It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Remedy had started work on a sequel to their cult classic, Alan Wake following its release in 2010. The game wasn’t a runaway hit, but it fared well enough for them to want to explore what Alan Wake 2 might look like with an early prototype.

This concept footage is just that, a glimpse of what could’ve been, had Microsoft decided to greenlight a sequel.

This never-before-seen prototype comes from Polygon, which recently sat down with Remedy’s chief creative officer Sam Lake.

According to Lake, pre-production of Alan Wake 2 kicked off almost immediately after the first game’s release in 2010.

“Near the end of Alan Wake, we were sitting down and talking about the sequel and where we should be taking it, on a detailed level,” Lake explained. “More or less straight from getting Alan Wake shipped, we were working on a sequel and planning on a sequel.”

This atmospheric prototype only scratches the surface of what Remedy was planning for the Alan Wake universe, which they saw as something far bigger than the eponymous writer.

“Definitely what we have mapped out is a longer thing than the first game and a sequel; there is more to it,” Lake said. “In many ways, we see the universe as a bigger thing. Alan Wake is a very central character, but we have other characters around him like [friend and agent Barry Wheeler] and his wife Alice and Sheriff Sarah Breaker and other characters there.”

Currently, the future of Alan Wake is an uncertain one. It might get a sequel, it might not. The first game may come to the Xbox One, or maybe it won’t.

Whatever happens, this rare in-depth look at the thought process behind a sequel that many of us still want gives us a better idea of what the game might look like, should it ever see the light of day.