Game Alan Wake 2
Developer Remedy Entertainment
Publisher Epic Games
Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series
Release October 17
The log cabin, real or imagined, where a writer has been chained to his typewriter for the past 13 years. The forest in which a detective finds herself lost, clutching a tattooed heart, as reality ebbs away around her. The insides of both characters’ heads, which you can walk around. We’ll visit all of these places in time, but for Edge the story starts somewhere stranger still: on the set of a late-night chat show.
Outside, it’s a bright day on the streets of Helsinki, the long dark of winter finally thawing. In here, though, the only window shows a gloomy New York nightscape. It’s positioned alongside a sign that declares that we’re watching In Between With Mr Door, the soft light from which reveals that this view is a fabric backdrop, the slight ripples in its surface ensuring you don’t forget the artifice. Because nothing here is real, as Alan Wake is about to learn.
Action is called, and Ilkka Villi emerges from behind a billowing red curtain, blinking in the spotlights. Later, he’ll tell us: “I just counted 18 years with Alan Wake,” having been cast as the physical embodiment of the character during early development of the first game, while Matthew Porretta provided the voice. “Games were a lot different then,” Porretta says. “This would never be done this way now, right? The person who mocaps it would voice it. But back when it first started out, we were just figuring out how to do it.”
This unusual arrangement has been preserved for Alan Wake 2, albeit with a few changes. Not least that, with the increased prominence of live-action footage in this sequel and a much higher fidelity of performance capture, Villi’s face is at the forefront more than ever before. The character himself has changed too, after all that time trapped in the Dark Place. “When doing the first Alan Wake, we always said that his state of mind was terrified but cool,” Villi says. “But now, I think so much of the coolness has fallen away. He’s just so much more confused, and vulnerable.”
That’s apparent on set, with the shagginess of Wake’s grown-out hair and beard complementing his wide-eyed bewilderment at the situation. How did he get here? Is this really New York? Wake did used to live here, after all, before that business in Bright Falls, back when promoting a book on a chat show was part of everyday life. But do the hosts of these things normally sit silent in the dark, silhouetted against an evidently false cityscape?
Mr Door rises from his seat, removes his glasses, and steps into the spotlight – to reveal the face of David Harewood. The British actor has done everything from Shakespeare to Call Of Duty, and that experience shows here. Once at his mark, Harewood barely moves anything other than his lips, and speaks in hushed, gravelly tones, but that only makes you want to lean forward and listen all the more.
As for what he’s actually saying, well, the scene being shot here comes late in the game’s story, so we can’t go into the specifics too much. Suffice it to say that it is a climactic
