Does Alan Wake deserve a sequel?

What's your favorite Bright Falls/Alan Wake memory?

okay so if i remember id like to leave another comment after i finish watching but I have some thoughts on this i want to air out unfiltered so to speak. I first discovered Alan Wake a little more than two years ago, so before the sequel came out but far closer to the release of alan wake 2 to the original. As it stands in 2024 i am a huge fan of remedy's games (despite not having finished any of them. i can't handle being horror, like at all) so its a really cool for me to see this video as more of a time capsule of what the perception of alan wake was before i was ever introduced to it.

A sequel to Alan Wake? It’ll never happen…

I'm really curious how Alan Wake would be had Resident Evil 4 never came out. I feel like the open world might have been scrapped in favor of making something more in line with RE4. A lot is taken from it down to enemy movements, the hedge maze & other scenery, chainsaw enemies, crows, list goes on...
The combat feels like they went in with the Dead Space design philosophy to make something like RE4.

I wouldn't call it a horror game, it is more of an action-adventure with some mystery theme, like Fahranheit. Or you also can say that the horror of it is very light, akin to a detective mystery books for kids. But they did emphasized it like if it was a real horror. I couldn't play it very long, not enough to support tension (and I am a chickenshit, so there was really 0 actual horror).😊

I gotta be real, the game sounded far from perfect but I walked away from this review kinda wanting to play it.

“It took itself very seriously”. What? Did we play the same game? This is the same game that is full of funny Twin Peaks references, the importance of protecting cardboard cutouts, and a segment dedicated to fending off enemies on a rock concert stage while the in universe rock band “Old Gods of Asgard” plays which is performed by real life band Poets of the Fall, a Remedy staple since Max Payne 2. Oh and one of my favorite little jokes is Agent Nightingale calling Alan a different name of a famous author to mock him. Things like “Stephen King” or “HP Lovecraft”. There’s a guy who’s voiced by freaking Max Payne who speaks to you in a diving suit floating in a dream land…
Oh! And don’t get me started about the live action episodes of everyone’s favorite thriller series: Night Springs. This absolute goofy parody of Twilight Zone. Every episode is a treat.
Either way, dude Alan Wake is an absolute goof ride sometimes and I love it. It’s like the perfect step up from the Max Payne games with it’s mix of dramatic story telling and levity. So does it take itself super serious? No…it does not.

Man, I gotta say I'm disappointed in your take on the combat - I loved it, the flashlight/gun & light-based elements were one of the freshest new concepts in shooter games I'd ever seen at the time. I was super cautious with my ammo; I only realized by the 3rd playthrough that I was so cautious I rarely even used the flare gun, always "saving it for later" and then having it taken away during a weapon reset before I had a chance to use it. This was the first game since HALO that I loved so much, I found myself replaying it and surprising myself by working up to the hardest difficulty level. I am not one of those "git gud" players; like you, I'm older and don't play at the level I had as a youth, but I'm still surprised you found the combat so hard. It definitely had a few hard spots for me, but if you had kept some flares, grenades, or a flare gun, nothing was too tough. For me - and I'm bummed you didn't experience this - the tension I felt at night wasn't due to combat, it was the utter dread the game gave me when the atmosphere changed and the taken would come. Even when I was kicking ass, it scared the shit out of me, because if you didn't find "light", they could just keep coming, exhausting your ammo, making me often to ditch the idea of exploring and run for my life. Although that led to me missing some book pages, it was absolutely nerve wracking like no other game has ever been. I had to stop some times just to calm my jangled nerves. Terrifying, but utterly addicting

It’s funny, until you pointed it out I never noticed how most longform video game analysis videos have a lot of time just dedicated to naming things that happen and going beat for beat chronologically through the game & then just have a wrap up at the end. Your structure and attention to that pitfall definitely sets you apart.

As of 2022 the answer is YES, Alan Wake 2 is coming 🥳

Bro I’m from 2 years in your future… Alan Wake 2 is real.

You find out about agent Nightingale's motivations if you bother to find and read the manuscript pages.

I live in the Pacific Northwest it sucks and it’s exactly as this game portrays it’s a nightmare living here in Washington specifically

Beat this game a couple years back it was pretty good

Alan is a plant Uses photosynthesis

Bold to compare Halos combat being 'yes you kill Elites twice but at least you do it with the same weapon' when that statement is antithetical to Halos entire legacy as a weapons sandbox. Great video otherwise but the combat criticisms fall flat IMHO

You know as someone who played Control on an Xbox one S and Xbox One X O can say it runs just fine on previous gen systems. The only issue is when you pause and un pause at least for me there's always been a bug where it drops frames drastically for a few seconds.

Great video but never found this game on normal or the dlc difficult.

Alan wake 2 is official!! Woo

Happy to announce that Alan Wake will be Remastered for next gen consoles. Just look up Alan Wake Remastered.

Never understood the love for this game, I played it, beat it and I thought It was barely an Ok game, nothing special.

I just find your channel as well and liking the content so far

they a re working on 2

I wouldn't mind a sequel with improved gameplay, (improved mechanics, more creative weapons, etc.)

"Microsoft's...whatever they want to do"

why is all the game audio distorted?

still interested in how Remedy is connecting all their games

i wonder what the open world survival version would have been like

I swear I heard the JP3 talking raptor.

You forget to mention that when you're in the NY flashback picking up manuscripts, the narrator voice is Max Payne himself James McCaffrey playing Alex Casey, the copyright friendly alias of Max. That is so freaking cool!

Great retrospective on a game close to my heart. I, like you, was obsessed with this game when it came out. I've tried replaying it several times, but haven't finished it in years. I might give it another go, as I'm not as put off by the combat as you. I'm also in love with the setting, small town USA has always spoken to my imagination. Thanks for the video, keep it up!

I'm on my first playthrough of Control, and having just reached the Alan Wake DLC. This was exactly the summary I needed to refresh my memory on Alan Wake. And I even learned a bunch of stuff I didn't know about the development of it! Thanks!

I never liked the combat in either Max Payne and Alan Wake. Too punishing and kind of clunky. So far, Control is more of that. They're decent games, but the story and presentation has always been the highlight in any Remedy game. That said, you can't say Remedy aren't damn ambitious with their projects. Even if they never actually got to make that big open world, episodic version of Alan Wake. And even if the TV show + videogame thing of Quantum Break didn't quite set the world on fire. Control has a bunch of Destiny and Dark Souls systems in it, and I wonder what unrealized ambitions they had there.

Ok, time to go watch your Quantum Break video.

you've said american wasteland several times instead of american nightmare. tony hawk much? hehe

What font did you use for this thumbnail, it looks really nice and professional

I do recall American Nightmare being easier in terms of gameplay, and now I understand why. I also completely agree on the time lapse on Chapter 3. It was a fun game, having done a 9-hour binge back in 2014. I wouldn't mind playing it again. It's flawed, but good.

The funny thing about the difficulty is that the game was designed for the "easy" difficulty. On the original Xbox version, the difficulties are named "normal" and "hard" and were then changed to "easy " and "normal" for the PC port. No idea why this was done.

The combat has the usual Remedy problem where the stakes of the gameplay aren't raised at the same pace as the plot's. It occurs to some extent in Max Payne, and I found it most infuriating in Control. I think a lot of the late-game battles would've been balanced out with better weapons, in which case the game's combat would kind of shift gears and become more about the dodging of Taken and ensuring that the damage output is constant. The game kind of already has that element, but with, like, 7 asterisks attached.

Also I'm not sure whether the Tony Hawk's American Wasteland connection is intentional but that sure bothered me every time you said it...

I just discovered this channel last week and it's absolutely amazing. All your videos are great. Greetings from Peru.

Amazing review, this is an absolutely amazing video, keep on keeping on!

Awesome review and effort put in. Easy like.