When the first Alan Wake game was released back in May 2010 for Xbox, most gamers (including this guy) thought we’d be seeing a sequel soon thereafter given the game’s success. As it turns out, that wasn’t the case, and here we are 13 years after, and we’re just getting Alan Wake 2.

If you’re wondering what took Remedy this long to make the sequel, you’re not the only one. Speaking to MP1st during a preview event, we asked Remedy why it took so long to get a sequel to the first game. Alan Wake 2 game director Kyle Rowley and Principal Narrative Designer Molly Maloney both answered that question.

• Related Reading: Alan Wake 2 Hands-On Preview – A New Story, A Darker Place

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.

Hopefully, assuming Alan Wake 2 lives up to the hype, we won’t have to wait as long for the third game in the series.

Stay tuned to our full chat with Remedy hitting the site soon.