With Alan Wake 2 set to finally make its way out on October 27, we got the chance to not only play the game early, but also to chat with Remedy Entertainment about it as well.
At the preview event, we were given the chance to talk to game director Kyle Rowley, and Principal Narrative Designer Molly Maloney. Below is our chat with the devs where they talk about the game’s music, why it took them this long to develop a sequel and more.
- Related Reading: Alan Wake 2 Hands-On Preview – A New Story, A Darker Place
Alan Wake 2 Interview With Remedy:
MP1st – So Remedy has many made games that were thrilling, spooky, and even genuinely disturbing at times but never really swung for proper horror before, at least in our opinion. What drove the decision for Alan Wake 2 to go more horror, and how has it been a learning process for the studio?
Molly Maloney – Well, I like to joke around but I feel like Alan was always a horror game, whether the genre matched or not, so it felt like a really natural fit for Alan Wake 2. I think that in terms of it being a new genre for the studio, I do think it’s a great match for Remedy. I think Remedy is known for making strange, surreal, somewhat quirky experiences. And I think that great horror is not a tonally a one-note or it is a tonal of variants where you have ups and downs, you are scared you are having rest points. And I think that that that really works well for the studio. I think it also matches really well the story that Sam and Clay wanted to tell with this. The horror provides those downbeats that really let you have this nuanced and complex story that I think you’ll see coming through.
Kyle Rowley – Yeah, I think that from my perspective, when we were thinking about the concept for this game and kind of what we wanted to improve upon from the first game, one of the things that we kind of felt was that the story and the gameplay were kind of fighting each other and so we really wanted to kind of make sure that the story and the gameplay here we’re kind of working together to create a more cohesive experience. And you know, survival horror, I think, allows us to do that we have much more slow pacing, we can bring the camera closer to the character, we can focus more on the world-building and the narrative, and just pacing-wise, I think that the story that we wanted to tell here kind of much better blends with that kind of genre of game.
I think horror itself is quite difficult. There are many different types of horror as you know, you can have more like zombie horror or body horror, etc. We really feel like from the franchise’s perspective, leaning in on that psychological aspect, I think was very important for us. The situation that Alan finds himself in, in this kind of nightmare version of New York, allows us to kind of explore horror on a paranoia level, like not being able to trust what’s real or what’s not, being able to not trust your surroundings. So it allows us to explore that kind of focus off the horror experience. On the Saga side, we have very supernatural horror, which is kind of found grounded and the foundation is being this kind of idea that you’re investigating murders. I think that layering that supernatural element on top of that allowed us to create like very two unique experiences that complement each other very well.
MP1st – Speaking to the general tone of the game, if there were any movies or books you might recommend your players to engage with? To get the right in the right headspace for this game? What would you say those are?
Kyle Rowley – We have many. On the horror side, sure, we’re kind of like horror has been very cool from a game perspective, and we’ve had some great survival horror games that have come out recently. But on the movie side, we’ve been quite heavily influenced by the works of Harry Aster. So Hereditary and Midsummer are interesting for us, not because they’re necessarily tonally exactly the same, but because the way they tell stories, like how they’ve made their horror experiences is through the narrative and through the characters and through the situations they’ve been put into, rather than relying on for example, like just jumpscares and kind of like gore or whatever. So it’s this sense of perpetual dread that builds up over time, and I think that’s kind of like what we’re trying to aim for from our horror experience. That buildup of dread, that sense of something’s not quite right, and then the characters are put in those situations and the kind of journeys they go through. I think that was very kind of like something we’re looking into. I think House of Leaves comes up quite a lot for books.
Molly Maloney – I feel like if I just set up a watch party in it for the game, I think it would be True Detective Season One. Seven is always on my list. Some Twilight Zone episodes, fix some good ones, and maybe a bit of Twin Peaks.
MP1st – We’ve seen stories with parallel characters, where you switch back and forth before. But how have you approached this scaffolding, you know, switch-swapping characters from unique Remedy storytelling that’s rather famous at this point? And what are some of the challenges and resulting solutions you’ve gotten to wrestle with to bring that structure to life?
Molly Maloney – It’s super exciting to have two characters. When you’re structuring a story around these two storylines, it’s not two games, it’s two different parallel lines that are running and you can jump between them. That’s a really exciting challenge and opportunity. It involves basically figuring out okay, what Saga’s arc, what’s Alan’s arc? And then what are fun points to jump between the two of them, and how can they recontextualize what you’re learning on the other side? So oh, if I do this first, then what? How does that make this other beat feel? So long story short, it requires a lot of iteration, a lot of communication between the writing team between the design teams, standing it up, playing it, and then tweaking it over and over again, to make sure it feels satisfying. But it’s so fun because you get these two unique stories that are really interesting. But then how they marry and and interplay with each other creates a third story and that is the spine of the game.
Kyle Rowley – I think one of the challenges we’ve obviously had is, a lot of people have said, well, how do you pace it right, because like a lot of games do draw narratives, but they kind of forcibly switch you. Whereas in our game, you’ll see we’re kind of giving the player some agency over how they want to play. I think that was more important for us than necessarily making sure that the kind of story worked in a way. We would have written a totally different story for this game, if we had made it so that we would forcibly switch you. When we set out from the start to make it so that the player has control, that kind of drove what kind of stories we wanted to tell. As Molly said, we made sure that they kind of were almost like their own independent stories that worked independently with each other. Then found interesting ways to connect them together, in a kind of very satisfying way afterward.
Molly Maloney – It also serves a very functional purpose, which is if you’re getting really quite stressed out playing some of Alan’s sections, it’s really nice to be able to walk back. That’s not to say that Saga is not having a cakewalk over there. But you know, it’s like it provides you the opportunity to say, “okay, I’d like something different. In a horror game,” I think that’s really important. Ordinarily, I might just put down the controller and walk away, but this provides you with something else to look at. Let’s see what Saga is up to.
MP1st – What is the ratio between playing as Alan and Saga? Is it a 50/50 or?
Kyle Rowley – Yeah, it’s about 50/50. It’s important obviously that we’re creating an Alan Wake sequel, so we need to make sure we wanted to represent Alan as a character. But 50/50 felt about right for us from a pacing perspective. Alan is present in Saga’s side of the story as well, so it’s not like he’s only in the dark place that we kind of showed him in the trailers and stuff that he’s kind of also in some of those areas.
MP1st – What took so long to get an Alan Wake sequel?
Kyle Rowley – It’s a complicated question because obviously when we finished Alan Wake one we really wanted to do the sequel, and because of various different reasons, nothing ever panned out. Every time we’ve tried to create a new game It started out as Alan Wake 2, so Quantum Break had foundations that came from some ideas we wanted to do for Alan Wake 2, Control had some of the ideas that we originally were exploring to do a sequel for Alan Wake 2 and they just didn’t necessarily fit into the kind of game that we were thinking to make at the time. So we kind of just drifted in or whatever. Then after doing control or while working on control, we were like, we really, really want to find a way to do this now. The industry at the time, horror was kind of picking up, not just inside of games, but also inside of pop culture, you know, the success of control, I think has also just allowed us more freedom to kind of explore those kinds of opportunities.
Molly Maloney – I think also this idea had a lot of us really excited. I think Sam (Sam Lake, creative director) sometimes says it’s not the first version of Alan Wake 2, but it is the best version. I think it was a combination of the right idea. Obviously, Epic Games has been a great partner to us, so it’s kind of like the planets aligned and this game finally got to be made. But I think it was made when it needed to be made.
MP1st – How have you approached the music for this game? How does it compare and contrast with the first one? That one already had memorable music and set pieces like the jukebox in the diner.
Kyle Rowley – I think that across Remedies’ games, music has been important. In Alan Wake 1 we had end-of-episode sequences where we had like licensed music. The same goes for Quantum Break. Obviously in Control, we had the ashtray maze, and we tried to use music in interesting ways outside of just being music. We try and create an emotional response, and that’s definitely the case for Alan Wake 2. We’re not talking too much about what we have in store for players for this game in terms of music, but there is cool stuff. I would say we’ve taken it to the next level.
MP1st – How do you personally like to play the game?
Molly Maloney – I have obviously spent a lot of time with Saga and I love investigating. I was a fan of the first game, and so getting to spend time and Bright Falls again, spend time in Cauldron Lake, it’s so fun to poke around. I think because it’s a horror game, and not so heavy-duty action, like the first one, it really allows you to explore and thoughtfully look for those fun notes and books and different things. There’s just a lot of fun narrative items to discover. It’s kind of how I like to move through it. I find doing that in the dark place a little more stressful, as there are enemies around every corner in there. But that’s kind of how I like to do it. I’m always backtracking. And I’m looking at everything I can find.
Kyle Rowley – A lot of my time right now is spent playing it and going like, we need to fix that
MP1st – That doesn’t count!
Kyle Rowley – I haven’t had the time to play it like that, that’s what my pure focus is right now trying to make sure we ship the best game possible. I’m actually kind of looking forward to being like, okay, well, we kind of can’t change anything anymore, now I’ll just play through it. I haven’t actually even thought about like, how am I actually going to play? I’m just constantly, we need to fix this or like change this.
Molly Maloney – I think you’re gonna be like Rambo!
Kyle Rowley – Headshot! Headshot! I’m looking forward to playing in a nondeveloper way.
Alan Wake 2 will be released on the PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC this October 27.