It might be surprising given that I've been posting about it almost nonstop since playing it last weekend, but I haven't actually picked up Alan Wake II to do any replaying or anything. This is despite the fact that, unlike Control, which still is probably my favorite (of three, the other two both being Alan Wake games) Remedy game I've played, there's actually a way to save your progress while still going back to replay the game.
Alan Wake II's save system is basically between a Quicksave function that I believe works in tandem with the auto-save function to just get you in at the most recent checkpoint you've hit (often auto-saving before a boss, for example) and a Manual Save, which allows for three different save files that won't be updated until you overwrite them. Mostly thanks to luck, I happened to manually save right at the start of the "We Sing" chapter, which is probably the most talked-about moment in the game.
Still, even though I'm not rushing back to play the game again, it has sat with me.
Sometimes, you encounter a work of art and step away from it and think "I've just witnessed something historic." I think these moments are best when you don't get too much hype in advance. For example, in 2015, I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road, and the movie had been so profoundly hyped up that when I actually watched it, there was a little skepticism in me. I remember thinking a couple times "wait, is this really it? Am I missing anything?" Upon rewatches and some artistic digestion, I realized that yes, I had been missing something, and I think largely it was just my expectations getting in the way of letting the movie stand on its own.
I did get very hyped for Alan Wake II. But I did play the game more or less right when it came out, and before there was much of a public discourse beyond early previews (and to be fair, I saw some good chunks of the Room 665 and Local Girl chapters). But there was a lot that I discovered on my own. I had a vague sense of something musical coming, but was not prepared for the insane audacity of We Sing, and certainly not the treat at the end of the Zane's Film chapter.
There are lots of games that I think are art. Frankly, I think the only reason people have had doubts that the medium could be art is that the language with which to describe the art form is still evolving. An early game like Super Mario World struck countless young gamers in ways that we're only now learning to describe.
Alan Wake II comes at a point when gamers and game developers have matured a lot. It wrestles with more complex themes than we usually get. And it also approaches those themes at oblique angles. On a technical level, it's one of the most amazingly immersive games I've ever played, the sheer level of detail staggering. If its locations were film sets, I could imagine it winning awards for production design.
Also on the technical side, there are some invisible elements that amaze when you notice them. The seamlessness with which you can enter the Mind Place and the Writer's Room, for example. And both of these could have simply been presented as some kind of pause menu, but instead they are worked into the "diagetic" nature of the story. But they load in as smoothly as if you were just pressing pause.
More than anything, though, the game feels like an uncompromised artistic vision. At the heart of that is, of course, Sam Lake, who throws himself into this game fully. There's a world where I could see him placing himself in the game as Alex Casey's model (and at one point appearing literally as himself, which is one of the few things in the game I'm willing to dismiss more as a gag than as having any real narrative implications) as an act of ego-stroking. But in the way that he comes off in interviews, at least, he appears to be doing so not out of a lack of humility, but as an act of total investment.
I don't know what the culture is like at Remedy Entertainment, and of course there are some places (like Blizzard, which is hopefully on the mend now) that I had previously thought likely to be good places to work that then turned out to be anything but, but my impression of Sam Lake is as a thoughtful, generous, and collaborative artist.
Perhaps a game that is, thematically, all about the way that our art reflects our inner and outer lives, the primary artistic voice behind it ought to be a visible part of it.
It would also be easy to feel strung along by the mysteries of Alan Wake II if it were handled in a less elegant manner. Despite being a huge Lost fan when it was on the air, I've grown skeptical and tired of "mystery box" style storytelling. But the ambiguities and enigmas in Alan Wake II feel far less like something being teased to string the audience along, and much more like an invitation for the audience to interpret. The answers are withheld not to tantalize, but to invite engagement.
A work of art is an act of collaboration between the creator and the audience. Perhaps that is no truer than in interactive media like video games. And while yes, Alan Wake II has a singular story it is telling, rather than the massive branching narratives that something like Baldur's Gate III has, I think the game is an invitation for us to look into our own fears, our own Dark Place.
Perhaps it is serendipitous that this game comes along while I am working on a story that also concerns itself with the Jungian Shadow. The conflict of this game is internal - even if the Dark Place is literalized as a kind of extradimensional realm, ultimately Alan's struggles are entirely with the darkness in his own mind, the form the Dark Place takes being a reflection of his own darkness, both in the conscious exploration of that darkness he has done through his fiction and the fears he holds of his own impulses and needs.
Indie gaming has become much bigger over time, as the tools to make games become more widely available. At the same time, the AAA, big-budget gaming industry has ballooned, making game-making extremely expensive. And, with expenses, you often get corporate forces urging creators to avoid big risks, to make the safer products.
Somehow, Remedy has the budget to make big, stunningly gorgeous games, but I detect not even a hint of artistic compromise. That might just be because it's well-hidden, but no one else, to my knowledge, is making games quite like this.
I don't want them to rush, but I hope that when we eventually get Control 2, it will equal (if it doesn't surpass) Alan Wake II's ambition and grace.
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