Night Springs Episode Two: North Star

 The ultimate impact of Night Springs on the lore and vibes of Alan Wake II is likely to be minimal. Ultimately, I think the main goal of this DLC has been to let us play around in the world with different characters and different vibes. I'll admit I was hoping for this DLC to be a bit more substantial than it is - more like Control's Foundation and AWE expansions, which were certainly shorter than the main game by a lot, but still felt like big chapters with a real arc to them.

Night Springs is what I'd describe more as bite-sized content. I could imagine blasting through these again at some point if I'm really eager to play through some Alan Wake combat, but honestly, combat was never AW2's strongest suit.

It's important to note that the cost of this DLC was pretty low - I think both packaged together as an upgrade to the "Deluxe Edition" was like 15 bucks, so if we're calling this $7.50, it's not a terrible amount of content for that price (by contrast Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree is a whopping 40 bucks, so I'm expecting a pretty massive chunk of game for that investment).

Still, I guess I loved being immersed in the story of Alan Wake II so much that I'd have perhaps liked to pay 25-30 bucks for a meatier expansion. We don't know when or how big the Lake House DLC will be, but I think we're really going to have to set our sights on Control 2.

All this being said, while short, there's some fun stuff to this.

The second Night Springs episode is North Star, which has us stepping into the shoes of Jesse Faden, the player character from Control. This clearly takes place before the events of that game (though it's also very "alternate timeline" so that might not be a necessary distinction. The episode actually has a weird parallel with the plot of Control, where we arrive at a strangely desolate location where Jesse's brother is being held, only to find that some strange and alien force is infecting the people there.

Unlike Number One Fan, these enemies do have darkness shields, but like the previous episode, ammo (and now batteries) are plentiful. I realized I was trying to carefully line up headshots and was getting my ass handed to me and then remembered that I didn't need to be so conservative and blasted away as if I had the Grip form of the Service Weapon.

North Star takes place in Coffee World, where some kind of weird alien strain of coffee has taken over the minds of the people kept there. Sheriff Breaker (or, rather, "The Sheriff," as no one is explicitly named in any of these stories) is our one friendly face. Most of the episode revolves into trying to get into the warehouse (the Kalavala Knights workshop,) where we think the brother is being kept.

There are a few puzzles to solve - fairly simple ones - and a few Coffee-Taken to take down.

It's super fun to be able to play as Jesse again, but I also think that unless there's some big twist in episode 3, the stand-alone nature of these episodes feels like a bit of a bummer given how important story and lore are to these games.