Late last year, Alan Wake 2 was finally revealed by Remedy Entertainment. The game was originally teased in a Control DLC in 2020, nearly a decade after the original sequel plans were axed. From the get-go, it was obvious that the game was going to be full of twists and world-bending elements. The groundwork for one of Alan Wake 2's biggest twists seems to have been laid out in one of its latest trailers.

One of the more recent trailers set up the game's apparent plot and a new cast of supporting characters. Among them was FBI Agent Saga Anderson, who is a playable protagonist in Alan Wake 2. However, the character with the most secrets to him appears to be her partner, Alex Casey.

RELATED: How Alan Wake 2 Can Improve on the Original's Manuscript Pages

Who Is Alex Casey In Alan Wake 2?

The first gameplay trailer for Alan Wake 2 was brief but had a lot of subtle bits to it. Among them was the introduction of Alex Casey. In the game, Casey is an FBI Agent who is investigating the disappearance of Robert Nightingale. Nightingale was a secondary antagonist in the first game and a former FBI agent who was hunting Alan due to an apparent connection to his partner's death. The character's ultimate fate was left ambiguous, but it's Alex Casey's identity that is a bit more concerning.

In the first Alan Wake game, Alex Casey is the name of one of Wake's fictional characters. He was a detective and protagonist of a popular series of novels that the titular protagonist wrote. At the end of the series, the protagonist was said to have died. Given the nature of the Dark Presence, there is no way that the Alan Wake 2 character having the same name is a coincidence. The oddities with Alex Casey do not stop there.

Why Alex Casey’s Voice Actor Raises So Many Questions In the Control Universe

In the game, Alex Casey is voiced by the great James McCaffrey. McCaffrey has had an acting career that goes all the way back to the late 1980s but is best known for voicing Max Payne in all three games. What makes his role in this game curious, however, is that this is not the first character he's played in this particular universe.

In the final piece of Control DLC, it was firmly established that Alan Wake took place in the same universe as Remedy Entertainment's latest game. In it, McCaffrey voiced the previous Director of the Federal Bureau of Control, Zachariah Trench. One of the game's final twists was that Trench was the one who unleashed the game's antagonists, the Hiss, upon the organization.

Now normally this could be written off as a voice actor taking up another role in a universe. However, James McCaffrey's voice is incredibly distinct. There is, quite literally, no difference between the voice of Max Payne, Zachariah Trench, and Alex Casey. His being voiced by an actor who already voiced a major character in this universe seems like something that warrants further discussion. With Alan Wake and Control likely already on another collision course, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that Casey may have some kind of connection to Trench as part of whatever story Wake has conjured for the game.

Currently, there isn't a lot of information on this version of Alex Casey. Various bits of story information about the game have been revealed, but the developer is keeping a lot of its story cards close to its chest. Alan Wake 2 is set to be a horror game, and often the scariest things in such games are what the player doesn't know. It is very possible that McCaffrey has a good relationship with the developer, and they simply wanted to use him in another game. However, at the moment it seems far more likely that Alex Casey is a character that could be a whole lot more important than he looks.

Alan Wake 2 releases October 27, 2023 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

MORE: Horror Games Releasing In 2023 You Should Know About