Alan Wake 2 is Remedy's Magnum Opus (review)

Allen wake 2 is one of the best examples of what video games can do in terms of Storytelling and its intricately clever multi-layered meta narrative do tales with the gameplay the Define Ludo narrative Harmony a TS haunting harrowing and surprisingly hilarious every ingredient from score and sound design to the alternate reality ities and the enemies that stalk you in them works together to keep you enthralled for the 20 hours of its run time it's not without its problems which we will talk about most notable among them accessibility which is a crying shame given the sheer work of art the remedy have created here for all its faults the game is a masterpiece and the strongest Contender so far for my personal Game of the Year wake where did you come from you've been missing for 13 years the original Alam wake came out at in 2010 and ended with the titular protagonist stranded in the dark place fans of the game have been waiting for 13 years for this Sequel and in delivering it developers remedy entertainment have gone all out to truly show The Cosmic reality bending horror of the dark place using all the technological advances at their disposal whilst also further fleshing out the connective tissue between their various properties not just the first Allen weight game but also control and Quantum break I was aware of some but not all of these connections while playing alen wig 2 it's worth noting that although they serve as funny Str EGS and make the world building deeper and richer you don't need to be aware of them to grasp the central narrative and enjoy the game the remedy connected Universe isn't what the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become where it feels as though every new entry essentially comes with homework a long list of other entries you need to be able to understand it in the game World 2 Alan Wake has been missing and much sought after for 13 years the first game saw him arrive in the town of right Falls looking to escape from the misery of his writer's block and enjoy a relaxing retreat with his wife Alice but instead an entity known as the dark presence took a and forced him to write using his fiction in order to make itself grow stronger while the dark place had sought to escape took over the town's folk Alan sacrificed himself to save Alice and has been trapped in the dark place ever since he seeks a way out so too does the dark presence now manifesting as his doppelganger Mr scratch FBI agents Saga Anderson and Alex Casey who shares a name with the fictional Pi of Allan's most famous works come to Bri Falls to investigate a series of ritual murders this soon turns out to be the work of a cult but that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to weirdness as the latest victim returns to life the dark place possesses more Town's folk and realities begin to overlap Allan and saga's Journeys are connected and as the player you will explore both sides of the story as they unfold though suggesting the story only has two sides feels like trivializing it I won't reveal more about what happens as it really is best experience firsthand as Saga your job is to solve the case as it unfolds exploring locations around bright Falls cauldron Lake and the neighboring town of watery Saga pieces together the clues within her mind place an imaginary construct within her mind where she build up the evidence wall from what she discovers in the world as well as profiling various characters to gain insights into their thinking the profiling is the first instance of the game using live action footage alongside rendered Graphics both in her profiling and in other areas such as the overlaps between this world and the dark place and the dark place itself live action images imposed over the gameplay are the Supernatural and a the real quality to the Visions the game confronts us with while straight up live action Cuts scenes or videos that you can see on screens and televisions lead us down The Uncanny Valley and add an extra air of unreality and abstraction to the proceedings that sense of unreality and passing between different versions of the same thing feeds into a meta narrative which is all about multiple versions of the same thing the barriers between them breaking down and the same events repeating echoing and invading across worlds and times just as characters question what's real and whether wake's fiction is changing reality or their own past memories were false so you will see the same moments unfold in multiple ways only at the end or on a repeat playthrough will you be able to see what was foreshadowing and what was misdirection or even realize what was in front of you from the very beginning this folds into the gameplay particularly in Allen's sections as he tries to escape the dark place by writing and your progression through the level depends upon solving the puzzle of the story Rewritten scenes opening up new roots or offering new information that will help you rewrite the next scene in the right way or even on saga's side more conventional exploration gameplay leads to Collectibles that enrich the law and expand upon the characters who populate this eccentric and changing town the overlaps which sit at the edge of our reality in the dark place Loop like nightmares which force Saga to confront her own psychic fears and past even while providing navigation puzzles to get to the next boss fight wake's writer's room and saga's mind Place both exist as gameplay devices allowing for the collecting of information reviewing of found artifacts and upgrading of weapons but also as real or eal places within the story which are themselves integral to the plot and as you progress the atmosphere and pacing of the story feels spot on there are jump scares but most of the horror of the game comes from the near continual cranking up attention and anticipation of what might happen next the level design the story moments the lighting and sound design and the music all feed into that and come together cohesively to build an environment where you genuinely dread going down to the basement and feel relief when you step into the light also the game knows when to allow you to let off steam there's as much humor as there is horror from background interactions in the in the town or certain videotape Collectibles we going to a cool guys house to drink some bruskies are you coming no ILO I'm very busy wearing a turtleneck and drinking wine like an [ __ ] a big insane setpiece in the dark place set to the music of the old gods of agard the same band accompanies one of the big final setpiece combat moments and it's Testament to how well these things are pieced together that way you can laugh at how surreal it all is in one part in the other it offers a significant and climactic catharsis just before heading into the final chapter as Allan noted in the first game the Supernatural infiction is a metaphor for the human psyche and as we Traverse this story that remains the case exploring themes of family Redemption and Damnation and how fiction and reality impact on one another saga's anxieties over spending too much time working and away from her family in the mystery of her past are both reflected in how the Dark Places rewriting of reality impact her life both the real life Alex Casey and his fictional darkplace counterpart wrestle with the way Allan's writing has toyed with their lives and whether they can escape it Allan himself is caught in a battle of wits and will with scratch and a crisis of identity over who is really in control I won't dig further into these themes as that way spoilers lie but you can feel the weight of all this as you play through the personal Stakes just as crucial as the apocalyptic ones and the characters struggle against the story they find themselves caught up in in short this is a supremely effective psychological horror the story and its presentation through the gameplay as much as the cuts scenes is a work of art greater even than the Su of its parts alongside the narrative genre of psychological horror Allan Wake 2 also sits in the gameplay genre of survival horror and this was definitely the right call for this game it's predecessor was an action adventure with Allan using torch and gun to battle various enemies interrupted by the occasional relative ly simple puzzle or cinematic set piece it wasn't bad but it was clunky and at times infuriating and it didn't fully fit the story of the game as the developers themselves noted but here the game's pace is a lot slower and more deliberate it will be a little while before you get into combat and in a fair few of the chapters the combat will be spaced out with exploration puzzle solving and story progression even where it isn't it's often far more beneficial to flee from enemies than face them head on saving ammo and health for when you need it combat works in the same basic way as before with a few tweaks the dodging is a lot more refined with the aiming and shooting feeling better in a way that's very akin to the aiming in Resident Evil 2 remake ammo is scarcer however it's very possible with exploration to have an abundance of supplies or equally if you stop and fight everything it's very easy to quickly find yourself running out the flashlight no longer recharges on its own as it did in the first game which means if you exhaust the batteries then you cannot fight until you find more likewise the street lights which provide safe havens don't despawn the taken only prevent them from seeing you and you will lose their safety if you initiate combat from them and they no longer restore your health anywhere near as fast or as much as they did in the original all of this works to disincentivize a lot of the combat in Allen sections with shadows everywhere it can often be safer to dodge through and run past a lot of enemies in Saga sections likewise enemies are less frequent but can often appear in clust that make it very easy to get overwhelmed if you fight carelessly the combat isn't seamless however if in an unavoidable combat situation the weapon swap animations are often a lot slower than your own inputs which can thwart your attempt to quickly fire off a shot at an incoming enemy and even the quickest healing animation with the painkillers is hugely slowed down as a result which double with the fact that the character slows to a walk or even a stop while healing can lead to getting killed while healing or having to dodge and then start the whole process over again as the character goes back to their last equipped weapon after a heal or attempted heal having to retry or do more than one heal in succession doesn't speed up the process any in a similar fashion if you're used in other games to quickly spamming the pickup button to collect a bunch of items from a container here that will often result in items being missed this may be a designed decision to require a more deliberate item collection and put you in a tight spot if trying to pick up items while pursued by enemies however as there were a number of occasions where I had to fiddle with the character's position and the camera angle to even trigger the pickup prompt I'm inclined instead to think there's an issue to be fixed there beyond that the other major frustration for me in combat was Story related particularly there were at least two occasions during Allan side of the story where a major story of progression reveal was interrupted by a mass of enemies these couldn't really be avoided as they were in a spot where you needed to be to move things forward which was fan in itself but them attacking as the game was trying to reveal information I needed made it so much harder to follow atten divided means death and focusing on the fight means getting lost speaking of getting lost brings me to a major visual accessibility issue which was most apparent in the boss fights in the dense forest at night but also came into play at a couple of other points the game is extremely dark as you might expect and in the forest of the overlap in particular the dense foliage hugely limits visibility in the night Andale fight this made trying to find the various paths around the level and the weapon caches much harder in making the fight much harder than it needed to be on a second play through I went in with the saof shotgun and much more ammo meaning the fight was over far quicker however that was with the benefit of for knowledge and the lack of visual accessibility either built into the level design itself or through a toggleable option for high contrast or color blind modes would make this impossible for anyone whose eyesight or spatial awareness is worse than mine there are some accessibility options in the game on the audio side you can reduce the base output or change the audio to Mono as well as apply a hyperacusis filter filter that blocks out high pitch noises such as Sirens machinery and tire screeches to varying degrees you can also apply aim assist remap all the buttons and fully customized subtitles but many of the environmental sounds and enemy noises are missed off for the lack of closed captions there's also a flashing lights warning at the start of the game but no option to actually turn these flashing lights off for anyone with epilepsy whilst it's good to have the options that are there the lack of a wider Suite of accessibility options is certainly the biggest disappointment of the game even in the scope of the game and the sheer quality of it it's sad to see many disabled players May Simply Be excluded from it one thing in the actual gameplay which does in a way work as an accessibility setting is saga's evidence wall whilst there are a number of points where for the story it's mandatory for the player to complete the actions in the mind place to progress such as profiling a character in order to know to ask them a certain question there are also Clues you can find which can be left alone without preventing progression but which will give additional Clues and information for puzzles or item locations if you find yourself struggling with them what this also means is that if you're not a fan of having to read documents and games in order to solve puzzles then you can let Saga read for you by collecting the clues as evidence and going to the Mind place to piece it all together and the clue documents are always collectible in this way with law and will building documents readable but not collectible meaning that you don't have to worry about which are important to progression and which aren't in broader terms the Mind Place mechanics feed into the old folding narrative and to The Wider well building as well as serving as a handy way to track collectibles in the game for those seeking to find all of them there's a degree to which the main cases on the evidence board are also a puzzle to solve although for the most part it's just a case of putting the pictures in the right order to be presented with the answer this won't be everyone's coery especially at the points where the game requires you to do this in order to move on but these beats can be hit relatively fast and take up an overall very small percentage of the actual gameplay but outside of the M place the level design of the three main Hub areas are Bri Falls cauldron Lake and watery is really well done to feed into the traditional survival horror gameplay Loop of exploration and puzzle solving to progress there are optional additional areas to explore which provide more items Collectibles and so on particularly if you retain after defeating the relevant boss each area has Parts blocked off by flooding that at that point become passible which feeds into a broader Motif throughout the game regarding water and its power to flow through anything but when exploring for the first time as part of story progression there are a lony of locked doors and block paths which can be unlocked to allow for easier movement later as the game forces you to backtrack and retrace your steps in order to get everything you need Allan's side of the story is even more interesting and Innovative in how it uses the narrative device of his story altering the world around him the map like with Saga opens up more as you explore and unlock shortcuts and hidden passages but much of that unlocking is done by finding key scenes for the story and choosing which plot beats apply to them this physically Alters the environment opening up new ways forward and knowing which ploty to use and in some cases where to stand when using different ones allows you to progress through every nook and cranny the story itself is the puzzle writing it is how you explore and backtrack and progress another similar mechanic in Allen section is the use of the lamp he finds to add or remove light Shifting the environment in smaller ways than the plot board but just as vital taking a different path to find additional light sources allows you to backtrack and progress further on the main path giving you the option of hidden areas and forcing you to choose went to fight and when to run as shadowy figures haunt your progress the only two times that this level design got the better of me leading to the better part of an hour backtracking across a whole level where when there were multiple light sources group close together that you had to activate and deactivate in a specific order which I didn't realize initially we're in all the same light and when I lost track of a lther in a brightly late room because I missed it multiple times whilst in there this calls back to the visual accessibility concerns raised earlier in this video rather than the level or puzzle design however both of which are incredibly well done and really bring the experience together the other system worth mentioning here is the upgrade system both Allen and saga's inventories feel similar to those in Resident Evil 2 remake in that they're limited but not excessively so and they can be expanded The Saga that means finding inventory upgrades around the world alongside that she can find manuscript fragments in The Lunchbox Collectibles which can be used to upgrade her weapons and charms after solving nursy R puzzles which provide various Buffs to her character you can get by without using any of these things as I managed to in my first playr only really noticing the benefits of charms and upgrades when on my second playthrough to sweep up the trophies however they go a long way to rewarding exploration and puzzle solving and making life in bright fall somewhat easier Allan can also upgrade his inventory weapons and other attributes but to do so he needs to find Words of Power these come in varying forms and you don't necessarily know whether the next one you discover will be for weapons inventory or something else so again there's a clear reward for exploration and seeking hidden areas whilst making the dark place still feel that much more threatening with fewer reprieves than the real world the game's presentation is superb as well an extremely good-looking experience which as I've said Blends High Fidelity photorealistic graphics with live action in a way that perfectly complements the story every environment looks great setting the tone and mood and the quality of the sound design and the score makes it all feel alive the darkness itself watching you and waiting I did experience a number of bugs during my time with the game playing on Playstation I never had the lack of audio that befell Xbox users nor anything genuinely gamebreaking the most serious one was when I triggered a cut scene at the end of a boss fight only to die off screen because the fight was apparently still going on and have my progress reset beyond that I had visual glitches such as the white Aura of the safe room staying on the edges of the screen even when I had left the light a brief period where the glow of my flashlight when focused was perfect diamond some items not aligning with the character model during pickup or equip animations and having the camera completely flung around and occasionally the character moved as a result of moving the camera during an animation where a taken grabbed me or I picked up a manuscript page these were by no means constant and didn't broadly affect my experience but they were still noteworthy and in need of a fix remedy to their credits are working hard on patches to address reported issues as well as trying to tackle issues of copyright claims for stream on YouTube and twitch which are most likely the result of Bad actors since the studio reports they' work to get everything in the game wh listed for Content creators one final thing to note is that there is at present no new game plus nor any unlockable extra weapons or Cosmetics whilst this may limit the replay value for players especially after getting all of the achievements it doesn't undermine the impact of the base game and we now also know that a new game plus mode is coming which will allow you to retain all unlocked weapons and upgrades but also adds A New Nightmare a difficulty level and a new alternative narrative which includes new manuscript pages and video content that certainly seems like something to look forward to and I'll be doing a video reviewing the new mode once we get it as it stands alen wig 2 is an ambitious confident game that feels like the culmination of remedy's development efforts over the past decade or more it's a work of art a triumphant meta narrative where the gameplay and the story are in sync and feeding one another if it had the greater levels of accessible design that we know games are capable of these days it would be as near to perfect as a game could get have you played alen week 2 yet let me know what you thought of it whether you loved or hated it or somewhere in between in the comments if you enjoyed this video then please give it a like and consider subscribing to 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Channel: AKblackandred

Views: 3,704

Keywords: alan wake, alan wake 2, alan wake 2 gameplay, remedy entertainment, remedy, alan wake saga, alan wake 2 saga, survival horror, horror games, playstation, ps5, video game memes, alan wake ii, alan wake review, alan wake 2 review, alan wake 2 game of the year, alan wake 2 goty, alan wake 2 masterpiece, alan wake 2 we sing, alan wake 2 best moments, remedy connected universe, sam lake, alex casey, saga anderson, Ilkka Villi, Matthew Porretta, Melanie Liburd, James McCaffrey

Id: 3tNg8MAHdjY

Length: 20min 4sec (1204 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 06 2023