Launching on October 27th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC, Alan Wake 2 is the long-awaited sequel to Remedy Entertainment’s cult-classic series. It’s bigger, bolder and way more terrifying than the original, but what changed after all these years? How does Alan Wake 2 evolve the formula and take it in new directions?
Let’s look at 15 of the biggest differences between Alan Wake 1 and 2, from their gameplay and story-telling mechanics to the overall scale and development time.
Psychological Thriller vs Survival Horror
Alan Wake has elements of horror as the writer extraordinaire was involved in various supernatural affairs, but it felt closer to a psychological thriller and mystery. There’s nothing wrong with that, but with Alan Wake 2, Remedy is leaning much more into survival horror and even adding body horror into the mix (no dismemberment, though). It touts the sequel as being its scariest game to date – interesting, given the bar thus far, but we’ll wait and see how it pans out.
Playable Characters
The first game only had Alan Wake, as he ventured through Bright Falls trying to make sense of what was happening. There were allies and other characters, but you only controlled Wake. The sequel upends that by having two protagonists – Wake and newcomer Saga Anderson, an FBI agent who arrives in Bright Falls to investigate some murders.
Inevitably, she gets caught up in a story that Wake is writing. After a certain point, players can switch between the two characters at any time during the story to experience their perspective. As for how the game is split between Saga and Wake, game director Kyle Rowley says it’s about “50/50.”
New and Returning Characters
Some characters like Alex Casey, who was only referenced in the first game and voiced pages from The Sudden Stop, one of the manuscripts, will appear in Alan Wake 2. Remedy teased other characters in The Dark Place, but it’s unknown if Alice Wake will appear. One thing is for sure: Robert Nightingale, who pursued Wake in the previous game as an FBI agent, returns, but he’s now a monster and an “agent” of The Dark Presence.
The Dark Place
As an alternate dimension and the “ocean” in which the real world is but an island, The Dark Place has existed for a long time. It’s a massive, constantly shifting location and can manifest concepts, ideas and characters. Wake accesses The Dark Place at various points in the first game before ending up trapped in the dimension to save his wife, Alice. The Signal and The Writer DLC sees him dealing with an irrational version of himself throughout an alternate version of Bright Falls, eventually reconciling and writing a new story to try and escape The Dark Place.
By contrast, The Dark Place in Alan Wake 2 is a surreal version of New York City, where Wake wanders around and meets characters from his books (including Alex Casey). While gorgeous in its lighting and shadows, this version of The Dark Place still has several dangers to beware of.
Inspirations and Influences
It’s no secret that the first Alan Wake took inspiration from many games. While many of those influences are apparent in the sequel, Alan Wake 2 also looked at Resident Evil 2 Remake. There are also influences from Silent Hill, per Rowley in an interview with VGC.
Gameplay Changes
The first game’s core mechanic involved using light, usually flashlights, to break down the darkness shielding the Taken, the main enemies. By focusing the flashlight’s beam, enemy shields would break faster, but its energy would deplete quickly. Collecting batteries would keep the flashlight topped off.
These mechanics return in Alan Wake 2, and you’re still aiming and dodging in the third person. However, there are fewer combat encounters, per Sam Lake, with a focus on more variety. Speaking to IGN First, he said, “We just realized that in survival horror, the pacing is slower. [Alan Wake 2] leans much more on building up to an encounter and then having more strategic resource management and all.
“So, we chose to give more variety in combat but also have less combat. Instead, we’ll have more moments to do things with the story.” The focus, instead, is on paranoia – some enemies may appear but not attack right away, for instance.
New Mechanics
In terms of new mechanics, Alan Wake 2 takes a more investigative approach to its gameplay, best seen in Saga’s Mind Place. It’s an entirely separate space consisting of her thoughts, deductions, clues, character profiles and a board linking everything together that can help players as they investigate the mystery.
Wake has the Writer’s Room and a Plot Board, discerning the plot of each chapter into a sequence of events and adjusting things accordingly to progress. While the manuscript pages return, sections have been edited or scratched out. Who did this and why? You have to keep playing to find out.
More Open Areas
Alan Wake 1 is a pretty linear experience. You could collect manuscript pages, often foreshadowing upcoming events, collect thermos flasks and discover TV and radio shows that provide more information on the town. However, from beginning to end, there isn’t much freedom when exploring Bright Falls.
Alan Wake 2 offers “slightly more open” areas per game director Kyle Rowley, but you can now freely explore them, like the forests around Cauldron Lake or the Diner in Bright Falls, discovering more of the world in the process. It’s also possible to revisit locations in a playthrough. Again, this doesn’t seem like a massive open world, but there are at least options to go off the beaten path.
Development Time
Measuring the “development time” for the first Alan Wake is difficult because it wasn’t originally the game we see today. All the inspirations were there when Remedy started making concepts after Max Payne 2’s release in 2003. However, the plan was for a sandbox-style open world with a dynamic day and night cycle and survival mechanics where players fought for their lives when the sun went down. It was showcased at E3 2005, but plans didn’t pan out for various reasons. When it was finally released in May 2010, Alan Wake 1 was a far different game than initially planned.
Alan Wake 2, by comparison, is a game that went through several concepts. It was originally pitched to Microsoft, who didn’t want to make a sequel and eventually turned into Quantum Break. Remedy returned to work on the property around 2017, but plans didn’t pan out, and it was ultimately busy with other projects like Control (we’ll pretend that Crossfire FPS on Xbox doesn’t exist).
Creator Sam Lake and his team continued working on ideas, dubbing it “Project Big Fish.” The total development time for the current version is around four years, and, as Lake has stated, it’s the concept that he was most happy to have gone with.
Remedy’s Biggest Project to Date
Alan Wake wasn’t a small game per se, but its overall scope and scale are fairly contained compared to the likes of Control. Alan Wake 2 is Remedy’s biggest project yet, per Sam Lake. It’s in keeping with his previous declaration about the story being a “monster” with more pages written than any other title under the developer. Given that this was in July 2022, the script has likely grown even larger in the interim.
Ray Tracing
Alan Wake 1 and 2 both use Remedy’s Northlight Engine and just as the sequel looks stunning by today’s standards, so did the first game when it was released in 2010 for Xbox 360. That difference in generations and available technology also means that Alan Wake 2 will feature ray tracing support.
It’s not like this is a first for the developer’s games – Control used ray tracing to excellent effect. With Alan Wake 2, it should be interesting to see how the developer applies its learning (while hopefully still maintaining strong performance on Xbox Series X/S and PS5).
Digital-Only
While Alan Wake 1 had the benefit of digital and physical versions, Alan Wake 2 is digital-only, which means it will retail for $60 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S (as opposed to the $70 tag many big titles are embracing) and $50 on PC. Remedy opted not to release a physical version since that would require a download and would not “make for a great experience.”
Later, game director Kyle Rowley told Eurogamer that going digital only allowed for more “time to polish the game. Like, a significant amount of weeks, actually. Because otherwise, the game that goes on the disc obviously has to be playable without a patch. We didn’t want to release something we weren’t proud of, basically, and we didn’t want players to play. So hopefully, this way, we can give you a better version of the game.”
Playtime
When it comes to playtime, Alan Wake is in line with most linear Xbox 360 titles at the time. You could finish it in about 11 hours when focusing on the story (14 hours or so when doing extra content) but going on a completionist run and finding everything could take around 27 hours. Remedy has expanded on the length of its games since then, with Control being its longest experience yet, requiring almost 12 hours for the story and roughly 19 hours with side content. Going on a completionist run bumps that up to 29 hours or so.
With Alan Wake 2, Remedy aims to go even longer than Control, with Sam Lake saying it would be over 20 hours long when speaking to PCGamesN. That could include the story and side content, but how much longer remains to be seen.
Connections to the Remedy-verse vs a Standalone Experience
While Remedy has embraced the idea of a connected universe between its franchises, it wasn’t always like this back. Alan Wake 1 had several references to Max Payne, including Alex Casey, a fictional character created by Wake who was eventually killed off (in a not-so-subtle nod to Remedy wanting to move on from the third-person shooter series). However, it was still a self-contained story, with no direct connections to the developer’s other works.
That was before Remedy acquired the rights to Alan Wake and began tying it in with its supernatural shooter Control, as seen in AWE. As a result, Alan Wake 2 is part of the Remedy-verse and will even help set up the story for Control 2.
Free DLC
Remedy has already confirmed two expansions for Alan Wake 2, much like with the first game and Control. However, unlike its predecessor, it’s also getting some DLC separate from the expansions that will be free. Speaking at EGX Theater, Same Lake says there will be “pretty significant” with more details set to be revealed after the game’s launch. Will it be something akin to Control’s Expeditions, free for all players after launch, or perhaps New Game Plus? We’ll have to wait for more details.
