Alan Wake fans have been waiting for what felt like an eternity to see a proper sequel to the beloved franchise. We know that over the years since Alan Wake was released, Remedy Entertainment was also keen on getting back to the franchise. However, things didn’t quite work out the way that they wanted. According to Sam Lake, the creative director for the studio, he’s quite happy those pitches and concepts for Alan Wake 2 in the past failed to make the game come to fruition. Instead, fans can get the best experience that Remedy Entertainment could provide, a game that was not possible to make in the past.
According to an interview in which PCGamesN was a part of, Sam Lake offered some insight into the upcoming Alan Wake 2 and why now was the perfect time to bring it out. According to Sam’s comments, it mainly boiled down to finally succeeding in bringing the franchise back. However, upon looking back, the past pitches and concepts that Remedy Entertainment created were quite different. Apparently, previous concepts for an Alan Wake 2 were not set to be a survival horror experience either.
This is the first time we’ve succeeded. We’ve been trying through the years and the time was not right back then, looking back at those pitches and concepts that we created. I am really, really happy that none of them were made, because that meant that this got made now – and we could not have made this game earlier.
Sam Lake – PCGamesN
Meanwhile, the director of Alan Wake 2, Kyle Rowley, mentioned that the development team wanted a more cohesive package for players to experience. Looking into the survival horror genre, it made more sense to go down this pathway for the sequel. While Alan Wake had horror attributes to the game, it was mainly an action experience. Instead, this upcoming sequel will be a complete survival horror game.
Kyle went on to state that this genre made it easier to push forward a game that focused on its atmosphere and characters. So it looks like this installment will put quite a bit of attention on the game world, setting, and characters within it compared to the original installment. Meanwhile, being a survival horror game, you should go in expecting scarce resources, forcing you to think about how to combat some of the enemies that pop up along the way.
We’ve just come off making Control and we learned a lot about how we can do interactive storytelling there and just wanted to push that forward for this game. Slowing down the gameplay, focusing on the world, focusing on the atmosphere, focusing on the characters; it’s aligned very well with the genre, so I think everything just happened to fall into place. Me coming back as well.
Kyle Rowley – PCGamesN
Fortunately, we don’t have too long of a wait before we can get our hands on Alan Wake 2. This game is set to launch on October 27, 2023. When the game is released, you’ll find it available for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC platforms. Likewise, just yesterday, we had Gamescom ONL, which featured a brand-new trailer for the upcoming game. If you missed out on the event, you can check out the trailer in the video we have embedded below.