By Dean Moses
Perhaps considered the kings of horror from two very different mediums, two directors met on June 13th to discuss the long-awaited sequel to Alan Wake and the inspiration behind the most anticipated video games of the year.
Moderated by Mike Flanagan (known for directing Doctor Sleep and the Haunting of Hill House) sat down at the SVA Theatre with Sam Lake, the Director of Remedy Entertainment (responsible for the creation of Alan Wake and Max Payne) to discuss the world of Alan Wake and what to expect in its sequel—a survival horror game set to be released on October 17th on the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.
Originally, Alan Wake was released in 2010, and now 13 years later Lake announced at the Tribeca Festival that although it has taken a long time to get the game off the ground, it will be hitting the shelves this fall and will include live action scenes and more surprises.
Alan Wake holds a special place in many gamers’ hearts. Its combination of unique gameplay features and engrossing storytelling worthy of a novel endeared itself to fans, leaving them clambering for a sequel. For over a decade fans have only seen a remaster of the beloved classic, but now according to Lake the wait is over.
“When I look at Alan waiting, I think it’s a story about duality. It’s about light and dark and external light and dark, internal light and dark. And you’ve given us a hero in Allen, who is flawed, and who is confronting a lot of his own darkness internally, and you’ve created a metaphor that we all get to participate in by having him confront it externally. That is the kind of character work I think that makes effective horror,” Flanagan said, gushing over the opportunity to have an in-depth horror conversation with Lake.
“Alan Wake, somehow he’s kind of the most precious character to me. And that’s why I was spending 10 years on and off trying to see what happened,” Lake said. “It is a sequel, but at the same time it is something completely new. And I do think that time affects it. At Remedy we tried to get the sequel started many times, the first time right after finishing the first day. It wasn’t the right time for it. And then we created Quantum Break, which is a time travel story,” Lake said.
Alan Wake follows the protagonist as he fights to rescue his beloved wife from a strange evil. A writer, Wake travels to Bright Falls, a fictional Washington town for a vacation with his wife. While attempting to garner some inspiration to begin another book, his wife is taken by an unknown dark force leaving him in a desperate battle to rescue her. In the first iteration, Wake
literally battles the darkness, using his flashlight, flares, flashbangs, and even flare guns in order to overcome enemies possessed by the darkness. Drawn forward with a narration by Wake that would make Stephen King proud, players are thrust into an intriguing and entertaining world.
Alan Wake 2 finds Wake trapped in a dark nightmare fighting to flee it by constantly writing stories. Joining Wake in the macabre tale are FBI agents who are involved in solving a murder mystery only to find themselves trapped in the nightmare as well. Lake also adds that there will be two playable characters, splitting the experience in half. One as a female FBI Agent working a case and the other as Wake himself.
“You are pretty much playing each character (half of the experience). She comes in and his work, a case to be sold but then we have a horror story as we had in the first game that stops from true. And she’s mentioned in the total story. She’s drawn into that and so very fast. It becomes very, very personal to her an as much as this is fighting the supernatural forces of darkness and solving that mystery. It is about solving the mystery of herself,” Lake said.
During the hour-long conversation, it was clear to see that both Flanagan and Lake draw from similar influences of horror, such as the master himself Stephen King, Twin Peaks as well as detective noir.
“What are some of the biggest things that have influenced the way you’d like to tell stories because you focus on character and atmosphere over cheap scares, over kind of the trappings of genre. And that’s something that I admire and respect a great deal because that’s something that I’ve aspired to try to do in my career, and I feel like, I’m assuming, we have a lot of the same heroes and influences,” Flanagan inquired.
“I love when things are unknowable and scary in that way. I love cycle psychological thrillers. I love to go deep into the character in places that the character doesn’t recognize or know about what they fear, and that then comes out externalized into often supernatural horror. To me that kind of idea keeps it’s being this kind of a recurring starting point for building a character and building an interesting forward character who can be at the heart of the story,” Lake responded.
Photo by Dean Moses
