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@@campbell412 Yeah I kinda wish they went with Spider-Man 2. I’m 6 hrs into Alan Wake 2 and I think I’m done with it. The frustrating puzzle solving, I keep getting stuck walking around aimlessly trying to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do to be able to move forward at certain moments. It’s very vague and not intuitive at all. It’s happened twice so far, particularly in the Alan Wake segments.. extremely annoying and ruins the pacing for me to the point I just turn the game off. On top of getting lost and unsure of how to progress the story at times, I have teleporting shadow people that kill you in like 2 hits
@DFTNSHEXGRM haha, those are all things that make me love it. It really just isn't for you at all it seems. Which really is a shame, sorry that you don't like it. Although enemies don't kill you that fast if you play on easy and you can change the difficulty any time. I played on hard but that's because I'm a masochist lol.
@campbell412 Spider-Man 2 is definitely an easier to understand story. But there's a hell of a lot more to discuss about Alan Wake, no matter which story you'd call better. And that makes Wake a way better choice for a Dive.
In reference to around 27:00 , Alan says he hasn't written them as horror stories, it's that Mr. Scratch has been editing the pages to make them horror.
I don't know what the etiquette around spoilers is here, so I'll make people scroll... Mr Scratch wrote the first draft of Return. The typewriter text is Scratch, the handwriting is Alan putting Saga into the story and helping her. If it's a full page of typed text, it's a new page Alan wrote and inserted into Scratch's story.
I appreciate AAA big bombastic stories as much as the next person, but god this story is so surprising and clever that I am just always in awe of how cool this universe/lore Remedy has created is. Its inspired by things like Twin Peaks sure, but it also is distinctly its own thing because of how recursive the world is into itself in so many ways at any given time. Unraveling this puzzle of a narrative, even without the amazing graphics and cool gameplay, have to be one of the coolest things to do on a Halloween weekend on your own or with a partner Also the ways they've vaguely hinted at the premise of Control 2 so far just have me so excited for more from this studio lol
To Sarah's question (paraphrasing), "If Alan's trying to write himself out, why doesn't he just not write horror?" Alan brings this up. He says that The Dark Presence got out and changed the story into a horror story. And by the "rules of drama" that Haley brings up, Alan has to go along with it. He's basically fighting against a hyper fast game of Tetris. Alan keeps trying to write himself a way out, but the Dark Place keeps raining down new blocks, changing the rules and attacking him. So he needs to come up with new ways out on the fly. He can't just write "And Alan got out, the End." He needs to be sneaky about how he does it, like giving himself ammo, words of power for upgrades, the lamp.
Hyper-fast game of tetris is a good way to put it! Also, I believe that the Dark Place DOES like good structure in a creative work. Things have to be earned, nothing new can be created, everything must exist already and be altered and used smartly. There must be balance. To bring Alice out, Alan has to jump in, for example. It should be a good, albeit conventional, story.
@@DonnyKanone I don't see that. The way I see it is two ways. First the canon way, that being that the rules of the Dark Places power is that the story needs to be consistant. That outside of the influence of the clicker, the story needs to flow and make sense and the genre needs to match. The second way I see it is that it would be boring if Alan wrote "I get out, the end". Its the most semantic fandom argument that I find tiring. Like the whole "why don't the avengers show up and stop it", well then we wouldn't have a fucking Spider-Man story! Same with this. If Alan could just write "I get out and my wife has huge tits" there wouldn't be a fucking game.
This a small touch but one Ive not seen anyone else mention: I love that they actually animated characters taking items like keys from other characters. Usually games tend to bring the camera in and the character makes a vague motion forward or the item just dissapears and shows up in inventory. This game the camera actually adjusts to see the Saga take things from other characters with her actual hands! Its super rad
Where are people getting the idea that Alan was divorced?? Wake was missing and presumed dead. But last time he was with his wife they were together. And Alan was hoping that the trip to Bright Falls would bring em closer together. He only gets understandably, albeit a bit too, upset with her when she reveals that she really brought him here to get therapy so he can start writing again. And they were a good couple even if the last two years before the Bright Falls incident were a bit rocky. And Alice DOES remember that she was in Cauldron Lake and in the Dark Place. That's why her exhibition is called The Dark Place. And yeah, while Alan was a bit of a jerk in the outside world and had some temper issues (some of it is fair enough as paparazzis as famously assholes)... I wouldn't necessarily call him "a bad man"
The Dark Place/Dark Presence seem to sort of... feed on the darker parts of ourselves. That's the only reason the Dark Presence was able to overtake Alan in his moments of grief/anger/self-torment when he thought he'd driven his wife to suicide, albeit unintentionally. Alan has always had problems, but I agree with you that he's not a bad person at his core. The next game will follow his "ascension", given the dialogue we get from Alice in the mid-credits scene. I'm assuming this means Alan (perhaps Saga and the others now trapped in the Dark Place) will get closure on his issues and be able to move past them in order to finally escape.
Alex Casey (Dark Place version) mentiones Alice being Alan's ex. I protested out loud when I heard that in the game: "Excuse you, I'm presumed dead, not divorced!" But honestly a) we don't know how things worked out legally with Alice after Alan's disappearance b) the Dark Place likes to taunt Alan c) Alan getting tricked is kinda part of the plan. And for people who haven't played the first game or haven't been obsessing about its lore for years, it's easy to take Casey at his word and not question the idea that they were divorced.
@@travellerinthedark it's more likely that Alan would've been declared legally dead given that his body hadn't been found, and he was already presumed drowned. Basically, any information Alan gets in the Dark Place is almost always gonna be sus, as he himself is an unreliable narrator.
In terms of Saga being real or not, Alan cannot create a person wholecloth. Alan sees visions, like the echoes. Pre-2010, Alan believed they were just ideas, but he was actually a wee bit psychic. Then, when he wrote his visions/Casey/Saga into stories, the stories can come true and shape the real person's life. The question is just how much influence he has, and whether it could extend to Saga's life before or miles away in a different state. I would argue that Alex Casey proves Alan can have some impact, perhaps less directly, regardless of distance or intent. So, therefore, Logan is not safe. I personally believe ol' crazy Rose was actually just spot on. I think, amidst all the supernatural, Saga is actually just legitimately in denial to a psychologically broken degree. I think her daughter died exactly as described, completely separate to anything Alan has done.
@Blballerboy I think they certainly planted seeds for that, but I personally hope she isn't. In fact, I kind of hope we don't revisit Saga in future games so they never have to answer whether her daughter is back. The Inception ending doesn't work if there's an Inception 2 where they have to answer whether or not the top kept spinning, y'know?
@@adeviantproduction no way they introduce this super interesting character that you play most of the game as and don’t bring back for another entry, especially with that cliff hanger ending. Not sure why you would even think that.
@Blballerboy I said I hope they do that, not that they will or I think they will. They set up Saga Door, it makes sense they'd go back to it. I just don't want them to, and think it would be better if they don't. I explained why. I don't want to see Inception 2 where Leo lives out his life with his kids. For the cliffhanger to work, it needs to remain unanswered. I would prefer Door/Breaker hijinks to be Door's focus going forward. Can't wait for the Night Springs DLC.
@@adeviantproduction yeah but inception isn’t a sequel, and Nolan doesn’t do follow ups besides Batman anyway so that comparison doesn’t really work here. AW2 vague ending feels like it’s left purposely to lead you on to a 3rd follow up.
Wild ass coincidence given it was always going to be return with Alan Wake. It was like the cliffhanger was Return in the typewriter. Also both of them seemingly never having a sequel and then the owners getting the rights back and making a weird sequel way later.
@@PleasantLeechSam Lake said when Twin Peaks:The Return came out it almost felt like a message because it was already established. Must have felt surreal 😂
In literature, there are three stages to the hero's journey: Departure, Initiation, and Return. So, the third part being "Return" in both of those works is likely related to that. Fun fact, the manuscript in Alan Wake 1 was "Departure" ... So now we've seen all three 😉
I'm too cowardly to play myself, but I'm really glad Haley's been streaming it and pointing out all the references I missed. Hope she continues to stream the whole game!
I know this is two months late, but as someone that can’t handle horror games, I haven’t been scared once 9 hours in. The most recent part was a bit unnerving, but honestly it’s more “horror style” than scary.
From what I understand, the reason that the Anderson brothers and Ahti call Alan "Tom" is because Thomas Zane was the original protagonist of 'Departure', and because they were in the original draft, they remember meeting him as Tom, first. Then Alan rewrote 'Departure' to make himself the protagonist, moving the setting from 1970 to 2010, aging Tor and Odin. Alan has never met the original Thomas Zane.
What I think really makes this story so perfect for a Deepest Dive is that the story isn't just self-aware/meta which is hardly revolutionary, it's that its also self-aware within itself. Since Alan and now Sage are self-aware of the strange rules of this world, it becomes something to constantly ponder, especially when you have guys like Ahti or even Thomas Zaine which seem to be omniscient on whats really happening. Add to that that this game has so many references to Control, which is canon in-universe, but also references to Quantom Break and kinda Max Payne at times, and you start to ponder even more about the scope of what the rules of the game really are. Add to that things like Sam Lake's use of himself in the narrative or using Alan Wake's voice actor as the real actor as Casper Darling from Control (who is on book covers and tv broadcasts in this game), and it causes you to blur the lines of yourself and the characters really easily Not sure if the MinnMax crew knew this: but Remedy made an anonymous real-life Reddit post years ago that was kind of written like a non-fiction/creepypasta story that someone just posted with real life photographs of settings and objects. Only thing is, it had subtle details to Alan Wake that were not apparent right away such as a woman finding a shoebox in an attic with a manuscript cover labeled "Return" with the the author's name Alan Wake scribbled out (with real-life photos). This was years ago, I believe even before Quantum Break released, so their commitment to how "real" this universe feels is just so uncanny that I can't quite think of any other media franchise doing stuff like this, yet alone a video game studio. Thats even before discussing how photo-realistic their graphics can be in this game, adding to the realism P.S. anyone who enjoys the narrative of this game should watch Nathan for You on HBO lol. Nathan Fielder would love this game
THIS RIGHT HERE PUTS IN WORDS HOW REMEDY GAMES FEEL. I'm sorry for yelling however the bit to making them feel real the House of Dreams blog that they literally denied until you can find it discussed on a white board in Control The live action the meta that bleeds into reality it's just so fantastic
i've been playing through Alan Wake Remastered including The Writer & The Signal DLC, then American Nightmare, which were fun to revisit, now playing CONTROL and loving every moment of this dreamlike weirdscape, so i can't wait to join everyone in the Dark Place inside Alan Wake II soon as well...
I just did this too! Although, I started with the Bright Falls tv show, included the comics, and threw in Quantum Break as well. I’m just now getting to Alan Wake 2 and it’s been so cool being totally immersed in this universe!
Maybe I'm going super slow but I'm like 6 hours in and just got to the part where you play as Alan Wake. Gonna have to wait on listening to this for the time being.
If you're an Alan Wake lore expert, you should know that Alan Wake cannot create something out of nothing. This has been established since the first game. So no person is fake, no one is made up. They all had real lives. That is the number 1 rule of AW.
@@mikebrushing1851 Sarah is a mood killer when something isn’t her thing. It drives me crazy and she does it all the time. It’s like she can’t comprehend that people might be into things that she isn’t.
You know when the game starts it asks you if it can view your profile?I assumed this meant the game would have a gimmick where it read your real name. Then I get to the Janitor, and he says MY NAME (Tom) instead of Alan's and I'm like woooooah so meta! Then hours later I found out about the actual real character named Tom and got deflated a bit lol.
I think Alan Wake has one of the best video game romantic subplots. In the first game Alan does everything throughout the entire game not to stop some great evil or save universe. He just wants to save his wife to the point that he was willing to sacrifice himself and switch places with her. That's just beautiful. Alice didn't marry a bad man, Alan just has a temper, but he never got physically violent with Alice and in some flashbacks in AW1 you can see that he can be very sweet towards her and always feels bad first after a fight that you can also see in the first game. American Nightmare is also all about Alan trying to reunite with Alice. [SPOILERS AHEAD!!!] It was very nice to reveal in AW2 that Alice still loves Alan even after 13 years of his absence and at the very end we learn that she not only forgot about him, she is also actively trying to bring him back from The Dark Place! She is basically doing for him what he did for her in AW1. Lets just hope that in the end she won't have to switch places with him as well. Alan and Alice deserve a happy ending. I haven't been this invested in a video game love story probably since Days Gone with Deacon and Sarah and Tales of Arise with Alphen and Shionne.
I don't like those random face jump scares. I don't understand why they're there, and they nearly give me a heart attack every time. The crazy thing to me is that the game DOES have other, more effective jump scares. Even the very first one that happens in the first few minutes happens after a more subtle jump scare, where a deer runs out past Nightingale. The deer comes on the heels of sounds of deer in the woods nearby. The atmosphere and ambience is perfect, and then it's just ruined by the face jump. So annoying. Love the game, could do without Alan's face every 20 minutes trying to remind me this is a horror game.
The reactions of Thornton and Mulligan make no sense ... unless you listen to the police radios in 'Alan Wake' and read the tie-in comic book: they were members of the Torchbearers. They're supposed to be aware of the Taken and are trying to play stupid ... which isn't hard for them, but it's a little weird.
Personally, I felt like "It's not a lake, it's an ocean" was pretty straight forward. I feel the same about "It's not a loop, it's a spiral". They're metaphorical and symbolic concepts that explain (pretty eloquently) what's happening in these games.
I'm a huge fan of twin peaks, and I had a feeling that the diner was very familiar! Highly recommend the entire twin peaks series, including the reboot season with the original cast except those that left the industry or died. What's cool is that the return was predicted in the original show and is literally canon with real world time.
So funny that Alan Wake 1 was a huge Twin Peak reference already. And then they both got screwed over by higher ups and then way later got the rights and made a bizarre sequel where everything has changed so much despite keeping the same weirdness.
I really dont agree about the jump scares. I hate them in horror movies mostly but here theyre used as a way to infect the mind and make you feel like nowhere is safe. Its not just a loud noise. Its a monster toying with you. Its really frightening being plagued by someone trying to get into your mind. To each their own.
Are we all just believing that the Alan that washed up on the beach is the real Alan, or could it really be Mr Scratch? Considering that he shows up seconds after Saga and Alan communicate and yet we continue playing as Alan in the dark place suggests maybe it’s not really him.
2:11:36 Haley MacLean: "Mr. Scratch could believe in you, to screw over Alan." My Brain: "Just because you don't believe in the devil doesn't mean that the devil doesn't believe in you ...
Not opposed to having a different opinion on the show, but man Sarah was such a killjoy. We get it, you can nitpick story elements and you weren’t paying attention to what was going on. Having never played the original game and only played Control the story is all there but you came off more pretentious than anything else.
She was utterly and entirely obnoxious the entire time. The one thing she got right was to say something along the lines of having no business being on this deep dive. Thank goodness for Haley and Leo's insights (and the other listener questions) though. It pulled me all the way through to the end.
Really surprised nobody thinks that time is not linear in the dark place. For Alan to only have a minor beard and then him interacting with the New York murders that happened years ago and at the same time interacting with Saga in the present. Alan is really surprised it's been 13 years because maybe to him, in the dark place, it only seems like months have passed
42:01 - 42:44 - whoever was playing for the footage was clearly struggling hard with figuring out those polaroids... They tried every possible combination except the correct one on BOTH images.
Yup, the Oldest House from Control seems to used to be known as Yggdrasil. Unclear for how long the Oldest House was a building and when/if it was ever an actual literal tree Also the service weapon Jessie uses also used to be Thor's hammer Mjolnir and King Arthur's Excalibur lol, it just changes form over time.
@PleasantLeech the Yggdrasil connection has only been hinted at through subtext. You learn more about the Service Weapon in the Foundation DLC through files scattered throughout.
@batmanvsuperman_ what are you talking about? Lmao the world tree is also always depicted as a literal tree. It's just like the oldest house in that it exists both outside and within our dimension at the same time. If anything that makes it more likely.
I just finished the game and watched the first 10 minutes and I am already having so much fun with thinking "you guys have no idea what else is coming up still". By now you probably played more, but still... :D
It's interesting to think about development timelines. In some cases, I wonder if something seems like it was taken from Control, but actually Control took it from development plans for Alan Wake II. The spiral is a good example, called out around 2:31:00. I also wonder whether some key ideas in Control came from development plans for Alan Wake II that weren't working there. Maybe the thought of X-Files-esque paranormal investigators came up and that evolved into FBC?
Real time videos being projected realistically on characters and environments was already a thing in Control!! Hell, you could pick the projectee up with your telekinesis throw power and move around with it and rhe video would keep playing and properly projecting on surfaces.
I'm half way in the game right now (i think) at the Valhallah Eldery Home. And i'm loving it. Growing up on Max Payne and replaying that a ton when i was young to recently revisted Alan Wake 1 and now Alan Wake 2, Remedy has always been one of my fav's. Where Alan Wake 1 felt like a Stephen King book with Twin Peaks influences, this game feels like Twin Peaks The Return The Game. It reaaaally feels and looks like The Return. One hour into this video i notice that the things you guys praise are the exact things that they take from Twin Peaks, music after a episode for example or Lynch as Gordon. The different time lines. The mystery of the doppleganger. This game is extremely close to Twin Peaks and as much as i love Sam Lake i think that show and Lynch deserve the praise you guys are giving Sam Lake for it.
Just catching up on all this, Sarah’s comment about if they were Saga and Alan popped out of the dark place they would shoot him on the spot, absolutely killed me dead and I’m now posting this from the afterlife.
I think the ocean being referenced is the ocean of creation where ideas spring from. The oceanview is arguably where its ports are traversed as Zane said in the first game and Ahti being the God of the ocean can traverse between them at will.
Them saying “I’m glad they’re not just doing twin peaks!”has me screaming at my headphones because this is basically twin peaks the return in video game form ha ha the similarities are beyond surface level…they’re an ocean. Or maybe as deep as a well….
22:06 - They say that the Dark Place is an ocean of darkness bigger than even our entire universe. Some possible reads on that: Oceans are made up of tons of water, which is another theme that carries through this game. As Ahti describes, water carries things where they need to go, it can give life or drown it, it can be clean or muddied. It's a neutral thing, but elemental and fundamental to Human existence. water is the blood of life. The Dark Place as an Ocean is the cauldron from which the world is born. It's bigger than our universe: perhaps because it is literally the primordial chaos from which the entire universe is birthed. Before "Let there be light" there was only darkness. The vastness of an ocean evokes the imagery of thinks like sinking: crushing weight, endless pounding waves, turbulence and storms, etc. The biggest thing, I think, that's meant by "It's not a lake, it's an ocean" is that despite Cauldron Lake literally being , it houses this thing (the Dark Place) which is much more like an ocean than like a lake. It's bigger than the vessel which contains it (the lake, the world, the universe), it's darker than the night, it's immense and unforgiving, and it's somewhere one could easily get lost with no land in sight. The Dark Place is not a "thing" that is physically inside the lake. It's an idea that is embodied by Cauldron Lake (and in some cases we see it embodied by the surrounding waters as well).
The Alan sections for me were well crafted in a horror sense as there were times where it made me feel discomfort and disorientation and even claustrophobia without becoming tedious. It remained engaging
It's interesting to me that this crew only played a portion of it before jumping into this conversation. AW2 is one of those games that you really need to experience all of before it begins to make sense.
Still slowly making my way through this, am currently held up by a collectible bug that I'm waiting to get patched out. Anyway -- I took Alex Casey's "I hate nature, too much sky" as an oblique reference to Max Payne 1 & 2, in that they mostly take place within apartment buildings and other edifices, with ceilings. In rare cases where this isn't the case, its often when Max is stuck in a nightmare, where there sometimes is no ceiling, just a open black void above and below. But as Sarah said, I might just be attributing too much meaning to throwaway elements. 😄
I'm wondering how you guys even played this game. I have it on PC and it runs like crap. I can't even play for more than 30 minutes without my frames dropping from 90fps to 22fps. Apparently this RAM leaking issue has been around since launch. Shame too. I'm loving the game itself.
Alan wake “everything but the darkest and most twisted stories or elements disappear within the dark place” if Alan doesn’t write the darkest creepiest shit it disappears from the dark place
ergodic, not erotic. Ergodic literature is any literature that uses the form of the text to tell a story, on top of using the text itself. House of Leaves is notable because it's one of the few non-children's books which does this, and it does it to great effect.
How difficult is this compared to the first one? I really want to play this bc I loved Control, but I couldn’t get through Alan Wake 1 because it was super hard for me for some reason, even on easy mode. I don’t want to spend the money if I won’t be able to play the game, esp if it’s like the first one where easy mode wasn’t easy enough for me.
On Story difficulty the enemies do very little damage and all die in 1 or 2 shots from your basic Handgun. Very manageable in my opinion and you can switch at any time.
@@drakeheinhorst3312 Thanks! Do you happen to remember if you felt this about the easy mode on AW1? I have been lambasted on reddit for saying it was too hard for me, was even called mentally ill for not being able to get it!
@prettyhatemachine101 I didn't struggle much with the first game but it had an odd rhythm to combat so I could see why some would struggle. I think this one is even easier on the easiest difficulty. For example, on normal an enemy hit might take 20% of your health. On story difficulty it would do like 3-4%. Plus you get more resources and health items seem to be stronger.
@@drakeheinhorst3312 Nice! I decided I’m gonna jump in today. I figure if I pay $60 that will motivate me to get through whatever difficulty I encounter. AW1 was free, so I gave up bc there was no investment. I love the universe they are building and the vibes look seriously epic.
Dude, i wanted to love this so bad and all im left with after finishing is a feeling of having played a cringy fanfic self referential circlejerk that looks amazing and has some of the best lighting i ever experienced in a video game.
I feel like in the context of videogames it deserves to be praised for being different to so many other AAA games, but in the wider context of all storytelling, god im so tired of meta shit, it's become the lowest form of story telling to me.
@@williambarter245 See, and i want to agree and disagree at the same time. Because it looks amazing but if you boil down the "game" part it literally is a bunch of fetchquests like leftover sidecontent from an open world game. And the talked up the gameplay enough that i hoped that this would be the Remedy game where substance finally meets style and its the opposite.
I would love to see Alan Wake 2 win at the game awards as it would be so funny to see it win over bigger more mainstream stuff like Zelda and Baldurs Gate and Starfield and Spider-Man.
Alan Wake isn't supposed to be a good writer, he's a bit of a hack which is half the problem lol Also Rose got possessed by the dark place in AW1 and it scrambled her brains.
Taking my sweet time with this game. May be in my top 3 🐐 along with Bioshock and Witcher 3... Then the math puzzle on 1 of the cult stashes slapped me in the face at 2am. I'm not a smart man. I'm charitable, thoughtful, considerate, kind and empathetic. But fuck math. I can't believe Remedy did this. Worst game ever
I like Alan Wake 2, a lot. However in the back head, I am a bit let down from the game I thought it would be from the initial teaser. I thought it would be all Alan Wake, and I thought the game would be a little more experimental, desperate, trippy/scary in a kind of semi-open world Dark New York. Less Resident Evil feeling. Like still survival horror but with some Control weirdness - exploring and defining the dark place. The Alan Wake half of the game starts touching upon it, but it feels too truncated. It's more shallow and pallatable in order to mesh well with the other half of the game. For all its faults, TLoU pt. 2 had a cool semi open world section in Seattle where you can find info you need to piece together yourself in order to find optional treasure. Something like that but on a whole game scale. And obviously far trippier with crazy dream logic.
@@joshuabrungardt461 she was grating and pretentious and it brought the whole mood down. She came across like a child that was too cool for everything.
The fact that there is basically no talk of this game's very clear inspirations beyond Twin Peaks (which you haven't seen) is hilarious. Gamers are so easy to impress, they don't know anything outside of Disney slop.
Well that’s incredibly rude! I thought we talked about Stephen King, archetypal horror and Finnish lore some which I was super interested in seeing their inspiration stem from as a Finnish studio. Gonna be watching some Twin Peaks in the coming weeks as this has me super inspired to finally sit down and watch it!
@@haleyfax Wow, my bad, Stephen King? You guys really did dig deep…. The point stands. Sam Lake is only, like, 20% more well-read than the average gamer, but that’s why he seems like a wizard to you guys. This gives me flashbacks to WandaVision, where all the least cultured people in the world became convinced Marvel had achieved some new form of high art.
@@shambolic8539genuinely sorry you see people excited about something and your first instinct is to try and find a way to tell them they’re stupid, even though it seems like you’re enjoying Alan Wake II as well. Hope you keep enjoying it!
@@haleyfax “best, most thorough discussion about Alan Wake 2 on the internet”. My bad, guess I misunderstood what this was. This is a story game, how is this discussion meaningful at all if you guys don’t know any other stories? “Man, it was cool when [x] happened!” Great content, for sure.
@@recker545the ham fisted attempt at Lynchian surreality, horror in the vein of Stephen King, and their clunky references to the arts (mainly cinema) is reminiscent of my year in creative writing. It’s not at all refreshing to listen to because it reeks of first draft pretension, but then again I’m not sure you can make something like the “Dark Place” sound like it wasn’t written by a teenager.
I've always seen Alan Wake (as a fictional writer/character) as a trope-y, tryhard-y writer, so all of this makes sense to me within the world. Because when you look at Control, for example, I think Remedy's writing shines.
@@andrewmartin520 Yeah agreed. Also I've gotten this feeling in Control but definitely moreso in this game, but it feels very much like Remedy is 100% on the same wavelength of my/the audience expectations of how the story and plot details are going to go. I often find myself seeing some of the environmental storytelling, then a cutscene, then making a hypothesis about it, only for the game to address my theory with another detail like 20 min later that makes me question what I was thinking before. And this happens frequently, all the time lol Saying its just a dumb wannabe Stephen King copycat piece of media wiht Lynchian tropes kind of ignores the fact that David Lynch and Stephen King never made video games, so was never able to reveal details/bizarre insights in the way this game does. The dark place being extremely simple and one-note, and yet effectively nightmarish and uncomfortable when you're inside of it, is sort of the point since its possible it could be written by just a mid-level writer going crazy (which it seems like Alan absolutely was/is).
I was so disappointed by this game as a Remedy fan from Max Payne 1 on. Will listen just to get at least good vibes from others about this game. The worst gameplay of all Remedy games by a long shot for me. Main loop is basically Ubisoft open world fetchquest collecting effin lunchboxes, paperscraps and photos.
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I'm so happy the community chose this game over Spider Man 2. Remedy deserves the spotlight.
At this point, Spiderman 2 is a more coherent and understandable story to be fair.
@@campbell412 Yeah I kinda wish they went with Spider-Man 2. I’m 6 hrs into Alan Wake 2 and I think I’m done with it. The frustrating puzzle solving, I keep getting stuck walking around aimlessly trying to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do to be able to move forward at certain moments. It’s very vague and not intuitive at all. It’s happened twice so far, particularly in the Alan Wake segments.. extremely annoying and ruins the pacing for me to the point I just turn the game off. On top of getting lost and unsure of how to progress the story at times, I have teleporting shadow people that kill you in like 2 hits
@DFTNSHEXGRM haha, those are all things that make me love it. It really just isn't for you at all it seems. Which really is a shame, sorry that you don't like it. Although enemies don't kill you that fast if you play on easy and you can change the difficulty any time. I played on hard but that's because I'm a masochist lol.
@campbell412 Spider-Man 2 is definitely an easier to understand story. But there's a hell of a lot more to discuss about Alan Wake, no matter which story you'd call better. And that makes Wake a way better choice for a Dive.
I don't think there would be much to discuss with spider man 2. It's super fun but the story doesn't really have twists or turns.
In reference to around 27:00 , Alan says he hasn't written them as horror stories, it's that Mr. Scratch has been editing the pages to make them horror.
I don't know what the etiquette around spoilers is here, so I'll make people scroll...
Mr Scratch wrote the first draft of Return. The typewriter text is Scratch, the handwriting is Alan putting Saga into the story and helping her. If it's a full page of typed text, it's a new page Alan wrote and inserted into Scratch's story.
I appreciate AAA big bombastic stories as much as the next person, but god this story is so surprising and clever that I am just always in awe of how cool this universe/lore Remedy has created is. Its inspired by things like Twin Peaks sure, but it also is distinctly its own thing because of how recursive the world is into itself in so many ways at any given time. Unraveling this puzzle of a narrative, even without the amazing graphics and cool gameplay, have to be one of the coolest things to do on a Halloween weekend on your own or with a partner
Also the ways they've vaguely hinted at the premise of Control 2 so far just have me so excited for more from this studio lol
To Sarah's question (paraphrasing), "If Alan's trying to write himself out, why doesn't he just not write horror?"
Alan brings this up. He says that The Dark Presence got out and changed the story into a horror story. And by the "rules of drama" that Haley brings up, Alan has to go along with it.
He's basically fighting against a hyper fast game of Tetris. Alan keeps trying to write himself a way out, but the Dark Place keeps raining down new blocks, changing the rules and attacking him. So he needs to come up with new ways out on the fly. He can't just write "And Alan got out, the End." He needs to be sneaky about how he does it, like giving himself ammo, words of power for upgrades, the lamp.
Hyper-fast game of tetris is a good way to put it! Also, I believe that the Dark Place DOES like good structure in a creative work. Things have to be earned, nothing new can be created, everything must exist already and be altered and used smartly. There must be balance. To bring Alice out, Alan has to jump in, for example. It should be a good, albeit conventional, story.
Not gonna lie, feels like a narrative device to gloss over the shoddy plot, not a creative decision to make it better.
I love this. the Tetris example is a great point.
@@DonnyKanone I don't see that. The way I see it is two ways. First the canon way, that being that the rules of the Dark Places power is that the story needs to be consistant. That outside of the influence of the clicker, the story needs to flow and make sense and the genre needs to match.
The second way I see it is that it would be boring if Alan wrote "I get out, the end". Its the most semantic fandom argument that I find tiring. Like the whole "why don't the avengers show up and stop it", well then we wouldn't have a fucking Spider-Man story! Same with this. If Alan could just write "I get out and my wife has huge tits" there wouldn't be a fucking game.
@@DonnyKanone It is actually what makes good writing, both in the real world and in the universe of the game.
For a special treat, finish this video THEN go back to the beginning to see where Hanson's voice started compared to where it ended.
Best part of a new Remedy game is getting to see the community get bigger! Welcome to the madness of the Remedyverse.
Nice to see you here! I've been itching in anticipation for your Alan Wake II breakdown since release week.
This a small touch but one Ive not seen anyone else mention: I love that they actually animated characters taking items like keys from other characters. Usually games tend to bring the camera in and the character makes a vague motion forward or the item just dissapears and shows up in inventory. This game the camera actually adjusts to see the Saga take things from other characters with her actual hands! Its super rad
Man, FFXVI is SUPER guilty of this lol. I know it saves time and resources but come on!
@@msmoon6011 its such a small detail but I always notice it so when AW2 finally did it I was so thrilled
Where are people getting the idea that Alan was divorced?? Wake was missing and presumed dead. But last time he was with his wife they were together. And Alan was hoping that the trip to Bright Falls would bring em closer together. He only gets understandably, albeit a bit too, upset with her when she reveals that she really brought him here to get therapy so he can start writing again.
And they were a good couple even if the last two years before the Bright Falls incident were a bit rocky.
And Alice DOES remember that she was in Cauldron Lake and in the Dark Place. That's why her exhibition is called The Dark Place.
And yeah, while Alan was a bit of a jerk in the outside world and had some temper issues (some of it is fair enough as paparazzis as famously assholes)... I wouldn't necessarily call him "a bad man"
The Dark Place/Dark Presence seem to sort of... feed on the darker parts of ourselves. That's the only reason the Dark Presence was able to overtake Alan in his moments of grief/anger/self-torment when he thought he'd driven his wife to suicide, albeit unintentionally. Alan has always had problems, but I agree with you that he's not a bad person at his core. The next game will follow his "ascension", given the dialogue we get from Alice in the mid-credits scene. I'm assuming this means Alan (perhaps Saga and the others now trapped in the Dark Place) will get closure on his issues and be able to move past them in order to finally escape.
Alex Casey (Dark Place version) mentiones Alice being Alan's ex. I protested out loud when I heard that in the game: "Excuse you, I'm presumed dead, not divorced!" But honestly a) we don't know how things worked out legally with Alice after Alan's disappearance b) the Dark Place likes to taunt Alan c) Alan getting tricked is kinda part of the plan. And for people who haven't played the first game or haven't been obsessing about its lore for years, it's easy to take Casey at his word and not question the idea that they were divorced.
@@travellerinthedark it's more likely that Alan would've been declared legally dead given that his body hadn't been found, and he was already presumed drowned. Basically, any information Alan gets in the Dark Place is almost always gonna be sus, as he himself is an unreliable narrator.
The worst thing he did in the first game was looking like a douchebag wearing sunglasses in his apartment while hungover and on painkillers.
In terms of Saga being real or not, Alan cannot create a person wholecloth. Alan sees visions, like the echoes. Pre-2010, Alan believed they were just ideas, but he was actually a wee bit psychic.
Then, when he wrote his visions/Casey/Saga into stories, the stories can come true and shape the real person's life. The question is just how much influence he has, and whether it could extend to Saga's life before or miles away in a different state.
I would argue that Alex Casey proves Alan can have some impact, perhaps less directly, regardless of distance or intent. So, therefore, Logan is not safe.
I personally believe ol' crazy Rose was actually just spot on. I think, amidst all the supernatural, Saga is actually just legitimately in denial to a psychologically broken degree. I think her daughter died exactly as described, completely separate to anything Alan has done.
Mr Door theory? You think hes Sagas father like I do?
@Blballerboy I think they certainly planted seeds for that, but I personally hope she isn't. In fact, I kind of hope we don't revisit Saga in future games so they never have to answer whether her daughter is back.
The Inception ending doesn't work if there's an Inception 2 where they have to answer whether or not the top kept spinning, y'know?
@@adeviantproduction no way they introduce this super interesting character that you play most of the game as and don’t bring back for another entry, especially with that cliff hanger ending. Not sure why you would even think that.
@Blballerboy I said I hope they do that, not that they will or I think they will. They set up Saga Door, it makes sense they'd go back to it.
I just don't want them to, and think it would be better if they don't. I explained why. I don't want to see Inception 2 where Leo lives out his life with his kids. For the cliffhanger to work, it needs to remain unanswered.
I would prefer Door/Breaker hijinks to be Door's focus going forward. Can't wait for the Night Springs DLC.
@@adeviantproduction yeah but inception isn’t a sequel, and Nolan doesn’t do follow ups besides Batman anyway so that comparison doesn’t really work here. AW2 vague ending feels like it’s left purposely to lead you on to a 3rd follow up.
Twin peaks third season was called "The return" same as Alan Wakes book
Wild ass coincidence given it was always going to be return with Alan Wake. It was like the cliffhanger was Return in the typewriter. Also both of them seemingly never having a sequel and then the owners getting the rights back and making a weird sequel way later.
@@PleasantLeechSam Lake said when Twin Peaks:The Return came out it almost felt like a message because it was already established. Must have felt surreal 😂
In literature, there are three stages to the hero's journey: Departure, Initiation, and Return. So, the third part being "Return" in both of those works is likely related to that.
Fun fact, the manuscript in Alan Wake 1 was "Departure" ... So now we've seen all three 😉
I'm too cowardly to play myself, but I'm really glad Haley's been streaming it and pointing out all the references I missed. Hope she continues to stream the whole game!
I know this is two months late, but as someone that can’t handle horror games, I haven’t been scared once 9 hours in. The most recent part was a bit unnerving, but honestly it’s more “horror style” than scary.
It's not that scary honestly and you can turn the jump scares off.
From what I understand, the reason that the Anderson brothers and Ahti call Alan "Tom" is because Thomas Zane was the original protagonist of 'Departure', and because they were in the original draft, they remember meeting him as Tom, first. Then Alan rewrote 'Departure' to make himself the protagonist, moving the setting from 1970 to 2010, aging Tor and Odin. Alan has never met the original Thomas Zane.
What I think really makes this story so perfect for a Deepest Dive is that the story isn't just self-aware/meta which is hardly revolutionary, it's that its also self-aware within itself. Since Alan and now Sage are self-aware of the strange rules of this world, it becomes something to constantly ponder, especially when you have guys like Ahti or even Thomas Zaine which seem to be omniscient on whats really happening. Add to that that this game has so many references to Control, which is canon in-universe, but also references to Quantom Break and kinda Max Payne at times, and you start to ponder even more about the scope of what the rules of the game really are. Add to that things like Sam Lake's use of himself in the narrative or using Alan Wake's voice actor as the real actor as Casper Darling from Control (who is on book covers and tv broadcasts in this game), and it causes you to blur the lines of yourself and the characters really easily
Not sure if the MinnMax crew knew this: but Remedy made an anonymous real-life Reddit post years ago that was kind of written like a non-fiction/creepypasta story that someone just posted with real life photographs of settings and objects. Only thing is, it had subtle details to Alan Wake that were not apparent right away such as a woman finding a shoebox in an attic with a manuscript cover labeled "Return" with the the author's name Alan Wake scribbled out (with real-life photos). This was years ago, I believe even before Quantum Break released, so their commitment to how "real" this universe feels is just so uncanny that I can't quite think of any other media franchise doing stuff like this, yet alone a video game studio. Thats even before discussing how photo-realistic their graphics can be in this game, adding to the realism
P.S. anyone who enjoys the narrative of this game should watch Nathan for You on HBO lol. Nathan Fielder would love this game
You're referring to the This House of Dreams blog. It's made reference to on a whiteboard in Contol.
THIS RIGHT HERE PUTS IN WORDS HOW REMEDY GAMES FEEL. I'm sorry for yelling however the bit to making them feel real the House of Dreams blog that they literally denied until you can find it discussed on a white board in Control The live action the meta that bleeds into reality it's just so fantastic
i've been playing through Alan Wake Remastered including The Writer & The Signal DLC, then American Nightmare, which were fun to revisit, now playing CONTROL and loving every moment of this dreamlike weirdscape, so i can't wait to join everyone in the Dark Place inside Alan Wake II soon as well...
I just did this too! Although, I started with the Bright Falls tv show, included the comics, and threw in Quantum Break as well. I’m just now getting to Alan Wake 2 and it’s been so cool being totally immersed in this universe!
Every culture analysis podcast needs to follow this four lovers and one hater archetype
Frank Breaker is Sarah's father. He is dead. Tim Breaker is her cousin. Sarah left Bright Falls and is now a federal agent.
Maybe I'm going super slow but I'm like 6 hours in and just got to the part where you play as Alan Wake. Gonna have to wait on listening to this for the time being.
Same, got to where they are after 10/11 hours. Smelling the roses though, the environments are incredible!
I think my final play time was 52 hours. I took A LOT of time and no guide. Searched every nook and cranny.
Poor Ben your voice held as long as it could lol
To Sarah's point, I think its very intentional that Alan is a bad writer. I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be mediocre at best.
If you're an Alan Wake lore expert, you should know that Alan Wake cannot create something out of nothing. This has been established since the first game. So no person is fake, no one is made up. They all had real lives. That is the number 1 rule of AW.
None of these people are actual experts on Remedy lore, let alone Alan Wake; which has had a very dedicated fan base for over a decade.
Sarah yelling "YOU ARE CARICATURES OF YOURSELVES" after my comment got read is my Joker origin moment LOL great episode and discussion!
Timestamp?
it was at the 2 hour and 40 minute mark!@@minnmax
@@minnmax 2:39:55
It's so good
Would love to get Haleys full take feelings on Control loved the way she talked about this game feeling the same way
@@mikebrushing1851 Sarah is a mood killer when something isn’t her thing. It drives me crazy and she does it all the time. It’s like she can’t comprehend that people might be into things that she isn’t.
You know when the game starts it asks you if it can view your profile?I assumed this meant the game would have a gimmick where it read your real name. Then I get to the Janitor, and he says MY NAME (Tom) instead of Alan's and I'm like woooooah so meta! Then hours later I found out about the actual real character named Tom and got deflated a bit lol.
I think Alan Wake has one of the best video game romantic subplots. In the first game Alan does everything throughout the entire game not to stop some great evil or save universe. He just wants to save his wife to the point that he was willing to sacrifice himself and switch places with her. That's just beautiful. Alice didn't marry a bad man, Alan just has a temper, but he never got physically violent with Alice and in some flashbacks in AW1 you can see that he can be very sweet towards her and always feels bad first after a fight that you can also see in the first game. American Nightmare is also all about Alan trying to reunite with Alice. [SPOILERS AHEAD!!!] It was very nice to reveal in AW2 that Alice still loves Alan even after 13 years of his absence and at the very end we learn that she not only forgot about him, she is also actively trying to bring him back from The Dark Place! She is basically doing for him what he did for her in AW1. Lets just hope that in the end she won't have to switch places with him as well. Alan and Alice deserve a happy ending. I haven't been this invested in a video game love story probably since Days Gone with Deacon and Sarah and Tales of Arise with Alphen and Shionne.
I don't like those random face jump scares. I don't understand why they're there, and they nearly give me a heart attack every time. The crazy thing to me is that the game DOES have other, more effective jump scares. Even the very first one that happens in the first few minutes happens after a more subtle jump scare, where a deer runs out past Nightingale. The deer comes on the heels of sounds of deer in the woods nearby. The atmosphere and ambience is perfect, and then it's just ruined by the face jump. So annoying. Love the game, could do without Alan's face every 20 minutes trying to remind me this is a horror game.
The reactions of Thornton and Mulligan make no sense ... unless you listen to the police radios in 'Alan Wake' and read the tie-in comic book: they were members of the Torchbearers. They're supposed to be aware of the Taken and are trying to play stupid ... which isn't hard for them, but it's a little weird.
Personally, I felt like "It's not a lake, it's an ocean" was pretty straight forward. I feel the same about "It's not a loop, it's a spiral". They're metaphorical and symbolic concepts that explain (pretty eloquently) what's happening in these games.
I'm a huge fan of twin peaks, and I had a feeling that the diner was very familiar! Highly recommend the entire twin peaks series, including the reboot season with the original cast except those that left the industry or died. What's cool is that the return was predicted in the original show and is literally canon with real world time.
So funny that Alan Wake 1 was a huge Twin Peak reference already. And then they both got screwed over by higher ups and then way later got the rights and made a bizarre sequel where everything has changed so much despite keeping the same weirdness.
I really dont agree about the jump scares. I hate them in horror movies mostly but here theyre used as a way to infect the mind and make you feel like nowhere is safe. Its not just a loud noise. Its a monster toying with you. Its really frightening being plagued by someone trying to get into your mind. To each their own.
Are we all just believing that the Alan that washed up on the beach is the real Alan, or could it really be Mr Scratch? Considering that he shows up seconds after Saga and Alan communicate and yet we continue playing as Alan in the dark place suggests maybe it’s not really him.
2:11:36 Haley MacLean: "Mr. Scratch could believe in you, to screw over Alan."
My Brain: "Just because you don't believe in the devil doesn't mean that the devil doesn't believe in you ...
You all need to see Twin Peaks. Especially the third season.
Not opposed to having a different opinion on the show, but man Sarah was such a killjoy. We get it, you can nitpick story elements and you weren’t paying attention to what was going on. Having never played the original game and only played Control the story is all there but you came off more pretentious than anything else.
She was utterly and entirely obnoxious the entire time. The one thing she got right was to say something along the lines of having no business being on this deep dive.
Thank goodness for Haley and Leo's insights (and the other listener questions) though. It pulled me all the way through to the end.
Really surprised nobody thinks that time is not linear in the dark place. For Alan to only have a minor beard and then him interacting with the New York murders that happened years ago and at the same time interacting with Saga in the present. Alan is really surprised it's been 13 years because maybe to him, in the dark place, it only seems like months have passed
I'm guessing Saga can hear the narrator of the book she's in. That's why she can know things she can.
42:01 - 42:44 - whoever was playing for the footage was clearly struggling hard with figuring out those polaroids... They tried every possible combination except the correct one on BOTH images.
Yup, the Oldest House from Control seems to used to be known as Yggdrasil. Unclear for how long the Oldest House was a building and when/if it was ever an actual literal tree
Also the service weapon Jessie uses also used to be Thor's hammer Mjolnir and King Arthur's Excalibur lol, it just changes form over time.
That's so cool! I played through Control bu didn't know all that
Interesting, that definitely does make a lot of sense. Where did you learn that though? I'm curious
@PleasantLeech the Yggdrasil connection has only been hinted at through subtext. You learn more about the Service Weapon in the Foundation DLC through files scattered throughout.
Foundation DLC kills the Yggdrasil theory. the Oldest House was revealed to be a literal tree, not a metaphorial world tree
@batmanvsuperman_ what are you talking about? Lmao the world tree is also always depicted as a literal tree. It's just like the oldest house in that it exists both outside and within our dimension at the same time. If anything that makes it more likely.
I just finished the game and watched the first 10 minutes and I am already having so much fun with thinking "you guys have no idea what else is coming up still". By now you probably played more, but still... :D
I was waiting for this! I'm almost up to par with Alan's side of the story
Ben’s Yada Yada budget completely spent after this episode 😂
It's interesting to think about development timelines. In some cases, I wonder if something seems like it was taken from Control, but actually Control took it from development plans for Alan Wake II. The spiral is a good example, called out around 2:31:00.
I also wonder whether some key ideas in Control came from development plans for Alan Wake II that weren't working there. Maybe the thought of X-Files-esque paranormal investigators came up and that evolved into FBC?
Top 10 scariest moments: Sarah and Haley syncronizing at 1:07:58
Hahaha didn't even notice this
@@haleyfax it's just like Saga and Alex taking a sip at the same time.
1:17:14 The iconography for Asgard is an upside-down mountain, so I don't think it's referencing The Board so much as Asgard.
Real time videos being projected realistically on characters and environments was already a thing in Control!! Hell, you could pick the projectee up with your telekinesis throw power and move around with it and rhe video would keep playing and properly projecting on surfaces.
That feature was even included as a tease at the end of one of Control's trailers, they must have known people would love that.
I'm half way in the game right now (i think) at the Valhallah Eldery Home. And i'm loving it. Growing up on Max Payne and replaying that a ton when i was young to recently revisted Alan Wake 1 and now Alan Wake 2, Remedy has always been one of my fav's. Where Alan Wake 1 felt like a Stephen King book with Twin Peaks influences, this game feels like Twin Peaks The Return The Game. It reaaaally feels and looks like The Return. One hour into this video i notice that the things you guys praise are the exact things that they take from Twin Peaks, music after a episode for example or Lynch as Gordon. The different time lines. The mystery of the doppleganger. This game is extremely close to Twin Peaks and as much as i love Sam Lake i think that show and Lynch deserve the praise you guys are giving Sam Lake for it.
Just catching up on all this, Sarah’s comment about if they were Saga and Alan popped out of the dark place they would shoot him on the spot, absolutely killed me dead and I’m now posting this from the afterlife.
I think the ocean being referenced is the ocean of creation where ideas spring from. The oceanview is arguably where its ports are traversed as Zane said in the first game and Ahti being the God of the ocean can traverse between them at will.
Them saying “I’m glad they’re not just doing twin peaks!”has me screaming at my headphones because this is basically twin peaks the return in video game form ha ha the similarities are beyond surface level…they’re an ocean. Or maybe as deep as a well….
22:06 - They say that the Dark Place is an ocean of darkness bigger than even our entire universe. Some possible reads on that:
Oceans are made up of tons of water, which is another theme that carries through this game. As Ahti describes, water carries things where they need to go, it can give life or drown it, it can be clean or muddied. It's a neutral thing, but elemental and fundamental to Human existence. water is the blood of life. The Dark Place as an Ocean is the cauldron from which the world is born. It's bigger than our universe: perhaps because it is literally the primordial chaos from which the entire universe is birthed. Before "Let there be light" there was only darkness. The vastness of an ocean evokes the imagery of thinks like sinking: crushing weight, endless pounding waves, turbulence and storms, etc.
The biggest thing, I think, that's meant by "It's not a lake, it's an ocean" is that despite Cauldron Lake literally being , it houses this thing (the Dark Place) which is much more like an ocean than like a lake. It's bigger than the vessel which contains it (the lake, the world, the universe), it's darker than the night, it's immense and unforgiving, and it's somewhere one could easily get lost with no land in sight. The Dark Place is not a "thing" that is physically inside the lake. It's an idea that is embodied by Cauldron Lake (and in some cases we see it embodied by the surrounding waters as well).
Holy shit. Haley was built for this particular deepest dive. I'm only 10 minutes in.
The Alan sections for me were well crafted in a horror sense as there were times where it made me feel discomfort and disorientation and even claustrophobia without becoming tedious. It remained engaging
It's interesting to me that this crew only played a portion of it before jumping into this conversation. AW2 is one of those games that you really need to experience all of before it begins to make sense.
Still slowly making my way through this, am currently held up by a collectible bug that I'm waiting to get patched out. Anyway -- I took Alex Casey's "I hate nature, too much sky" as an oblique reference to Max Payne 1 & 2, in that they mostly take place within apartment buildings and other edifices, with ceilings. In rare cases where this isn't the case, its often when Max is stuck in a nightmare, where there sometimes is no ceiling, just a open black void above and below.
But as Sarah said, I might just be attributing too much meaning to throwaway elements. 😄
This is the first deep dive I will actually play along with.... because I'm too scared to marathon this game
I'm wondering how you guys even played this game. I have it on PC and it runs like crap. I can't even play for more than 30 minutes without my frames dropping from 90fps to 22fps. Apparently this RAM leaking issue has been around since launch. Shame too. I'm loving the game itself.
Sarah sure was a bummer. Why was she even on this episode?
Quantum break walked so Alan wake could run
Alan wake “everything but the darkest and most twisted stories or elements disappear within the dark place” if Alan doesn’t write the darkest creepiest shit it disappears from the dark place
I'll be taking a longer lunch break today, boss.
ergodic, not erotic. Ergodic literature is any literature that uses the form of the text to tell a story, on top of using the text itself. House of Leaves is notable because it's one of the few non-children's books which does this, and it does it to great effect.
Sarah watched too much CinemaSins
How difficult is this compared to the first one? I really want to play this bc I loved Control, but I couldn’t get through Alan Wake 1 because it was super hard for me for some reason, even on easy mode. I don’t want to spend the money if I won’t be able to play the game, esp if it’s like the first one where easy mode wasn’t easy enough for me.
On Story difficulty the enemies do very little damage and all die in 1 or 2 shots from your basic Handgun. Very manageable in my opinion and you can switch at any time.
@@drakeheinhorst3312 Thanks! Do you happen to remember if you felt this about the easy mode on AW1? I have been lambasted on reddit for saying it was too hard for me, was even called mentally ill for not being able to get it!
@prettyhatemachine101 I didn't struggle much with the first game but it had an odd rhythm to combat so I could see why some would struggle. I think this one is even easier on the easiest difficulty. For example, on normal an enemy hit might take 20% of your health. On story difficulty it would do like 3-4%. Plus you get more resources and health items seem to be stronger.
@@drakeheinhorst3312 Nice! I decided I’m gonna jump in today. I figure if I pay $60 that will motivate me to get through whatever difficulty I encounter. AW1 was free, so I gave up bc there was no investment. I love the universe they are building and the vibes look seriously epic.
This game is easier than 1 - I played 1 on Easy difficulty and the Story mode on this game is easier than that.
Really enjoyed everyone's input (except Sarah, she is rather obnoxious). Looking forward to getting into part 2.
Psychonauts 2 did the joke about how long ago the first game was
Alan is now less rough round the edges, more neurotic mess.
13 years trapped in a custom tailored nightmare dimension will do that to a guy.
Who’s Uncle Otti? Still not sure what you guys are referring to
Ahti the janitor
alan did not get divorced, what is she blabling about ?
As for all "meta" storytelling, it definitely prioritizes being 'smart' and 'unique' over everything else. I do think it's missing something (so far)
Dude, i wanted to love this so bad and all im left with after finishing is a feeling of having played a cringy fanfic self referential circlejerk that looks amazing and has some of the best lighting i ever experienced in a video game.
I feel like in the context of videogames it deserves to be praised for being different to so many other AAA games, but in the wider context of all storytelling, god im so tired of meta shit, it's become the lowest form of story telling to me.
@@williambarter245 See, and i want to agree and disagree at the same time.
Because it looks amazing but if you boil down the "game" part it literally is a bunch of fetchquests like leftover sidecontent from an open world game.
And the talked up the gameplay enough that i hoped that this would be the Remedy game where substance finally meets style and its the opposite.
Let’s juice deez numbers
I would love to see Alan Wake 2 win at the game awards as it would be so funny to see it win over bigger more mainstream stuff like Zelda and Baldurs Gate and Starfield and Spider-Man.
Boy just continue playing you seen nothing yet, most questions will be answered.
its time.
Alan Wake isn't supposed to be a good writer, he's a bit of a hack which is half the problem lol
Also Rose got possessed by the dark place in AW1 and it scrambled her brains.
Schlub Club!
Taking my sweet time with this game. May be in my top 3 🐐 along with Bioshock and Witcher 3...
Then the math puzzle on 1 of the cult stashes slapped me in the face at 2am.
I'm not a smart man. I'm charitable, thoughtful, considerate, kind and empathetic. But fuck math. I can't believe Remedy did this. Worst game ever
yesyesyesyesyes
Ben drink water lol
Playing this before the 1st game is kinda poser energy
I like Alan Wake 2, a lot. However in the back head, I am a bit let down from the game I thought it would be from the initial teaser.
I thought it would be all Alan Wake, and I thought the game would be a little more experimental, desperate, trippy/scary in a kind of semi-open world Dark New York. Less Resident Evil feeling. Like still survival horror but with some Control weirdness - exploring and defining the dark place. The Alan Wake half of the game starts touching upon it, but it feels too truncated. It's more shallow and pallatable in order to mesh well with the other half of the game.
For all its faults, TLoU pt. 2 had a cool semi open world section in Seattle where you can find info you need to piece together yourself in order to find optional treasure. Something like that but on a whole game scale. And obviously far trippier with crazy dream logic.
We don't deserve Sarah
@@mikebrushing1851 it was meant as a compliment. Much like how Gotham doesn't deserve Batman
@@joshuabrungardt461but Sarah was insufferable during this.
@@MrGeoff-iv6re I thought she kept it from turning into a Remedy circle jerk. It brought a nice balance and also I find her genuinely funny
@@joshuabrungardt461 she was grating and pretentious and it brought the whole mood down. She came across like a child that was too cool for everything.
@@MrGeoff-iv6re we will have to agree to disagree on this one.
Remedy makes indie art
Insomniac makes pop art
Nintendo makes childrens art
The fact that there is basically no talk of this game's very clear inspirations beyond Twin Peaks (which you haven't seen) is hilarious. Gamers are so easy to impress, they don't know anything outside of Disney slop.
Well that’s incredibly rude! I thought we talked about Stephen King, archetypal horror and Finnish lore some which I was super interested in seeing their inspiration stem from as a Finnish studio. Gonna be watching some Twin Peaks in the coming weeks as this has me super inspired to finally sit down and watch it!
@@haleyfax Wow, my bad, Stephen King? You guys really did dig deep….
The point stands. Sam Lake is only, like, 20% more well-read than the average gamer, but that’s why he seems like a wizard to you guys.
This gives me flashbacks to WandaVision, where all the least cultured people in the world became convinced Marvel had achieved some new form of high art.
@@shambolic8539genuinely sorry you see people excited about something and your first instinct is to try and find a way to tell them they’re stupid, even though it seems like you’re enjoying Alan Wake II as well. Hope you keep enjoying it!
@@haleyfax “best, most thorough discussion about Alan Wake 2 on the internet”. My bad, guess I misunderstood what this was.
This is a story game, how is this discussion meaningful at all if you guys don’t know any other stories? “Man, it was cool when [x] happened!” Great content, for sure.
@@shambolic8539you must be fun at parties
I think you need to play through whole game for these deep dives. This is more like first impressions discussion. There is no depth to it
That's why you tune in for part 2? You don't go to book clubs and shout "Why haven't you all read the whole series yet?!"
Fun game but the story couldn’t be any more painfully amateur.
Scriptwriting definitely isn’t Remedy’s strong suit.
Interesting take, can you explain why you feel this or what is the basis of story being "amateur"? Just wondering.
@@recker545the ham fisted attempt at Lynchian surreality, horror in the vein of Stephen King, and their clunky references to the arts (mainly cinema) is reminiscent of my year in creative writing.
It’s not at all refreshing to listen to because it reeks of first draft pretension, but then again I’m not sure you can make something like the “Dark Place” sound like it wasn’t written by a teenager.
I've always seen Alan Wake (as a fictional writer/character) as a trope-y, tryhard-y writer, so all of this makes sense to me within the world. Because when you look at Control, for example, I think Remedy's writing shines.
@@andrewmartin520 Yeah agreed. Also I've gotten this feeling in Control but definitely moreso in this game, but it feels very much like Remedy is 100% on the same wavelength of my/the audience expectations of how the story and plot details are going to go. I often find myself seeing some of the environmental storytelling, then a cutscene, then making a hypothesis about it, only for the game to address my theory with another detail like 20 min later that makes me question what I was thinking before. And this happens frequently, all the time lol
Saying its just a dumb wannabe Stephen King copycat piece of media wiht Lynchian tropes kind of ignores the fact that David Lynch and Stephen King never made video games, so was never able to reveal details/bizarre insights in the way this game does. The dark place being extremely simple and one-note, and yet effectively nightmarish and uncomfortable when you're inside of it, is sort of the point since its possible it could be written by just a mid-level writer going crazy (which it seems like Alan absolutely was/is).
I was so disappointed by this game as a Remedy fan from Max Payne 1 on.
Will listen just to get at least good vibes from others about this game.
The worst gameplay of all Remedy games by a long shot for me.
Main loop is basically Ubisoft open world fetchquest collecting effin lunchboxes, paperscraps and photos.
This game insists on itself too much. Makes it annoying like if deadpool was a video game