Alan Wake

[SchizoidFreud]

^^ it wont

[Keyofx]

The game seems to be more action-oriented than I initially thought it would be.

 

Not a good thing.

That's just a snippet of gameplay though. Remember what Remedy have told us so far: Daytime is free roam in Hope Falls and will be structured almost like an adventure game. Night is for combat because that's the only time the apparitions materialise.

[Karooo]

my short demo saw everything from crazed townsfolk to bulldozers come at Alan with every thing they had.

 

 

omg awesome.

Edited June 24, 2009 by _karooo_

[Tyler]

That's just a snippet of gameplay though. Remember what Remedy have told us so far: Daytime is free roam in Hope Falls and will be structured almost like an adventure game. Night is for combat because that's the only time the apparitions materialise.

 

Yeah I do realize that it was a small section of the game. Perhaps showing off a moodier section of the game wouldn't have gone down so well with the crowd.

[devil_angel]

Yeah I do realize that it was a small section of the game. Perhaps showing off a moodier section of the game wouldn't have gone down so well with the crowd.

well i would've loved it if they jus let out the cycle of day/night fully.....jus show off the engine.....I'm jus don't gettired of saying this.....I love this engine.....jus hope it doesn't get spoilt they way dunia was in FC 2

[Keyofx]

Yeah I do realize that it was a small section of the game. Perhaps showing off a moodier section of the game wouldn't have gone down so well with the crowd.

Yup, it's almost never a good idea to live-demo a character just walking around.

 

Nothing stopped them from releasing videos of the town sections though. Did they? HAH.

[MarketTantrik]

Wakey Wakey

 

Alan Wake - Five Biggest Surprises

 

 

Sounds like the games is structured like Alone in the Dark. Each chapter can be replayed like an episode. Following the narrative is extremely important and the game will not be a sandbox experience.

[MarketTantrik]

Some snippets from the preview

 

In a gaming landscape where most titles look impressive these days, it's getting trickier and trickier to impress cynics like us. However, Remedy has really done some amazing things with the proprietary technology in its engine.

 

You can see the hallmarks of quality design all throughout Alan Wake's world beginning with Alan and the other main characters themselves. The facial animation, lip-synching, and the combination of careful key-frame animation and motion-capture, combine to create some stunning sequences in the game. During moments of action, watching Alan, who's no action hero, stumble slightly as he lunges out of the way of a flock of demonic birds, looks wholly convincing; other, less overt things like dialogue exchanges between Alan and Barry show subtlety.

 

As we mentioned above, light and dark play critical roles in the experience. The engine handles all kinds of effects with panache. Every major object in the environment, including Alan and his clothing, is self-shadowing – meaning that light sources in the game cast massive and frightening shadows over surfaces all over the place. It's real horror-show stuff; the kind of detail that really builds atmosphere.

 

On a grander level, there's a key moment in the game where a certain building suddenly gets torn very violently apart – and you will be floored by the dynamic damage, impressive physics and brilliant smoke and particle effects at play.

 

The other half of the technology card has to do with the seamless experience. There are no load sequences once an episode begins; it's just a series of events that you must deal with from start to finish. After pressing through the forest, in and out of cabins, long and winding paths, into a cable car and over a gully, you end up in an SUV, cranking the accelerator along a cliff-side road overlooking the ocean before ending up at your destination, face to face with a gigantic tornado. All of this – from the get-go, is seamless and enormous – a fair use of the word 'epic' if there ever was one.

 

That's Alan Wake on a macro-level. On a smaller scale, there are a few details you'll really appreciate if you stumble across them; back at the start of the demo, if you turn off the light as you leave the cabin, you'll end up leaving Barry in the dark – and he's not too happy about this, so naturally he'll comment on what you just did. Hopefully the game is littered with little moments of normalcy just like this, because this is the kind of stuff that really adds extra flavour to the experience.

 

 

[Tyler]

I know I say this a lot but I can't f**king wait!

[Ne0]

Alan....wake the f**king up....you moron

[MarketTantrik]

Info from the Alan Wake forums

 

The basis and idea of Alan Wake have remained pretty much the same over the years. It's still an action thriller from the third perspective.

- The concepts and the visions haven't changed a bit but the ways to accomplish them have been under experimenting during the years. Of course the game has seen some changes but the vision which we were looking for in the beginning is still the same, Ranki explains.

The game is still about Alan Wake, the writer, who hasn't been able to write anything for a few years. He goes to the small town of Bright Falls in the East Coast of the US with his wife Alice to find an inspiration. When they arrive things start to turn into a nightmare. Alice disappears and Alan gets driven into events that were written by himself, although he doesn't remember writing them. The dark force overruns the whole town and the only thing Alan knows is that in order to find his wife Alan must find the mysterious pages of his manuscript. But what to do when every page he founds tells from the future - which doesn't seem to end well - and the events described in them turn real in front of his eyes?

Remedy has told from the beginning that light will be an important element of the gameplay, which comes very clear from the game demo. Alan Wake's most important weapons are his flashlight and other light sources found in the game world. The dark force can possess both the residents and animals in Bright Falls and make even lifeless objects attack Alan. They are vulnerable only in the light. It's obvious that the player should scare for the dark - and night.

With light Alan can defeat the enemies possessed by the darkness and give himself some space to breath for a moment, for example with a chemical torch. Even a flare gun will have a whole new role when darkness is your enemy. The light itself won't defeat the enemies, though, but makes them vulnerable for gunfire.

Alan Wake is not a horror-game, although the mood in the demo is very stressing. The combat against the darkness is still very intensive.

 

Four years ago Remedy told that Alan Wake would join free sandbox gaming and compelling storytelling together. At the same time the developers told that they understood how challenging the task was and that the subject was still under brainstorming amongst the team. The open-ended gameplay is a thing that has given the game it's biggest change.

- We've tried everything, including the sandbox gameplay. It's not a good mixture with storytelling. For it we would have been forced to make such compromises in the game that we at Remedy don't want to. The most important thing for us is a compelling story and so we decided to go in that direction, Ranki explains.

So, Alan Wake won't be an open playfield like in the GTA games. This won't, however, mean that the player would be constantly running along a path defined by the game developers.

- The player must not feel they're being pulled from strings. The player must feel like they're making the decisions themselves, Ranki says.

There are many characters in Bright Falls that Alan can interact with and exploring the game world is still part of the business. For example all the pages of Alan's manuscript won't be automatically found during the game and all of them don't even have to be found. That's one reason why the game world should be explored in detail.

- All of the pages won't be found during the plot so finding them demands you to actively look for them, just like the audio tapes in BioShock, Ranki tells.

Four years ago Alan Wake was said to be the first real next-generation game, based on it's technology. Of course the technology keeps going on and takes huge advances in four years. Might the game had fallen behind from it's time?

Based on the demo the technology of the game leaves no doubts. Visually it's just as beautiful as you'd expect from a next-gen game and from Remedy. Especially the plot-related special effects, the atmosphere, the day-night cycles and changes in weather are impressive.

 

The demo begins in a wooden shack that's located in the national park of Bright Falls. Alan is having an intense conversation with his agent and friend Barry Wheeler about his lost wife Alice who Alan thinks has been kidnapped. Turns out that Rusty, a member of the Bright Falls police department has some lost pages of Wakes manuscript which might lead to Alice's trail. The dialog and the voice acting sound good. We'll hear that Bright Falls has a lot of people that we'll get in touch with. Some of them can be talked with even when not on mission.

Barry, who's wearing a red winter coat is getting stressed while Alan's panicing while trying to figure out what to do next. Barry is described as a character who will bring some humour to the game in the middle of all the darkness. The jumby and allergic guy will sneeze when you point him with a flashlight and the forest definitely isn't a pleasant place for him. If you'll turn off the lights from the idyllic shack Barry will comment you on it - it looks like the lights have effects on the other people as well, not just enemies.

Alan leaves the house and walks towards a building in which Rusty should be waiting for him. The street lamps lighting up the nightly forest path are blinking on and off. If the atmosphere in the shack was somewhat safe, all of that is gone now. The surrounding forrest seems threatening. You can only imagine what horrors could jump out from the darkness.

Alan's flaslight beam is being controlled with the right axis and the beam is being used for aiming as well. From the left shoulder pad you can activate a dodge move and from the right one you can use the object you're holding, a torch for instance.

A helicopter flies past the player and shows off the lightning effects at the same time - the bright light from the spotlight is filtering beautifully trough the trees. Along the road there's an abandoned car with a manuscript page inside. Reading it will start a brief cutscene which gives bad feelings on what's going to happen next.

The lights are flashing, a tree falls and somewhere around the nearby house some creature is growling. A bulldozer has been driven towards Rusty's house and there are gunshots and screams coming from inside. The yard is under a chaos while Alan runs in the house, finding the police with blood in his head. He tells Alan he's hidden the manuscript pages, and all of the sudden an enemy from the darkness comes in, Rusty wasting his bullets...

[Bulovski]

oh Alan you tease

[Ne0]

Alan is a wuss

[Pushy]

Alan is a wuss

 

[MarketTantrik]

Alan is a wuss

You are a wuss, graud bastarad.

 

And why havent you managed to get us a GI scoop on the game from Remedy's HQ?

[Keyofx]

Good find, MT. I wonder if it is really for story progression that they decided against going open world or whether it was just a question of wrapping the game up after more than half a decade in development :/

 

And the lost pages sound like random collectibles in the game world, just like orbs or coins or what-not..

[Tyler]

I was personally looking forward to the open world stuff. This whole Alone In The Dark style progression... well, let's just say it reminds me a lot of Alone In The Dark. Even the E3 gameplay and combat reminded me a lot of AITD. And we all know that's not a good thing.

 

Still, I have faith that Remedy can turn this into a great experience.

[Aftrunner]

- We've tried everything, including the sandbox gameplay. It's not a good mixture with storytelling. For it we would have been forced to make such compromises in the game that we at Remedy don't want to. The most important thing for us is a compelling story and so we decided to go in that direction, Ranki explains. So, Alan Wake won't be an open playfield like in the GTA games. This won't, however, mean that the player would be constantly running along a path defined by the game developers.

 

Thank f**king god for rational thinking.

 

Ubisoft if you are reading this is the point where you click open the pen and start taking notes. Not everything has to be "Like GTA".

[Tyler]

I thought the open world would mean a more exploration-style gameplay (much like parts of the Silent Hill games where you had to roam around the town). Except a bigger and prettier version of that. Not like GTA where you could do random side missions and stuff like that.

 

It's looking more like an action-oriented game now with the random puzzle or two thrown in.

[Keyofx]

@Afty: Well..

 

If any game deserved to be like GTA, it was Alan Wake. I don't think there has ever been an open-world survival-horror game. It would have been great driving around and talking to people during the day, and then have night kick in, with stores closing and people getting off the streets. Sigh..

Edited July 6, 2009 by keyofx