Alan Wake

Telling the story of a frustrated writer who suddenly sees himself as one of his creations, Alan Wake is a great horror game that successfully operates under the logic of a nightmare, blurring fantasy and reality through the veil of horror.

Author of a couple of best-sellers, Alan Wake has been unable to write anything for almost two years, and because he’s getting increasingly frustrated with his writer’s block, his wife Alice decides to go with him on a vacation to a small, isolated town in Washington, called Bright Falls. They are to stay at a cabin on a lake, but as soon as they arrive, they start to quarrel and when Wake storms out of the cabin, furious at her, the lights go out and he suddenly hears Alice screaming. He returns just in time to catch a glimpse of his wife falling into the lake. He jumps after her and… wakes up in a car crash in the middle of the woods.

The game opens with a dream sequence where the writer is chased down by his own creations, with his characters appearing as shadowy figures hellbent on getting him. Here’s the thing: they are not only trying to physically harm Wake but also expose his failures as a writer, making him believe he’s a fraud – which may hint that the darkness that envelops them may be the manifestation of his repressed insecurities. Wake’s most valuable weapon here is a flashlight, since the creatures are immune to damage until we illuminate them. Cementing light as a symbol of safety, the writer’s goal is also to get to a distant lighthouse, where the darkness won’t be able to reach him.

This intro may not be subtle in establishing the dichotomy between light and dark that structures the game, but it certainly is effective. So much so that immediately after arriving at the local diner in Bright Falls, we can sense something sinister is about to happen as soon as we spot a badly lit corridor. To hammer the point home, there’s a lady trembling at the corridor’s entrance as well, urging us to be cautious of the dark.

There’s a bit of fun in the writing of Alan Wake, especially at the beginning. The dream sequence, for example, ends with Alan Wake’s wife telling him, “Alan, wake up.” It also opens with a Stephen King quote (“Stephen King once wrote that ‘Nightmares exist outside of logic and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear’”), which makes it amusing that the first man Wake meets in Bright Falls is called Maine. Even the town’s name is playful, suggesting we are in a place where light vanishes.

The game’s very structure is playful as well, mirroring that of a television series, being divided into episodes with a “Previously on Alan Wake” segment playing before each one starts. Alan Wake is that kind of horror that is more weird than scary. This is why we often come across TVs playing a show in the vein of Twilight Zone, here called Night Springs. These are wonderful shorts – clocking in about 3 to 5 minutes – that are played in live-action, introducing elements that will be present in the game’s story, such as doppelgangers, and the blending of fantasy and reality.

Sometimes, instead of a horror show, the TVs will display Alan Wake himself talking to the camera, speaking of recent events as if they were a story he is writing. The fact that, on the TV, Wake appears in live action instead of a 3D model is an ingenious touch, as it makes the reality displayed on the TV feel more real than the one we are currently controlling. There’s a fuzzy dream logic permeating the narrative, after all, making Wake unsure of what is happening around him. He believes his wife fell into the lake, for example, but when he went after her, he woke up in a car crash in the middle of the woods, without knowing how and when he got there: space and time have become a blur to him.

At first, he can’t even be sure that the shadowy figures that appear at night really exist. While most people scoff at the thought, Wake eventually meets some who show signs of having had odd experiences, such as a prisoner in Episode 2, who is afraid of the dark and swears that the man he attacked the other night was not himself. The elusiveness of reality, where we can’t ascertain that what is happening is really happening, is a driving force in Alan Wake’s narrative: it’s not a coincidence, then, that one of the antagonists try to gaslight the writer, making him doubt his memory, the reliability of his senses, and, therefore, his own sanity.

To make reality even more intangible, Alan Wake keeps stumbling into pages of a manuscript he never wrote, even though it’s signed by him. And the words on each page are prophetic, commenting on the things that have just happened or will happen soon: it’s as if the people of Bright Falls and Alan Wake himself have now become characters in one of his stories. In a curious touch, there are spelling mistakes on some of the pages (prophesy being used as a noun, for example), suggesting that Alan Wake may be in need of a better editor.

These manuscript pages make for a great collectible, since each one we find in the environment gives us more insight into the events and characters of the story, revealing their hidden motivations and secret thoughts. Sometimes, they even warn us of the dangers that are coming, letting us know beforehand when a jump scare will occur or a strong enemy will appear. On the other end of the spectrum, regarding collectibles, are the many bottles of coffee we can find, which even though essential to any writer, do absolutely nothing in the game. In other words, they are just useless things to be collected in the game – and, unfortunately, there are a hundred of them.

Alan Wake is titled after its main character, so who really is Alan Wake? His best friend and agent, Barry, jokes that he’s all surly and mysterious, and complains that Wake takes his friends for granted. Alice also feels “left in the dark” – a perfect choice of words – and worries that her husband is becoming violent. We can witness that: when he discovers that she brought a typewriter to the cabin for him to write, he immediately lashes out at her and storms out of the place. There’s also a scene where Wake leaves a certain antagonist behind to be taken by the darkness, and after locking the door, he simply smiles: there’s an edge to Alan Wake, a violent predisposition that makes him dangerous.

He also dismisses his fans, such as Rose, the bartender of the local diner, who is ecstatic to meet him even though he’s clearly just annoyed at her. It becomes clear that Alan Wake is a man who pushes all the people who love him away. His ego may also be at full display by the game’s structure: if he’s the author of this story, writing the terrible events that are happening, it’s telling that he chose himself to be the protagonist, the one with the task to save everyone, especially Alice.

Alan Wake’s story is ultimately about guilt, revolving around a vain attempt at a second chance to make things right. Alan Wake is trying to write fiction to change reality, crafting a story to correct his mistakes and save his wife. Alice was taken right after they quarreled and he left her alone: he fears that he is to blame for her fate. Alice suffers from Nyctophobia too, an extreme fear of the dark, which means that the monster – the eldritch darkness that may be haunting Bright Falls, possessing its people – is a representation of her greatest fears. After all, darkness for Alice “was something with a mind of its own, something malicious and malign. For her, things changed when they were wrapped in darkness, they turned into something else, something foreign, and nothing was safe or innocent anymore.” In other words, despite being trapped in his own story, the nightmare Alan Wake is living is actually his wife’s.

The majority of the game takes place at night, in the foggy woods that surround Bright Falls, where the shadowy figures can appear out of nowhere, hidden in the darkness behind the trees or in the thickness of the fog. The combat loop is very straightforward: we aim the flashlight at the Taken, as they are called, until a flashy effect indicates that they have finally become vulnerable to gunfire, and then we shoot them with pistols, rifles, or shotguns. We can “charge” the flashlight to make it brighter – essential if there are several enemies coming at once – but it quickly drains its battery, leaving Wake vulnerable if depleted. The Taken can also materialize out of nowhere, and they often come in groups, surrounding Wake and attacking all at once – the difficulty usually arises precisely from their position, since we can’t aim the flashlight in two different directions at the same time. To balance things up, we are giving flares that fend off the creatures for a short time, and flag grenades that simply dissolve the Taken with their sudden bright light.

The eldritch darkness, however, doesn’t limit itself to possessing only people. Any object in the environment can also be taken by it, such as chairs, cars, logs, rocks, and barrels. The resulting unpredictability about what can suddenly become hostile generates one of the best action sequences in the game: the amazing fight on a farm against a huge tractor.

Even though the scenery rarely changes too much between episodes, each one still tries to make the action feel distinct through specific set pieces and context. One time, Wake will be running away from cops in the woods, without the means to defend himself, another, he will be assisting a mysterious man, flashing light at the Taken so the guy can dispatch them with his gun.

Finally, there are also some light environmental puzzles scattered throughout. Early on, for example, the stairs leading out of a logging camp are broken, so Wake must find a generator to turn on a machine that will let him move the logs to form a bridge for him to cross. The flashlight is also useful to reveal hidden signs in the environment, such as graffiti pointing to the location of supply caches.

Alan Wake’s story only falters with one of the antagonists (the FBI agent Nightingale, who is after Wake), which only makes sense when we find the respective manuscript pages – and, even with them, he remains underdeveloped. And, from a gameplay perspective, the ending can also feel anticlimactic, lacking a final confrontation.

Despite these small issues, Alan Wake remains an excellent horror game that excels in developing a fascinating protagonist while building a strange atmosphere that is both playful and oppressive.

April 25, 2024.