Alan Wake is Returning

It’s no secret that Alan Wake is one of my all-time favorite video games. The atmosphere is amazing, the story is weird as hell, and the combat is tense. I have never been a fan of horror-like games, but Alan Wake has so much more going on that it’s just so much fun to play.

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Alan Wake

Then they came out with Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. Yes, I played this game, yes I still enjoyed it, but it wasn’t a true sequel. It was branded an arcade game on the Microsoft store. It was fine, but it really didn’t scratch that Alan Wake itch at all.

Fast forward 4 years and developer Remedy releases Quantum Break. I was all in on this game. Time warp abilities, solid gunplay, and of course Remedy’s signature weird story. Here’s the kicker: a famous TV show that would pop up in the Alan Wake universe, Night Springs, started showing up in Quantum Break. Everyone automatically assumed that this was a sign. I mean, one of the easter eggs was promptly called “Alan Wake’s Return.”

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Quantum Break

Of course, this wasn’t true. Sam Lake, the writer of the Remedy Games said that it was really just a way to show appreciation to their fan base.

“A lot of it is a joke, and I kind of feel that to me, telling stories in games and creating immersive, believable worlds, there is room for all kinds of different things in there. And that to me is the richness for telling stories with games, that there can be optional content, exploration content, and different tones as well without breaking the overall style and theme. You can still enter all kinds of things in there. And in a way, also use them as commentary and echos and twisted mirrors to the primary story.”

At E3 Remedy announced their newest game titled Control. I was so impressed by it that I actually named it my top game of E3 2018. 

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Control

But this meant that Alan Wake still was not making a return anytime soon. Remedy knows its fans are clamoring for more Wake content. They hear about it every single day. I personally would love to get short stories. Or even read the novels that Alan Wake has written himself.

Imagine my surprise when I load up Twitter on my phone and the first tweet I see is from one of Remedy’s main writers talking about how Alan Wake is getting turned into a TV show.

Peter Calloway, the person behind “Cloak and Dagger” and “Legion” (Marvel shows), has signed on as showrunner and writer for the live action Alan Wake series. Sam Lake is of crouse involved by being the shows executive producer. This is great news. Having the actual creator involved makes me feel like it will stay faithful to the lore of Alan Wake.

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Alan Wake: American Nightmare

Tomas Harlan, Contradiction partner, told Variety that “Alan Wake was basically a TV series that was put into a game. That was Sam’s vision. It was influenced by ‘The Twilight Zone’..”

Seeing how the game definitely felt like each level you started was like a new episode, this could work fantastically well. From the sounds of it, the show will not follow the game’s story entirely. Of course they will use that, and apparently all the lore they have built up from an unreleased sequel they worked on years ago.

Sam Lake has expressed a lot of interest in continuing Wake’s story and its world. The studio has been working on the lore and concept ideas for more Alan Wake for years, and hopefully, this TV show will be a huge jumping off point for the sequel die-hard fans have been waiting for.

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