There’s no shortage of author surrogates in horror fiction. From Stephen King’s numerous fictional writers to the self-insert protagonists of H.P. Lovecraft, this has always been an extremely popular trope, but I don’t think it’s a particularly bad one. Most authors are at their best when writing about what they know, so why not tell stories about storytellers? When used well, these characters can even be more than just a point of view, with their interaction with fiction becoming the heart of the narrative. One of my favorite examples of this is Remedy’s Alan Wake, a game that I consider to be a shining example of the power of interactive storytelling, and one hell of a love-letter to the horror genre.
For those unfamiliar with the game, Alan Wake is a 2010 survival-horror title originally released on the Xbox 360. The game chronicles the struggles of the titular mystery writer Alan Wake as he and his wife travel to Bright Falls, Washington in order to deal with a bad case of writer’s block. Unfortunately for the struggling author, this secluded town has a dark history of swallowing up artists and destroying their lives, something that Wake soon discovers when a reality-altering entity kidnaps his wife and takes over his mind.
One week later, Wake finds himself with amnesia while being pursued by poltergeists, murderous birds, and possessed shadow-people. Arming himself with a flashlight and weapons manifested from a prophetic manuscript that he doesn’t remember writing, Wake attempts to solve the mystery of Bright Falls’ enigmatic past and defeat the eldritch entity that lies deep within Cauldron Lake.
In practice, this means that players explore the town through a series of episodic missions, encountering strange characters, lost manuscript pages, and hordes of the “Taken” (former townsfolk corrupted by the Dark Presence). In a clever twist, most of the games’ enemies are invulnerable until you wear them down with your battery-powered flashlight, resulting in an added level of resource management when dealing with foes. While the game’s fast-paced combat and thrilling set-pieces make it feel more like an atmospheric third-person shooter rather than a traditional survival-horror title, the thematic elements make this one of the best horror experiences of the 7th console generation, and the clear result of a passion project.
Sam Lake (creative director of Remedy and the literal face of the Max Payne franchise) originally envisioned Alan Wake as an ambitious open-world survival game, with Bright Falls designed to be fully explorable as players dealt with side missions, collectibles, and dynamic enemy encounters. Due to a fast-approaching deadline and fatal performance issues (some of which would only be resolved with the eventual PC port in 2012), the game was eventually reworked into a more focused episodic adventure in order to preserve the story.
Luckily for us, these story elements are what makes Alan Wake stand out, with a respectable pedigree of narrative inspirations backing up an already-engaging mystery. Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft are mentioned throughout the game (the opening cutscene actually begins with a quote from King), but media like Mark Z. Danielewski’s revolutionary House of Leaves and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks are also referenced, making for an enjoyable smorgasbord of metatextual storytelling.
Facing enemies that could have come straight out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and flocks of Hitchcockian killer birds, the player eventually realizes that these moments are more than just casual references, as the intertextual elements of the narrative slowly become a driving force in the game’s plot. As the story goes on, we realize that Wake is weaponizing genre fiction in order to combat the existential horrors of the beyond, with the plot musing on the real-world cost of scary-stories and why we need them.
While this would have been entertaining enough as a movie or TV show, videogames are uniquely suited to meta elements due to the addition of another essential character (namely you, the player). Games like Metal Gear Solid 2 and even Hotline Miami take advantage of their interactive elements in order to question reality, and Alan Wake does this really well. At a certain point in the story, it’s even implied that Wake might be writing you playing him so that he may achieve his goals.
In fact, the story justifies a lot of the title’s game-y elements, from Wake describing his unlikely finding of random weapon caches and convenient passageways to his newfound action-hero bravado despite never having shot anyone before. This all comes together to form a unique interactive experience with only a handful of imperfections.
Even with all these genre references and elements of cosmic horror, Alan Wake is surprisingly devoid of in-game frights. The shooting is consistently fun, but once you master the dodge mechanics and hoard a certain amount of batteries, the Taken start to feel more like a trivial nuisance rather than terrifying obstacles. The Dark Presence itself is also a bit too vague to be more than a conceptual threat, but Remedy’s unique cinematic flare makes it easy to overlook these blemishes.
Testing the waters before diving head-first into hybrid productions like Quantum Break (originally meant to be an Alan Wake sequel) and Control (which actively references the Bright Falls incident), Alan Wake features some live-action elements that further flesh out the story and setting. You can actually find and watch full episodes of a fictional Twilight-Zone-inspired TV show called “Night Springs” within the game world, and Remedy actually commissioned a prequel Web-Series alongside a couple of books and comics in order to promote the game. All this supplemental material is just further proof that the developers were just as passionate about creating this story as the fans are in dissecting it.
The high production value extends to the character-work and performances, with Matthew Porretta‘s compelling narration and Ilkka Villi‘s stoic demeanor bringing Alan to life as a believable protagonist. The soundtrack also kicks ass, featuring licensed hits and a handful of original songs that actually exist within the game world, affecting the story. This all culminates in a surprisingly moving (albeit tragic) finale that I highly recommend readers experience for themselves before reading the rest of this article.
While the end of the main game sees Wake trapped within the Dark Place after having contained the evil of Cauldron Lake, the character would return in a couple of DLC episodes and a bizarre standalone title dubbed Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. While the DLC merely establishes that Wake must continue to use his writing skills to keep the Dark Presence trapped, American Nightmare is a different beast altogether. Caught in a Donnie-Darko-esque time-loop, Wake becomes entangled in an over-the-top episode of Night Springs as he attempts to thwart an evil doppelganger from taking his place in the real world.
These additions may have been a fun distraction for fans, especially the tongue-in-cheek nihilism of American Nightmare, but they mostly teased a sequel that never really came to fruition. It was only a decade after the original game that Control would offer us the concrete promise of a follow-up through its AWE add-on (which features Wake as a prominent character, with Porretta and Villi reprising their role), though it remains to be seen how exactly this will pan out.
Even if we never get a true sequel, I honestly appreciate the idea of a troubled author trapped in eternal limbo, being forced to write forever in order to fight back the dark. In a way, Wake’s predicament reminds me of H.P. Lovecraft’s highly underrated The Music of Erich Zann, a short story where an aging violist is forced to perform his art every night in order to keep the eldritch forces of the universe at bay. Wake may have met a more merciful fate than Zann, but I think both of these stories carry a universal truth about how we perceive art and those who make it.
That’s why I think Alan Wake is still worth revisiting even over a decade later. While bigger (and arguably better) games have come and gone since this tale was first told, Alan Wake still serves as a testament to the potential of videogame storytelling and remains a landmark in horror gaming. Times may have changed, but it’s nice to know that Wake is still out there somewhere, writing to keep the fabric of the universe intact. Though I have a strange feeling that we’ll be returning to Bright Falls soon enough…