Celebrating All Things Spooky: Alan Wake II

It’s finally time to talk about a game I’d been anticipating for quite a while: Alan Wake II.

I’ve waited 13 years for Alan Wake II, so I intended to play it right away. But I didn’t have a PS5 at the time and then other games got in the way (I was trying to catch up on the Yakuza series), so after playing a few hours I ended up putting it on hold until this October.

But now I finally got back into it and played the sequel I waited so long for.

Unlike its predecessor, which was more of a thriller, Alan Wake II is a survival horror game. Ironically, this makes it calmer in some respects – there are longer stretches of gameplay where you’ll go without encountering many enemies. But when you do encounter enemies, they’re a greater threat and your resources are limited, which really increases the tension.

There’s an unfortunate number of jumpscares for no reason, which feels cheap, but fortunately the other horror elements are handled well enough to make up for it. I jumped much more from realizing an enemy was right beside me than from the thousandth time an antagonist’s face flashed on the screen.

If you’ve never played the first Alan Wake, it is impossible to discuss this without spoilers for the first game, so you might want to stop reading here. It’s one of my favorite games of all time, so I definitely recommend it.

Now that we’re past that, Alan Wake II is set 13 years after the first game. Alan has been trapped in the Dark Place for all that time and is still trying to write his way out. The game is split between two protagonists, one being Alan and the other being a new character, an FBI agent named Saga whose case takes her to the Bright Falls area and begins intersecting with Alan’s manuscript.

Saga’s gameplay is fairly straightforward. Like in the first game, you fight darkness-possessed Taken, so you need to weaken them with your flashlight before attacking. There’s a much stronger emphasis on exploration than in the first game, with lots of collectibles, upgrades, and resources to find, as well as occasional backtracking to unlock new areas now that it’s survival horror.

Alan’s gameplay has all those core elements as well (with even more survival horror style exploration), but also takes into account the fact that he’s in the Dark Place attempting to write his way out.

When you’re playing as Alan, you frequently visit locations in which part of his manuscript is set. As you learn key details, you can then visit his plot board to change which scene is currently being reflected in that location. That changes the scene, letting you access new areas or interact with different things. Light and dark also play a key role as well, with Alan having a lamp that lets you take light from one source and bring it to another, which shifts the environment.

That is great and an excellent way of incorporating the Dark Place’s rules into gameplay. I love it.

Meanwhile, Saga has a case board where she pins up clues to draw conclusions. This is… kind of fun from a collecting perspective (I just like completing little sections of the board), but feels a bit pointless. Fortunately, it’s not always required; sometimes I’d solve a puzzle first and then visit the case board to see all the clues automatically fill in. Sometimes it is required, though, and that just feels a little tedious. She also can “profile” characters to pick up new clues, which comes across as very strange – intentionally so, but I wish they had hinted at that a little better.

One thing I had worried about leading up to Alan Wake II was that its survival horror approach and seemingly darker tone would eliminate humor. The first game had a lot of really funny moments, and I didn’t want to lose that. Fortunately, the sequel still has a lot of funny stuff, as well as some truly epic moments that match the greatest moments of the first game.

Now, the DLC is actually integrated into the main game, so since I waited as long as I did, I got to play it as I went. The first DLC is a series of three alternate universe / what-if scenarios, and it really made for a nice change of pace to take a break from the regular game for a wacky little episode. The second DLC is a longer side story that ties more closely to Control (even including a Control 2 teaser). It also takes a stance against AI-generated writing, so I appreciated that.

For the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed playing Alan Wake II and would say it was a fantastic experience, but there are three things that frustrated me.

First, I encountered a handful of bugs that required me to reload the game. One time I interacted with a key item before I was supposed to, and the result was that I couldn’t collect it when I needed it. It was just floating in the air until I reloaded my save. Another time, I lost the ability to do anything except melee attacks and pausing the game. Another bug sent me sinking through the whole game world. It wasn’t often, but since each stopped me from progressing until I reloaded, it was annoying to encounter, especially in a game like this.

My other two criticisms are more subjective. For my second, I’ve come to realize lately that I don’t like when shared universes cross over too much. I’ve noticed this with Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere books, too. Little references and nods are fun, specific crossover stories are interesting, but when one starts directly interacting with the other, it bugs me. That’s how I feel about the connection between Alan Wake and Control. I didn’t mind the little connections or the second DLC, but the FBC had just enough of a role in the story for me to start wishing they didn’t.

And finally, I waited 13 years to finally get answers to my questions, and I ended the game with more questions than when I started.

It’s fun to theorize, but being left with this many questions after such a long wait for answers just has me a bit frustrated.

Despite these few complaints, I really did enjoy Alan Wake II, and it was a perfect game for October. I hope they intend to make an Alan Wake III, and I hope we don’t need to wait another 13 years to get it.