Alan Wake Preview

Levels, DLC and the PC version

Remedy has clearly spent a lot of time polishing and tweaking Alan Wake – in fact, we were told at the preview event that the game has been playable for nearly a year, since last year’s E3, and that the entire process since then has been “getting the game to stage it needs to be.” The care and polish certainly shows when you’re playing the game.

It’s got a real sense of momentum – you might be shooting bad guys, but there’s a definite sense of drama, and being pulled through the levels. It also helps that the levels have clearly been play-tested a lot. The woods might seem sprawling but it’s usually very clear where you’ve got to go next. We’ve only played the game for an hour and a half, but underneath all the talk about psychology and nightmares, there’s a very strong game structure.

That said, it’s quite a traditional one, and it makes heavy use of scripting. Go back and replay events and they’re largely the same; mystery and surprise are key to creating a sense of horror, and these, of course, are absent on the twentieth time through a level. Unlike Max Payne, it’s not so combat focussed, so we do have our concerns about Alan Wake’s longevity, especially as there’s no multiplayer either.

Remedy was keen to address these points at the event, calling the Alan Wake game disc “like the first season of a TV show” – a satisfying story, but one that can be expanded with DLC and possible sequels.


One point Remedy wasn’t overly keen to talk about was Alan Wake’s past as not just a PC game, but something of a standard bearer for PC technologies such as quad-core CPUs. It was addressed and here’s what was said:

“We’re a relatively small studio round about 50 people, and it makes sense for us to concentrate on one platform at a time and right now we’re fully focussed on the Xbox 360 version and nothing to announce other than that at this point.”

Remedy’s spokesperson denied the shift away from the PC was due to piracy or publisher demands , either, and when questioned about that said: “It’s purely the size of our studio and knowing our capabilities. [Our size] is partly why it’s taken so long and it’s a labour of love for us.”


You might ask why Remedy didn’t just increase in size, but the company has made a conscious decision not to, in part so that it can retain its independence. It sold the rights of the Max Payne franchise to Take 2 (which is why Rockstar is heading up Max Payne 3) so has been able to fund its own endeavours. Remedy feels that focussing on one platform has been beneficial to the final game. Indeed, after six years in development, a degree of ruthlessness to get the game finished is understandable – and to us, the game’s focus on familiar, if well polished and finessed gameplay does hint at this.

We certainly enjoyed our time with Alan Wake though, and a full review will be forthcoming when the game is released in May.