Alan Wake 2 And The 13 Year Journey To Make It | Audio Logs

we see our FBI agents and especially in this first beat we have saga's character in the focus her partner in the background drinking coffee hello I'm Sam Lake the creative director of Remedy I'm here today to show you the Gameplay trailer of Alan Wake to talk about the details in it and talk about overall the Journey of working on Alan Wake too Alan Wake 2 is an actual survival horror game it's a sequel but at the same time it is a standalone experience this time around you will be playing Anna wake himself who since the events of the first game has been trapped in a nightmare dimension of the dark place and he's trying to escape we have a new playable hero character FBI agent Saga Anderson who comes to this small town of Pride Falls to investigate a series of ritualistic killings that's how we start off soon enough their stories start to tie together there was an idea immediately when when Anna wake one was out on a potential sequel actually with that some of those ideas ended up going with a lot smaller budget into Illinois American Nightmare between every other project there's been a version and and they have evolved quite a lot and they have always been action games and only in this last version we came to the idea of it must be a survival horror okay we knew that we want to go with this genre when the idea came and we knew once we started talking about this that this will be perfect for Alan Wake the trailer we have out now on Alan Wake 2 we start out with something horrifying this kind of a ritualistic killing taking place it's meant to be shocking it's meant to be pretty brutal just to drive home the idea of survival horror horror used to be kind of a niche genre now it's very much mainstream there is always a ton of inspiration Resident Evil games before one on film side it's a wide range of Inspirations going back to what were the original Inspirations for the first Alan Wake game which goes everything by Stephen King Twin Peaks David Lynch's material there are other elements in in this game as well when we go to the dark place where where Alan Wake is trapped we kind of have this nightmare New York because it's a Dreamscape in many ways I'm drawing from his mind and his fiction and he comes from New York and and and he has written for years and years Alex Casey crime books set in New York so our dark place is now New York drawing inspiration from Taxi Driver 7 Inception and then more recent stylized crime things like like let's say the first season of True Detective this is a psychological Horror Story so so out of this we transition and and and show you our Title Character Alan Wake as you would have it waking up from a terrifying nightmare we see our FBI agents and especially in this uh first beat we have sagas character in the focus and we are introducing her with this she comes in to investigate this gruesome crime and then these nightmares elements start to come to play she finds manuscript pages of a horror story where she's a character herself and and these events start to come true which of course sound familiar to anyone who is familiar with with Alan Wake her partner in the background drinking coffee it's for us the text is about us being a character in this side role as Alex Casey a lot of fun uh making it go going back to ancient history when when I last borrowed my likeness to to a game character so many things have changed then it was really just posing in in photographs these days it requires actual acting motion capture and performance capture it's been wonderful to act with great professional actors that we have as part of this experience I feel that I have learned a ton also about riding needing to act out those scenes you you tend to have discoveries that you wouldn't otherwise and and and realize that yeah maybe maybe these things should be taken into account when riding a scene when we came to the idea of two FBI agents obviously everybody has seen a ton of crime investigation television or films and it's always a partnership it's really critical then for that pair of detectives to have an interesting dynamic between them you you want two characters that are different so so that you can get in interesting banter and interesting scenes between them and somehow us focusing on what kind of character Saga Anderson in this should be we wanted to contrast that with a totally different character on on her side and and they just felt like a perfect match and starting to write that Dynamic into the pages it felt really really fitting it's always an interesting process of story Workshop months and months in the writer's room figuring out the connections and the kind of deeper layers of what we need from these characters to to create the story there is a lot of dualism in Alan Wake too and and and we knew go into this uh that that we wanted two playable characters how the game is structured is that overall it's a 50 50 split we introduced both sides of the experience to you and after that you can keep switching between them as you progress so depending on which side of any particular moment you experience first it gives you a different point of view and perspective yeah it would be fun to say that that all of this is figured out perfectly years in advance but I also think that there is a lot of fun to be had in this work looking back and finding interesting ways to connect it when we were making quantum break it was clear that at that point we won't be making Alan Wake too but there were some ideas so we created this video and it was an Easter egg very small budget with actors that we had available at the time who were doing motion capture certain elements there were kind of like in the sketch-like way present and and and kind of knocking in my mind as an idea that a pair of FBI agents investigating The Disappearance of a certain Rider it took a long time and and a couple of Concepts in between until we came here and as it always is when you really start working on a game concept and fleshing out the details of what the story really is finding those connection points uh in it and and figuring it out you learn many many things and kind of find ways or making it better and and figuring what it needs to be to work maybe the biggest challenge for us we wanted to tie the gameplay and uh storytelling even more closely together to to each other and that meant that we wanted to add other gameplay elements on top of the combat into it which is like pacing wise a big part of this experience there is actually less combat than we had say in Alan Wake one a lot more anticipation for combat and creeping in and and being wary and being afraid is a big part of the experience which this part of the trailer shows us as we see with this cultist coming through the wall we have some intense jump scare moments but that's not really how we approach the experience we have always felt that atmosphere and mood is a key part of any World building and and any experience it's much more important to us than than having jump scares questioning what's real what's fiction what can we trust in our surroundings at the same time it's worth mentioning it's also an Alan Wake experience and and and for us it it was critical absolutely critical that it's not wall to wall darkness and horror and you creeping down a corridor and monsters coming at you there are daytime scenes quirky small town Larger than Life locals to be met and talked with you might claim some details of musket suits or coffee thermosis or things like that so it's a pacing thing for us and and a balancing thing to have all of these different elements present through the whole experience we knew from the beginning that we want more variation and that is the reason why the environments are quite varied very different the dark Urban setting of the dark place is big big contrast to our Pacific Northwest yes there are forests there a small town of Pride Falls the neighboring town of watery all three of these are Hub areas that's learning also from control that that this is not as linear of an experience in any way as Alan Wake one was a more modern game if you will Alan Wake 2 is definitely part of the remedy connected Universe it's a crossover experience for our returning fans there is a ton of connection points and lore and interesting events to be discovered all of course as as a Creator I would love everybody to play all the remedy games but but very much the starting point for the design for the sequel was the idea that that this needs to be exciting and approachable on its own Alan Wake 2 is remedies most ambitious game the longest game so far that gives us a ton of opportunities for all kinds of Storytelling optional exploration based material to be discovered and when we have the universe to draw from that gives us a lot of ideas and connection points that's not the main point uh though we want to craft characters who are part of that particular game and and a story that is about the story and structure of that game and and that will always be more important and more critical for us than having those connection points to the universe yes we have ideas of what could come after the reality of it is that that when you actually decide to create a new game it's such a huge Endeavor and it takes years of work we can now look back and see on Alan Wake too many things end up changing and many opportunities might not be there at a certain point and come back later on feeling very excited about a ton of absolutely Bonkers crazy ideas waiting for for the players in Alan Wake too very excited about what we have been creating on any game project than them being so big and taking multiple years and not really being able to show or talk about it it takes a lot of belief wanting to create a sequel uh waiting to be able to create the sequel and now finally working on on it getting that positive response uh from all of you out there is critical for us a lot of hard work has gone into it we we still have months to go it does give us a boost and and and a lot of uh excitement no knowing that okay we are on the right track and this is creating a positive response in the fans I'm hugely proud of all the games that we have created but somehow Alan Wake already when we were making the first Alan Wake ended up being a very special game and and especially a story for me and being trying to get to the sequel and now having been able to work on on it it's been uh thrilling it's been really hard as as making games always easy but but kind of like uh be being on on this final stretch and and uh yeah it's it is special foreign [Music]

Channel: GameSpot

Views: 69,077

Keywords: audio logs, gamespot, sam lake, behind the scenes, developer interview, developer insight, sam lake interview, alan wake 2 interview, alan wake 2 gameplay, alan wake 2 development, alan wake II, alan wake 2, developer stories, video game development, game, games, video games, gaming, jeugo, video juego

Id: EYOOVlkASe4

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023