E3 ‘09: Alan Wake impressions

Spring 2010 can’t get here soon enough. That’s the date that the next evolutionary leap forward in story-driven gaming arrives, a landmark gaming experience called Alan Wake.

From the creators of Max Payne, Remedy Games, comes this tale that plays out like episodes of a TV show, each ending with a cliffhanger. You play as the title character, a horror writer who’s come to the northwestern town of Brightfall on vacation his wife. But things go wrong very fast when Alan’s wife disappears and the horrific events in his latest novel start coming true.

Bright Falls is a beautiful, idyllic town — until nighttime comes, and that’s when the Taken appear. The citizens of Bright Falls, it seems, are being taken over by some unknown dark presence, and are sent to destroy Alan. While fending them off whenever night falls over the town, Alan does his best to piece together the mystery of what’s happening to Bright Falls, where his wife is, and why he can’t remember writing this novel that’s coming to life all around him. (Continued below image…)

Fortunately, Alan has one great advantage: light. One of the many innovations in Alan Wake is its use of light-vs.-dark. Far more than a metaphor, light is actually the most powerful weapon in Alan’s arsenal, because it harms everyone that’s been taken over by the dark presence; as long as enemies are bathed in darkness, they can’t be harmed, but shine a light on them, and the dark presence immediately starts to lose its grip. Flashlights, flares, generators, vehicle headlights, lighthouses, and virtually everything else that creates light comes into play in the game as a way for you to beat back the dark presence. But the presence has more than just people in its army — it can take control over any object it wants, too, and gladly sets cars against you, and in the case of the demo I saw, big forklifts, too.

Alan’s latest book hasn’t been submitted to his publisher yet, and somehow the pages of it have been scattered all throughout Bright Falls. You’ll busy yourself looking for these pages as the game unfolds because, as one developer from Remedy put it, what’s written on those pages has a disturbing habit of coming true.

Bright Falls is a huge, open world to explore, with drivable vehicles, tons of characters you can interact with, and endless secrets and mysteries to be unraveled. But don’t mistake it for just another sandbox game. Nothing really moves forward until you engage in Alan Wake on its own terms, and that means settling into the shoes of Alan himself as he works his way from one carefully-scripted nightmarish encounter to the next.

Everything about Alan Wake shows that Remedy is going far out of its way to keep you from thinking about it as just another shooter — or even a shooter at all. Sure, there’s plenty of FPS action to enjoy, but the beating heart of Alan Wake is a story that Remedy seems desperate to tell, and this Xbox 360 exclusive game is merely the canvas upon which they’ve chosen to paint this arresting yarn. It also boasts one of the most drop-dead gorgeous graphics engines I’ve ever seen, with stunning photo-realism and day/night cycles that look remarkably real.

Alan Wake ties with Assassin’s Creed II for the top position on my Most Anticipated list, and I predict that it may just redefine the term “game” for the next generation. There are some well known critics out there who believe that true storytelling can’t occur in this medium. Alan Wake begs to differ, and after seeing this imaginative, ground-breaking game in action, you will too.

Images: Copyright 2009 ©Remedy.