This is a complicated review to write at the ass-end of a binge of every Remedy game I could lay my hands on. Alan Wake II would have been better as an introduction to the Remedy-verse rather than a finale (ewwww, 'Remedy Connected Universe'. Makes me gag just to type it). You go through a fun-house enough times and you know what to expect, even if it is shinier and newer each time the carnival comes to town.
Quantum Break is when this studio showed their hand and admitted that they would probably rather make TV shows than video games. They likely took a few lessons from that experience and got less literal about it in subsequent work, but Control and Alan Wake II still adopt most from that medium and it's clear that the rhythms and paces of the last decade of 'Peak TV' are what inspire and motivate Sam Lake and Co. the most.
I guess that's what I find kind of tasty about the Twin Peaks and True Detective influences: This game takes a lot from those worlds in terms of setting, style, and tropes. But where those shows, especially The Return, defiantly ravaged audience expectations of what TV could/should deliver, Wake instead wallows in the worst tendencies of a Netflix sci-fi show: meta-textual gobbledegook, cut-to-commercial pacing without the commercials, 'world building' as a means to keep the show going on and on, into syndication, forever and ever. And of course, the worst: scenes and set-pieces seemingly lab-grown as chum for the social media waters. This is probably best exemplified by the meme-able musical theater number that launched a thousand Polygon articles.
That's not to say that it's poorly executed, quite the opposite; this could be in the running for the best art direction ever in video gaming. So when faced with the choice of playing more Wake vs. watching one of the second-rate seasons of True Detective it mostly resembles, I'd probably still pick the game! The FMV-fronted effects they do here and in Control never get old, and I think this is one of the few games whose fidelity and beauty made me feel like I'm not a complete piece of shit for buying an Xbox Series X. Survival horror gameplay was also a killer call for this setting, though it was bold to basically copy/paste what Capcom has been doing with RE of late.
I think Remedy has the talent and capabilities to make the bat-shit, weird, audience and shareholder-unfriendly AAA game of my dreams, but their ongoing success, and the fact that, well, the AAA industry exists as it does, means that such a game can only ever exist in my Mind Place.
Quantum Break is when this studio showed their hand and admitted that they would probably rather make TV shows than video games. They likely took a few lessons from that experience and got less literal about it in subsequent work, but Control and Alan Wake II still adopt most from that medium and it's clear that the rhythms and paces of the last decade of 'Peak TV' are what inspire and motivate Sam Lake and Co. the most.
I guess that's what I find kind of tasty about the Twin Peaks and True Detective influences: This game takes a lot from those worlds in terms of setting, style, and tropes. But where those shows, especially The Return, defiantly ravaged audience expectations of what TV could/should deliver, Wake instead wallows in the worst tendencies of a Netflix sci-fi show: meta-textual gobbledegook, cut-to-commercial pacing without the commercials, 'world building' as a means to keep the show going on and on, into syndication, forever and ever. And of course, the worst: scenes and set-pieces seemingly lab-grown as chum for the social media waters. This is probably best exemplified by the meme-able musical theater number that launched a thousand Polygon articles.
That's not to say that it's poorly executed, quite the opposite; this could be in the running for the best art direction ever in video gaming. So when faced with the choice of playing more Wake vs. watching one of the second-rate seasons of True Detective it mostly resembles, I'd probably still pick the game! The FMV-fronted effects they do here and in Control never get old, and I think this is one of the few games whose fidelity and beauty made me feel like I'm not a complete piece of shit for buying an Xbox Series X. Survival horror gameplay was also a killer call for this setting, though it was bold to basically copy/paste what Capcom has been doing with RE of late.
I think Remedy has the talent and capabilities to make the bat-shit, weird, audience and shareholder-unfriendly AAA game of my dreams, but their ongoing success, and the fact that, well, the AAA industry exists as it does, means that such a game can only ever exist in my Mind Place.