Alan Wake
Alan Wake got an unofficial sidequel in the form of Control — a new Remedy developed shooter with horror elements that features Alan Wake in its second DLC. There’s so much mystery in that 2020 reintroduction to the Alan Wake character, I’m not sure I can even call it a true ending to his story. It’s more of a setup for Alan Wake’s next adventure… whatever that might be.
No, we’ve got to go back and look at the original game’s DLC. In a pair of episodes, The Signal and The Light ($6.99 each), Alan Wake tries to make contact with his insane doppelganger in the strange world of imagination beneath the waves of Cauldron Lake. It’s hard to even describe why the ending of Alan Wake left us so baffled. The entire game is baffling, ending with Alan Wake falling into Cauldron Lake and declaring that “the lake is an ocean” — which basically means that this strange world of imagination is much bigger than we thought.
The game immediately cuts to black after the vanilla ending, so at least the two DLC episodes give us a slightly clearer idea about what is happening to Alan Wake. In the alternate world, Alan is losing his mind — at the end, you’re able to regain your sanity and decide on a new path. Alan Wake decides to write his way back into the real world, by creating a sequel to his book “Departure’ — “Return” is the title. It gives us something to hope for instead of slapping us with a completely unexplainable ending.
Doom Eternal
Sometimes, you don’t even know you need a ‘true ending’ until you’ve played it. The end of Doom Eternal is short — like, it might be 5 seconds long. You defeat the god-like demonic bad guy and the game is over. What else do you expect from a Doom game? Doom Eternal has more story than you might expect, and it still ignores all that for the pure spectacle of blasting skyscraper-sized demons into bloody chunks.
The Doom Eternal DLC adds some truly insane wrinkles to the story, and sets us up for the final game in the trilogy. The first DLC chapter of The Ancient Gods pulls two big triggers — Dr. Samuel Hayden finally leaves his robotic vessel behind and inhabits an Urdak body. The Doom Guy also destroys the physical embodiment of the Father, and summons the physical embodiment of the Dark Lord. And it turns out, the Dark Lord is the Doom Guy!
Only the Doom Guy is cool enough to become the Dark Lord of Hell. Without a doubt, you’ll destroy the new Dark Lord in the second Ancient Gods chapter — but that leaves a big gap in the power of Heaven and Hell. Does that mean Dr. Samuel Hayden will take up the mantle of big bad guy in Doom 3? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Find for fumbled endings and attempts to sell us extra DLC on the next page.
