Alan Wake

Alan Wake – A Detailed Game Assessment

Background Story

Alan Wake is a psychological thriller/survival horror shooter played from a 3^rd person perspective. The game’s central character, which the player controls, is a writer by the name of Alan Wake who has been suffering from a two year span of writer’s block. He decides to abscond with his wife to the town of Bright Falls located in the Pacific Northwest in order to rest and relax in the hopes of rejuvenating his creative spark. After arriving at the small town and interacting with many of its inhabitants, Alan and his wife drive to a house they believe they will be staying in located on a small island in the middle of Cauldron Lake. At night an argument erupts by the fact that Alice, his wife, had set up a typewriter in the cabin in hopes that Alan will be able to continue work. Frustrated by her persistence, Alan storms out of the cabin. Soon after, he hears Alice being attacked by a mysterious presence in the cabin. When he returns, he sees Alice pulled underneath the water by a mysterious Dark Presence and jumps in after her. He awakens behind the wheel of a wrecked car teetering over the edge of a cliff. As he makes his way back to town, he comes across sheets of paper that appear to be the complete version of the book he was working on before he got writer’s block. The sheets of paper seem to be prophetic as they describe events that will occur before they happen. Also, Alan is attacked by townspeople who have been engulfed by the Dark Presence. It appears that a week had passed between the cabin incident and Alan waking up in the car, in which he supposedly wrote the pages he is now discovering. Alan is swept up in a journey that leaves him questioning the reality of his situation, the possibility of his insanity, and the chance that the nightmare surrounding him might in fact be an actual presence.

“A Problem-Solving activity, approached with a playful attitude”

The most basic and reoccurring problem-solving activity addressed in the game is fighting enemies while navigating the level. Alan is equipped with two essential bad-guy fighting tools: 1) a flashlight and, 2) one of several weapons ranging from pistols to shotguns and the usual gambit. The flashlight is essential to the problem-solving due to the fact that enemies cannot be harmed by gunfire unless they have been weakened by light. Essentially, a shroud of darkness covers the enemies protecting them from harm. Alan must concentrate his flashlight on an enemy to dissipate the dark shroud before he can harm them with conventional weapons. This may seem simple, but enemies only come out at night and they often appear suddenly and in close proximity to the player. Another way of avoiding enemies and restoring health is to enter a spotlight produced by a lamppost or equivalent. Sometimes these devices are powered by generators which the player must crank before they activate. While activation will make the enemies disappear for a while, it is risky to crank the generators as is leaves you wide open to attack. It’s fun and thrilling to be running through the woods at night dodging marauding crazy-men while trying to keep your flashlight on them with the intent of blasting them to kingdom-come.

Incorporates conflict and the possibility (necessity?) of winning and losing

The main conflict in the game revolves around rescuing Alan’s wife from her imprisonment beneath Cauldron Lake and discovering the origin behind the Dark Presence. This conflict leads to the Dark Presence attacking Alan so that he can’t prevent it from escaping into the world. The game is structured in episodes reminiscent of a TV mini-series. The player is driven by the major conflict of rescuing his wife and solving the mystery of the Dark Presence which spawns the smaller conflicts with people possessed by the Dark Presence. As the game’s story has several twists, it can almost be considered winning in the players mind every time they survive long enough to witness a new development in the plot. The player loses when they die but since the game works on a checkpoint system, the player can keep trying until they win at the smaller section of the game. In its most basic sense “winning” is surviving and navigating to the end of a level.

“A closed, formal system”

*Interesting Anecdote: Alan Wake was originally conceived as an open-world environment where the player could wonder around a complete Bright Falls.

This idea was scrapped due to the kind of experience the developers wanted to convey. They decided that a linear, well-scripted series of levels would serve the story and thrilling style they hoped to portray. This is a good example of how a more closed, controlled environment can lend itself to a better experience depending on what that experience is intended to be. The levels have minor branching paths where secret items or more ammo or equipment can be found, but they are much more linear than a game like Grand Theft Auto.

The Lenses

Essential Experience: In Alan Wake, this is to create a psychological action thriller. The developers aimed to create a combination of fear, thrill, and anxiety for the player. This is why they elected to create an extremely scripted experience so they could more effectively craft their intended essential experience. The tension of having to dissipate the darkness around the enemies before damaging them also works to create the thrilling aspect critical to the essential experience.

Surprise: Surprise in Alan Wake comes from both the gameplay and the story. The surprise in the gameplay comes from the sometimes random appearance of enemies around the player. In a game that aims to generate thrills, this particularly effective. The story is one of the biggest surprise-generators because all of the mystery and plot-twists. Not only does a plot-twist create an initial surprise, but it also creates unique and unexpected set-pieces for the player to play.

Fun: The fun aspect of Alan Wake comes from emerging yourself in the character and the story. The game feels like your living in a movie or a TV series, and the gameplay is solid to complete the package. People who enjoy the game will say it’s simply fun to be scared and enjoy the suspense and mystery of the engaging plot. It’s also fun to be in the shoes of a normal person and not an intergalactic superhuman.

Curiosity: Curiosity in Alan Wake both drives the player to continue playing and to explore side paths. Most of the dangerous gameplay occurs during nighttime sequences. It’s both safer to stick to the beaten path, but curiosity will often drive the player to wonder off into the woods in search of the games secrets. The player is rewarded for curiosity with ammo, batteries for the flashlight, and pages from the mysterious novel. All carry a good endogenous value.

Endogenous Value: The valuable items in Alan Wake are ammo, batteries, flare equipment, and novel pages. Ammo is self-explanatory: without ammo it’s nearly impossible to kill enemies. Also, as a survival horror game, ammo is not in abundant supply and the player must choose their shots carefully. Batteries power the flashlight. These are arguably more important than ammo since without light, enemies are invulnerable. What would not be valuable in other games is valuable here; flare equipment (both flares and flare guns) inflict major damage on enemies and if uses strategically can be extremely useful. Finally, novel pages possess a kind of intellectual value. Not only do they give you glimpses in what is about to happen, but also provide looks into different characters and help the player understand the story as a whole.

Problem-Solving: While there are more complex problems in the game, most go back to the root of what was mentioned above. The combination of flashlight and convention weapons must be used together to outwit and defeat the Dark Presence.