Over the last couple of weeks, I developed something of a ritual for playing this game. I would wait until at least 9 PM at night, ensuring that I could make my room pitch black. I cranked the volume on my headphones and connected my dualsense controller to my PC. I brewed myself a mug of herbal tea and let it cool while I extinguished the lamps in my room. Finally, I booted the game up.
Alan Wake II is squarely Remedy's best. I have rolled credits on all their games and have loved each in their own way. I was driven to treat this one with reverence in a way I never did the others. I don't think I have ever seen a game so bold and strange get production values this enormous. It's a pure delight from start to finish, and feels like a once-in-a-generation game.
The decade-long gap between Alan Wake II and its prequel has allowed its concepts to simmer in the minds of its writers and designers. The game is clearly better off for it in every way.
True survival horror is a perfect fit for Alan Wake II. The game borrows heavily from the Resident Evil games to great effect. The stress of high-risk combat and resource management bring a player closer to Saga and Alan's journey. It also gives compelling reasons to follow the delightful collect-a-thon side quests in order to bolster one's aresenal. I was morbidly delighted when some of the cult stashes had me bust out a pen and paper to do algebra problems.
The technology behind Alan Wake II is peerless. My jaw dropped as soon as I stepped into the forest of Cauldron Lake and I was rarely able to pick it back up. Path traced lighting and reflections make every tiny detail shine. Audio deserves a shout as well, with incredible binaural simulation making me swing the camera around every time I heard a twig snap off in the distance. I played through the whole game with everything cranked up and I felt like my monitor was showing me a glimpse of what AAA games will look like a decade into the future.
What will remain in conversation and stick in the memory of players the longest is undoubtedly Alan Wake II's metafiction story. It is sublimely layered and rewards careful attention. A player doesn't need to have played Alan Wake to enjoy the twists and turns in this game's narrative. On the other hand, previous experience with Remedy's stories will allow a player to recognize rich detail in every aspect of the game's story. It's a story about stories that interrogates the process of both creating and consuming media. Who should decide how the story goes: the writer or the audience? Is a creator responsible for their fandom? Can we really kill our creative darlings in permanent ways?