Highlights
- The upcoming Alan Wake sequel is fully embracing survival horror and incorporating live-action elements, similar to Remedy's past game, Quantum Break .
- Quantum Break leaned heavily on live-action, generating 22-minute episodes to watch based on the player's actions.
- While the use of live-action content could enhance the eerie setting of Alan Wake 2, it needs to avoid the pitfalls of Quantum Break 's lengthy and lackluster episodes.
Remedy Entertainment has never been a video game developer that's happy to just rest on its laurels. After debuting in 1996 with its genre-bending top-down vehicular combat game Death Rally, Remedy went on to shake up the third-person shooter genre with the first two Max Payne titles. Then, after a seven-year hiatus, Remedy returned with its incredibly unique psychological horror third-person shooter Alan Wake. While Remedy carries over certain elements between games, no two Remedy titles are the same, and that seems to be the case for its upcoming Alan Wake 2.
A sequel 13 years in the making, Alan Wake 2 is finally set to launch in October, and every bit of footage released so far has been equally impressive. Though it definitely uses a similar tone to its predecessor, Alan Wake 2 is fully leaning into survival horror this time around, and in typical Remedy fashion, it seems to be incorporating some big, experimental components. One of those is the implementation of live-action elements, and while it isn't the first time a Remedy game has used them, it has the potential to be the best, just as long as it learns the right lessons from Quantum Break.
Alan Wake 2 Needs to From Quantum Break's Use of Live-Action Content
Launched back in 2016, Quantum Break is perhaps the most divisive Remedy Entertainment game. Remedy is a studio that loves to experiment, and Quantum Break -- for better and for worse -- is probably the developer's most experimental title, though not through its gameplay. On the surface, Quantum Break is a solid third-person action game, with some pretty impressive visuals and physics for the time, and some unique time-manipulation powers. But Quantum Break isn't just a third-person shooter; it's also a whole season of live-action TV.
At the end of each chapter in Quantum Break, players switch perspectives to the game's primary antagonist. As the antagonist, players are given one of two choices, both of which can dramatically change the course of the game moving forward. After choosing a path, players are then given a 22-minute-long episode of a live-action TV show based on the choice they made, and after the episode ends, they get to play again as the protagonist as they deal with the aftermath of the episode's events.
Quantum Break's structure is incredibly unique, and extremely ambitious, but the execution of it all left quite a bit to be desired. The two biggest issues with these live-action segments of Quantum Break were their quality and length. Though the acting across the board was good, Quantum Break's live-action episodes had little substance to them, and their lengthy duration only served to grind the game to a halt every 90 minutes. The simple takeaway from Quantum Break was that the vast majority of players don't want to be forced to watch a whole episode of a TV show while they're meant to be playing a video game.
Alan Wake 2 is currently balancing on the tip of a double-edged live-action sword. From what fans have seen so far, it seems as though Alan Wake 2 will be using live-action quite frequently, but its specific purpose and role in the game hasn't been directly stated just yet. On the one hand, Alan Wake 2's live-action elements could work really well in practice, primarily being used in The Dark Place as a way to add a sense of uncanniness to the eerie setting. On the other hand, if Alan Wake 2 ends up overusing live-action elements, then it could end up repeating a lot of Quantum Break's mistakes.
Alan Wake 2 releases October 27, 2023, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
