Alan Wake 2: Creating The Dual Protagonist Experience – IGN First
His name may quite literally be the title of the game, but Alan Wake is not the only main character in Remedy Entertainment’s upcoming survival horror. The ‘2’ in Alan Wake 2 doesn’t just point to its sequel nature, but also to the duality that runs through the entire game. Two protagonists. Two perspectives. Two worlds. And two approaches to gameplay.
“Obviously we’re making a sequel and we knew that Alan was going to be a big part of it,” says Kyle Rowley, Alan Wake 2’s game director. “But we also knew that we wanted to have a different perspective for the players who are maybe not familiar with Alan Wake 1.”
The second perspective is that of Saga Anderson, an FBI agent investigating a ritual murder. For September’s IGN First we spoke to two developers at Remedy to learn how they created different experiences for both Alan and Saga, how they developed two unique spins on the core survival horror gameplay, and how swapping between the two leads affects the way Alan Wake 2’s story unfolds.
Saga’s case brings her to Bright Falls, the small town America setting of the original Alan Wake. “She’s here with her partner, Alex Casey, trying to solve this increasingly impossible seeming series of mysteries,” explains Molly Maloney, principle narrative designer on Alan Wake 2. “She’s a really complex person, and I think as you go deeper into the game, you get to see more and more sides of her.”
While Saga is the story’s new character, it’s through her that you’ll experience the setting of the original game, along with all its Twin Peaks-inspired oddities. “Saga obviously exists in our world, so it’s a more grounded reality, but it’s still Remedy’s take on the Pacific Northwest, which means it’s a little quirky, a little interesting, a little weird,” Maloney says. “So I’d say overall the vibe of her side of the story is, it’s sinister, it’s moving through exploration, plotting, and methodically trying to solve these pieces. But also at the same time it’s interspersed with these profound moments of really weird, disturbing, exciting, supernatural combat.”
“The first game was very much focused on combat,” Rowley notes. “Here we wanted to hook into that idea of being an FBI agent, a profiler, someone who’s investigating ritual serial killings. And that leads into gameplay of exploring the world, finding clues, talking to people, having this kind of case board where you’re piecing everything together.”
It’s not exactly L.A. Noire, but Alan Wake 2’s slower, more exploratory gameplay is significantly different to the approach of its predecessor. A similar radical switch-up can be found in Alan’s side of the story, too. While Saga investigates murders in the real world, our titular hero fights for survival in The Dark Place, a realm of nightmares that manifests itself as a noir-like rendition of New York City. Wake has been trapped there since the conclusion of the original game, released back in 2010.
“Well, as you can imagine, somebody who’s spent 13 years inhabiting the Dark Place being stalked by malevolent forces definitely has a bit of, I hesitate to say paranoia, but it’s earned paranoia,” explains Maloney. “So his spaces, his side of the story definitely has a lot more of that tone.”
“Unlike Saga’s side of the story, the Dark Place does not obey the rules of reality that you would expect,” she adds. “And so it’s a kind of place that shifts and changes in unexpected ways that are designed to keep both Alan and the player on edge.”
The Dark Place doesn’t just shift and change; Alan himself can alter the world around him. This comes to life through environmental puzzles, such as dead ends that can be reshaped into explorable routes.
This shifting of reality is conducted in The Writer’s Room. Upon a chalkboard that exists only within Alan’s head, you can use moments of inspiration discovered throughout the world to craft new ‘stories’. These stories translate into The Dark Place and reshape the space around you. Find the right inspiration and you can unlock new pathways and secrets, which in turn push Alan’s story forward.
Saga also has a mechanic that only exists within her head. It’s called The Mind Place, and at the center of it is the Case Board. Here you can arrange clues and evidence that you’ve found in the real world into lines of investigation. Connecting clues unlocks new mission objectives, which in turn pushes Saga’s investigation forward.
“It’s tricky because ultimately we’re creating one holistic game, Alan Wake 2,” says Rowley. “And we were quite aware that we did not want players when they were switching between the characters to feel like they have to relearn the game all over again.”
“The actual game mechanics the player has to utilize are kind of the same across both characters,” he continues. “The context and the worlds and the situations they’re in are very different, so we definitely wanted to make sure that they had their own unique twist on that same core experience. Saga has her Mind Place and the Case Board. Alan has his Writer’s Room and the Plot Board. So they’re the same, but there was a difference.”
Remedy has applied this ‘same, but different’ approach to each protagonist’s combat experience, too. “For Saga, we’re more leaning on the anticipation of the encounter,” Rowley says. “We have less combat in this game compared to the first game by quite a lot, but we didn’t want it to feel like there’s no danger at any moment. So we play on the player’s expectations.”
“For Wake, the core combat loop is the same,” he continues. “I still need to use my flashlight, I still need to burn away the darkness. But we’re a bit more focused on the idea of paranoia and not being able to trust what’s real. So we have enemies that are kind of shadowy. You’re not sure, some of them will fade away and then not attack you, but some of them will attack you.
“[We’re] trying to create different types of emotional responses from the player, but utilizing the same kind of core gameplay loops that we’ve established.”
In many games with multiple main characters, the perspective switches at specific moments that have been pre-planned by the developers. Remedy has rejected this approach. Instead, Alan Wake 2 will allow you to switch between Saga and Alan’s perspectives as you wish. You could alternate between characters each chapter, or play Saga’s side of the story to completion and then swap to Alan. This means you could witness the events of the game in a very different order to another player, something Remedy has had to meticulously plan for.
“With two protagonists, it felt like a really great opportunity to jump between the two,” says Maloney. “But when it came to structuring that story, […] it required a lot of iteration to make sure it was really satisfying, not just two stories you jump between.”
When playing as Saga, events you witness can act as responses to things you’ve already seen as Alan, or foreshadow moments you’ve yet to experience in The Dark Place. To make sure all this plays out as intended, you can only swap perspective at specific points in the story.
“There was a version where you could actually switch between the characters a lot more freely and a lot earlier,” reveals Maloney. But what seemed good on paper failed in practice. Remedy eventually scrapped the free swapping and replaced it with Break Rooms; locations throughout the world that offer players the choice of continuing as their current character or switching to the other perspective.
“As we started standing up the material and looking at it, we realised that for the story to make sense, there are linchpin moments that you need to have to tie it together,” Maloney explains. “Alan needs his arc, of course, Saga needs her arc, and then the two of them together also need an arc. And that arc needs to be flexible depending on the order. That’s an impossible challenge to do simultaneously, at least for me.
“So we focused on one at a time. Let’s make sure Alan feels good, let’s make sure Saga feels good. Now let’s start looking at how you can jump and where it feels right to jump. And that work allowed us to identify those linchpin moments. And that’s where you started to see the break rooms appearing.
“By identifying those moments, we made sure that you could never switch in a place where you would miss a critical piece of information for that to make sense,” she explains.
Switching between these dual perspectives adds texture to Alan Wake 2. But it also grants player agency when it comes to navigating tension and fear.
“We wanted to go, ‘Okay, this sequence that you’re playing as Saga, maybe it’s a bit too intense,’” says Rowley. “You [can] just go hop and play as Alan where he’s exploring the streets or whatever and vice versa. So giving the player a bit of agency over how they want to play through this game so we’re not hand-holding them through the whole thing.”
Across both Alan and Saga’s sides of the story, Remedy has used different approaches to the same core mechanics to create two bespoke experiences. The two combine to make the whole that is Alan Wake 2; a single story made up of two distinct experiences.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.
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