the project to Alan Wake publisher Microsoft Studios. Microsoft, however, at the time was not interested in a sequel and instead, tasked Remedy to create a new game. This ultimately became Quantum Break , released in 2016. It included, alongside other easter eggs to Alan Wake, a short live-action film, titled Alan Wake: Return. It features two FBI agents, one named Alex Casey, investigating the reappearance of Wake, which had been created by Remedy as to help promote a sequel to publishers. [5] [6] The other FBI agent was Saga Anderson, who was portrayed by Malla Malmivaara. She was later recast with Melanie Liburd. Most of the ideas for Alan Wake 2 were implemented in American Nightmare , a downloadable follow-up to Alan Wake. [7] Remedy CEO Tero Virtala stated that any further sequels to Alan Wake would require Microsoft Studios' approval as the publishing rights holder, though Remedy otherwise owns all other intellectual property rights to the series. [8]
When Quantum Break was announced, Sam Lake explained that a sequel to Alan Wake had been postponed, and that Alan Wake was not financially successful enough to receive the funding they needed to continue developing the sequel at the time. [9] Director of communications Thomas Puha stated in April 2019 that Remedy had briefly returned to work on an Alan Wake property about two years prior, but the effort did not work out, and the company was booked for the next few years, between their own new game Control , supporting Smilegate on its game CrossfireX , and another new project. Puha said that the only limited factor for them to work on an Alan Wake sequel was "time, money, and resources". [10] Despite that, Lake continued to be part of a team in Remedy to brainstorm ideas and work on different incarnations for Alan Wake 2. Internally, the project was code-named "Project Big Fish", which represented its importance and significance to Remedy. [11] In the second downloadable content pack for Control, Remedy's next game following Quantum Break, Alan Wake was featured as a character. According to Remedy, Control established the "Remedy Connected Universe" which is shared by both Control and Alan Wake, and that the next game released by the studio will also be set on this universe. [12]
Remedy fully acquired the rights to Alan Wake from Microsoft in July 2019, including a one-time royalty payment of about €2.5 million for the game series' past sales, which helped pave the way for a sequel. [13] Remedy had signed with Epic Games Publishing in 2021 for the release of two games. Remedy released Alan Wake Remastered in October 2021 as the first game of this partnership, [14] while the second, larger game, Alan Wake 2, was announced at The Game Awards 2021. [15] Remedy's communications director Thomas Puha said that Epic allowed Remedy to create the game they wanted to make with minimal publisher interference, while providing extensive feedback to help improve the game. [16]
With Epic as their publisher, Remedy began production on Alan Wake 2 in August 2019. [17] According to Sam Lake, the game would be powered by Remedy's own Northlight Engine, which they used for Quantum Break and Control. Lake also stated that Alan Wake 2 would be a survival horror game, as opposed to Alan Wake, which Lake said was "an action game with horror elements", though he did not explain the difference between the two. Lake further added that players will not need to play the previous games in order to understand Alan Wake 2. [11] The sequel continued to draw inspiration from the works of David Lynch, particularly Twin Peaks , while also bringing more detective themes from works like Seven , The Silence of the Lambs , and True Detective . [18] Lake said that his approach to Alan Wake 2 was bolstered by the success of the film Everything Everywhere All At Once . [19]
Remedy confirmed the game would remain in the third-person perspective despite the switch to survival horror, and that both Ilkka Villi and Matthew Porretta would return to provide the appearance and the voice of Alan, respectively. [20] Other cast include Melanie Liburd as the live-action and voice of Saga Anderson, David Harewood as both the live-action and voice of Mr. Door, James McCaffrey and Lake as the voice and live-action appearance of Alex Casey, respectively. [21] Further, Alan Wake 2 includes cameos from characters in Control, including Jesse Faden (voiced by Courtney Hope), Dr. Darling (Porretta) and the mysterious janitor Ahti (Martti Suosalo). [22]
Alan's story includes a mission known as "Initiation 4" or "We Sing", which has the player guide Alan through a surreal set while Alan's psyche, Mr. Door, and others sing "Herald of Darkness", a musical (via live-action video) summarizing Alan's story to that point, with music provided by Poets of the Fall (playing as the fictional band "The Old Gods of Asgard"). [23] Lake said the idea for the musical sequence was inspired by Alan Wake's concert standoff as well as the Ashtray Maze level in Control , both set to Poets of the Fall's music. Lake also knew that Porretta (Wake) and Harewood (Mr. Door) could sing, and Poets of the Fall were able to help with choreography. Frequently through development, some of the developers questioned the need for the musical sequence due to both the strangeness of the sequence in the horror game and the difficulties in pulling it off. However, Lake insisted that the sequence be kept. [24] The song was played live at The Game Awards 2023 by Poets of the Fall, along with Villi, Porretta, Harewood, and Lake reprising their roles. [25]
Overall, the game took 13 years to develop. In an interview, Sam Lake said this was because "The sequel contains many characters and locations, as well as a continuation of the supernatural lore established and introduced in the original Alan Wake." [26]
The Budget for the game reportedly stands at €70 million, with €50 million in development and an additional €20 million spent on marketing. [27] This is considered to make the game one of the most expensive cultural products in the history of Finland. [28]
Prior to the release of Alan Wake 2, Remedy Entertainment had earned a reputation for pushing visual boundaries and graphics technology with releases such as Control and Max Payne 2 . [29] Alan Wake 2 was developed with ninth generation consoles in mind. For its traditional graphics rasterization, Alan Wake 2 harnesses mesh shaders that are only supported by the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 20 series or AMD Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs and later on PC. [30] The game was the first to be released with native support for mesh shaders. [31] As opposed to older vertex and geometry shading techniques, mesh shaders try to reduce the bottleneck from rendering a large number of fixed vertex triangles by instead flexibly rendering large groups of triangles. Developers are given greater control over rendering complex geometry as mesh shaders can be segmented into smaller meshlets that can be re-used and rendered in-parrallel while making less calls for data from memory. [32] The graphics pipeline is also shorter with mesh shaders as opposed to a traditional vertex and tessellation pipeline. [32] Alan Wake 2 running on hardware without mesh shaders support, such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 10 series or AMD Radeon RX 5000 series GPUs, results in poor performance and visual errors. [33]
Ray tracing is extensively used in Alan Wake 2 to better simulate how light reacts realistically behaves in the real world. Scenes are lit using global illumination and the light provided by the global light source bounces off surfaces and diffuses depending on the materials present. The use of ray tracing is particularly important for adding ambience to dark scenes in the game that feature flashlights as a sole light source. [34] Alan Wake 2 even goes beyond ray tracing to incorporate path tracing where diffused light will also bounce across duller surfaces in addition to reflective ones. [35] Path tracing's computational demands means that it is not not available on the limited console hardware. [36] Alan Wake 2's extensive use of ray tracing made it a promotional vessel for Nvidia's graphics technologies such as supporting DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction. DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction on Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics cards seeks to improve ray tracing visual quality and performance by not performing calculations on multiple rays per pixel and instead using machine learning to fill in the gaps. [37]
Alan Wake 2: Original Game Soundtrack | |
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Soundtrack album by Petri Alanko | |
Released | 14 May 2024 |
Recorded | 2011-2023 |
Length | 108:49 |
Label |
|
The original score for Alan Wake 2 by Finnish composer Petri Alanko was released via Epic Games and Laced Records on 14 May 2024, the 14th anniversary of the first Alan Wake game's release. [38] Alanko returns to the role of composer from the first Alan Wake game with his approach to composing for Alan Wake 2 "akin to reuniting with an old friend, discovering both familiar and new elements to play with". [39]
Alanko first began recording Alan Wake 2's original score in 2011, and in the years since then, it became a "very different entity". The biggest change that occurred since Alanko began work on the score was the addition of the game's second protagonist Saga Anderson. [40] In the years since beginning work on Alan Wake 2's score, he also composed the score for Remedy Entertainment's 2019 game Control . [41] To create some of the sounds for Alan Wake 2, Alanko used unconventional means such as dropping pianos off forklift trucks. [42]
No. | Title | Artist(s) | Length |
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1. | "Vertical Reflections" | Petri Alanko | 1:50 |
2. | "Slaughtering a Nightingale" | Petri Alanko | 1:36 |
3. | "Driving to the Spot" | Petri Alanko | 2:39 |
4. | "This Road (The Mirror is a Trap)" | Poe | 1:43 |
5. | "Manuscript Page" | Petri Alanko | 1:14 |
6. | "Plotboard, Alleys and a Few Dead Bodies" | Petri Alanko | 6:23 |
7. | "Driving Around Washington State" | Petri Alanko | 2:41 |
8. | "Writer's Writings" | Petri Alanko | 3:50 |
9. | "This Road (The Dark Chamber)" | Poe | 2:47 |
10. | "Nightingale Wakes Up" | Petri Alanko | 2:47 |
11. | "Saga" | Petri Alanko | 1:43 |
12. | "Rose" | Petri Alanko | 1:30 |
13. | "A Ritual and An Appearance" | Petri Alanko | 3:17 |
14. | "Bathtub" | Petri Alanko | 1:45 |
15. | "Evil is Contagious" | Petri Alanko | 2:48 |
16. | "Cult Photo" | Petri Alanko | 2:10 |
17. | "Them Three" | Petri Alanko | 2:12 |
18. | "Wake Talks" | Petri Alanko | 3:57 |
19. | "The Attack, a Ceiling Fan and Lots of Blood" | Petri Alanko | 4:32 |
20. | "Wake Shoots Casey" | Petri Alanko | 1:53 |
21. | "Tor and the Pond" | Petri Alanko | 3:02 |
22. | "Wake Shoots Wake, Scratch Scores An Escape" | Petri Alanko | 3:15 |
23. | "FBC Arrives" | Petri Alanko | 2:02 |
24. | "This Road (Falling Apart)" | Poe | 1:01 |
25. | "Into the Static" | Petri Alanko | 2:46 |
26. | "Last Straws" | Petri Alanko | 2:57 |
27. | "Just Driving" | Petri Alanko | 3:51 |
28. | "Zane" | Petri Alanko | 6:46 |
29. | "This Road (The Beginning)" | Poe | 2:04 |
30. | "The End(s)?" | Petri Alanko | 4:46 |
31. | "Yötön Yö" | Petri Alanko & Martti Suosalo | 4:09 |
32. | "End Credits - Welcome Again to Bright Falls" | Petri Alanko | 3:15 |
33. | "End Credits - Awash Unknown" | Petri Alanko | 2:29 |
34. | "End Credits - Scary Suite" | Petri Alanko | 10:53 |
35. | "Ballroom Jazzy Flyboys Inc." | Petri Alanko | 2:16 |
Total length: | 108:49 |
Remedy announced in May 2023 that Alan Wake 2 would be a digital-only release, rationalizing that many players had already shifted to only buying games digitally, so they wanted to ensure the game maintains a low price, and they didn't want it to require a separate download even if a physical version was released. [43] Originally planned to release for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on 17 October 2023, Remedy delayed the game by ten days to 27 October to avoid competition from other major triple-A releases. [44] The PC version is exclusive to the Epic Games Store for "a long time". [45] Free downloadable content packs and two paid expansions, titled Night Springs and Lake House, will be released after the game's initial launch. [46]
An Alan Wake cosmetic outfit was added to Fortnite Battle Royale as part of the "Fortnitemares 2023" event [47] and a retelling of the first Alan Wake was available within Fortnite Creative in the weeks prior to the sequel's release to help new players come up to speed on events from the first game. [48]
From 10 October to 13 November 2023, a free copy of Alan Wake 2 was included in a promotional bundle with the purchase of certain Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs. [49] The eligible GPUs for the bundle were the RTX 4070, RTX 4070 Ti, RTX 4080 and RTX 4090. [50]
Alan Wake was added to the video game Dead by Daylight in January 2024. Additional cosmetics were included with his release, including skins that turn the character into either Saga Anderson, Rose Marigold, and Mr. Scratch. [51] [ better source needed ]
Aggregator | Score |
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Metacritic | (PC) 89/100 [52] (PS5) 89/100 [53] (XSXS) 90/100 [54] |
OpenCritic | 89/100 [55] 93% Critics Recommend |
Publication | Score |
---|---|
Destructoid | 9/10 [56] |
Digital Trends | [57] |
Eurogamer | [58] |
Game Informer | 7.75/10 [59] |
GameSpot | 10/10 [60] |
GamesRadar+ | [61] |
Hardcore Gamer | 4.5/5 [62] |
IGN | 9/10 [63] |
NME | [64] |
PC Gamer (US) | 88/100 [65] |
PCGamesN | 9/10 [66] |
Push Square | [67] |
Shacknews | 9/10 [68] |
The Guardian | [69] |
Video Games Chronicle | [70] |
VG247 | [71] |
Alan Wake 2 received "generally favorable" reviews from critics for the PC and PS5 versions, while the Xbox Series X version received "universal acclaim", according to review aggregator website Metacritic. [52] [53] [54]
Andrew Farrell of PCGamesN in his Alan Wake 2 review awarded the game 9 out of 10 saying, "Alan Wake 2 is a marvel, serving up intense gameplay, a twisty, dark story, and more secrets and surprises than you could possibly imagine. Remedy has outdone itself here, delivering a truly remarkable experience." [66]
Alan Wake 2 was ranked first on Time 's top 10 best video games of 2023 list. [72]
By the end of December 2023, Alan Wake 2 had sold 1 million units, and by February 2024, had sold over 1.3 million units, making it Remedy's fastest-selling game. It sold more units and over three times more digital units in its first month than Control did in its first four months. [73] [74]
Date | Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2023 | Golden Joystick Awards | Critics Choice Award | Won | [75] [76] |
Best Game Trailer (The Dark Place Gameplay) | Nominated | |||
Best Lead Performer (Ilkka Villi / Matthew Porretta) | Nominated | |||
Best Lead Performer (Melanie Liburd) | Nominated | |||
Ultimate Game of the Year | Nominated | |||
The Game Awards 2023 | Game of the Year | Nominated | [77] | |
Best Game Direction | Won | |||
Best Narrative | Won | |||
Best Art Direction | Won | |||
Best Score and Music (Petri Alanko) | Nominated | |||
Best Audio Design | Nominated | |||
Best Performance (Melanie Liburd) | Nominated | |||
Best Action / Adventure Game | Nominated | |||
2024 | 13th New York Game Awards | Big Apple Award for Game of the Year | Nominated | [78] [79] |
Herman Melville Award for Best Writing in a Game | Nominated | |||
Statue of Liberty Award for Best World | Won | |||
Tin Pan Alley Award for Best Music in a Game | Nominated | |||
Great White Way Award for Best Acting in a Game (Melanie Liburd as Saga Anderson) | Won | |||
27th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards | Game of the Year | Nominated | [80] [81] | |
Adventure Game of the Year | Nominated | |||
Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction | Won | |||
Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design | Nominated | |||
Outstanding Achievement in Character (Saga Anderson) | Nominated | |||
Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition | Nominated | |||
Outstanding Achievement in Story | Nominated | |||
Outstanding Technical Achievement | Nominated | |||
22nd Visual Effects Society Awards | Outstanding Visual Effects in a Real-Time Project | Won | [82] | |
24th Game Developers Choice Awards | Game of the Year | Honorable mention | [83] [84] | |
Best Narrative | Nominated | |||
Best Technology | Nominated | |||
Best Visual Art | Won | |||
Audience Award | Nominated | |||
20th British Academy Games Awards | Best Game | Nominated | [85] [86] | |
Animation | Nominated | |||
Artistic Achievement | Won | |||
Audio Achievement | Won | |||
Game Design | Longlisted | [87] | ||
Music | Nominated | [88] [89] | ||
Narrative | Nominated | |||
Technical Achievement | Nominated | |||
Performer in a Leading Role (Ilkka Villi as Alan Wake (Live Action + Mocap)) | Longlisted | [90] | ||
Performer in a Leading Role (Matthew Porretta as Alan Wake (Voice)) | Longlisted | |||
Performer in a Leading Role (Melanie Liburd as Saga Anderson) | Longlisted | |||
Performer in a Supporting Role (James McCaffrey as Alex Casey (Voice)) | Longlisted | |||
Performer in a Supporting Role (Martti Suosalo as Ahti) | Longlisted | |||
Performer in a Supporting Role (Sam Lake as Alex Casey (Live Action + Mocap)) | Nominated | [91] [92] | ||
Nebula Awards | Best Game Writing (Sam Lake, Clay Murphy, Tyler Burton Smith and Sinikka Annala) | Pending | [93] | |
Hugo Awards | Best Game or Interactive Work | Pending | [94] |
Nvidia Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It is a software and fabless company which designs and supplies graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interfaces (APIs) for data science and high-performance computing as well as system on a chip units (SoCs) for the mobile computing and automotive market. Nvidia is also a dominant supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and software.
GeForce is a brand of graphics processing units (GPUs) designed by Nvidia and marketed for the performance market. As of the GeForce 40 series, there have been eighteen iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for add-on graphics boards, intended for the high-margin PC gaming market, and later diversification of the product line covered all tiers of the PC graphics market, ranging from cost-sensitive GPUs integrated on motherboards, to mainstream add-in retail boards. Most recently, GeForce technology has been introduced into Nvidia's line of embedded application processors, designed for electronic handhelds and mobile handsets.
Alienware Corporation is an American computer hardware subsidiary brand of Dell. Their product range is dedicated to gaming computers and accessories and can be identified by their alien-themed designs. Alienware was founded in 1996 by Nelson Gonzalez and Alex Aguila. The development of the company is also associated with Frank Azor (co-founder), Arthur Lewis, Joe Balerdi, and Michael S. Dell (CEO). The company's corporate headquarters is located in The Hammocks, Miami, Florida.
Remedy Entertainment Oyj, trading internationally as Remedy Entertainment Plc, is a Finnish video game developer based in Espoo. Notable games the studio has developed include the first two entries in the Max Payne franchise, Alan Wake, Quantum Break and Control. Sam Lake, Remedy's creative director, has represented the company on numerous occasions.
James Perry McCaffrey was an American actor best known for his voice role as Max Payne in the Max Payne video game series, Jimmy Keefe on Rescue Me (2004–2011), and Captain Arthur O'Breun in New York Undercover (1994–1997). He also had main roles and recurring roles in a number of television series as well as appearing in feature films.
Sami Antero Järvi, better known by his pen name Sam Lake, is a Finnish video game writer and director. He is the creative director at Remedy Entertainment, known for his writing on the popular Max Payne video game series, and Alan Wake.
Alan Wake is a 2010 action-adventure game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The game was released in May 2010 for the Xbox 360, with a Windows version following in February 2012 and a remastered version released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows in October 2021, as well as a Nintendo Switch version in October 2022. The story follows bestselling crime thriller novelist Alan Wake as he tries to uncover the mystery behind his wife's disappearance during a vacation in the small fictional town of Bright Falls, Washington, all while experiencing events from the plot of his latest novel, which he cannot remember writing, coming to life.
Martti Juhani Suosalo is a Finnish actor and singer.
Gamescom is a trade fair for video games held annually at the Koelnmesse in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Gamescom is the world's largest gaming event, with 370,000 visitors and 1037 exhibitors from 56 countries attending the event in 2018. The event is used by many video game developers to exhibit upcoming games and game-related hardware.
Matthew Charles Porretta is an American television-, voice-, and film-actor, known for his appearances in Wings, Beverly Hills, 90210, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. He has also appeared on Broadway and in video games, where he is known for his voice role for the titular character in Alan Wake and its sequel, Alan Wake II, and as Dr. Darling in Control.
Alan Wake's American Nightmare is a third-person shooter video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Studios. The game is a downloadable follow-up and spin-off to its predecessor, Alan Wake. The game is an Xbox 360 title and was released on 22 February 2012 worldwide. A Microsoft Windows version was released on 22 May 2012 in North America, 29 June 2012 in Europe and 15 November 2012 in Australia.
Melanie Liburd is a British actress known for her roles in This Is Us and Power Book II: Ghost.
Control is a 2019 action-adventure game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by 505 Games. The game was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in August 2019, and for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in February 2021. Cloud-based versions for the Nintendo Switch and Amazon Luna were released in October 2020, followed by a version for Stadia in July 2021. Two paid expansions have been released.
The GeForce 20 series is a family of graphics processing units developed by Nvidia. Serving as the successor to the GeForce 10 series, the line started shipping on September 20, 2018, and after several editions, on July 2, 2019, the GeForce RTX Super line of cards was announced.
Turing is the codename for a graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture developed by Nvidia. It is named after the prominent mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. The architecture was first introduced in August 2018 at SIGGRAPH 2018 in the workstation-oriented Quadro RTX cards, and one week later at Gamescom in consumer GeForce 20 series graphics cards. Building on the preliminary work of Volta, its HPC-exclusive predecessor, the Turing architecture introduces the first consumer products capable of real-time ray tracing, a longstanding goal of the computer graphics industry. Key elements include dedicated artificial intelligence processors and dedicated ray tracing processors. Turing leverages DXR, OptiX, and Vulkan for access to ray tracing. In February 2019, Nvidia released the GeForce 16 series GPUs, which utilizes the new Turing design but lacks the RT and Tensor cores.
Deep learning super sampling (DLSS) is a family of real-time deep learning image enhancement and upscaling technologies developed by Nvidia that are exclusive to its RTX line of graphics cards, and available in a number of video games. The goal of these technologies is to allow the majority of the graphics pipeline to run at a lower resolution for increased performance, and then infer a higher resolution image from this that approximates the same level of detail as if the image had been rendered at this higher resolution. This allows for higher graphical settings and/or frame rates for a given output resolution, depending on user preference.
The GeForce 30 series is a suite of graphics processing units (GPUs) designed and marketed by Nvidia, succeeding the GeForce 20 series. The GeForce 30 series is based on the Ampere architecture, which features Nvidia's second-generation ray tracing (RT) cores and third-generation Tensor Cores. Through Nvidia RTX, hardware-enabled ray tracing is possible on GeForce 30 series cards.
The GeForce 40 series is a family of graphics processing units developed by Nvidia, succeeding the GeForce 30 series. The series was announced on September 20, 2022, at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2022 event.
The 20th British Academy Video Game Awards were hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts on 11 April 2024 to honour the best video games of 2023. Held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the ceremony was hosted by comedian Phil Wang for the first time. Nominations were announced on March 7, 2024, with epic fantasy roleplaying game Baldur's Gate 3 earning a leading eleven nominations. Charity SpecialEffect was honoured with the BAFTA Special Award for their work in making gaming more accessible to people with physical disabilities. Baldur's Gate 3 received the most wins at the ceremony, with five including Best Game.
In September, we announced that the smaller of the two Epic Games Publishing projects, Alan Wake Remastered, was completed and ready to be launched in October on PC on the Epic Games Store, Xbox, and for the first time in the franchise's history, PlayStation console [..] Another key milestone was the entry of the bigger Epic Games Publishing project into full production in August.