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June 11, 2009 | 9:11 PM PST
What the Game's About
Alan Wake was one more E3 absence away from being vaporware as far I was concerned. We've been hearing rumblings about this game for nearly five years, the gradually fading interest intermittently recharged by the odd release of some moody new screenshots, and yet in all this time the most the developers have been willing to share about the project are buzzwords and generalities like 'cinematic gameplay' and 'psychological thriller'. Enticing words for fans of a medium that is still teetering on the cusp of legitimate storytelling, but utterly meaningless in the context of trying to figure out the specifics of how the game was supposed to actually play. Just what the hell kind of game is this really? Now I know. Now I'm excited. Even in an unfinished state, Alan Wake conjures a unique guttural reaction that refuses to release its hold.
What's Hot
The underlying goal of any psychological thriller is to get the audience thinking about and questioning everything that takes place, if not from the outset then by the ending. Just go rent any of David Fincher's early films and you'll get the gist pretty quickly. From what I've seen, the story that Remedy has put together for Alan Wake seems like it has to the goods to suck players in and keep them guessing. The titular character is a writer that has gone on vacation with his wife in hopes of getting over a bout of writer's block, but when his wife suddenly disappears, a supernatural presence starts taking over the world around him, and everyone talks about a book he can't even remember writing as if it's the key to all this insanity, well, his vacation gets a little more interesting than anticipated. I came up with about a hundred different questions over the course of the 20 minute private demo, questions like how are these crazy events related to Alan's writing, what's the significance of the recurring themes of light, darkness and sleep, and is any of this real or is Alan just going insane?
Remedy is combining a variety of story-telling techniques with top-tier presentation values to create the kind of moody atmosphere that's necessary for eliciting those feelings of unease and paranoia. As with Remedy's last project, the Max Payne series, the main character narrates the action as events unfold, while the player still has full control of the action. The melodramatic execution of the device in Max Payne helped sell the notion that players were playing through a schlocky B-movie but in Alan Wake the delivery is much more restrained and professional. Alan's voiceovers add dramatic weight to certain scenes and significantly enhanced the feeling of urgency as he pursued Rusty and his attacker. It's surprising that more games haven't tried to replicate this feature, because it's actually a very effective and unintrusive way of guiding players through the experience.
Most games that attempt to use foreshadowing to elicit suspense and dread fail miserably because their lack of subtlety makes the telegraphed events feel predictable, but from what I saw in the demo, Remedy is doing a fine job of implementing the classic literary device. When Alan finds pages from the manuscript that he can't remember writing, he reads the content aloud as words and images flash across the screen in a real-time cutscene. In the case of the demo, the manuscript revealed that something bad was about to attack a character named Rusty. The game doesn't tell you what was attacking or how the altercation would end, only that it was mean and Rusty would shoot off a few rounds to defend himself. I had just enough information to let my imagination run wild before I approached Rusty's wrecked cabin and heard those shots ring out. Alan ran inside just in time to hear Rusty screaming for help as he was dragged out of his home by the unseen attacker.
Light and darkness play a huge role in the game, not only from an aesthetic standpoint, but from a narrative and gameplay perspective as well. Bright Falls is a beautiful Northwestern town surrounded by serene wilderness, but some astutely applied shadow, mist and gloom make this vacation paradise feel like a nightmarish labyrinth at night. The presentation values are top-shelf stuff, and it's easy to get sucked into a game that looks and sounds this good. Remedy has opted not to give players a true day and night cycle so that they can control the experience to maximize the emotional output. During the daylight, players will spend most their time exploring the town of Bright Falls, searching for clues and interacting with the townsfolk in a manner similar to most adventure games. Once the sun sets, the dark presence has free reign to take over people, animals and objects throughout the world to use as weapons against Alan, and these segments provide most of the game's action and survival horror thrills.
Light is Alan's only weapon against the darkness, and the combat mechanics revolve around using light to weaken and dispatch the possessed humans and objects impeding your progress. The possessed denizens of Bright Falls are extremely resistant to traditional weapons and ammo is scarce, Alan must weaken enemies by exposing them to light before he puts them down with bullets. Of course, bullets don't do much good against a possessed bulldozer or a jeep hurtling through the air in your direction, so sometimes light is all you have. In the demo, Alan carries around a trusty flashlight that he can point and 'focus' on enemies, causing the beam to intensify, the batteries to drain faster, and glowing embers to burn off of enemies. You can also use road flares to saturate the environment in a reddish hue and vaporize any enemies in close proximity, or drop them behind you when entering a building to create a barrier to keep enemies out. There are also environmental light sources that can be turned on, typically by cranking a generator, which create small safe zones for you to catch your breath. Standing on an illuminated dock and staring out at the gathering masses of possessed townspeople at the light's edge is pretty creepy.
I'm not sure if Alan's ability to 'focus' flashlights is a latent superpower or a delusion (though the way possessed humans disintegrate into light after that final bullet certainly points toward the 'crazy' option), but it's pretty much the only combat skill he has. Alan is frequently outnumbered and outgunned, and weakening individual enemies with the flashlight takes a fare bit of time so it's not wise to taking out a horde of enemies one by one. As such, combat is characterized by a lot of ducking and isolating specific, powerful enemies or large vehicles as you high-tail it for the next environmental light source. It's fairly fast-paced, but feels tense and tactical at the same time, and looks a lot smoother than anything we've seen from certain other survival horror titles *cough*SilentHill*cough*. It doesn't seem like the combat will be the most revolutionary element of the game unless Remedy is still keeping a lot of supplementary mechanics under wraps, but the way the use of light ties directly from the narrative and presentation into the gameplay makes it a noteworthy part of the Alan Wake experience.
What's Not
Honestly, there really wasn't much to dislike about Alan Wake at E3 2009, but then again, five years worth of preparation should make for an impressive demonstration shouldn't it? My only major reservation at this point is how much replayability a game that focuses on storytelling and cinematic gameplay can offer. How interesting can a psychological thriller be if you walk into it knowing the answers to all the questions ahead of time? Remedy argues that the cinematic action is thrilling enough to inspire multiple play-throughs and contends that there will be supplementary narrative material in the form of extra manuscript pages and character interactions for those players that take extra time to explore. Sounds great on paper, but walking out of that demo, it was the cumulative experience that wowed me, including the atmosphere and storytelling, and both of those might lose something once I've completed the game and found out Alan Wake's secrets.
I'm also not quite sold on the episodic presentation of the storyline, wherein each chapter is treated as an episode of a television show complete with a recap of the previous episode and teaser for the next chapter following the cliffhanger ending. It's executed well, but the TV presentation conflicts with the narration device. Are we reading through this experience along with Alan, or are we watching it on television piece by piece? Doing both feels like Remedy might be getting a bit too clever for their own good.
Outlook
As videogames design evolves alongside the hardware and the developer ambitions that power them, subtleties and intangibles become increasingly significant. More and more, the cumulative effect a videogame has on the player cannot be summed up so easily by the traditional checklist of technical merits and objective standards. Sometimes you just feel it. During the Alan Wake demo, I felt something powerful, a chilling, exciting rush that reinforced the notion that I was witnessing something unique, unlike any of the other games on the show floor. There were no spiffy motion controls, time had caught up with the once-impossible looking visuals, and the core third-person gameplay wasn't a revolution waiting in the wings. Yet somewhere between the palpable, moody atmosphere, the intriguing storytelling and the exciting balance of survival-horror and classic adventure gameplay, Alan Wake managed to elicit a guttural reaction. I saw something special in that demo, and it's quite possible that none of you will understand what until you feel it for yourselves. Mark my words though, Alan Wake is going to be something special.
Alan Wake was one more E3 absence away from being vaporware as far I was concerned. We've been hearing rumblings about this game for nearly five years, the gradually fading interest intermittently recharged by the odd release of some moody new screenshots, and yet in all this time the most the developers have been willing to share about the project are buzzwords and generalities like 'cinematic gameplay' and 'psychological thriller'. Enticing words for fans of a medium that is still teetering on the cusp of legitimate storytelling, but utterly meaningless in the context of trying to figure out the specifics of how the game was supposed to actually play. Just what the hell kind of game is this really? Now I know. Now I'm excited. Even in an unfinished state, Alan Wake conjures a unique guttural reaction that refuses to release its hold.
What's Hot
The underlying goal of any psychological thriller is to get the audience thinking about and questioning everything that takes place, if not from the outset then by the ending. Just go rent any of David Fincher's early films and you'll get the gist pretty quickly. From what I've seen, the story that Remedy has put together for Alan Wake seems like it has to the goods to suck players in and keep them guessing. The titular character is a writer that has gone on vacation with his wife in hopes of getting over a bout of writer's block, but when his wife suddenly disappears, a supernatural presence starts taking over the world around him, and everyone talks about a book he can't even remember writing as if it's the key to all this insanity, well, his vacation gets a little more interesting than anticipated. I came up with about a hundred different questions over the course of the 20 minute private demo, questions like how are these crazy events related to Alan's writing, what's the significance of the recurring themes of light, darkness and sleep, and is any of this real or is Alan just going insane?
Remedy is combining a variety of story-telling techniques with top-tier presentation values to create the kind of moody atmosphere that's necessary for eliciting those feelings of unease and paranoia. As with Remedy's last project, the Max Payne series, the main character narrates the action as events unfold, while the player still has full control of the action. The melodramatic execution of the device in Max Payne helped sell the notion that players were playing through a schlocky B-movie but in Alan Wake the delivery is much more restrained and professional. Alan's voiceovers add dramatic weight to certain scenes and significantly enhanced the feeling of urgency as he pursued Rusty and his attacker. It's surprising that more games haven't tried to replicate this feature, because it's actually a very effective and unintrusive way of guiding players through the experience.
Most games that attempt to use foreshadowing to elicit suspense and dread fail miserably because their lack of subtlety makes the telegraphed events feel predictable, but from what I saw in the demo, Remedy is doing a fine job of implementing the classic literary device. When Alan finds pages from the manuscript that he can't remember writing, he reads the content aloud as words and images flash across the screen in a real-time cutscene. In the case of the demo, the manuscript revealed that something bad was about to attack a character named Rusty. The game doesn't tell you what was attacking or how the altercation would end, only that it was mean and Rusty would shoot off a few rounds to defend himself. I had just enough information to let my imagination run wild before I approached Rusty's wrecked cabin and heard those shots ring out. Alan ran inside just in time to hear Rusty screaming for help as he was dragged out of his home by the unseen attacker.
Light and darkness play a huge role in the game, not only from an aesthetic standpoint, but from a narrative and gameplay perspective as well. Bright Falls is a beautiful Northwestern town surrounded by serene wilderness, but some astutely applied shadow, mist and gloom make this vacation paradise feel like a nightmarish labyrinth at night. The presentation values are top-shelf stuff, and it's easy to get sucked into a game that looks and sounds this good. Remedy has opted not to give players a true day and night cycle so that they can control the experience to maximize the emotional output. During the daylight, players will spend most their time exploring the town of Bright Falls, searching for clues and interacting with the townsfolk in a manner similar to most adventure games. Once the sun sets, the dark presence has free reign to take over people, animals and objects throughout the world to use as weapons against Alan, and these segments provide most of the game's action and survival horror thrills.
Light is Alan's only weapon against the darkness, and the combat mechanics revolve around using light to weaken and dispatch the possessed humans and objects impeding your progress. The possessed denizens of Bright Falls are extremely resistant to traditional weapons and ammo is scarce, Alan must weaken enemies by exposing them to light before he puts them down with bullets. Of course, bullets don't do much good against a possessed bulldozer or a jeep hurtling through the air in your direction, so sometimes light is all you have. In the demo, Alan carries around a trusty flashlight that he can point and 'focus' on enemies, causing the beam to intensify, the batteries to drain faster, and glowing embers to burn off of enemies. You can also use road flares to saturate the environment in a reddish hue and vaporize any enemies in close proximity, or drop them behind you when entering a building to create a barrier to keep enemies out. There are also environmental light sources that can be turned on, typically by cranking a generator, which create small safe zones for you to catch your breath. Standing on an illuminated dock and staring out at the gathering masses of possessed townspeople at the light's edge is pretty creepy.
I'm not sure if Alan's ability to 'focus' flashlights is a latent superpower or a delusion (though the way possessed humans disintegrate into light after that final bullet certainly points toward the 'crazy' option), but it's pretty much the only combat skill he has. Alan is frequently outnumbered and outgunned, and weakening individual enemies with the flashlight takes a fare bit of time so it's not wise to taking out a horde of enemies one by one. As such, combat is characterized by a lot of ducking and isolating specific, powerful enemies or large vehicles as you high-tail it for the next environmental light source. It's fairly fast-paced, but feels tense and tactical at the same time, and looks a lot smoother than anything we've seen from certain other survival horror titles *cough*SilentHill*cough*. It doesn't seem like the combat will be the most revolutionary element of the game unless Remedy is still keeping a lot of supplementary mechanics under wraps, but the way the use of light ties directly from the narrative and presentation into the gameplay makes it a noteworthy part of the Alan Wake experience.
What's Not
Honestly, there really wasn't much to dislike about Alan Wake at E3 2009, but then again, five years worth of preparation should make for an impressive demonstration shouldn't it? My only major reservation at this point is how much replayability a game that focuses on storytelling and cinematic gameplay can offer. How interesting can a psychological thriller be if you walk into it knowing the answers to all the questions ahead of time? Remedy argues that the cinematic action is thrilling enough to inspire multiple play-throughs and contends that there will be supplementary narrative material in the form of extra manuscript pages and character interactions for those players that take extra time to explore. Sounds great on paper, but walking out of that demo, it was the cumulative experience that wowed me, including the atmosphere and storytelling, and both of those might lose something once I've completed the game and found out Alan Wake's secrets.
I'm also not quite sold on the episodic presentation of the storyline, wherein each chapter is treated as an episode of a television show complete with a recap of the previous episode and teaser for the next chapter following the cliffhanger ending. It's executed well, but the TV presentation conflicts with the narration device. Are we reading through this experience along with Alan, or are we watching it on television piece by piece? Doing both feels like Remedy might be getting a bit too clever for their own good.
Outlook
As videogames design evolves alongside the hardware and the developer ambitions that power them, subtleties and intangibles become increasingly significant. More and more, the cumulative effect a videogame has on the player cannot be summed up so easily by the traditional checklist of technical merits and objective standards. Sometimes you just feel it. During the Alan Wake demo, I felt something powerful, a chilling, exciting rush that reinforced the notion that I was witnessing something unique, unlike any of the other games on the show floor. There were no spiffy motion controls, time had caught up with the once-impossible looking visuals, and the core third-person gameplay wasn't a revolution waiting in the wings. Yet somewhere between the palpable, moody atmosphere, the intriguing storytelling and the exciting balance of survival-horror and classic adventure gameplay, Alan Wake managed to elicit a guttural reaction. I saw something special in that demo, and it's quite possible that none of you will understand what until you feel it for yourselves. Mark my words though, Alan Wake is going to be something special.
November 20, 2009
