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Alan Wake strikes a unique chord with its premise of an author whose writing is manifested before him. Unfortunately, Remedy only capitalizes on this concept in a relatively restrictive manner, with shadowy figures and the disappearances of certain characters. This worked well for an action-adventure game that relied loosely on psychological thriller tropes, but Remedy now has a great opportunity with Alan Wake 2 being a survival-horror game.
With any luck, Remedy will produce frights that are much more diverse than its Taken, otherwise known as Shaded Individuals. But the gameplay in Alan Wake 2 will need a considerable overhaul if it is to meet the modern standard of survival-horror. This may mean prohibiting combat in certain areas, restricting ammunition or flashlight batteries, or the addition of other mechanics. However, the sequel also has the opportunity to fully flesh out manuscript pages from the original game, and hopefully make them more integral.
Alan Wake’s Collectibles Make an Otherwise Empty World Fun to Explore
Much like many of Remedy’s games, narrative and cinematic storytelling are paramount. Remedy games are fairly linear with only a bit of exploration indulged in each, but the areas players can explore are typically rife with collectibles or data logs that can add context to the game’s narrative.
It would also be unfair not to mention how engaging it is to discover clandestine supply chests by following yellow paint, which is only visible via Alan's flashlight. But legitimate collectibles come in the form of either coffee thermoses or manuscript pages, both of which make exploration worthwhile.
Thermoses add nothing to Alan Wake’s lore, but are nonetheless fun to scour for throughout Bright Falls and Cauldron Lake if players have a particular completionist wit about them. Alan Wake’s manuscript pages are another collectible players can scrounge for at their leisure, but they also add fun context and lore to Departure - a story Wake had intended to write, and is credited for writing, but does not remember having written.
Pages are collected in a non-sequential order, with narrative events either being recounted or foreshadowed as players find more. It is unclear if thermoses or manuscript pages will be reprised in the sequel, or substituted for new, modernized collectibles. That said, manuscript pages should return and have a legitimate effect on gameplay.
Alan Wake’s Manuscript Pages Should Have Been Connected to Gameplay
Even though Alan Wake's manuscript pages relate to the narrative, Remedy missed a huge potential opportunity to have these pages indicate certain parts of gameplay that players could prepare for. This is likely due to the game’s linearity, lack of puzzles, and lack of avoidable occurrences.
Because narrative events are scripted in Alan Wake, manuscript pages informing players about what is to come would not necessarily offer them an advantage. If Alan Wake had gameplay that allowed for these choices, such as if optional environmental interactions could be used to tip the scales in a Taken encounter, it would give players an incentive to collect pages in order to learn about options they would not have otherwise known about.
Even if a page referred to storage caches with more ammunition, for instance, it would add diversity to gameplay and reward players for taking the time to search them out. Then, if players wished to experience the game without any precognitive assistance, they could conclude their search for pages and approach the game with reckless abandon. Because of Alan Wake’s action-adventure genre, this was likely less of an issue. Exploration or experimentation in an area only reaps minimal reward with regard to thermoses, pages, and chests, while the latter are only rarely important due to how frequently the game hands out ammunition.
Alan Wake 2 Could Improve Its Own Manuscript Pages
Alan Wake 2 now has the opportunity to capitalize on this feature, making manuscript pages significantly more integral and meaningful to gameplay rather than just the narrative. Survival-horror games are commonly centered around puzzles and exploration, oftentimes to supplement a lack of explicit action or combat.
If Alan Wake 2 follows the same blueprint template that other third-person survival-horror titles have, fans will likely see more of an emphasis on puzzles where they could arguably get the most out of a manuscript page offering premonitions. Even if the page only alludes to a critical solution to a puzzle, such as a key needing to be found, it could make pages incredibly satisfying to find.
Pages could also be left in more precarious or perilous environments, making players have to encounter more dangers in order to reap the page’s benefits. Pages would obviously not be mandatory for players to solve puzzles or find different routes to circumvent enemies, but it would tie well into the narrative premise of Wake being an author while adding benefits to a collectible that players may find and pick up regardless.
In order for this to be effective, though, Alan Wake 2 would need to feature gameplay that could offer the player more of a diverse choice in how they might approach enemies, and puzzles would have to be frequent enough that pages could remark upon them whenever they were found. Further, pages that players actively search for could be read aloud with audible narration from Wake, as it was done in the original game.
Some pages could lend hints toward gameplay, while others could continue filling in contextual blanks from the narrative. If the game is supposed to be more modern, Remedy could even substitute typed pages for tape recordings, notebook shorthand, or other such means of predicting story and gameplay events that players could return to in the menu. Either way, it will be interesting to see exactly how Alan Wake’s transition from action-adventure to survival-horror will look, and what effects this will have on its returning gameplay elements.
Alan Wake 2 is scheduled to release in 2023 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
