I've now played through the first of the three Night Springs episodes. It's short - I don't have a great estimate of its length as I had a long birthday phone call in the middle of it.
This one centers an unnamed fan (obviously Rose Marigold) who lives in a weirdly charmed world - essentially, it's the world of her strange fan-fiction (actually, technically speaking it's not fan fiction because it's not based on an existing story, unless you count Departure or Return). She's a perfect Mary Sue character, and that's reflected in the gameplay: you start off with a pump-action shotgun and a hunting rifle, and you have about 300 shells for the former.
So, basically, you need to throw out the typical careful Alan Wake II gameplay strategy and just smoke every enemy you come across. Healing items are not infinite, but relatively plentiful, so basically if you ever wished you could just go hog, this is for you.
The scenario is absurdly silly: a "bad boy" evil twin of "The Writer" whom the narrator/player character loves has shown up on a motorcycle, and claims to have kidnapped him, and unleashed a bunch of "Haters" to attack him.
The map is basically just the Bright Falls area, starting at the Diner (in this case "Nite's Diner") and going out through the boatyard and into the woods toward the Valhalla Nursing Home (or just, in this reality, The Writer's home). There's a boss fight with the evil twin, with some truly absurd developments over the course of it.
The whole thing is pretty quick and simple. I was waiting for some haunting, jarring descent into horror or at least psychological weirdness, but it's mostly told simply and straightforward.
If this is the typical length of the chapters, then this DLC is going to be probably closer in scope to the first Alan Wake's DLCs, the Writer and the Signal. I'll confess I'm maybe a little underwhelmed, but we'll see how I feel after getting through all three chapters (the second is the Jesse Faden one).
What I'm curious about is how these will play with the balance of the game. Number One Fan is mechanically pretty much unchanged from regular AW2 gameplay (now, feeling like an idiot, I never checked to see if Rose had her own Writer's Room/Mind Place equivalent) but the ample availability of ammunition and the lack of darkness shields on the enemies makes the whole thing feel more action-heavy.
While the map is basically the same as in the base game, with some barriers that appear to keep you on a narrow path, there's a lot of fun, cheeky design. In particular, I laughed out loud when I was going to find the evil twin on a beach and I came across two signs, one on top with an arrow pointing forward that said "NOT THIS BEACH" and another below it with an arrow pointing to the right saying "THIS BEACH."
There is this kind of open question as to whether Rose's enthusiasm for Alan tips into inappropriate territory. Here we see the unfiltered version of her obsession, and there's something weirdly childish about it. Also, we get several shots of Rose in wide-eyed wonder while absolutely splattered with blood (of people who don't like Alan's writing. I mean, yeah, they're also violently attacking people, but if Rose thinks of people who aren't a fan of his writing as being mindless zombie-like monsters that are totally worthy of being blown away with a shotgun, that's... not super healthy?)
One note here is that Alan - sorry, "The Writer" - calls out to her through a couple of means. The first is through one of those plastic singing wide-mouth basses. This actually reminds me of one of the Dead Letters from Control in which a person claims that one of these is possessed by the devil. I don't know if that's meant to be a connection or just another piece of weird, surreal Americana.
It's also fully possible that there are hints and details in this that I just didn't clock because I don't have the context. There are two other chapters to play through, and I'm very curious to see what the through-lines might be.
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