The Deepest Dive - Alan Wake 2: The Middle

hello everybody Welcome to the deepest dive on Allen wake 2 the best most thorough discussion about the game on the internet can we can we restart that I spilled on myself no can we like restart really do you need to like get a sponge I'll just wipe it in hold on here we go I like not wipe it off I'll wipe it in I'll just rub it into the top which reminds me we're joined by Sarah poori I spilled we're joined by Jeff's here as well je uh it's me I think did you say did you say my name so many times Leo Vader is here and I'm jeffim or yeah yeah and Haley mlan otherwise known as jeffim is here a Flawless start this is the best most discussion about alen wake 2 on the internet you already know that you clicked on this thing this is a multi-part game club discussion covering alen wake 2 we are talking about in this discussion kind of the middle chunk the chunky middle of Allen awake 2 so we're talking about everything this game up through saga's chapter 6 and Allan wake's chapter 6 so up through those chapters that is the stopping point specifically cuz I know all you out there are sticklers so we're talking up through uh scratch for Saga that chapter and then for Alan Wake of course the chapter is is called return which is confusing but initiation six return so the way this works this is a huge game club we are pulling comments from the minmax community everybody who supports minmax at any tier on patreon at patreon.com minmax with 2ns submits their thoughts over there on a regular basis uh this is the second of three chunks of this gamecub discussion the final discussion is going to be happening uh next week and so this Sunday this Sunday the 19th we're going to be collecting your comments over on patreon for everything else in the game the grand finale of Allan Wake 2 so if you're watching this thank you first of all you can go another layer Deeper by subscribing to M Max's YouTube channel or supporting us at any tier on patreon so you can submit a comment and we'll read it in the final discussion for the deepest dive on alen Wake too if we have thoughts or if you have thoughts that you're annoyed we aren't saying on this saying oh these people don't know crap about Alan wake lore fix us by going to patreon.com Max with2 WIS where you can also unlock the podcast version of all of these discussions early adree versions of the mmax show uh podcast versions of all of our interviews bonus content in that bonus podcast feed it's very easy and this is kind of um this is kind of our whole kitten Kaboodle this is our greatest hope is that you watch a video like this and you say you know what I think this Outlets worth supporting I'm going to go check it out just this once and then you unlock that bonus podcast feed and help support the deepest dive and make it better halee how you doing hi I'm good this game's rad it's better this chunk is better than last chunk do you all agree yes I think so I feel like I was misled playing that first chunk they definitely they defin it just wasn't as fun they really like they really like made you kind of earn earn it earn your Allen wake musical by like dragging you through that aw Subway that annoyingly easily to get lost in forest they were like you will earn the camp okay and you have not earned it yet right right so is it the gameplay that's clicking for you more now you're kind of finding more of that groove of a more of a Resident Evil style Groove that you used to so much the game play but I feel like I finally like clicked with the game yeah like even though I don't know the lore like I get it I get like the camp I get that it's like kind of silly like I get that it's very like self-aware but it's like in the beginning that's not obvious at all right and you have to do a lot of like very normal game stuff where you're like okay what is this how is this different where are we shining and then yeah in this next chapter like they really put it into full gear yeah especially The Shining if you're C my R uh hey uh Leo we like to play a little game called No Leo stay with us stay with us please we like to play a little game called most common comment for the deepest dive we have people Smit hundreds of comments over there on patreon what is the most common comment the middle of Allan Wake 2 what are people writing in about more than anything else this is a layup who can say yeah who can say I mean that's the thing is I want to go musical but Sarah having just mentioned that I maybe the costalas sorry did I cheapen it oh okay so you're going with the brothers I just want to look original and everything I do everything else is secondary we'll see if that pays off Jeff from most common comment what do you think I have no interest in being original it was the musical obviously okay well we'll see Haley what do you think it was the musical it's like the best gaming thing I've ever seen it's the musical the best gaming thing I've ever seen is AIC seen live action I have in my notes jaw a gape at the musical sequence uh Sarah most common comment I'm gonna go with Cynthia's feet lock that one it was the first time ever for the deepest dive were I just had to delete just dozens and dozens of comments about the feet cuz they got too graphic too detailed too weird I said you guys it's the deepest ey we did a find and replace in the dock replace with themes so they're going to sound a lot smer uh no come on Leo get original uh the answer is of course the we sing chapter uh by far but second place a lot of people writing in about jump scares that was that was closer than I thought they went off with those boy did they all right there's a lot to unpack for my little heart is still recovering I played until 2 in the morning last night in this spooky meter was off the charts that one chapter The Saga one yeah Sarah was there with me that was the scariest crap ever that was way scarier than Alan Wake 1 times a million yeah old gods you mean just the nursing home stuff yes yeah absolutely uh and like I was really going back and forth on the jump scares too cuz I think we talked about in the first discussion like I don't like them and especially in this one I was like in that old God section I like enough enough like liter I was angry at the game like I get it I get it do something else I get it stop doing this to me please and then I really 180 hard once I saw you streaming the game Haley um at twitch.tv/ mmax show and I was like you know what the fact that people were so excited to see you play through the jump scare stuff and like Sarah you were like oh I got to watch her play this thing like I hate to say it in this in this age in this era like maybe remedy is smarter than all of us who don't like jump scares and it's like you know what it is fun to watch people get jump scared if they're streaming this game and it's fun to have that big of a reaction even if it does feel like a cheap trick put a JPEG Five Nights at Freddy's like you can you can fill a game full of cheap jump scares and yeah it's entertaining to watch other people do it this this section like I I got so pissed at at those I I went on a like overall I went on a completely emotional journey of ups and downs on this it ended on a high note and and of course there were other highs like the musical and stuff but like I found myself like normally in games I don't like I I probably should have mentioned this uh last episode but everyone was was dunking on Sarah for not liking it so I figured I would just leave her to take it but like normally I don't like games when or stories where the main character is a writer who's clearly just a standing for the person who's writing it like that has that has always annoyed me and it feels very self-referential and it's like you're enjoying writing this a lot more than I am enjoying it as the person you know consuming it adaptation level stuff you mean like that type of thing bugs you uh like a what like adaptation yeah I I mean adaptation is weird for it's that's like its whole own bucket but like Stephen King does it a lot and it's like oh wow the protagonist is another you know like sad sack writer who doesn't have any ideas and like and that just becomes the idea and i' I've always disliked that and but like it's Alan Wake has been weird for me because I do really like Sam Lake and I think he's an interesting guy and so like I don't associate those kind of things with Sam Lake but but like it manifests itself in my hatred of Alan Wake and it's like the entire the entire time I was playing the game and and still this is the one thing that didn't end on a high know like I got more and more annoyed with Alan Wake as a character and as a human being to the point where like I found myself blaming him for the jump scares like like the jump scares would flash and I'd be like this is the exact kind of cheap that alen wake would put in a movie adaptation of one of his poorly written horror stories and it's just like that really ground on me the this entire section um and it's and yeah it's it's I I fall for him I'm sure it is entertaining to watch other people jump for but it's like man figure out how to actually work that into the great atmosphere that you have like there were a lot of really cool locations in this section that had me totally creeped out on their own you don't need to flash up the super cheap faces every 30 seconds it was weird cuz I I feel like they pulled a lot of like horror punches especially in that like beginning water room where you go to turn the lights back on by the way you were turning the lights on a lot in this section Saga would walk into a building and they'd be like silly the lights are out like better go do something about that and as much as I love the Mind Place little silly to keep going back there to go okay and then yes and here yes I need to find a fuse right yeah lights on Rose told you that yeah yeah Cyrus in the community they say this is easily one of the most creative games we' ever seen to this point uh and then they start the electricity isn't working someone has to fix it in the basement Trope I'm not a fan of that decision I think it would count as a horror game already without that but that is a wild thing cuz it's like oh my God this game's so awesome oh my God this rocks this rocks and it's like but we just need a fuse it's like oh okay sure I understand I had a fuse to turn the lights on I will say by the end of the Cynthia section I was no longer like I was still getting jump scared but at the end of it I was just like in a rage like I was like I will find Cynthia I will throttle her I don't care that it's elder abuse I will take her down I was so sick of like just seeing her everywhere like she she got me every time with that jump scare by the end of it I wasn't even scared it was just it was a Revenge killing at that point I like that idea Jeff of blaming Allan Wake for the jump scares because I do think there's kind of this building tension throughout this chunk of the game as well of like every time you're playing a saga it's just like come on Allan like every time you talk to him it's just like everything is confused it feels like he's so behind the eight ball she's like wait you're still in the dark place no you're out like what are you talking this he's trying to catch up to where she's at it's just like this frustrating feeling of like I can't even understand what you're talking about I'm five steps ahead of you Mr Allan Wake but a lot of people wrote in about this uh this basic idea um Bo wrote in saying with each new draft Allan creates he says he needs a new murder scene are the three victims Saga is solving at the start a consequence to Allen's failed drafts maybe I think it's interesting that we've got confirmation in this part that did exist before and now it's just alen is is changing things so it's it's unclear what was around before cuz clearly a lot of it was right right uh mighty Ethan writes in they say what do y'all think of Allen in this game we love him um he's trying to get himself I think he needs to be stopped he needs to stop writing Boo in the middle of his stop what would be the consequence of just stopping so this man needs to answer like this he needs consequences okay like when he gets out of the dark place consequence says I feel like his entire life has been consequences that's what I was saying would it be so wrong stay there will keep writing he's got to keep giving notes to scratch come on scratchy boy uh so uh mighty Ethan says he's trying to get himself out of the dark place by writing a horror story in which many people are turned into dark monsters killed or otherwise traumatized I understand he has to follow the laws of drama and can't make everything sunshine or rainbows or won't work but is the cost worth it in the first game it was one thing because the darkness was already out and he was trying trying to save the world but in this one he's trying to save himself and he's sacrificing a lot of people to accomplish it is uh is Allan the the baddy I think that's in there that's not an unfair read of of him and what's going on yeah but also it's like I don't know how did how would he stop if he stops scratch keeps going if he kills himself he just wakes up again later because he keeps dying and he keeps not really dying you know but is the dark presence not trying to get out through other people now like regardless of Allen to like you know it's like Nightingale was did Allan write Nightingale coming out of the woods and getting killed or did that just happen cuz the dark presence like was trying to use night Andale to get out again cuz it's just trying to get out again over and over it's like he tried with Barbara didn't work tried with Allan it didn't work so it's just like it doesn't have to be Allan I think it could just be someone who's dumb in the lake like you again but but like the writing thing seems to work well so it's it latches on to writers for some like like Thomas Zayn and now Allen and maybe he thinks he has a better chance of stopping it because he knows how to work with it with writing within its genre the what his kind of monologue about that about like I know what I have to do I need to keep it within these parameters I can't change it too much like he might have some kind of hero yeah he might have some kind of hero complex around like I have a better shot of stopping the dark presence than anybody else he definitely seems to have a hero complex and it's also it's also funny that it's like well I have to write I have to write the story to you know to save everything and get everything out so I'm going to right okay so there's a cult in here and it's called The Cult of the word and they're obsessed with a writer named Alan Wake and they hang on every word that he writes and thinks he's the most interesting and amazing person on the planet but they're out to get me now and it's like come on dude like you are so self-absorbed and I'm just I'm just glad that like those feelings don't extend to remedy and Sam like in my mind for whatever reason like I like as as soon as I saw him Sam Lake dancing around I was like well this is the best thing ever and I'm kind just gonna sit here and enjoy this even though like those those two things are and then and then Alan wake's stupid face will come up and be like oh that alen wake you're so full of yourself and it's just like whatever man whatever whatever divider I have in my brain uh is at least working in Sam L's favor on this object permanence right yeah so is is he self-absorbed or is it's scratch that self-absorbed that in writing it then maybe trying to frantically edit it to make him like oh it's not Alan's fault it's scratch's fault but can't we believe that like scratch is a part of Allan like everyone's like oh he's the demon he's the devil but like couldn't it just be like a writer's unchecked ego sort of like slipping out a little bit that's what scratch is scratch is everything that people don't like about Allan like as a thing and the dark presence like uses that to just like troll Allan I guess but like like what's the worst parts of Allen and that's what scratch is and then he just like goes out in the world and why does scratch keep torturing Alice like this is something I can't like how does scratch have the free time of being evil to go stand in Alice's hallway like we still haven't really figured that out yet like who has the time I guess he's not fully out like he he wants to be able to do whatever he wants but all he can do is Spook Alice a punch in the hallway like that's his Thursday night he's like ah I wish I could destroy Humanity but I'll just Alice like that's all he could do is your read Haley um being the deepest into the lore of all this stuff is your read that the Allen wake that was on the beach that we encountered in the last chunk that's like all right now you're out way to go that that was scratch being like it's me secretly the whole time or is it a matter of kind of like a Dr Jackal Mr Hyde thing because that's the impression I kind of had like in the prison that like Allan Wake is still Allan Wake but then he's shifting into scratch as like a a monster thing that he can't control cuz I mean we control Alan Wake in this chunk and you know he's all bloody he's like oh what happened like it does it doesn't feel like it's just as clean as that was scratched the whole time it feels more like it's he's jumping back and forth between personalities at the end of one of the dlc's there's a moment where he's standing in front of himself and himself on the ground is like it's like scared Allen they I think people call him irrational Allen cuz the whole DLC is about him like trying to reach his irrational self that's just scared like it's just the Primal Instinct of I'm really frightened where's my mommy and he's trying to like get over that feeling to do what he needs to do and that's like the point of the DLC is like trying to get to a rational Allen and at the end he fuses with ir rational Allen and then he keeps writing and that's when he starts writing return and that return shows up on the on the um typewriter and then we don't hear anything until Alan Wake two right so it's like or I guess maybe American Nightmare came after that but people try I've seen people argue that that was him fusing with scratch in that moment like and but I think it's irrational Allen I don't know I can see why you'd think that because he's in the cell and he's like panicking he's like you don't get it he's right here ah and then like he slicks his hair back looks 10 times hotter and it's scratch and you're like oh okay I guess it's scratched now but I I really don't think that maybe he can just possess him cuz it's not like he's a body he's not a mass right he's not like walking like he can walk around and do things but he can also like the dark presence isn't just scratch like the dark presence is like a a fial thing like that's always the scariest thing and that was like the first thing they said and like the first all wake is like it's scarier not to know what's happening than to like be like that's the enemy the demogorgan and stranger things done and like check the box it's way scary to be like what are the rules and like lately I haven't really been writing notes about like that much stuff it's mainly just like what are the rules of the dark place and dark presence cuz they give you little little pieces every like hour they'll say something like it works in loops and rituals and I'm like frantically writing that down that's the scratching it out that's the only way they give you that lore is through these really quick like either it's a manuscript or Allan like realizing something or even Saga sometimes like cuz she's smarter than Allan like let's be real like she'll figure things out herself too and once we know the rules then we can come to conclusions but I feel like I know like four out of a hundred rules so I can't really like figure out anything yet but that's the point okay yeah yeah so the one the Juan one over there on patreon they submitted a comment saying Mr scratch has a totally different presence and personality in this game than he had in Allan wake's American Nightmare in American Nightmare the tone and story were Pulp Fiction so Mr scratch matches that with his character being a Mr blond or Vega type character he seduces women kidnaps victims kills them in front of Alan Wake through the TV and parts of that game taunting wake throughout the adventure that he's going to live a better life than he ever did and will kill Alice when he gets out he even showed Allen the weapons he used to kill his victim noting he hates guns as are not personal wake stopped him in American nightmare but I think this confirmed Haley's theory that American Nightmare was one of wake's attempts to get out of the dark place as that game works as a Time loop as well while in Alan Wake 2 he's the silent killer type like Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers which matched the story as this is a horror book/movie sorry for being a nerd for another second but scratch's main theme in that game was the Happy song Poets of the Fall the same theme plays when wake and Zayn were drinking going on drugs and writing which raises red flags for me so maybe zaye equals scratch or scratch equals wake that's a lot then Zayn happens to look just like Allan too like without a beard could not believe the difference between Zayn and like I was like I couldn't believe they were the same person wait really because of the beard yeah I literally like I did not believe they were the same person at first and I was like who knew a beard could be so magical ask Jeff what a moment uh okay should we try and work our way CR chronologically through this even though it's kind of confusing because you can jump through a bunch of different things but there's so many great comments from people but uh let's start with sagas I did the bulk of saga stuff first I don't know about the the rest of y'all I alternated I couldn't find this freaking bucket sometimes so I just kept going with whoever I was with it's weird how not every save room has a bucket right right yeah it is a weird feel like that yeah I guess it's silly to put one in every save room but it is weird yeah it's it's a weird it's a weird mechanism because I was at at one point I was like in the um running around in the police headquarters and it's like I want to go to Saga now and I guess I just have to leave and like run across town back to the hotel in order to just like switch over to her I I wish I wish it was they just had a bucket in the mine place that you could use to switch between them but yeah I do kind of and maybe this is just making excuses but I kind of like the weird physicality of the thing like it makes you care about the switch a lot more even if it's you know just playing Spider-Man 2 was like I just go ahead and hot Swap all over the the open world like there's something kind of cool about it being constrained in a way of like I need to go see ati's bucket in order to switch and it's kind of a funky feeling to finish a chapter and be like all right I'm ready to switch now but it's like no no no you're still running and also it's just it kind of reminds me of just kind of the funky structure of this where like you'll finish a chapter and then sometimes it's a little while before like the next chapter will boot up and actually put the title screen on the on the screen it is just like a weird state of limbo of like is this what am I supposed to be doing I guess this is kind of just the explore time but it kind of just adds to a really unique feel to the game overall limiting it in these ways you know um but uh Sala return three local girl heading to watery uh it's Washington's little Finland uh is what they really like to to let you know about wandering around the town seeing ATI just belted out with that karaoke song which I feel like is in so much of this entire chapter then is him just letting it RI unbelievably good song I know I stood sat there and listened to it and I was like oh oh I see okay I've been here a few minutes it's looping now it's just looping it's looping and then kept listening to it for like another full cycle it's a kind of looping overlap I don't want to leave yeah they say it Loops forever the cycle I leave you on every time Bo writes in says uh as an owner of a cleaning service I may be biased but ATI is the best he's so weird he seems to have a key to everywhere he's a walking overlap also he's a lovely singer uh yeah there's there's the goat every time I see AE my heart calms down a little bit he's very much like Uncle ATI and you're like oh I'm okay for a minute in balla where jump scares you yes that is UN we were not on the same side then true to be fair you were trying to get in his room and he was like what are you doing stop I was that his room the one with like the spiral line like Ocean View thing no I thought that his room was on the right I I ever got into the spiral room yeah I don't think you can go so Kevin oh no yeah Kevin right they say everyone else or anyone else go to the top floor of the retirement home and try to open the door with the spiral on it I nearly jumped out of my skin when ATI appeared behind s to tell her that getting in is forbidden for your own safety this was a much better jump scare than the black and white flashes of screaming of screaming which are getting tiresome and repetitive I wasn't able to play far enough to discover the significance of this room but the incident confirms that a is always watching and I can't tell if it's a good thing or not uh yeah I went and talked to him and then did that and like he him getting there impossibly fast when I knew where he was really effective yeah yeah and also yeah it is it's weird with the jump scares and you know these types of scares too of just like some things are just so scary compared to other things like 70% of the jump scares do zero for me and then 30% give me a heart attack and I'm still trying to figure out that distinction but it's so weird ratio though I I can live with that ratio hopefully unless the heart attacks are too bad but like the ATI jump scare like that one got me in such a big way and I'm trying to think of it's just something about like thinking you understand the space when you don't like is that the the alarm in my heart that goes off and like you thinking you understand the rules of like yeah characters haven't done that then they aren't going to do that again different yeah yeah yeah I think I had a remedy moment that Sarah would have loved during that scary part going back to we're because we're near ati's room where I jumping ahead but creeping up to Cynthia's room finally ready to open it I go check out AE he's a posing with his legs stuck in the couch in the mattress and I'm like Oh my are they getting this metal with it wow that's so weird and then heum you've done it again yeah I fell through the world I had a couple bugs this time that I like fell through the world like whenever I tried to like proceed to an area too fast my body would just keep falling and I was like looking up at the world like floating away and I was just like really Sam Lake you've done it again as I'm like floating into the abyss yeah I definitely um I'm playing on Xbox and I I want to say maybe I didn't notice it as much maybe it just course corrected or maybe they patched it but like for the first couple days at least playing this chunk like the audio was still out of sync for cutcenes and it oh know man it really has an impact it really bothered me and and lowered my impact and just enjoyment of the game for that chunk but hopefully the stuttering audio that I last time I said wasn't a big deal this time the end of the musical segment is in a cut scene a loading screen cut scene that gets the stuttered Audio Oh that's rough the dancing was off that was unforgivable yeah that seems unforgivable um Fred denovo writes in over there on patreon thanks for support Fred they say Sarah cover your ears just you can cover them or you can pour two drinks over them really quickly and it'll muffle it I think um did anyone else notice the detail on anyone else notice the detail on Norman's legs outside the sauna in watery his legs are discolored to show he isn't getting the correct blood flow and part of the reason that he needs those crutches what a specific detail oh wow I didn't notice that I was very happy to see uh the sauna sitting over there by the water and just the old guys in the towels ready to go it's it's a cool I had people in my chat being like it's the towel Ben talked about I was like what oh because we have a the way this works for everybody watching YouTube is we have literally just like a a Google doc over there on patreon that everybody adds their comments to so I wanted to get the ball rolling and show them the format so I just said I don't know what's a stupid comment that no one ever comment about I said I like Norman's towel so that's what're talking about I'm not actually obsessed with the towel you guys I wondering if you tweeted about it or like how did they get this take from him I don't remember writing this anywhere yeah I made a video essay on mx's YouTube channel if you saw it it's all just about Norman's towel uh let's see um the speaking of sauna and at the start of saga's section here did you guys Eaves drop on the two people at the the outdoor sauna in watery no I assume I did I don't remember what to talk about but what H out over there for a bit it's one of the funniest metag gags in this game which is one of the people at the sauna wants to have a conversation and the other one does not is not interested in having an NPC conversation but one guy keeps saying generic lines and the other one keeps trying to get him to shut up for example they say auna is good to fix what ails you they also say silence is golden and that's the end of it and there's so many barks from them like that it's really funny oh that's like one is an NPC and one is a real person that's right I like I forget who it is but there's somebody that you profile is Saga in this chunk too where they're going back and forth and debating puzzles like everyone hates puzzles like no what are you talking about puzzles are great oh isn't it yako and ilmo I think so when you're trying to get into the their like I don't know locked Vault they're like everybody likes puzzles right yeah I like they have a line where they're like you have to be a really smart person to design puzzles everybody loves them okay I guess that's right uh let's see uh they didn't leave a name so I'm assuming it's Mr scratch but they say I became obsessed with Pat Main's Radio Show in this chapter when it came on I as I walked by a new area I stopped and listened immediately his spiraling insistence that Wendy Davis confirmed dead on the caseboard from Davis Family beef jerky confirmed by her widower that has never existed is Alive and Well despite repeated callers telling him that she's dead it might weirdly be the most chilling part of the game so far for me it's mainly depressing yeah and I was laughing cuz there was one point where I think I think it was one when you're in a gondola or not a gondola a gazebo and he's trying to plug the jerky and but the guest won't let him like get it out and so he keeps trying to replug I was like this is Ben when he's trying to do the plugs so we keep interrupting him and then it kind of escalated to Pat me his Ben and when he's 90 oh I can live that talk he had a setup in his retirement home he did stuff he had lots of mics little dials and he was doing a show like there's bad I do think that's I mean a sign of just kind of the confidence we have in remedy at this point in this game is like when I first heard that pet m radio show it's a matter of like this is going to be important I should stop and listen to all these and then to have just like that little payoff of like oh you encounter him in the old folks home you get to actually see his equipment it was like meeting a celebrity at that point also when I met Elmo And yako I was like oh my God I love your commercials problem saves ilmo and yo Patman has a show in the whole first Allen wake as well like show that you can listen to yeah but he's not uh he doesn't have dementia and or is you know been possessed potentially like they're very unclear about why he's confused it might just be he's old or it could be that something nefarious is happening and I kind of like that I don't know he could just be an old man he's a bit confused and Mrs Wendy like and he's sad about it it's and people are swearing at him on his radio show live on Air instead of just calling him on the phone instead of talking to him on the radio my God yeah it's kind of the fun thing with this game is like just having multiple ways to interpret almost everything like even interacting with rose in the old folks home chapter it's like are you just lying trying to derail what I'm doing here or did you really not see Tor come out of that water you know like there's so many situations like that of like I'm reading the face just to trying to figure out like is this the narrative within the world twisting or are you just straight up a liar and this is just a real human to human interaction it's tough to tell at times right yeah where she got left after after the first one cuz she gets possessed by the like by the dark presence in the first game so it's kind of like is she still messed up from that question mark or is Rose just weird like you kind of don't know yeah we can get to Rose uh in a bit for sure but uh yeah this is whole chunk all right you're making your way to the trailer uh you run into ilmo talking you about your daughter and all that stuff and it's the classic thing now of saga being like Oh it's like they remember a different reality but I guess I can go to my trailer let's see how it goes um even I have to navigate through coffee world to get there the scariest abandoned amusement park in the middle of the woods but also like not abandoned cuz it clearly is running it's supposed to be open yeah like we're going to open it soon and I'm like it looks like it was opened and then closed and now you're opening it again right right the rides are running and you hear children screams as you approach but there's children there when you get there yeah I hated that but then I love too awesome when you're coming up on it and there's like that body of water and there's just like those little like water rides but they're kind of like scattered all over the lake it's kind of like I don't know everything's just in slight disrepair as you're going into this thing it's so real like that's so real small town there's a place called upper Clement Park in my Province that's now like looks like that like it's been abandoned 5 years ago and people sneak there and like record videos and take pictures and stuff but I went there not that long ago it feels like in my brain it functioned perfectly it was busy bus and now it's you're going to tell me it looks like the last of us it's like not even been that long but that's what it looks like there's grass growing over the roller coaster and the bumper cars are like rotting to the ground and I'm like how it's been like two it's been two weeks I feel like but it's it's decrepid so they like nailed that feeling of like if something doesn't get attention and Care AKA watery like they're losing all their tourism things just deteriorate so fast and pliskin makes a good point that ilmo and yako even make a call to the workers so you can pick up the key but now knowing what we know now who knows if they're really talking to anyone yeah or do you hear them on the phone I don't remember yeah I forget exactly but yeah the amusement park it it may me think of it's a very specific thing and I'm sure I'm connecting these two things that aren't connected but when we visited remedy back at Game Informer Sarah um for a cover story trip Sarah at game I don't know what that is oh sorry um but we visited remedy for the quantum break cover story we had like a free day at the end uh where Ben Reeves and I went to an amusement park like an old Finnish amusement park that was pretty close to remedy it wasn't that far and so I'm wondering like amusement park amus par but like it was super old and they had just a bunch of cool old stuff like all right here's kind of our equivalent of It's a small world but just a bunch of old Finnish witches like but then they had like an a roller coaster that was so old that it didn't have breakes like literally the way it would work is there had to be a Breakman riding on the back of it and he had like manually with a pedal slow down at the right sections of the roller coaster for this old was freaking cool was awesome had to put his feet through the boards like Spider-Man 2 we believe in you man as the boards are flying up by see uh Garrett hulfish writes in and says I love the absurdity of coffee world but $25 for adult admission that's robbery especially with half the rides out of commission and also it's called coffee world but the only B bathrooms are porta potties yeah like it's coffee world like I want some luxury bathrooms at Coffee World help us out please because that's a part of the coffee experience it's a part of the experience that's right uh yeah David Dillinger says every single portapotty was out of order in coffee world I had a good laugh when I found a note stuck on it where a visitor wrote you got to get your together it really is that was the scariest part of coffee World in general was just the bathroom situation such an awesome theme for an amusement park yeah I mean that's an overall theme I think for for this entire section and Jeff you already alluded to it but just like I realized just the idea of having abandoned coffee World amusement park back toback for the way I was playing it with like you know Scandinavian God old folks homes like just those two environments back toback and then obviously getting to the musical sequence like God just awesome environments you know early on in this game's development when they had that up on a white board it's like all right this is a cool idea this is a cool idea like good ideas for levels I think like the chapter framing of how this game is constructed like I wonder like if that helps them be more creative I don't there this is maybe uh too much out on the limb but like I remember reading about in a NADA ass like the making of Donkey Kong Country Returns and they had every level up on a whiteboard in Retro Studios and they would communally like give it a uh a grade it's like all right this level's at a c right now we're not going to stop till every level's at an A and there's something about like a chapter format for a game where I wonder if it kind of has the same effect of like all right we need every chapter to be unique it's such a distinct thing it's more clear than just like this quest line in this open world game versus this quest line you know it's like no chapter five needs to be awesome chapter six needs to be different and awesome you know like is that a weird thought am I up my own butt no that makes to sense to me it's like so much easier to edit a thing than the whole thing gued up then it's like what's wrong with just this section the other ones are fine Y and it's so much easier to rationalize and think about it and I do Wonder this game being made in only 3 years supposedly that's crazy it feels like they must have a really good hold on how to make a game at this point and I something that's that struck me on this note was when you're as Allen doing the sections here it was at the hotel with the cult play where you are putting plot elements into different scenes yeah it's like there's only room for four on the board there's only ever going to be for and it feels like establishing something like that or with the the janitor buckets only being in certain save rooms it's like putting these kind of limiters on it so we don't get too carried away keeping the scope like manageable like boundaries early on that's why I wasn't upset when people are like the NPCs don't really talk to me whatever it's wasted like there's so much better stuff they can focus their attention on than like the NPCs having like weird conversations with you yeah the fact that they couldn't make the first one an open world game is probably the best thing that happened to the series like it made it might have sucked at at the time it's like oh it's such a crazy Vision but this game needs to be linear it would not hit the same at all if it was not a linear game I'm so grateful there's no side quests like I didn't realize it till halfway through but like not having random stuff pulling me in different directions as someone who's been like playing a lot of games this year a lot trip like tripa games it just feels so good to not have to do a side quest like everything is main story you can go off the trail if you want but like it's not going to like drive you into this some weird thing that doesn't really relate to the main story it just feels good to play a streamlined experience yeah but still having yeah those pockets of like well explore the area now that's not flooded anymore if you want to and there's Collectibles everywhere you get the idea you're going to find some cool stuff but it's not a matter the Collectibles are rich enough that they're on the caseboard and there's like what am I learning about how these Collectibles are here like giving them that extra depth almost makes them replace side quests is anybody else kind as just as rich or richer I always feel like okay if I'm going through that caseboard stuff it's like all right the Collectibles I'll let those Stack Up for a bit before I'm going there and pinning like found another little chest over here there's some fun little spunky stories with the doll puzzles though like some very much s like like in control how you learn about all these wacky things that have happened behind the scenes that could be their own episode of a TV show like the little puzzles like I stumbled across one that was just a woman who married a bear and then you had to like reenact that with the dolls and then when reality switched the bear had killed her and there was blood everywhere and you're like oh no that's really sad but there was just like pictures of her with the bear on their wedding day and it was called the cheim was called Beauty and the Beast wasn't there like flowers on the bed too like a little heart formation I choose to believe this was a balers Gate 3 reference they added at the very last minute definitely they said delay the entire game that was why they delayed it by a week so they could slip in that ball get reference yeah there's I also like how my thought is the bear did the heart and not her but it was definitely her and she invited the Bear in K her but I like to think that the bear walked in and was like she's going to love this and Scattered it and then his blood lust took over halfway through maybe uh let's see oh I like the you mentioned the clothes pin thing I like that the first one you find Saga is like oh a little clothes pin doll perfect weird souvenir for Logan it's like no that's a terrifying toy for a kid what are you doing you're G to give your kid nightmares forever if you hand that thing to her don't do it please and she keeps she keeps collecting them even though like her daughter's kind of dead now like what I guess okay I guess my daughter's kind of dead now I guess is where um yeah I like that the walk to Coffee world too like you know you basically run into Quick Silver in the woods except he throwing those axes at you I hate that enemy yeah somebody those were boss enemies in Allen wake 1 they're just hanging out in the woods this one like that was like a big fight like oh no he's speedy and now they're just like yep what about it and you just have to run away half the time with those guys somebody pointed out I forget where it is oh yeah um Scott s pointed out that they taken they Dash around like Jesse feden did in control it's like I guess I hadn't thought of that connection but that's an interesting idea of like I guess it's just kind of a dash you know maybe we're connecting too many dots here but um utilitarian or whatever on this section this is where you get the crossbow too which deepest dive detail I don't know if anybody wrote in about this but the reload animation on that crossbow is so good it is I have she bends down and pulls the thing back and while she's doing it she's like glancing up ahead of her clear which works when she's alone and Afraid somebody might be there or when you're in the middle of combat it looks like so perfect and and in the world and when you upgrade it to have two she like balances both sometimes a little clumsily when she's like putting them in two at a time is it I've collected so many bolts and I somehow miss this crossbow and it's killing me cuz oh if you remember the4 I love the crossbow I know I love the crossbow um I don't know I need to go back and find it apparently I hope it still stream when you play can tell you where things are everybody can scream yeah yeah yeah I don't want him to see me freak out though with the jump scares so I can't possibly do that Sarah um empiric unicorn says the only problem with the jump scares is my throat hurts from screaming at every single one I'm G to lose my voice again you guys empiric unicorn writes in and says don't sleep on the crossbow taking taking down taken with head shots feels empowering and it's nice that you can recycle the ammo plus the upgrades are fun does sound great uh we really got into the upgrades this section there's some cool upgrades the crossbow has one where if you hit them with it it like will magnetize your bullets to where the bolt hit them yeah what you can get away with missing a little bit after you hit them with one crossbow likew and they like go aim towards the the bolt you that's a really cool idea yeah uh aex writes in says the crossbow is such a good addition uh to this game for me not because of how effective it was as a weapon or its ammo economy but because of how it made me feel shooting someone and then taking what feels like an eternity to reload another arrow while an enemy is running towards me made my heart rate Spike every time how stressful it felt while also being so cinematic and satisfying is one of the best feelings I've had in survival horror combat in general let's yeah let's talk more about the combat because I think it's not like groundbreaking but it's also not average I've had some really cool moments just in like juggling two enemies with the rifle I found myself counting the bullets I had fired because it doesn't show that on screen like in every other so you're like okay have one left I have to make this count and I have the upgrade for the rifle where if you stand still for after a second the Crosshair Zooms in it does a cool sound effect and then it has an extra powerful shot or whatever so knowing I'm on the last bullet of the clip dodging the axe and taking the extra second to get that boost of damage cuz it's the last most important bullet and hitting him with it really great moments in the in the combat yeah nothing's worse in this or re4 than when someone's throwing an axe at you and it's like I'll Dodge it no I just walked into it okay thanks a lot you dodge into it yeah exactly it over and over over that every time uh one bology R about that too saying did anyone else buy the rifle Focus upgrade I usually forgot I had it unlocked and the sound effect from it is so loud and dramatic along with the extra zoom and Screen effect I kept getting jump scared worse from that worse from that than the dark presence plus if you're in town and you have it put away but it was the last weapon equipped the effect will still trigger if you try to zoom in on something like a wall or a desk or something like that wow remedy that's genius did it again uh but Scott s is with you Leo they say I began to feel powerful during Saga chapter 4 switching between the crossbow handgun and my upgraded shotgun depending on the rage it really felt good uh don't get me wrong the axes whizzing past my head and the muttering taken dashing around like Jesse feden There we go still freaked me out but it didn't feel like running away I got the quote in one go trophy which is the crossbow head shot on the guy who pops up in the middle of the perk ride which was very satisfying that's when I got that too I think really oh that one guy rid in that middle weird thing my confidence with it is definitely building in this section like knowing how much the melee attack does knowing you know getting a handle on the positioning of enemies and how they move there have been times where I'm like okay I'm going to dash in and bring the fight to them instead of just constantly dodging terrified the whole time just Dash in and whack him to stun him and then hit him with the follow-up shot Dash and whack I'm I like that Allen is way weaker than Saga too like it feels different to be Allen than Saga like when he just has his little six only Six Bullets in his chamber he didn't have two guns until forever like it took forever to get the shotgun in the hotel mean while saa's got like five guns can reload as much as she wants has like 18 bullets in her chamber now it's like oh no like I have the pump action shotgun on Saga now it's like see uh like I just run right up them I'm like see done you not not even scared anymore but with Alan I'm like peeking out of the the safe room and like shooting twice and then going back in the safe room and trying to cheese it cuz he's so much wimpier that shotgun is awesome like for how far the enemies fly back when you hit them it's really satisfying yeah it's huge players are really satisfying too have you guys started using those been us them at all time I saw Haley in the Stream use one for the first time where it's like I've only been using them for like that last ditch like shove it in your mouth as it's coming towards you or whatever but I haven't like popped one and Haley it seemed like it was really good and and I should be doing it they don't tell you that you can Chuck them on the ground and then they're all kind of like and then you can and just like blow them away while they're all focusing on the flare on the ground I don't I don't like the propane tanks I think they're pretty bad like I tried to use them a few times and they did do what I want so I just put them in the shoe box didn't even try again I feel like I'm already always losing where they are like all right I threw it now where is that thing like in this boss fight okay I I don't have time to focus on just Dash away from it immediately and I'm like okay cool right you can use the flares on the Ripple enemies though when they're kind of cloaked and their little water ripple coming towards you and it gets I didn't know what that was at first when it approached me as a ripple and I was just staring at it I was like what's this and then it just kind of moved around and it didn't really pop out oh huh I I wish I wish I hadn't seen it in that Xbox showcase because I feel like it lessened a little bit but I mean it shouldn't be overlooked how cool of an enemy design that is is to have weird mirror reflection Ripple monster Sarah you say nay to the Ripple creatures and I'm not saying nay I just wouldn't lose myself over the incredible enemy design of putting someone's torso on their lower half what are you talking but it it narratively makes sense because it's like cauldron legs they reality water Sarah I thought I didn't see I didn't see the genius I didn't see the genius there yeah as someone whose shirt is drenched I was hoping you'd understand it better than most I died in that I apparently I I wasn't entirely submerged enough look like a in the lore of the game I do like when you shoot them and they die and they fall over the the they're they have the normal bottom half at that point and it's kind of like a seamless transition which is cool yeah so I have been playing this game on story mode yeah uh CU I didn't like the combat and I find story mode so funny because Allen in little Allen's world the Dark Shadows instead of like killing you on sight they literally just sort of like shoulder check you and then gently lower you to the ground and like over and over and over again like they'll come up to you and they'll kind of just like shoulder check push you and Allan will just go and then it'll just kind of fall to the ground and it'll do like zero damage but wait these are like cuz there's like the not friendly Shadows but there's definitely the Shadows that are secretly the evil the Shadows that will attack you okay so even the ones that will attack you shoulder check him and like gently lower him to the ground and he's like and then they kiss him gently on the and then they kiss him and they pat him on the head and they say better luck next time buddy good luck with chapter seven uh B has a really interesting take I like this idea uh saying I found when switching between Allen and Saga it felt right to give them a different weapon quick slot it made the first few moments after switching intense as I had to remember my setup but I like that idea cuz my instinct of course like okay well shotguns on the left pistols on the right but like oh no that is kind of cool like to Jumble it fully so absorb them as different characters pistol upwards pistol up oh disgusting I shouldn't even talk to a pistol up person pistol left are you out of your mind pistol left easily shotgun on the left I'll agree with that pistol up uh rifle on the bottom and bolt on the right that's just where your healing like scattered around I care about gun really well thought through philosophy of's doing a zero dog kill run like I watched her get like mauled down by like five of the dogs cuz she refused to kill it those are they are hard those have been most of my deaths yeah and the fact that they're like spawning again after I ran through that area like what is I thought I just would clear them out they'd be done but this is just their home turf now I guess I don't respect walls or anything either like I went in the house and I feel like game law is like when you're in the building they deagro but the Wolves were like and like knocked the door down came and kept they opened the door to walk in hello uh k m and actually they're not alone they say it's been said a few times that remedy has learned from the Resident Evil games but it takes more than save rooms in a similar UI for that to be true oh Cal you cheeky mfer Resident Evil knows how to design and Pace its combat encounters that knows exactly how and when to ramp up the action and apply pressure and when to give the player a breather something this game seemingly has no clue about if they put half as much effort into designing fun and interesting combat encounters as they put in a mediocre musical segment I think enjoying it okay look We're all sorry you died know you're FR I was fine with coming for the combat because I do agree that like combat is the weakest part of this game pacing overall is fine the boss fights have been miserable but coming for the musical that is where I will you're not making any friends sorry buddy uh yeah it is an interesting idea of like Resident Evil they've just honed it so well after so many years of making you always feel like all right this the stretch we're going to push you to your limit and we'll give you just s you need you can tell when they want you to like they're trying to waste your bullets basically right right and this game doesn't have that pinch is obvious right they're pretty generous with ammo though like it's it's one of those kind of systems where oh you're low on health and you open the next drawer it's all Health items like they know how to balance it yeah I don't think they're trying like I don't think that they want the combat to sort of be the focus of the game which is fine by me yeah it it is is a weird feeling cuz like I have complete faith in the narrative in the world but it is a feeling it's like I don't know if I fully trust that I'm in the best hands but I mean for combat encounters pacing all this stuff but it's like best hands is Resident Evil you know which is tough to compete with obviously um on that note real quick halay before I forget uh Hayden birth a lot birth a very lot they say this is probably a little late in the playthrough to share this but it's a Cheesy way to play so maybe it's for the best containers don't spawn what's in them until you open them so if a container is close to a save point you can quick save make trips to the locker to force loot that you want out of them if you don't get something useful or you get the hundredth bottle of pills you don't have storage room just uh storage room for just quickload uh and then quickload to save and repeat my containers were empty once I like I had like 30 bullets and my containers were like empty so I had to go put my bullets in the shoe box so they would give me bullets again please yeah yeah it's uh just story mode things I definitely I'm trying to remember if it was even it must have been a dump on the ground but at some point in a boss fight I ran out of I was before boss fight but I ran out of pistol ammo dump on the ground what is this coffee world sorry I was a little slow on that no Jeff why didn't you laugh at that man I did I just I think filtered oh I see changing story I my nose it was kind of a oh that's his gut busting laughter is through the yeah I also scream through my nose too right right right and he poops and pees through his nose yeah the point is at some point the game just like gave me like here's 33 bullets here you go you stupid idiot and it was just like a weird feeling like okay sure I'll just take this and get ready for this next fight thank you very much for having Mercy on my poor a must be hard to balance that where the boss fight you need that's in the way of progressing the story and you show up there with one bullet yes you're you can't progress the story it must be hard to figure out where to strategically like shove bullets at you and where to not yeah this game does have a lot of that though there is a lot of sequencers I'm like wow nothing has happened except for me getting 15 bullet pickups I'm pretty sure something's coming up right did you guys well we'll save it for when it no no no no in the boss fight with um the brothers in the woods right where there's like the two of them and it's like the glowing red don't think they Brothers but they were cops no the cops I'm sorry Sor sorry yes jeez yes Mulligan and something yes th yeah when it's like the glowing red and all that stuff um I died to them a lot um and then I'm pretty sure what happened is I just killed one of them then and then it just like cut to the cut scene like I beat both of them I I think it was did it reload after you did you kill one and then it reloaded you you died and then it reloaded you after You' already killed one of them I don't think so maybe I'm misinterpreting it but that was my read as it was just like a ultimate Mercy play after I died so many times like you know what here just we're moving on don't worry about it interesting last episode you said you could shoot people from the light area is all you wanted and the light never went no I cut that part out I noticed that got cut out I laughed did you really hear that got cut I I don't like to seem confused or in the deepest of so if you're listening to this this is me being fully on top say whatever you want Leo you can finally say it game on jeffim whatever you want let it out of your nose buddy this is your chance no I'm good okay great um let's see a lot of people wrote in uh with the idea of combat isn't their cup of tea cozy wrote In saying I like the story so far but the game's combat's holding me back uh we sing worked because it gave us a banger of a track broke up the visual and tonal monotony of Allen's side and engage the story in combat at the same time but for the rest of these chapters the two are divided we use the wrmp to get to bosses then shoot them then they go down too quickly to be impactful set pieces this divide is critical to pacing and a trapping of the genre remedy chose but Allen's lamp and W are opportunities to add environment challenges to combat but this is obviously easier said than done I don't know what w WR and MP we a wrmp to get to bosses oh oh is it Writing Room mine Palace mine place oh I think yeah yeah we all I forgot we all agreed on yeah we cut that out Ben could you cut us out being confused yeah snip snip snip uh yeah villis wrote in talking about how 70% of the the fights they feel Superfluous the combat in the game reminds me a lot of when I'm running d andd my friends I just put fights in there because I think they're necessary yeah I totally have been thinking if I didn't like this combat this would be too much combat for sure isn't Resident Evil 4 Combat kind of like that a lot of times it's just like plugging the plagas in between the like fun areas like you'll just run straight for a while they're just like and you're like and you just keep going I think there's something different with Resident Evil 4 though it just it feels like every enemy you fight is like a little mini Pata like going to give you some good stuff um okay get some poas get whatever you need here and I feel like for this it doesn't have that satisfying big Loot drop with every enemy you know feels I just don't like the flashlight like the running around with the flashlight with the cops and like having to get all the well it's like for me I would be like aiming it and then I wouldn't know when it had like used been used up completely and then the guy with the rifle had like he absolutely had a no scope on me so like I'd be running running he'd go aim and I would try to like go the other way at the last second and it was just like I couldn't even Dodge his bullets it was just like a continuous shot I don't know that boss fight was a total show I I I am mostly enjoying the combat in other places but that was that was the one boss fight where it's like I don't even know where I'm getting shot from I've I've also been playing on story mode uh Sarah and like and that is the one fight where it seemed like they were hitting way harder than any other enemy in the game like I still died a couple times there there and wasn't even clear where I was getting shot from and it's like okay I just have to like run after you and find where you are and kill you a couple times and I'm not sure how many times I have to do this and yeah it It ultimately just wasn't also wasn't very interesting I don't like the boss Arenas either they put a lot of like garbage on the ground like bushes and rocks that I find that I keep getting stuck on while I'm trying to like strafe or back up or just like run in a direction yeah um and it yeah it literally just feel feel like a show of like me running around going like and it's like it doesn't I do not feel like I am strategizing like in any sense it's sort of just like a show from beginning to end I think in that fight in particular it really felt like that I think there's a reason that you don't often fight people with ranged projectiles in survival horror games you know like I guess like the island in res Evil 4 is kind of an exception I suppose but it's kind of it's tough to have that the genre you kind of need some people coming towards you with melee and just I'm going to sit on a Ledge and snipe you it's like it's not really a fun thing to do and also snipers who instantly like warp to different locations it's just like where are you at this point and where am I and what am I even am I what am I doing who am I uh Chris F who are these little guys on my screen why are they dancing Chris F writes in and they say they also they didn't find the comment to be uh that satisfying uh so they bumped the game down to easy as well and while it feels silly it made the experience much better overall um I I had a tough time with the I don't want to fully dive into it yet but the synthony Weaver uh Cynthia Weaver boss fight and so that was when I was like I'm going to bump it down to story mode and then after that boss fight I bumped it back up but I was like I'm glad I just like had that option for like this a little fight I don't want to really stay up too late tonight beating my head against the wall so let me just tweak it a little bit fight where I couldn't shoot I had a glitch where my guns didn't work and I couldn't equip anything so I just had to walk up to Cynthia and Mer say take me take me I'm like tour it's the fact that like Leo likes the combat is almost like a red flag for me Leo likes like like he you know like the games that Leo likes the combat's usually like you need to be pretty good at all the details you know to really get enjoyment out of it you kind of have to be creative and you kind of have to like see everything as an opportunity to like test your skills and I just like to be like blam blam done blam blam blam head shot cool done yeah more of like I mean it's not it's not wildly complex combat going into this thing it's not like some but way I got one bullet and like two people I just look at it and I go pain this is a pain in my this is a pain in the ass if I was like okay whoops sorry for what I'm about to say if I was dying more I'd probably be a lot less if I was bad at playing video games I could see is not I never would have said a sentence like that if I knew what I was about Jesus was bad at video games this what it feels like to be in the dark thought of that sentence before you said it you're like here I go but totally it's like running from the dark on us running from the dark presence and getting killed it's like immediately like oh well this is a really stupid segment and they actually designed it as idiots they decided to be idiots for Designing this that's the most places I died too is running for I died there Bandicoot ass gameplay it's we I agree perfect game playay that said I did love there's that little moment and I think it's when you're in the police station later and it's also the dark presence coming at you but it's just like a little moment of before there's like waves of enemies coming down the stairs do you remember this there's just a moment before that where it's just like a dark presence wave just like just like comes through and things are like moving on the walls as it comes through before all the enemies come down so so that dark presence when it's coming around at you delightful and not when you're running through a hotel trying to figure out which way to turn y yada y yeah where I supposed and the other little Leo thing about the combat for sure is the upgrades being having like a couple little weird specific upgrades that I get to go that you know that you can combine in a very specific way to like and I feel like I'm the only person who ever did it even though everybody does it yeah there's only three per thing it's not that much right but there three Leo things that's the type of trick that be played on my brain yes uh Sam writes and they say I'm conflicted on the encounter Design Within the open areas in Saga section it seems here the enemy encounters and spawns are mostly randomized often times I'll be heading in a direction of the woods to grab a collectible and I encounter a group of enemies and then die because I'm clumsy after reloading and walking back I often find those same enemies and encounters are nowhere to be found I understand this allows exploring to be unpredictable but this either meant I couldn't get revenge or that encountering a lot of enemies by chance was just a waste of resources that's interesting the idea of like am I just wasting my shots here that is a strugg I I have felt that sometimes too um just a sting of like well this place is out of the way but I I want to go explore to see what's over there and then it's like it turns out to not really be anything and I used a bunch of ammo just to like clear out the enemies that were there and it just feels like a waste and that that doesn't feel great yeah and maybe there's something about Resident Evil like resent Evil 2 in particular with the Remake you know of like it's all such clean segmented things like is it worth it to go down this hallway okay yes whereas when it's a little more of an open area it's like ambiguous about okay what is worth clearing out what is worth pushing through and exploring you know it's not so much well I've done one two and three now do number four you know and I killed a guy three hours ago and I need to go through this hallway again and maybe he'll come back to life maybe he won't but his body's still there that game was really good it was really good yeah uh it was the best game of that year it's true that's what MMX said uh mogs wrote in they said uh do you remember when minmax said that jeffim I do okay did you hear them did you hear the people cry mogs R and they said the game goes through long stretches without combat and often when it occurs it is brief is this a survival horror or is it primarily a story game a story based game with aspects of survival horror gameplay I think it's a game that's good and they kind of don't care about genre too much honestly you know what I mean in a weird way I know we live in the real world where things have a genre we have to slot it but like I don't know I think they just are dabbling in horror does that make it a horror game well yes I mean you talk about slotting you know what I mean though yeah I hear you but they're the ones who quick slotted it themselves like with the announcement of this game that was like one of the first PR messaging points is this is survival horror remedy's doing full survival horor for the first time it was Dum thank you thank you we'll edit it out don't worry um let's see uh Adam Marin writes in says I'm enjoying the gameplay but seeing as how the worlds of uh remedy are now in full Collision it kind of feels like a missed opportunity not to have any powers of available in combat might make this a very different kind of game but it's fun to imagine Saga using telekinesis or some sort of thematically appropriate DSX Macho ability to knock a dead tree around or throw him into a taken or something or suddenly you can make a taken be struck by lightning yeah I think we've kind of just been spoiled by control I definitely have that feeling though sometimes when I see like an object fall it's like God I wish I could just pick that up and Chu it at somebody yeah Sarah I used to work at Game Informer and I went on this uh cover trip for one of our magazine covers you don't say that sounds really familiar actually oh okay good good we went to remedy for control and we asked them is this a survival horror game and I was surprised how immediately they were like no you feel empowered in this game that's not something in survival horror you're empowered to do crazy stuff and kill everybody and I wonder if that's still their their philosophy on it is like because it's survival horror you can't feel too empowered which is a tough line to ride if you want to make your game uh fun also right unless it's a musical sequence and you have a flare gun in that case we're just going to let you go nuts for empowerment we haven't even like dug into the musical like the musical there we're dancing around it why literally dancing around the best part of this game beginning like coffee world still yeah why would we talk about that when we could talk about Instagram expert finishing off the last combat thing saying do you all think the very small shaky hands while aiming is a visual bug or is it intended as an animation to show the scaredness of the characters they're shaky hands I guess I didn't notice that either so maybe it's a bug for you maybe it's you actually that who wrote it ining your right thumb stick like that there were a lot of typos in the message too they were clearly terrified of a jump screen appearing on their patreon window um let's see oh a Davin M back to Coffee World they say anyone anyone else get some fun bugs in coffee world I was exploring a small section of coffee world and was surprised by how dilapidated it was the ferris wheel didn't seem to have any carriages on it with one of them blocking the path to the rest of the park haly had that one it was really funny it wasn't until I read the note for the cash in the area that I realized they were supposed to still be attached to it apparently H didn't realize that I was watching her stream and she rolled to the ferris wheel and all of the cups had just Fallen onto the ground to the point where they were like blocking her route to other parts of coffee world and then she got the and all of us in the twitch chat were like um like this is not and then Haley found the note and immediately she didn't she was just so gung-ho about finding these cups like she was going to Wade through every single cup that had crashed to the ground until she found all the ones with stripes on them and everyone was like it's a bug like screaming at me from the G I was like what yeah I I had that with the Espresso World or whatever it was where you it it almost completely blocked my game because you you had to you had to like start it you know you you have to start it and get it and get like the little in my game it was just levers and the levers were going up and down because none of the cars were attached to them um and and so I was like this is weird but I I did get the one to get up so I could crawl down in there but then it was blocking the tunnel like one of them because one of them was halfway warped through the deck and it was blocking the tunnel that I was supposed to go through and I was like what the hell is and it took me way too long before I looked it up and then some people were like yeah I'm stuck here and I've tried reloading and it and I just can't get past it um but but someone else had had me like you have to you have to like save once that once you do that and then start the M machine and then reload after that or whatever and I like followed their steps and it actually fixed it but otherwise it's like progress blocking bug because the things can somehow become detached and like then through half the world it's like such a weird collisions explode and it just go like the fact that you know that that happened cuz when Haley loaded back in her little coffee cups were like swinging in madly and I was just like fall off that's sweet uh Tim writes in says there's a decent amount of dark humor in the game early in the coffee world there's a sign with moose fact we learned that mocha the Moose is 6 years old and will live to be 25 he's also the only moose addicted to coffee inside the gift shop there's a note saying that mocha died of a heart attack and did not have a tolerance for stimulants now they need to rush to find a new mocha rip mocha yeah somewhere earlier on too it's like there's a note to review something of someone be like and the Moose died it's like I kind of set it up for like okay this is going to be a weird Twisted take but good a news report on it like a little news clipping right right right uh let's see uh o so many places we can go oh this is they had like signs all around coffee world that just said like Fu n fun fun fun um and I noticed like the F and the U were like the red and the yellow that was very E3 like every time I saw that fun sign I it felt like an E3 sign going around there but maybe just if you have a red and yellow big letters remedy you've done it again brilliant done it again does it they brought back E3 I had a meta moment where you when you're going around um there's the coffee giant coffee pot that starts laughing at you yeah uh when you go past it and it's it scared me so bad that I yelled Jesus and then Saga immediately yelled Jesus as well I I just melded with her and became one yeah that whole coffee pot in this entire quest of like okay got a piece together that murder scene on the float is one of those situations where I was definitely ahead of the caseboard and kind of a frustrating way of like okay we need the Laughing thing like all right I remember the coffee pot laughing let me go grab it and I go there stand behind like I'm looking at the cassette why can't I grab this exact same thing so unsatisfying and it made me really angry it's like why do I have to wait for Saga to figure it out I did it I understand like just let me grab a cassette I know I can it's an inch away that that was that's my biggest gripe with the game I think is just yeah don't stop the progression because Saga hasn't looked at a picture of the cassette on a corkboard for sure do you still like the M Palace do you still like the mine plays I do I'm using it less often and I do like that if you forget about it for a while and come back you automatically fill in all the things so satisfying just it's like watching a like you know when you bring in a Pokemon that's not been in your team for a while and just watching like the levels go up once they're in one fight it's just so satisfying to have a rapid fire yeah but I definitely see the flaws now more for sure yeah that uh when we talked about the game on the on the episode of of the Moon Max show Kyle was Kyle was complaining about a a specific pet peeve that I also have in games where it's um you they like give you an objective and you get right to that objective and then they're like oh no actually in order to open this you have to do like four more things and it's just a it's a weird way of Designing detours into a level design as opposed to just like if you just if you just started from the from the beginning of like you have to go to these three places and then you'll go to this other place it it wouldn't it wouldn't like be as frustrating and when I was playing through this section I was like oh this is the section that Kyle is talking about specifically except then it happened like three more times where it's like wow this is a big tour that you're that you're putting me on again um and it it the those were those were some of the dips in this section of of like me getting getting more frustrated with it yeah uh Trent T by the way also it's frustrating to have like those notes that just say like for later you know it's like can I I guess okay how do she know that and they put the dot they put like the this is a new thing dot on it every time you go back into it and then it and then also in your little file cabinet it's like oh this has a new thing oh but there's still for later it's the same two things that you've had the entire time yeah uh I I I don't mind it I think it is still worthwhile to have there is something unique and it does it does help me a lot for just kind of like keeping track of the story it kind of locks it in in a unique way me too there's times it's stupid and there's times it's really really helpful and I love being able to hover over the picture and get the extra flavor text even of like the questions you should be asking about this yeah and the profiling I still like and I like more now we know too officially that it is like she finally put it together that oh this isn't just me being smart good at your job but actually you have magical powers oh it turns out I'm just a Norse God okay fine I guess um so there's that whole um Workshop uh the kav cavala nights Workshop um where you see more stuff about the Cults kind of the the cult HQ there's all of the paperwork um from the Federal Bureau of control going through uh working through the cult all that stuff so the cult got their logo from the control logo is the weird thing like from the FBC logo they like remixed it into their logo I like how they're dumb like that's fun yes I it's like we talked about last time they very satisfied that it definely is going that angle like control hates on them and they're like oh don't worry about it this will be an easy one and they like get those files they're like what the heck they don't even think we're that scary and they're like pissed about it yeah like they say we're disorganized we're not disorganized and then like you find all the emails about like trying to schedule the SAA and then like like please stop like what were they complaining about like there was some like minor thing that like call members were doing it they were like please stop doing this like oh yeah they were like upset that they lost Nightingale they were like please make sure like that you check the woods and make sure like no one's wandering around the woods when you perform a ritual sacrifice like that to me was hilarious yeah uh I like that Workshop like it it's funny again just like what can be scary but there's a little moment like coming out of a safe room in that little workshop area where there was just like a metallic ping sound like somebody like dropped a metal Cup on the ground or something and it's like that's all it takes sometimes it's like one weird note that will really freak me out in this environment uh Trent T wrote in saying I really love the manuscript page you get in the basement of the clla nights Workshop that describes the mini boss encounter waiting for Saga upstairs it really escalated the tension and made me a little bit scared to climb the ladder and face him I was expecting a big hulking monster the way Allan was describing it so it's was a little disappointed when it was just a bigger guy with a big hammer but still that cool that's as big as guys get yeah come on what do you want uh I will say at this point when you find out that like ilmo and yako are in the club yes in the cult I was like ifo and yako are in the cult I'm in the cult like like literally I was like if ilmo and yako are rocking with the cult of the tree I'm rocking with the cult of the tree I was like there's no way it's bad you don't understand Saga you don't get it he's a monster it's amazing how that turn do not made me like them any less and and it's I've also been amazed how profiling them like these two goofball characters you're watching these parody commercials of profiling them and having them say these cryptic quotes seriously I was like this still works I'm really surprised how compelling I find them in creepy modes porn Curley writes and it says shout out to Peter fronen as the brothers I've only ever seen him in the History Channel Vikings show and he's appropriately hammy in both he's as hammy in that Vikings show maybe I need to watch this Vikings show I have to watch it all right well there we go uh Craig Belmont writes in says as a horror fan I typically hate jump scares they feel cheap and as an easy way to scare your audience uh I cannot help but love them here and live in the stressful situation they force me in they throw a couple jump scares at you back to back and hold them back as a pseudo fear that looks over the player throughout the rest of the section it makes me so tense and paranoid the specific example I think to is the well boss fight Loop section with the two cops from Bright Falls yeah so when you go back to the well and that experienc the well they put like a as well they put a jump scare at that moment after you've already like encountered the well but when you go back to it then it'll give you the jump scare with it that one definitely too and and I I did really like that um just the design of coffee world like that the well in general you I think you get the backstory like very early on about what's going on with that and it's definitely the creepiest thing in that area and then it's like centrally located where like every time I was going down a path it's like oh my God it's that freaking well again and something to something is going to jump out at some point and it's like I don't even want to look at it I'm like turning the camera as I'm running past it and then yeah they they like they they timed that out in the cruestv let's just get this over with rip the Band-Aid off sounds important did you notice that the names of the brothers who used to commit the murders in the well are like almost identical to yako and ilo's names like kind of hinting that they're reincarnated versions or descendants or something oh I like that yeah uh Jared Piers WR WR it says a lot has been said about how good the environment details are in this game uh but for me the most affecting location so far has been saga's trailer beer bottles left everywhere General mess and a picture of Logan left on the bed Saga getting a glimpse of how badly her life would fall apart if she lost her child was brutal and made the whole sequence of trying to call her family and getting no answer super effective for me uh yeah yeah but we just found out we were related to Tor and Odin yeah so that's kind of more coolest guys ever if I W up to them and they were like I'm your grandpa and your gr Uncle I'd be like okay yes I love this I haven't even seen Logan I don't care about her she's not a God they're also really yeah they're nice to her they're like good grandpa and grunes like they're not just like and they give her like actual advice and she's like you guys are just some crazy Schmucks and they're literally like listen don't pay attention to the story and she's like you crazy old men and I'm like no Saga are you listening like they're giving you real advice I do one moment with Tor when Tor is like Logan's alive and like she kind of has like a breath of like she's like thank you for saying that I really needed to hear that and that was like a really nice moment I almost took a beat and I was like oh she needed that she is having a tough time like someone's validating her feelings for once instead of Rose gaslighting her no one's in the pond what are you talking about like that was that would get insanely frustrating and it would make you feel crazy yeah I I think it's just a cool structure for a game in a thousand different ways but one of them is just like an idea of like especially with the federal barreau of control right the FBC being this larger Force that's dealing with a lot of these anomalies around the world but then the struggle of Allan Wake is we're zooming in on one awe and just what a nightmare it is to live through that experience and then I like to flip on it a little bit from that discussion of like having Tor and Odin be like look there's the whole story here but you're above it like don't be part of the story make the story and so it's such a cool idea of like you're you're sinking in this world but then you get kind of a a narrative cheat code of just some people being like you're above this stuff don't worry about it it's like oh okay it's it's a cool feeling it's true it like completely changes the the vibe of Saga now approaching the problem before she was like what's happening and as soon as one other person outside of her psyche is like no you're you're fine she's like cool and it just moves forward from there yeah it was a good Pace change uh jeffim uh somebody on Twitch they say jeffim is so cute I want to pinch his cheeks do you want me to ban that person or how you feeling about it I saw that hey they're right here you get to pinch them come on man they asked for it um patreon.com with two ends unlock podcast version and you won't have to look at Jeff's cheeks anymore that's right get it on the go get Jeff's cheeks on the go um let's see uh Ampex writes in and says in Logan's room in the Anderson trailer there are pictures taped to the wall that she has drawn there's one of Tor and Odin and another one of her and David playing the boss battle against the the former in control that's the name of the boss fight she even drew the control health bar in the bottom left corner both of them are holding controllers in the picture though and since control is a single player game David obviously did the classic move of handing Logan an unplug controllers so that she thought they were playing control together oh there's so many layers to that that's so nice that's perfect uh green that where Alan Wake wrote it to be co-op in that world the way it should be yeah Co-op control hell yeah um did you have an impact uh personally with that news Haley did you see that remedy is kind of rebooting their their Co-op multiplayer thing did you see this what's that so they're working with uh 10cent on a free-to-play Co-op multiplayer thing um and then they announced recently like you know what we're kind of going back to the drawing board and we're not going to make it free to play anymore um and we're going to give it more of that remedy DNA type of thing which is interesting to see I wonder if like the success of Alan wake's reception kind of made them think like have we raised our own standards now we need money now give us money please yeah I don't know uh Green Mountain State right sentences I really like like the scene in Logan's room of saga's trailer in this moment saga's hit with how real the situation is getting and can't shrug off people mentioning Logan's death the music picks up her urgency picks picks up uh and I sprinted out of that trailer with it it felt like a big turning point to to me yeah that's definitely her her big turning point and every time then she sees Allen it's always like why why did you write my daughter into this what is wrong with you sweet Jesus which then when you see it from his perspective and he doesn't even hear that part the whole time waiting for like what's he how's he going to feel about the daughter thing but it doesn't even come through that's like heartbreaking yeah that part is cut out a little bit and then it's weird thinking that like yeah he's only writing Saga into the story because he encountered her from those weird mergings which is a fun it's scratch writing the story right and he's editing it now so scratch would have been the one using Saga to get to Allen and now Allan's editing it to try to make it so scratch doesn't just destroy her and her family I guess scratch is writing it but I swear Alan says like who's that Saga Anderson I should put her in this yeah he does at some point but maybe that's before he realized that scratch was writing it or maybe that's she's there as a counter to to what scratch is doing he wanted a stronger female protagonist okay get woke go Broly over that before scratch if I just search Twitter for the phrase Allan woke how many tweets are going out there every day so many I don't want to play Alan gets the easy parts the story like sure like running around a hotel could be a lot of work but he gets a lot of cutcenes and I noticed when I play Saga you don't get as many cut scenes cuz she has no like actor cutcenes so Allan's like usually my like more relaxing like I'm here to watch my little movie like run around my hotel but Saga is like you got to put in work you're putting in work you're turning lights on like you've got stuff to do it's true uh let's see so then Saga returned for no chance this is kind of the funky one um where you see the cult like swarming in on the lodge which is a cool invasive feeling like that's my that's my safe spot they can't just walk in there and then it jump cuts to Allen lying in the blood uh like he argues I guess first with Alex Casey about like we're not your playground and they argue about the rules of the world and how you can make stuff happen um but then you're playing as Allan Wake in saga's chapter for this little bit and he picks up the gun and the flashlight and he's like how nostalgic um and you're hearing Alex Casey screaming off of the distance and everything right yeah that's that you mentioned yeah is he Allen there they would would they let us play as scratch or does that like break some kind of rule you know it's I think I think you again I am not the expert in this but I do think it's you are Allen and then scratch inhabits him because there's a moment too where in this section Allen's like scratch is close now scratch is here now now he's so close um as you're running around his him so that cuz people had said and theorized in the last section that that was scratch coming out of the lake and so but then when this happened and he's like scratch is so close now I was like okay well then I guess that subverts that and this isn't scratch but Saga says clear as day after the boss fight after he turns into scratch more clearly outside the the sheriff's office or whatever she says wow he was scratched the whole time he played told her that scratch was out like he was telling her I thought Saga got the message that that wasn't really Allen but it was like scratch and then she was just apparently they got Lost in Translation well he said like he he says like I'm still trapped and that's like the confusing thing she like what do you mean you're still trapped like scratches out I'm still trapped but but I'm also you know before this conversation I took that as Gospel of like oh okay I see what happened yeah it was scratched the whole time but you know now I'm thinking like yeah Saga might not know exactly what's going on we can't really trust her interpretation of things yeah that's true if is you playing scratch there I kind of don't like that because it kind of feels like it breaks a rule to me and and is unfair like narratively speaking cuz like people are pointing out in the comment in the chat like night you play as nighting Gale but Nightingale doesn't know what's going on scratch does so it's kind of like if you're going to play as a character who knows what's going on you are that character it feels like cheating to then be like I'm Alan I think cuz like there's a rule in mystery detective fiction that the the narrator can never not be the murderer and you just don't tell the reader that the whole time because that's the thing in the world there's like a famous book I wish I could remember the name but I read it for a class and it's considered the worst mystery book of all time because the the narrator is the Killer and we just don't he just doesn't tell us that in his brain until the end like and I did it memory loss or anything he was just like by the way it was me the end and you're like what the heck I was just you for 250 Pages like how you forgot to think that for 2 seconds like it's like the worst way to to put someone into a story scratch yeah but is scratch then tricking us like I don't maybe that's what they're going for I think maybe if it is you are scratch but scratch himself is a scatter brain and doesn't realize it like is that a way to kind of Cushing it maybe like he doesn't he isn't aware that he is scratched for those sections I think he either is aware and he's tricking us too which I could like maybe forgive but then he has to be aware of the fourth wall where he's in a video game and then like his motives don't make sense anyways why would he want to destroy the world of the video game he's in he probably would want to kill me instead the person that's just the start yeah I mean video there's so much about like evil art being genuinely evil in this you know there's an evil force that can insidiously be in this evil work I I like that Sarah's already doing her quiet smiling while while everyone talk falling AP is there like there there are parts that where Alan Wake SLS scratches Behavior would just make no sense whatsoever but that said are these instances where Allan Wake is still in the dark place and writing what scratch is doing and then therefore influencing oh influencing what he's doing able to stop him a bit because he's editing this like scratch wants to just walk in and shoot Alex Casey in the head but he's editing it maybe that would make way more sense to me and that I would forgive that oh okay but I don't know uh it the whole thing still feels a little a little off to me and you know how like we're bending backwards to to come up with a an answer that might have just been a little bit of clumsy well or maybe we'll see in the final third and it'll lock into place a little bit better maybe maybe it will all be as genius as that layer of dust on the VCR Maybe maybe that expl I still haven't seen a layer of dust like I've been like kind of looking for open your eyes Sarah you haven't really been looking for it clearly dust quit squinting um let's see uh Sean Mills writes in and says I was really taken by surprise that the game switches you over to Allen during one of saga's sections while I thought the atmosphere was still tense I didn't really understand what was happening there's blood everywhere but no bodies did Casey run away and leave you alone or was he being kidnapped and was trying to fight his way back to you was the cult trying to kill you and then left you alone or were you trying to do something else these are the questions we're trying to figure out Sean we're with you weren't there bodies I saw some I saw bodies there were cult bodies okay yeah there was one of them shoved through a window and I was like whoa window death defense whoa what the heck um Amos Dragon R Jeff how old were you when you learned about the word defenestration years old that's right Amos dragon wres in the say it was very strange for me as I went from initiation 4 directly to return for tone flashing aside it was strange to go from playing Alan Wake to playing Allan Wake I was not expecting that switch it also highlighted the wild variation in chapter length we sang and no chance were like 20 minutes and 5 minutes respectively it maybe wonder what made them separate some of those sequences in such short chapters not that it's a big deal I got to hear more end of chapter songs faster than I expected so it's all good for me yeah I like it it's always a fun thing it's like oh this is one of those quick little chapters yeah yeah and and this Allen's final chapter in this section being the same as the final chapter in the last one kind of of going back to your house and it being this short little thing that gave me confidence of like oh I can just keep playing for 15 more minutes and then I'm done instead of having to like pick it up again later yeah uh also in Saga return four no chance this is when the FBC fully comes in and we meet agent Kieran and they're they're taking over the entire investigation here and I really love that they did the like this is our jurisdiction now thing I was hoping cuz I always wondered how does the FBC and FBI interact like how come the FBI doesn't talk about the FBC they seem to be aware that it exists but do they know what they do cuz the whole point of the FBC is to like cover stuff up and then sort of Gaslight everyone into not thinking anything just happened that's like their whole job but then the FBI knows about them do they are they privy to that I wonder how the governmental structuring of knowledge Works in this world it's weird I see FBC as like above governments in a lot of ways I don't think the president is hip to what's happening at FBC you know yeah like blissfully unaware he just says go do what you need to do and I'm not going to look but it was interesting with the FBC agent bleeding on the floor explaining stuff to you going like well doesn't matter now may as well tell you everything you know like for whatever good it'll do and it's interesting to see that kind of humanity from the FBC which I don't know if I saw that much in control maybe a little in the documents but it is a little like yeah these are humans still and they are still doing their best and afraid to die yeah I also really liked in this scene how there was like I could kind of tell that a woman probably wrote that scene because there was this really interesting underlying like respect of each other even though they're pissed like they're both very high up in their field and they're both women working and they're clearly solo and like have a lot of responsibility but they also are like you're stepping on my toes freig off but they still are like cordial cuz it's like all right I respect you you probably worked hard to get here too like there's like that underlying little little feel and I was like that feels good I like they talking on the radio and she's like yeah I hear you like she could just be like screw off and like turn it off she's like yep I'm here and like they respect each other I thought that was cool and then it makes kind of you know when Kieran gets shot in the police station later on like it helps that Bond again of like okay we're working together here you know yeah um she was really getting around that police station though I feel like you ran away and then came back and it's like oh she hauled her ass to the other side and put herself up on this chair even though like if I was shot in the leg or attacked in the leg it was bleeding profusely would she also found something to stop the bleeding like she's competent like she went and got a bandage and like like tightened it so that she wouldn't bleed out she doesn't she doesn't need anybody but she like needs a little help right now which is interesting and privacy to change positions no you can't be looking of course they don't want to animate that uh it's like ATI you know it's a similar situation uh then we get to Old Gods like I was I was so excited for this chapter like that that tease of we're going to spend some more time with Tor no it's definitely in this chunk yeah I think the most compelling stuff for me um just like I like Norse mythology it's like so that idea of centering an entire thing around this fall Hall old folks home I'm in heaven uh Mr buttons writes in over on patreon says the old gods has been my favorite chapter as Saga so far it's a perfect example of creating Open Spaces in an overall linear experience walking out of the woods to see the giant Valhalla nursing home the attached Wellness Center is stunning and the attention to detail in both buildings is fantastic from scratches on the floor what to some serious water damage that needs to be addressed the nursing home feels like it's been there for years outside of maybe the Hitman Trilogy I think remedy is unmatched when it comes to making environments that feel real and truly a sense of place in the world they've created I agree with that and only that cuz it's convert it's a converted building like it used to be a house and now it's an old folks home so like the rooms are kind of clunky like there's a workout space on the main floor that clearly was a dining room and that's just where they have to put the workout room but like that's the reality of a space that gets converted like Barry found someone's room like didn't have Windows I think like man May's room didn't have a single window in it which I still think is like incredibly illegal and like suspicious the winding staircase is not good for wheelchair like access so they have this like really inconvenient wheelchair ramp going all the way up that was probably like the worst thing to install when they could have just had nice ramps but that's the building they got so they just had to work with it I think that's really smart and they took time to like think all right let's just make a building and then turn it into an old folks home not like make an old folks home building I think that's cool yeah and just saturate the the lighting is going to be so yellow and oppressive and just like the small details of like when you're by a window hearing like a fly struggling to get out the window it's like oh God there's just so many little touches Sarah did you hear the fly the fly Sarah the fly I didn't hear the fly struggle are you sure like your headphones were like connected and it wasn't just like a there a fly in your headphones there's a fly head your headphones like are you sure wasn't an audio bug I thought that remedy put the fly in my headphones though because no one doesn't like them I'm going so interesting there were no Textures in this whole chapter uh I did I did like um one of those little uh you know deepest dive uh details I like when you get up to the old folks home and you ring the doorbell and that's when they pop up the title that was yep that was yep Matt R is right there with you about that that is such a good detail that yeah that's just a moment where I out loud will say like oh yes yes good job you did it that is something I love about this game is who doesn't love a late title card and they get to do it 18 times on this game it's every time uh Barry W writes and says did you notice the anime style fanfic drawings that Rose has proudly hung in the front room of the nursing home they include Allan longing internally as well as naughty Allen I love that they kep that they kept Rose obsessive just like the first game she seems like a good fit to watch all the old and brightfalls I like I love finding her fan fiction in the woods and the in the thing like her fan fiction honestly is like better written than most of Allen's writing um like I would Absolut I would absolutely read like a fullon Allan Wake like from Rose's perspective fan fake absolutely remember at the end of the at the end of the very sory we're skipping ahead but like at the end of saga's thing where they're in the police station they're like we need a piece of art to use the clicker we need a piece of art as like I don't know some kind of Gateway I was like please be Rose's fanfiction please be Rose's fanfiction please I like that in her little Shrine you know she's got like the flashlight there and all that stuff but I like in that Shrine too that her articles were kind of like shedding light on Allen in a new way of there's all those articles about like what a bad boy man about town how he likes to drink in New York he's kind of a little naughty boy I never he's a writer but he's a cool writer writing isn't for losers anymore they're for cool people uh Shi Coto wrote in says seeing Rose's Evolution into her super fandom and how it escalates from the first game to this one is fascinating previously she could barely function due to gushing so much about being a star struck now she's leaving fanfic drops in creepy forests while nonchalantly killing taken and recounting the methods for doing so to Saga as if she's a pro and joking about how it is so hard to find the bodies afterwards with a slightly giddy demeanor all because Allan supposedly told her to do it it was all hilarious to me and Spencer s says says Rose was was a highlight for me for sure learning that she had been receiving Allen's messages killing taken hiding the lunch boxes and waiting to help Saga recontextualizes all of her wide-eyed fangirling in a cool way makes her more interesting less of a comic relief character while still maintaining her goofy obsession with Allan she has some great dialogue in this chapter that makes it clear how exciting she seems to think it is to be manipulated by Allan Wake yeah I do love repeating the like love triangle thing that Tom hsein Barbara and Cynthia had which I think is cool because it's just now Allan Allison and Rose and that has me thinking like the loop thing like does this just does the exact same thing keep happening over and over because in Alan Wake 1 Cynthia who's like the scary she was actually a very nice character in Alan Wake 1 like she was eccentric but she helped you which is kind of weird that she's like just in her nighty killing you now kind of feels odd but uh like she was in love with Thomas Zay and like was obsessed with them and wanted to be with him him and did all she could to help him and she's the one who kept the clicker for Allan cuz Thomas St told her to and that's kind of what Rose is doing now like she's obsessed with Allan she's doing what Allan says to help like the like next person right it's like it's happening again and they did they're doing that with rose like rose was kind of just she got possessed in the first game she like she had a crush on Allen and that was it but she's becoming the Cynthia in this game and it kind of has me thinking like is this a loop too like are we just in a loop over and over just with bigger bigger pair like variations instead of just like a loop of a of a sewer where like just a giant Loop of the same thing happening over and over again yeah I do wish they would clarify why they also call Allan Tom sometimes yeah like obviously they're like one of the same but I'm like like can we speed up this explanation please play to the game uh yeah I like that they had uh that she still had that Allen wake Dy from the first game too that was in the diner but that's like sitting over there that's cute like at her place of work like maybe have that at home everyone has so many jobs in this town too by the way like rose do the diner and the nursing home like how does she have time yako and ilmo have like coffee world and then the float business and then have like yeah there but then I this is this is my meta moment is when when I first met ilmo and yaka there was another NPC staring off into the sea into like the the flood and he was like he said like idle Idle Hands Are the devil's play things and I was like are ilmo and yako so busy and Rose so busy does that keep does that help keep them from like the darkness that seems to like get everybody else who's just kind of standing around most of the time the only people who are working seem to be the ones that aren't affected by the story H I like that as an idea for sure especially with Allan having writer block and not being able to do anything just lazy so yeah yeah is Sarah getting into the lore wait a minute I heard an NPC you were listening to those guys that NPC is awesome he's like a construction worker staring at the broken bridge and he's like why do we build anything just I felt I really I really related to that NPC yeah that's an awesome character in 2023 that guy gets it man this game's many awesome meta NPCs I really like that one I do like um I like how expressive Rose is I don't know if what's going on the animator are just having the most fun with her cuz she is such an over character yeah there's a lot going on her face crazy eyes and you're like please roast don't look at me uh Ryan says uh it's so wild that almost every drawer in the nursing home had handgun and shotgun bullets inside and that the residents didn't object at all to me stealing them even when they were right in their rooms watching me rubbage through their stuff stealing everything you're taking their pills and just slowly like pocketing them yeah Mandy May was like I'm doing an ex exercise to better my joints and I just stole her joint medication left well I forget who it was more I really like the animation too of uh the old woman that was like knitting it's like really good hand animation on that that one was Mandy May is that right Donna was the one in the workout trackit it right little more I that was the point where the game passed the beal test cuz she asked her about her knitting that's true wow cuz like she keeps knitting that like not quite a scarf not quite a blanket and when I first saw her she was at A's concert and I was like what is this woman knitting like this isn't this isn't a shape like do we think that the length of Mandy May's scarf is how many Loops they've been stuck in she just keeps knitting s and her hands were like bloody at one point s hire me remedy I can give you some ideas cuz yeah she just she doesn't know what she's like I don't know what it is I've just been knitting and once again it's like the idle hands are the devil's play thing like Mandy M just doesn't stop knitting move your hands everybody I love it move your I got it I got it Saga move your hands uh Brian Stanley writes in it says I played the spooky game with headphones on for my playthrough which spooked me the most uh in the entire game was that the annoying black and white scratches of nearing Dark Forces to interrupt gameplay no it was the water cooler on the second floor of the Valhalla nursing home every time that thing glugged when I walked by I'd be spinning around in a panic looking for an enemy that was not there yeah that was my fly aex uh also yeah talks about like that connects to the fear of like overall haunted Waters like even the the bubbler as Sarah would say even that's scary in this envirment say that yeah I know you would you never stop it uh Darren Dillinger writes in and says I'm glad to read Barry wheeler revive the old God's rock career like he said he would in alen Wake one the constant water dripping sounds is thanks to Barry too we learned that Barry uh bought the manor for Tor and Odin but the contractors he hired ran off with the money I also learned a new idiom from ATI about heavy rain it's coming down like rain from the ass of a St it probably sounds better in Finnish says David uh okay yeah who is Barry wheeler again is he the agent yeah he's he's been friends with Allan since they've been kids so they're like long-term friends but then he became his agent as he got older and then uh he's kind of like the jerk you love like that's his character I very much feel like he's like Roman in Grand Theft battle 4 is like hey I'm kind of annoying but you love me like oh very he's like very realistic like he wears Christmas lights in the first game which is so smart he's just like what are you guys doing put Christmas lights on it's they don't touch me you're like that's so smart like and Shake Your Hands come on you idiots it's right there and I like that he's so sweet in this one like you can read emails where he's reaching out to Alice and trying to like and protect his integ like protect his image after they think he died and he really cares and and it's nice because in the first one they kind of tease that he's maybe he's just money hungry he's just using his childhood friend to make money and then this one kind of redeems him it's like no he loves Allan like he he's refusing money to make sure that as stupid zombie video game doesn't get made with Allan's likeness in it like I thought that was nice that was so funny like God forbid this becomes a video game I know I know this is the game that wants us to ask but do you guys think that they did turn it into a game and that's what we're playing do you think that's what's happen I wouldn't hate that okay switch at the end I do tend to kind of like that stuff I feel would say that we kind of saw it coming but it wouldn't be the worst if that is the reveal it'll get revealed in Alan Wake like 13 though getting at it too nobody I like that who's playing it Logan Logan's playing it yeah with that second controller oh and that's why you hear her whenever like saga's in danger which is really annoying like whenever Saga gets around water Logan pops up and I'm like get out of here you're not it's not even you we don't like you tell us about that episode of night Springs or get out frankly Logan uh Ryan T writes in and says last episode y all talked about how the oldest house from control was similar to the world tree idrasil from Norse mythology in this chapter we get a lot more connections to that with Tor Odin's characters do you think these connections are meant to be interpreted purely as Illusions or are they more literal in a Neo ging American God sort of way that's what I was I was like asking my chat about it is like how serious are we taking like the north Norse mythology or is it sort of just like cool names like highlighting that they're probably interesting important characters but there yeah and I think there's so much in this about like things echoing like if not directly looping it's like this event this significant thing has ramifications from the power of the idea of it that's something that's consistent in control and in this and I feel like that might be all there is to it is just like these resonant things with mythology because these are such powerful stories that they kind of keep occurring or keep having impact without it being like yeah that was this that was L they call the cult of the tree a backwoods echo of the cult of the word like they're they're not different they're just like how a different area with less access to information perceives that cult like you know that's I like that that's interesting yeah I do like that scene of when you profile Odin for the first time and then he's in the chair talking to you and there's like a liveaction uh Saga looking really confused about what's going on and all this stuff like that's such a fun twist like when you think you're in the Rut of like all right profile got it got it got it then suddenly it's like nope T noden they're just going to be hanging out there in a completely different way they're on you completely I like that you're not alone in being special but it's not that you're like I don't like cuz it's like she's not quite a Mary Sue right cuz Tor and Odin are also their own Mary Su they're just a little too old like they can't Marty Su but it's like I like how they're like we could do it but we're just like really old and like falling apart here so yeah right um yeah on Saga talking about saga's live action actor not being in it very much suddenly seeing her there yeah that made me think like maybe there is some big turn coming where we're suddenly going to get a lot of that I feel like there's they're kind of holding back and that's my prediction for for the final part here as we'll get a get a big boatload yeah yeah I forget when it is but there's one section just in the live action world where there's some section of this where you're going through a cave and like the exit of the cave is one of the brothers' like liveaction faces I thought that was such a cool idea of like coming out of the cave and faces right there um let's see uh Taylor wagan writes in says I really like the reveal that saga's powers are a trait that she shares with her family if not only it not only gives a great in Universe reason for her mind Place abilities outside of just being another unique par utilitarian it also explains why the two old Rockers are uniquely able to influence the events and stay one step ahead of being taken for so long something I've been wondering since I played Allan Wake 1 for the first time it's a great payoff to a longtime question for fans absolutely yeah and so they explain that the clicker it's just an amp what do they say they say you can play rock and roll without it but you won't blow anybody away it's like oh okay sure you got to explain the clicker in a convenient way sure we'll take that um and then he's talking about Tom's writing and then Saga immediately clicks like Oh by Tom's writing Odin's talking about Alan Wake okay it's overlapping anymore um then uh we get the key to the Wellness Center and that's where things get uh even creepier I love that it's like it's so tropy right like there's always a hospital there's always like a lab but this is a old person's retirement home Wellness Center and you're like how is this St terrifying like you see the exercise balls you see like the old person like little stair thing to train them not to fall downstairs I'm fighting for my life train them not to fall downstairs and like the ambient music too when you're in that Wellness Center is just like picking up so much and this was one of those where I was playing it at like 1:00 in the morning in the basement I'm like is it just late and I'm a complete coward if I was playing this during the day would I also beting bricks because this section really really got me like Resident Evil 2 remake level of scared I think playing through this chunk here yeah just constant jump scares like it was just Cynthia screaming at you every time you entered a door frame I was doing everything like to I could to put off going into Cynthia's room yeah which is good sign that the horr is really working it's like okay have I done everything uh yeah let's see Alfredo says I'm a coward when it comes to jump scares Al the first game had a few I didn't expect Alan Wake 2 to feature so many but it went wild in this chapter I got so anxious that I had to play the game in a tiny window on my computer on top of a colorful Animal Crossing desktop my wallpaper with mariachi music playing in the background to subdue the horror and give me the courage to push through I love it great problem solving truly and then Boondock Bandit said uh yeah at one point I was playing a background YouTube video playing the game of my periphery Vision with my hands and legs partially blocking the screen just so I could get through it I just sing what I see like whatever I walk in front I sing a song about it and then it's stupid so then it's not scary I've done that since I've been a little kid just like okay there's a shadowy figure over there okay music's picking up I'm walking in a room and there's a table oh it's knocked over who did that I think I'm going to know haha walk over here like just do that enough and then like if something happens you're like d I'm still running it like interrupts the fear a bit I just like get mad now like I just start swinging like the minute I can tell like I find it easier to just like run head first into it screaming with anger then like trying to tiptoe my way around it yeah fa Jonathan vald's writes in about like yeah this this section in particular feels so Resident Evil like even though I guess you go to a police station pretty soon that's also a little Resident Evil 2 Section you know it's still this entire area it just feels so so Resident Evil for sure uh James Elman says I love the fact that they keep playing with their expectations of enemies possibly being around every Any Corner in this chapter by the time I made it into the basement I was practically inching Along gun drawn waiting for the inevitable only for there to be zero enemy encounters down there you got me remedy you got me to be really entire room with the tunnel too that you can climb through I was like this is Resident Evil like something's going to come slowly walk through the water don't have to use the Echoes of their Pitter pattery footsteps to crawl through the tunnel and I literally like I crept the entire section cuz like I was like something's going to happen and then nothing did and I was like glad it didn't but I was also like I can't believe you made a fool of me I I definitely jumped around the um the washing machines and and I don't there was like some ambient noise or something and that was it and I was like I am getting out of here no they had like footsteps of people walking upstairs too like prob just the residents like hanging out it's not supposed to be scary but like hearing footsteps when you're in your basement is always scary so the fact all the old folks were on the porch at this time too they were like a he told us to just sit here and wait and they don't know what's going on meanwhile like saga's in the back with a rifle out like kapow uh did um we haven't really talked talked about like how enemies talk in this game and just the strange things they say alen Wake well there's that I suppose but it's interesting like I think like you know there's some water reflection funny how all all of the enemies in the Allen wake segment are always saying Allan Wake as he walks it's just like focused on him Jeff you're still in the mindset that there could be a flaw in this game part of it oh you're right you're right let that part die let it turn uh no but like like just you know there's somebody who jumped out at a certain point and they're like sign seal delivered or something and then there's some point where A lady jumps out here and she just goes top 100 American small towns she's attacking did that really happen yes yeah they they I feel like I miss it cuz I play on like story mode so it's like shoot first and usually they're dead before they can even get the words out they just say kind of surreal things from their lives or from the environment and stuff yeah it's a cool they're like still in there I think is insinuation they just have been taken so they're trying to just like be themselves and scream whatever the last thing they said was I don't know someone in the chat had said that one of them just yelled deer Fest is cancelled no all Tim the scariest thing you could hear oh absolutely do you want scary stuff Leo or do you want a fun detail fun detail Bo Colleen writes in they say when you enter the wellness center you find a small Pharmacy room as a pharmacist I always like to see what fake drugs the developers invent Spider-Man 2 had a drug drug called salbutamol uh I was surprised to see that the game included real drugs with accurate names dosages packages sizes expiration dates lot numbers and NDC numbers this may not mean much to people outside of healthcare but I've never seen this much detail in such a small set dressing like that and I loved it they did it for you congratulations nice the NPCs don't talk but all the drugs have accurate labels and there's flies trapped in the windows and dust on the VCR oh perfect gaming Tim writes in and says I never found any of the random jump scares scary uh close-ups of Allen scratch particularly scary at all however the Cynthia one sent shivers up my spine several times something about CIA Cynthia and those jump scares like that's that's it I think they changed them like I think the other ones were a little more like through like usually they weren't yeah I think they the Cynthia ones were altered in a way that made them scarier they send ones when you're relaxed also like the scratch ones come when you're already kind of like you're running through the forest and the red like the haunted like house lights are on and everything the cynia one is like I was just chilling by this door I was talking to I was looking at her feet yeah I was just looking at her feet she I was like where's your shoes I was trying to be nice to her and I was I turned my flashlight for her when she was like I miss my light I was like here Queen I turned my light on and she screamed in my face no I hate you now never mind Jacob Schumer says this is the first chapter where I really felt like not playing Allan Wake 1 would be a major detriment if you played Allan Wake one you know that Cynthia as the lamp Lady Lady of the light the analog of the light lady who was a hero of sorts and played a central role in the story and it was part one of the most iconic scenes in the game U part of one of the most iconic scenes in the game it made her story here how she descended to Darkness because Zayn's lamp was taken from her so much more tragic you can read about it nowen wake too but it's not nearly the same as experiencing it yourself it really bummed me oute I think you're just trying to rationalize having to play Allen wake one whoa whoa turns out that was a really good idea I am smart no I think Haley I think you do have a better appreciation of cynia she she was kind she was like a little Beacon of Hope at the end there cuz that she she kind of shows up well you see she was the one she leaves the little packages for you all throughout the game and and use this glow-in-the-dark paint that only shows up when you flash your flashlight so she's been helping you the whole game and at the very end she's like I have something you really need and she has set up these tunnels that are just filled with like Christmas lights so she can get around and know she's never going to be touched she's fully aware of what's happening so she's this like breath of fresh air when everyone else is like taken and she's just smart and she's set herself up at this water reservoir has lights like a million lamp lamps her place where she lives is so cool cuz all she's done is just buy 8,000 lamps and the her whole life is just changing the light bulbs she has like a list of how long each light bulb lasts and she has so many of them she's constantly going around and switching them out like that's her characterization and I thought that was so like that's what I would do if I was in a world where if I'm not in the light for one second you get killed so I'm like hell yeah relate and like she comes across as crazy but sis is alive and didn't get taken and she's living her life look what happened to her she lost she turned into a monster and we fought and I won yeah shot in her nighty like she had the after the fuses is the problem after all that work she still succumbed to the darkness but she probably got to like make out with Tor or whatever they had a hot and heavy steamy Affair that's true that was confusing that they were like she seduced him and she's like I'm like with what her nighty like what is she throwing back like is it the bare feet like tore up a foot thing and like he was just chasing after them toes like what was going on there these are great theories I all she had to do is take her shoes off he's been Bewitched it's interesting as like you're running down to the boss fight you're just hearing Tor be like oh I deserve this like oh what have I done like did you is there more meaning to that Haley of like yeah why Tor was so seduced or like his guilt over it and all that stuff did you read more into that I mean they few one of the few characters that are very self-aware like they know what's going on that those kind of characters are far in between they stopped the second awe which we don't have a lot of information about so Thomas Zayn stopped the first one they stopped the second one and then Allan Wake stopped the third one and there's a big mystery about like what was the second awe but we just know that Tor Toreno stopped it so they clearly know the rules and they know how to stop things and they've been aware of this the whole time so I think the fact that he got tricked so easy he was like d damn it like I knew it was going on and I still freak up like sorry kind of energy instead of just like I what's happening this woman is now evil he's like I knew this would happen I just wanted to get some from from I love all the people in the old folks home gossiping about it too they were like oh T like he's got a big thing for Cynthia now like can you believe it that'd be so exciting though it' be an old folks home it'd be like in high school again like o they're hooking up like that's going be the Talk of the Town well have you heard that like like STDs are rampant in Old Folks homes because they hon yeah you can't walk into an old folks home without just seeing old people just banging in hallways and stuff like it's everywhere it's a crazy thing STDs and a Leo would do you want me to make the shirt for you word 320 says the Cynthia boss fight was when I realized I think the game struggles with bosses I find the boss fights to be more chaotic and hard to parse than difficult for Cynthia I spent the fight being thrown around by her waves sort of tore and would get up to Shadows chasing me I made it hard to track her at times and know when I had a moment to heal or attack um yeah I also had a tough time with this boss fight her flailing running at you was like the scariest animation they have this whole game where she's just the moment where you knock her down and she's in the water and then she just comes at you cuz you can dodge four times in a row but eventually she's going to hit you unless you just run you can't just stay on your ground you have to just be like like let the old woman chase you for 5 minutes until she gets tired and then shoot her what did we think of the part immediately before the boss fight where she's chasing the water going to say that was really weird full on Jaws because it didn't feel it didn't feel like well flushed out to me like it felt like they were like okay we put water in here so we need a little water part because like in Amnesia they did it really well where you can kind of hear it like plotting behind you but in this one I it was just like Shamu came out of the water and knocked me over and then like swam off yeah you figure out the rules really quick where it's just like oh I get in the water and one and a half seconds later exactly every time you start to hear coming after you yep so every time you pulled it off it felt cool but then every time it got you like all right this is nonsense so there was one time where I barely got away and I so barely got away that I could see her in the foreground of the camera between the camera and Saga I saw her go sailing past just really every every now and then as you're running up on something it's like you have siblings I'm just curious like do you have siblings yeah like do you want to play mermaids no like when your siblings are chasing you up the stairs that like very you're like and you like just barely pull up and it's like okay grounders I'm safe you can't touch me like that's that whole section felt like my brother chasing me up the stairs and then like pushing me over at the top 100 American small towns uh let's see who is this Dylan Kelly says the flooded bunker wow earlier this year my girlfriend and I spent some vacation time in Washington we explored a few Coastal abandoned bunkers there sweet they're not quite did you learn nothing from this game where they said people drowned in those well they had a good time they're not quite as intricate as what you see in the game but the way certain things rust how water builds up and cracks start to show the graffiti from local teens and the fact that they use it as a party place is spot on one of the bunkers we went to in was exactly that Twisted teac cans graffiti tags and debris everywhere they really nailed that uncomfortable Vibe of wandering around in wet ancient concrete concrete yeah for sure it so the idea of like oh a little girl named Nora drowned in this back in the day I was going to bring that up cuz there's a lot of women drowning in this game considering Logan drowns this Norah person drowns and Cynthia in Allen's Hotel sequence is also drowning in a bathtub what is going on here I guess cuz the dark place is in a lake is kind of like when you die you go into the water maybe it's just that's their connection yeah the witch also drowns yeah Barbara drowned what's going on here well I thought Alice drown there something about like you know the idea that you can't you have to be pulling these ideas from somewhere for the story so is the idea that like the idea of Logan drowning is inspired by like this Nora girl drowning down here or by maybe some of those other characters drowning and it's all connected that way CU they don't really say how she drowned do they they're just like she drowned like they did say that they say that they wouldn't stop saying well the phone call where he's like she almost drowned in the shower right right is that where she drowned like he just flipped it so that she drowned there or yeah did she drown took Norah's place and drowned I don't know she drowned when they were living in like watery together in the trailer I I think that maybe she was Nora and they crossed her name out and wrote Logan cuz Nora drowned because she was in the bunker and then the water came in yeah that's I mean I'm just trying to rationalize it cuz like there's a lot of theming I think that's it at this point um let's see uh you also find the newspaper in the scary basement about Thomas Zayn starting the commune near brightfalls and how he wants to build a hotel called the ocean view hotel and all that stuff uh so you get a little more dashes of Thomas a in there um Kevin K writes s says I love the whole chapter you're looking for the song anger's remorse and then at the end of the chapter you actually get to hear it the perfect mixing of Medias that the game really excels at it is cool for that to be the the songs are so rad I oh they're all good they're all I'm I'm they need to do a vinyl release please uh IIT come on IIT come on I AIT and also restock the thermoses cuz those sold out in like 8 seconds did they really the de Diner I couldn't get one oh God somebody had oh somebody said something silly about the diner oh here it is uh Hunter B wrote in on patreon they say I'm not sure if I'm the only one to have this experience but hearing the crew talk about the diner brought it up in my mind when I walked into the OD deer diner for the first time in Allen wake 2 I was wondering where I had seen it before I hadn't played Allan Wake once so I don't think that was it then it clicked for me I remember that it was from Deadly Premonition I recognized a diner from a game that was copying a diner from Twin Peaks that remedy copied for alen Wake 2 it was a really weird experience oh man I started watching Twin Peaks oh really yeah it's really good I it's so weird to watch it though knowing that the reason it's familiar is cuz everyone else copied it like it feels like those things inspired this new show I'm watching super late in my life cuz I'm dumb instead of this thing inspiring most other crap I like like even like the the songs I was like this is the Night in the Woods theme theme song it sounds like so clearly Night in the Woods like extremely inspired by this I love Night in the Woods I'm like this is Alan Wake the show I love Allan Wake it's just like weird that I've never watched it even though yeah in a weird way I'm like drawn to it through all this other types of media of people that like it it's been very odd to watch it in a good way did you know that links Awakening was inspired by Twin Peaks too princess no links a literally like tzuka said like yeah it was a real inspiration we were all watching Twin Peaks we're like let's make a weird Zelda world and that was Link's Awakening surreal Island there just everything's inspired by this I guess that's it uh in the song you hear at the end of chapter 4 I forget if it's Saga or Allen but there's a lyric that is Lynch catching fish it's a recurring theme capital L Lynch which is the first time I think they've explicitly put his name in the game for all the references there are oh oh okay oh okay um Dixon denim writes in and says ever since the F the government commercial where ILO revealed we have Bol cter I have been stuck in my own mind place trying to figure out what connects the Cella Brothers to those darn things why were they hiding them what Dark Truth is behind all the chained up stuff down uh chained up doorways were the Cutters an object of power that are only that are the only way to sever their Twisted twily bond for Saga to un ceremoniously find them locked up in the flooded bunker like any other tool please I just feel a little like of a let down yeah but should have got their one yeah I was just like heck yeah finally I got the bolt cutters yeah that is satisfying I'm going around I'm going to snip some do we have to go back now before we proceed into like chapter 7 and bolt cut everything or cuz there was like all that locked stuff that's the fun you want I have to go back uh I I do think it was a smart idea of you get the bolt cutters and then it's like oh here's the door use it and you're so excited to finally use it you're running over there and then that's when the person bursts to the wall like they know that you're just like laser locked on the actually using them but then you Zig uh dark fish days writes in and says did anyone else okay this is this is we're getting we're getting deep folks you thought that was deep before Child's Play dark fish day says did anyone else notice the clocks in towns and in the dark place are stuck at 1010 315 or 000000 so so far the Valhalla nursing home is the only place with working pendulum clocks but most interestingly when I first when I first went to Valhalla the minute hand on the clocks matched my real world minute 455 in the game 8:55 in real life and the hands continued to move in real time but only while the game was on so when I returned another day the times no longer matched was that first visit a coincidence or did Saga trigger something when she first entered the nursing home as if her presence set the time itself wow remedy yeah now we're going into we're into quantum physics like if something is perceived and now brings it to real oh my God remedy shout out to that person for paying attention to that no I love that I remember it's some it was on the uh the second South Park RPG on that Sarah um three of us I guess four of us used to work at game inform former and we used to go on like cover story drips but on that uh did you go did you go on one for control we did actually well not for control for Quantum break though for me Leo was control I was a Quantum break this time we're kind so jealous I'm jealous of you bro I'm jealous of you bro anyways I remember on fractured butthole the South Park game they're talking about like that was late thing in development they're like oh crap we need to sync up all the clocks remember talking to developer it's like it's a surprisingly tough thing to do it's like it's just CU everyone puts that art up and they don't think about it it's like oh crap I guess we need to have this make sense someone needs to spend a day on sinking clocks up in this game World um anyways luuka a writes in it says something weird and fittingly meta happened in chapter 5 old Gods uh a few months ago I asked my sister who lives in the UK to buy a copy of edge the magazine featuring alen wake 2 as the cover art flash forward to this chapter featuring featuring a password puzzle the password turned out to be my sister's birthday as far as I know this is the only date password in the game so far talk about odds and Oddities that elevate otherwise regular gameplay moment remedy are truly masters of their work right Sarah says Luka com says right Sarah wow now the comment's getting mad at too I cannot Escape that's so great uh now we're in Saga return six otherwise known as scratch um I do like the weird push and pull of the FBC calling the taken the Shadow and then saga's always like they're taken like just like that SL thing no actually we have a name for those already you guys in your district and your Bureau don't need to come up with a new name for uh okay yeah per utilitarians is not catchy enough yeah it's not going anywhere guys I don't know what you're thinking um yeah this is the police station thing all that stuff uh and then the brothers are locked up oh I guess you see Alex Casey in here where it's a confusing thing where or Alex Casey can someone explain why they were like Alex Casey was injured so we put him back in the morg where the scary man was sure he's fine like he's and then he's so traumatized and he makes I didn't even see him his head his little head had to pop up and I was like buddy what happened pinching his little cheeks yeah poor little Puffs kid do you have a tissue the cold got him uh but yeah it's that weird idea of like he's been exposed to the Shadow or the taken but he's not turning and I like there's that note that's like is this part of like the dark presences strategy or the shadow strategy is to deliberately not convert some people even though they were so exposed like it's a cool idea feel like Alex Casey isn't real is kind of my vibe I got from that so he can't even get taken yeah he's just written in which makes sense because he's Alex Casey and Alex Casey is Alex's character so like very clearly a character yeah we're asking the right question there's a a note that's like yeah why didn't Alex get converted like here's possible theories is he stronger or whatever yeah it is weird for sure uh also in terms of big Mysteries um well I guess we can unpack that in in a second here um but I love this as a stopping point for Saga like having that boss fight uh with scratch I mean boss fight is kind of just running over and turning on the things and I guess just slowing boxes control yeah yeah yeah um oh I didn't even realize that I play control I can tell very impressed aren't you glad you did thank you yeah um but I did like that sequence of like I I'm a sucker for when there's like a big character in a big moment and it's just fully interactable and so I love just like actually walking down the little jail cells once you finally get in there and stuff and walking by the brothers and then just like walking up to Allen wake in the prison you know it's like such a cool idea of like oh my God it's such a big thing and I'm actually getting to walk up there myself it's not just a cut scene of me going up there and then I do love that scene yeah where the brothers video game Ben not a movie what yeah that's what I like I like when you interact with like big characters in the real world it's a small thing in games but I love it I feel that especially with the the flashlight walking through there peeking putting the flashlight through the bars is this him yes yeah yeah there's something special about that um and then he turns into scratch and then kills one of the brothers warps out uh and you fight him and he just kind of warps away at the end Saga I forget exactly what he says how it all works he he yells return right right and then disappears okay but stuff hits him light and then he's like right yeah they have the tech ready to go that was a cool idea yeah when he warps out am I right in understanding that he basically like warps into the brother and is then wearing the brother's jacket oh I missed the jacket thing he want yeah I was wondering where he got the leather jacket he got it from yo yeah interesting I I just thought he or something yeah yeah pretty badass way of uh warping out that's that's so funny because he could just have killed him but he's like and your jacket please like he didn't have to do that he just wanted to make Allan look like a jerk in a leather jacket in that moment I already loved him so much more than Allan Wake I was I was sold team scratch uh Gara writes in and says Dark Twisted and cruel featuring pale face is a Bop but like it is hilarious right like an over dark parody yeah oh absolutely it was giving it was giving like I'm in middle school and I listen to evanesence I am the darkness like you cannot even like fathom the amount of Darkness that is within me at this very moment that song was written by Alan Wake I'm sure I in my notes I had it written as Alan Wake DK rap super lame yeah Drake H also writes in about it saying the disparity between the quote I am the knife cutting your blouse and I don't say please really paints a picture of scratch this might be an unpopular opinion but I'm gonna say this scratch guy seems like a real jerk I did notice when he asked for the clicker that he didn't say please and I was like that's pretty rude of you must be scratch monster that's how you know if it says if he says please it's Allan Chris McMullen writes in and says with the revelation of saga's supposed family history how much do you think is fact and how much is fiction we talked about that already um but Odin claims that the Andersons can have their memories altered by the dark presence that seems to line up also with a note saying that Fat Bob bald was a member of the old gods of Asgard and saga's mother being Freya I'm guessing that saga's Dad is does anybody else have a guess of where this is going I thought it was door I thought it was door too oh interest I'm sorry are we not on the same page here I didn't what what is leading that up I didn't connect that at all yeah me neither in the oh what is it initiation five six whatever there there's a scene with Alan Wake talking to door and door says like hey you're like you're messing with crap that you don't understand and you're you're affecting someone who I care very much about oh jeez all right that seems huge or something something along those lines okay interest and when you go to the nursing home and you see like the portrait of saga's family on the wall yeah Odin gives you or like tour someone gives you backstory about how they don't like saga's father and how he's very much like mess with a bunch of things that he shouldn't be he's like in a lot of different places he was never around yeah he's always going through yeah so he wouldn't have she she got powers from door but then how come Thor and Odin have the same powers that they're not I think she got the Anderson Powers I don't I don't know if she has she must have something extra from door and literally Tor says when Saga asked about her dad Tor says some doors should remain closed ah and that was like ding ding ding ding ding come on guys I thought you guys were Allan W what do you mean me and Jeff picking up on this I well people people in the chat are saying that's from initiation 7 so maybe I I missed the what the stopping point come on she's cheating uh yeah but Chris McMullen was just saying that his guess with that is that her dad was going to be Loki and and they say whenever she's done doing a profile the shadow of the deer head behind her gives her antlers like Loki also the father of the family was uh tour pushing her father away all that stuff good read here's what I've been going off of cuz like Allan's the owl so he's owan and saga's the deer and she's an deerson which is how I've been like separating them mentally so like it's owan cuz he's an owl and dearon cuz he's a deer and that's how that's how it goes but but the and you might be totally right yeah but she has a daughter so it be and dear daughter technically I think that's her last name L gun loaded gun words of gun words of Logan uh hey uh this is a good time something here to to jump into you guys remember Allan initiation 4 that chapter called We Sing hold on real Qui in the twitch chat says her daughter is a gun I think that's really interesting can you drown a gun think you got read let's skip this chapter I don't want to talk about this chapter okay uh let's see let's move on we've got some more things Sarah should pay attention to uh no we have uh we sing of course uh our favorite Nintendo game I love that it sounds like a Wii game it really does yeah I I wish it wasn't that people weren't teasing it so strongly I feel like I I'm not even scrolling on Twitter but I still feel like I got enough of people being like there's one chapter that if you like astray Ma I bet you're really going to like okay all right I got it I I didn't so you're scrolling too much though oh nice nice nice totally blind it so great yeah walk me through your evolusion when did you realize like how how thorough it was going to be I guess probably the second person who's doing the the choreography like we're probably going to get through everybody aren't we I think them all doing it at the end was a treat a treat for the senses yeah so if you didn't play the game which I like you for listening this uh long into deep if you haven't played the game I am one of you um and I understand you would need an explanation What's Happening Here is this entire chapter is a musical a liveaction musical over a bunch of different scenes that you're watching through it's not so much a musical as it's like a rock concert it's a rock conc valad yeah retelling the story of alen w one which is a really impressive trick to pull off because it'll do a big a verse or whatever and then there's kind of going back down to the instrumental the BackBeat as you spend more time an amount of time they can't plan for in this section solving a puzzle fighting enemies or just making your way through it and then it still doesn't like T Odin like point up the stairs I love that way that's so fun that's so fun and I love like the stage directions too like there was one that said stand here for guitar solo and that's where you would stand for the guitar solo while you were like rushed by the enemies yep yep they literally so incredible yep and the fact that they had one of my favorite moments in gaming and it's going to be all downhill from there wow like I mean like in of this year but like it's going to be like the rest of the game all downhill I'm just thinking that will be a tough competition for best moment yeah for sure yeah that wins Michael Lane writes in they say uh given that the sequence is a shoe in for moment of the year it may be surprising to find out that we sing was almost completely cut out of Allen wake 2 according to Sam Lake in an interview on the friends per second podcast he actually had to fight to keep the sequence in seemingly because others at remedy thought it' be too unconventional even for this game just have to say I'm so thankful for Sam Lake's vision and determination to get this this chapter made is not only a stand up moment of the game but one of the most impressive sequences I've seen in a video game this generation who people love musical sequences so well executed it's so it really well done and then I thought that it ended and I was kind of bummed yep and then like Allan like starts he gets a little Jazzy and he does a little twep and I was just like I like I had a smile on my face the entire time I was going through this like I was blown away yeah like that's exactly is you wrap up a little segment and then Allan says I didn't see that coming it's like okay I guess that's the conclusion and then you go through the next section and it's just Allan Wake On a mic and he starts singing such a dark place am I trapped in here okay round two here we go um and with the basist playing like standup sounding bass yeah yep yep yep uh Nora writes in uh got better from the drowning apparently and she says this is already one of my favorite sections of the game maybe one of my favorites in gaming the several false endings the way Allan is reciting to it all and to top it all off when you're back on the set of the talk show and think what a way to start off the chapter uh getting hit with that chapter end as soon as you stepped out the door is is uh completely brilliant M uh yes most excellent like just the first thing where it's like the full panel of just like Sam Lake dancing it's like yeah this is this is a pretty good game I'm happy just sitting here watching this guy dance for a little bit and like I just it was well choreographed good dance it just made me think of like everybody involved has to have so much faith in remedy cuz I mean maybe everyone is just the hamiest MFR on Earth and they loved it but like can you imagine that idea of like am I going to look like a complete jackass doing this like not having the context or seeing what it's like in the game but just like recording all that stuff like just having faith that all right I know this team will put it together in a way that will be cool for people and not truly the dumbest thing that's ever been put in a video game hon these are actors you got to remember oh I was trying to like I was doing my remedy homework and I was trying to like read into the moves cuz they like put the crown on and then they like go through the woods it's like very like modern and yeah and then they do little like toe touches you know and I'm like What's Happening Star Killer is exactly mean cynth Star Killer is exactly there with you Sarah Star Killer says I haven't played any of remedy's other games so I was wondering if anyone had any inside into what the toe touches symbolized mhm yeah it's it's just a bunch of feed stuff primarily um the only thing that I was up in my head about with this sequence awesome sequence obviously obviously but there was a part of me I was like how does this timeline work out for development versus like The Peacemaker intro I don't if anybody watched Peacemaker the DC show cuz like the intro for that show is also just like choreographed sequence and it's a very novel Charming thing you know but it's like I hope that they were had this in the docket before that came around and it wasn't as clear of a line of like for the finale of this sequence in particular like let's just kind of Do The Peacemaker thing I hope it predated it I I think that's a that's an established tradition I don't know if you remember not that long ago 10 15 years ago movies just ended with the characters dancing is that right they would just do a little dance at the end Bollywood if you watch any movie Bollywood just bring it back just dancing it's always better got figure it out uh yeah Tim t n says it's one of the best moments in games for him absolutely uh I'm a biggie boy says I personally love the stage directions that allowed you to take part in the sequence for better or worse for example it took me too long to understand that the neon Escape sign was meant to guide you as who twisted and turn through the makeshift alleys which was certainly frustrating however the tape marks guiding you otherwise showing enemy placement I do love it's like enemies is and that big thing and telling you to wait for a solo allowed me to choreograph the fight fight sequences as to be as explosive as possible uh shout out to the flare gun that cannot be using a legal Mount of its combustive agent what a perfect way to introduce the flare gun is like this big like like the Pyro Technics of the show is you like that's so fun like but it's so much better than just like here's a flare gun and here's three enemies clumped up oh I get it I shot them but now it's like you time it with the music and it's choreographed in their stage Direction and it's like I'm in an interactive play but I'm playing a game like this so good Alfredo WR says I'm a big fan or a big Mark for old gods and Poets of the Fall so I was looking forward to what they would do in this game and they went above and beyond the musical is a clever way to catch people up on the story of Allen wake I recomend looking at the full screen liveaction videos on YouTube there are a lot of small details you can miss in the game like showing Allen's pugilistic incident with Paparazzi in the first game or the taken replacing his flowers and wine for Alice with a handgun and a flashlight then striking the chapter end pose from Allen wake one they clearly had a lot of fun making it all that's awesome I love I would love to list like hear them talk about when they obviously met with like choreographers to be like okay here's how we want the scene to go here's what happened in our first game and they had to be like jazz hands typewriter that sequence Rich mlin writes in it says this is my favorite part uh of the game uh and afterwards all I could think of was Sarah's voice saying another choreographed combat musical yes I see you remedy I'm not saying she ruined it but they were imagining you not liking this game in this moment apparently Sarah just so you know I mean this is I will give them credit where credits do this is an incredible moment but like after this hits what's going to like how do you recover from like this you know like after like that moment how do you keep wowing me I I think people said that with the astray maze in control and like I thought that about the astray Maze and control right before this which also is so fun and this blows that out of the water it's way better Sarah you you were in my mind you didn't like this and I'm still waiting for an apology on that uh Pretty Hate Machine says is it hyperbolic to say that we sing is is one of the most unique and enjoyable gaming experiences it might be recency biased but I certainly felt that while playing it that in itself is an achievement few games reach is there any discussion to be had about whether it might evolve the medium in some way I mean I think I don't know it is this game breaking my question is is this game breaking out of its bubble that's my question is it like is it really on fire like outside of the Allen wake people have already played the first one people put control or is it forever going to be this like underground thing it's like we all know that it was great and we just hope that like game developers play it and then like put it into their own work knowing I mean inspiring other artists will be something for sure like I think it has power that way but you're right I really have no idea how this game is doing yeah I don't think they've released sales numbers quite yet but I I hope it's I mean it was what tied for most nominations for game awards it helped that everybody was playing game interview that he's been like super surprised at the success of the sales and stuff so it's way more than they were ipating I think okay nice that's nice I do feel like game nomination Awards do not equal general interest from the public that is like a very small media bubble yeah and it feels like a lot of what they're doing here just is not going to be applicable to other games above and beyond like hey let's have a musical number now it's just like they have such a weird lore that they've built up in all these different games that can cross reference itself like I don't know that anyone else like what other you know developer has enough franchises where it's like yeah let's get rid The Meta with this and mix these universes together yeah I think what we've learned this year with like balers Gate 3 and Allen wake is if you let developers do what they do well in their own environment with like healthy boundaries and healthy like it it makes absolutely amazing games yeah but it's also a matter of I mean epic is funding this thing and right before the game launched or around the same window they also laid off a a boatload of people so I wonder if epic's in that phase of like this is just that perfect pocket of them saying all right here's a bunch of money please make something cool fortnite's making a million dollars a day for us and now suddenly it's like okay maybe they're not going to have quite the the full leash that they got for this you know for for other development teams um but I think like in the in the big Pantheon of musical sequences and games I think this is going to be talked about you know it's interesting thinking about uh stray Gods this year which I don't know if anybody else played but like that the whole pitch for that game was like we want to make an interactive Musical and I feel like it didn't get that much fanfare and then this segment from this game everybody's talking about but makes you got to trick us into doing it right I think that's it like you know people always love the sequence from conquer Bad Fur Day back in the day in' 64 like the Great Mighty Poo which is another like big musical sequence like it can be done right you know if it involves poop it's done right um except for for these people um these people didn't like it uh beaten down Brian says this was the weakest segment of the game for me it conclusion felt Pur as a result of how much people fonded over the astray maze it worked in control CU it was an empowering moment that arrived late in the game when Jesse could easily obliterate anything put in front of her this arrives in alen W's fourth chapter which I started with eight bullets I guess the flare gun was meant to be empowering but when they only give you four ammo and it has a splash damage of a brick it didn't really feel that way you picked up a lot more ammo throughout it yeah uh Conor that made Leo pretty grumpy that comment cool cuz it's empowering and near the end how about It's cool cuz it played a cool song while you had fun I think that's what it was what are you allergic to fun uh yeah con whims eating down Brian about to be double beaten wely beaten down uh Kenny two slice we love you being number on thank you uh Kenny two slice and Connor um they both thre in saying like yeah the combat really was rough in this section they didn't like it like that's why you play on story mode like let's not try to rationalize this combat like let's just all play on story mode keep these comments coming we can take it it's making us stronger it's making user uh let's see this person um has nothing negative to say Boondock Bandit says related to the musical sequence in saga's chapter return three in the hotel rooms hotel rooms you can find a diary from Ed Booker the local couple who ran into the cultist uh mentioning how being in bright Falls inspired him to create a rock opera I played Allan's Musical quence first and reading this it felt like Ed's rock opera inspiration bled into Allen's story The FBC was already testing stories that come true with nursery rhymes so this connection seems reasonable or am I off track no cuz he he's writing he writes The Cult play that you're editing at the end too so I think they're like feeding off each other maybe in a weird way the fact that he's physically in brightfalls writing might be like yeah bleeding into Allan I didn't think about that that's interesting was there more with those two that like it almost feels like there's there's extra content out there that I just didn't run into during one of kind of the open things because because they there I think there were like maybe manuscript Pages or something saying like Okay the brother went back out into the woods and then the the sister I think there's something fishy about them that I hope gets resolved like the fact that this man like the that they're both here they're both one of the people that we can sort of like what is it like profile mhm but yet we don't really have a conclusion on them like the only thing we profiled them for is like that she stole a necklace a little suspicious uh Tim writes in it says I was listening to the triple click podcast and Jason shrier confirmed with remedy remedy that Lance reck was meant to play Mr door he would have done an amazing job in the role and I would have loved to see his Take On the Musical component in this chapter that being said David Harwood did an amazing job but yeah can you imagine Lance reic dancing that would have been sweet that would have been good um let's see uh kardo says it struck me that giving the players the ability to switch between Saga and Allen it will give us a certain level of editorial control over how the narrative plays out I was waiting for the quote unquote right moment to switch over to Allen and after sticking with Saga all the way through fighting Cynthia Weaver a sequence I found particularly harrowing I was eager for a change of pace so I switched to Allen and was rewarded with this it couldn't have been a better fit for what the story needed at the moment for me I did the exact same that's a perfect order yeah Canon it was ideal um do you all have a strategy for when you're swapping I just like do one chapter one person one chapter another person yeah yeah I try to flip-flop but sometimes I can't find the bucket so I just keep going Mr Bucket can't find my bucket to piss in so I just keep running down the hallway we've all been there sister yeah uh then we get to Allen initiation 5 room 665 here we go everybody uh there's the billboard outside for the immersive play play called The Cult um and it's directed Yeah by Ed Booker and yeah put together the whole immersive experience all that fun stuff um Alex Casey runs into Allan Wake again and that was so weird and then we killed him right you like shoot him in the gut but he's like he's saying the whole thing about like oh you and the Raider are the same you are the dark place Allan all this stuff um but yeah just one more running with Alex Casey just to really kill him again I guess poor guy break green bendy says I was genuinely so sad when Alex Casey died for the second time uh holding a Beretta instead of his revolver and we weren't able to pick it up I still see Allan doing slow-mo Dives in my dreams yeah we all love Max p is the best um let's see slow-mo dive pointing a flashlight at a shadow cool steve Lucian says I think this might be my favorite sequence of the entire game is the hotel sequence the way the section makes use of Allen's storyboard mechanic is so well thought out and the tension that reaches a boiling point at the end was almost unbearable also if there's a better raage to The Shining and gaming than I've yet to see it I don't know Shin Ready Player one yeah that kind of feels like I I brought my contr remember too clearly I think that was a video game I think it was I think it was um yeah even like I mean the opening of alen wake 2 also made me think of The Shining of just having like the big overhead shots of the car just driving through the woods like that's already shining and then when you get to this and it's like we got to get to R 665 and lady in the tub like all that all that good stuff yeah Leo I think I'm kind of becoming obsessed with The Shining great I think it's like I think it's a thing like you know you watch the compilation of him looking at the camera what no yeah Jack Nicholson looks at the camera at several key points in the movie he does a little glare little glance right into the lens creepy cool very meta very remedy very ahead of their time they did it again remedy you did it again God damn it I can't believe they directed The Shining that well Hansen Hansen you're not really reading comments are you your your deepest dive document is just all all work and no play makes old boy right gab B writes in and says new plot element colon the devil goes supremely hard and it's and plopping it on my plot board is going to stick with me the same way press L1 to time travel and Titanfall 2 stuck with me yeah I'm not into devil fiction in a big way but that was definitely a notable thing new plot element the devil was like hell yeah let's put the devil into this man that sounds great I thought the haunted one was kind of useless the haunted one didn't really change that much besides add swirlies to the ground and cuz I went through to make sure that like I didn't miss anything so I was just adding haunted to every scene and it really only applied to like one of them and the rest of them it looked just like the devil but with swirlies on the ground and like maybe one other body on the left or something wish I wish they had like given us more here as someone who loves Cults and like ritualistic killings it was weird that we kind of just got like the set pieces of it I like to see the performance of the play yeah like I wanted to see the play the performance like yeah give me nothing that's a lot of NPCs talking though I don't know if the game has it in it that's just felt so Hollow W their whole theme is like interactive media like is a game but like the closest thing outside of a game is an interactive play is like where you're changing the work based on your interactivity so I was like when that was when I figur out that's what this section was about I was like oh heck yeah let's watch the audience get killed because that's what's happening to me as I play this game I'm getting killed it's like oh that's so cool and then it was just Casey being like so people died huh and I was like oh and I realized they were going to do that I was I was kind of let down yeah that's totally fair the premise is definitely stronger than the the execution yeah and and also like um the last one with Alan Wake where he was in like in the subway area and stuff I felt like using using the different plot elements really changed up the environments a lot and like opened up different Pathways and here's and here it felt mostly like set dressing quote unquote I guess like it it added a lot of blood and like some sometimes a hallway would you know like a door would lead to a different door that was locked in the in a different version of it and it just it didn't have the same hit that that the previous like really like that mechanism um in the earlier chapter and it like the subway screaming imagine if they did that but the screaming of the audience when they realized that they're getting killed for the actual so weird how they kind of didn't do that that would have been so cool here for that I'm they wanted to yeah it's just a bu thing Tom Rickard writes in says it was extremely hard to find a moment to talk about for the Strunk of the game and I think that's because each chapter in this middle trunk felt like it was at Peak creativity for this chapter though uh it's where it felt like story gameplay came together perfectly the maike structure of the ocean view the story of the murder all a slow burn to just the eventual the devil plot element the overwhelming dread in this section felt like remedy really nailing what a survival horror game is even though hours before there was a damn musical section any other game would give Whiplash but Allan Wake 2 Revels in keeping you on your toes that's a that's a great point Thank you thank you Tom did anyone else get mad when they were on the second floor but they didn't go up any stairs so it was like very confused to figure out where you were go a bathroom different floor but not the actual stairs right right very funky uh meca Pig says how do y'all feel about Thomas Zayn at this point throughout the first game and now the first half of this one he feels like the character the writers know is important but keep holding back for later I kept forgetting he existed when he's not actively being referenced on screen I do like him being a full Euro Cinema art trash bro yeah so finally get to the room and then you find out who's been calling wake and it's Thomas Zayn and it's the Allan Wake actor but without a beard kind of just doing a Jim Morrison impersonation it really this is our first time seeing Thomas Zayn too we've never seen Thomas Zayn right and is it the same voice actor as alen wake I think it's the voice actor of the actor yeah it's not it's not it's not the Dr darling voice guy it's actually the Alan Wake like face actor voice okay yeah okay that makes sense um the wor I don't know their names so that's the only way I could describe it that the the whole montage of their party sequence was like maybe somehow it was like dorkier than the musical sequence you know like the first time I was like this is party I thought it was cute it it was giving when you were in middle school and pretending to be at a party like pretending to be drunk yeah we're crazy we're licking the camera lens we're so high okay guys that song got me it was a little cringier than the the battle rap or whatever the I'm a psycho that one it totally I took me out of it to flash to my friend I know is about to play that game and I'm like he's going to think this is so stupid yeah it's a tough tough tone to pull off the party Montage I guess and it's like it's interesting I think to for the big Myster of thas Zayn to finally show him and it's like to make it so cheesy instead of mysterious is I don't know I don't know how I feel about it like I I'm all on board I don't think that's him I think is it Thomas Zay scratch I don't know I don't know if it's scratch or something because we just like I don't know at the end of Alan Wake one Thomas Zayn's in the dark place forever and the bright presence has taken him over and the bright presence is just using Thomas Zay to like get around so now that he's just in a hotel room with Allan hanging out I'm like that doesn't and they're too good at plot and like remembering what they did in the past to not be like oopsie we forgot about or maybe I'm missing a link in the middle it just doesn't really make sense so I don't when I saw him I was like that's not him this is a sneaky trick I don't know that's interesting uh forest with two RS right says we could talk about the overlaps and differences between Alan Zayn and scratch all day but the big thing to me is that the Anderson Brothers and AE all call Allan Tom in every interaction even when they're talking about him to Saga and that carries more weight when you find out that Zayn and Allen have been working on projects together in the dark place for a long long time you could have entire games overe explaining that uh just that bit but I love that this game is content with giving the player something to think on and keep on moving or Thomas Zay wrote Allen into existence which is the classic theory that they seem to want us to think and maybe they'll pull the rug out and it'll be something else but it seems like they're leading to that in a way what what's with the uh the diver stuff when alen wake he's like oh the poet the diver Thomas Z is like he played a diver in a movie is that what it was he dove into the lake to save Barbara and then like they call him the diver and then they put him actually like in a diver suit so like when you talk to him in Alan Wake 1 he's either like the aerial light and then they you learn later it's the bright presence but like it's through Thomas S it's talking to you and then they put him in a diver suit and it's like just a diver suit but like lights protruding from the mask so you can't see in it so that's what he's like that's what they make him look like and then they just call him the diver because he's just in the dark place in the water I guess huh cool um let's see Drake H says seeing Jesse and Dr darling show up on the TV and Zayn saying they're on to us while trying to hide gave me goosebumps they somehow managed to get me to take the universe seriously during one of the silliest game sequences in the entire game yeah the craziest the craziest thing was the price of those drinks am I right $25 for a cocktail that ocean you got yeah that's how you know you're really in the dark place yeah yeah no doubt about it no doubt about it that drink better be on fire or something or be good Instagram story if it's $25 uh so then uh chapter six uh return we're going back to the apartment uh the Alice stuff this is where you see those emails from Barry about turning Al story into a freaking video game and I like just the amount of he complains Hollywood in there as well that's always fun and satisfying to see um I like to that in the in the Red Room uh the dark room more specifically uh that Alice has like one of the photos she has is like the game over screen of Allan like on the floor it's a cool little detail yeah um Brad writes in and says the reveal that the horror story playing out in bright Falls was written by scratch rather than Allen at the end of this chapter puts the new darker tone of this game into fantastic perspective this game lacks much of the corny energy of the the first game because the story in this case is being written by a psychopathic monster and the Hasty looking edits the manuscript pages that seemed so Eerie before have now taken on a comforting new light knowing that it's Allen doing his best he can to weigh the events of oblique story in favor of the people experiencing it rather than having written all this tragedy and pain himself imagine if it was a word doc and they're just each in there likeing you can see the little like anous an uh Steve Bellard says whenever Allen runs into Tim breaker the sheriff there's a really funny tone change in Allen's speech he's normally like the darkness was everywhere I was alone and without hope then he runs into Tim in his conspiracy board and he talks to him like he just ran into him at the grocery store hey Tim so nice to see you here yeah I like think he pretends to not remember him again you know cuz Tim's like he's like a yeah you've forgotten me before and then he tries to like play it back again and he was like I'm just kidding I remember you Tim uh yeah Leo you referenced it I think before we started recording but uh just the Allen wake face I feel like so many of the scenes in this game is just him just giving that SS yes slightly no that absolutely is what it looks like I mean if he nailed that in the audition he's he's good to go throughout this entire thing even the dance scene I think he was making that face like he's being for held at gunpoint to dance yeah when he's not being like cool like wearing the sunglasses version of Allen wake for that little bit yeah but the the end of the sequence then Allan's like I'm going to type and fix a story and then scratch runs in and shoots him in the head and that's that entire sequence that we' seen he considered like not I know everyone's giving me like a various amount of reasons for just not writing but as he considered not writing cuz it says on the wall don't write like so who wrote that now scat is writing that wouldn't work but I guess the first time around he was just writing to save Alice and he I mean yeah I guess all the other he doing a bad job I mean wouldn't you want to kind of sneakily get out of there would you just be like I live here now I don't know tomaz Zayn seems like he's having a fine time yeah he's hanging out with the bright presents just floating forever uh infinite soup and and people on Twitch they say that he tried that and that's when scratch wrote it that's when scratch wrote return oh okay sure there's that uh Fabian has an interesting take I could see negative people having this take and I support negative people in the world I'm a negative person sometimes hey we're all negative people so Fabian we can't Jud have our scratch that's right Fabian writes in and they say for a game about writing and creativity most of the creativity seems to be in the non-game parts all the videos and music pieces have high production values and a lot of and add a lot of atmosphere but there are no real ways to influence the game world or enemies since the meta story supposedly supposedly is about art coming true this makes me feel like there are many missed opportunities to give players more way to approach approach the game's challenges than just shooting a gun if you want that kind of gameplay experience might I interest you in playing outer Wild's echo of the eye which very much gives the player that kind of control to play with the theme of what is video game and the expectations of a video game if you're looking for like so interesting more of that like meta perspective on like breaking the rules of the game by playing the game check that out instead this is definitely in the realm a video game and I'm not going to criticize it for like being a video game I was actually thinking that they should play Hitman oh yeah I was thinking there's a lot to consider here yeah but I do think the best I don't be too dismissive I do think that's an interesting point it is I I do feel like self-conscious about the medium I think when we're like this game rules because it has live action bits and the music's good in between segments like yeah we like those formats too but we like video games right and we're just you know but I do think like you know having the loop having being inspired by PT and having all these overlaps be a little Loop like there's there's cool ideas game inspired by oh my God that's the point Sarah that's the point incredible yeah the overlaying of the FMV on the game play I always expect it to like Snap between more I feel like that's going to happen at some point it's just going to snap and you're suddenly going to be in that scene you're seeing a little Glimpse up it's it's a totally fair criticism and I think part of the reason we find it so cool and are so excited by it is because it feels like only this studio is doing it so it's like this is this is a a Studio's personality we're getting to interact with and that feels rare in games yeah yeah unless it's rare uh Court says I'm playing the game on PlayStation 5 and I've never taken advantage of the game help feature until now I don't care to spend a lot of time figuring out what comes next and while this isn't an allen wake feature I really appreciate how this can keep me progressing through the storyline is anyone else using the game help feature on PS5 no does a game help feature so they have the little chapter thingies what do they call them PS5 I haven't used them for a long time I used them for like the astrobot thing game I played on but all right that seems cool um let's see Philly eake says here's a nitpick the mirrors in this game are driving me crazy the reflections are all a blurry mess why do they put so many mirrors in this game especially in the fitness center at the nursing home there are mirrors covering the walls they even tried switching between graphics on PS5 and they always look bad yeah is there's like a really interesting video about like how you can do mirrors in video games and doing them well often takes a lot of processing power cuz you're essentially duplicating the scene on the other side and it's like yeah nitpick a video game all you want and like I don't think it's like Allen wake's like it's not my game of the year but I'm not going to come for its mirrors don't come such a weird thing to like I mean yeah they don't look great but it's like cut them some slack it is an interesting problem cuz I bet like in their engine or whatever it's really hard to do and that's why they're like these but it's so thematic and so consistent that mirrors are constantly coming up it's like we have to have mirrors around yeah I mean it kind of this is such a cop out but it kind of plays into the narrative again like oh don't do it don't do it are you real or not I can't look at no thanks don't do it thought of it that way uh let's see uh jumpo WR and says I love how the Collectibles have their own set of side stories with conclusions to them all like little notes in the cult stashes especially the ones where you have to do math where you have to do a maths question all right this person's British um and the note inside is really mad about it also would love to know if anyone's been able to hear all of the pat m radio shows yes yes yes um because there's we're bugged out that's a bummer they couldn't hear the last three um yeah the math stuff Spencer brine says the most horrifying part of the game thus far was stumbling upon the cult stashes that hid their lock code behind an algebra problem F me man who remembers how to isolate variables in multivariable algebra equ my desk looked like saga's case wall in her mind place by the time I finished writing out Solutions on sticky notes yeah I guess the only one I found there is like the one about like the number of cars number of Wheels uh for the cars versus roller skates you know it has a total 273 you know what I'm talking about oh okay so yeah it's some it's some math problem there um yeah so it's like 754 total Wheels in a factory um and I am so bad at math I felt bad I'm just Googling this please forgive me remedy cuz yeah it was Cars versus bicycles yes that's what it was yes yes yes thank you yeah did you do it Jeff I did but it it was trial and error and I actually did have to get out my phone's calculator and and do the do actual maths and did you have a richer experience for doing that no okay and I I don't think I got anything good from the stash either and that's when I stopped doing kind of started giving up on the stashes but once again start mode I feel like they matter less yeah yeah um let's see uh Joe kinsky says doing a bunch of Collectibles of saga and the last rhyme triggered two of those water monsters it took all my resources to take them down and I limp back to the lodge with four bullets and no healing items inside I saw a deer at the end of a hallway it paused then went into a previously locked room I followed it and I found enough resources to leave me fully stocked I realized it was a coincidence and that I had petted the last of the mounted deer heads at some time during my Excursion but in that moment it felt like something had reached out and given me just the hand that I needed that's nice cool that's beautiful uh pet van rosmalen says I married a Finnish woman quit bragging and when her son was born we named him ATI for his second name uh some references to finish culture that I noticed in this game there are oh forgive me calana paraka pastries at ati's show it's a typical pastry with rice uh with rice and an optional egg salad it's very dry and I don't like it but it was there and watery uh ilmo says uh that his sauna invite invite email to bring condiments to the sauna it's common to drink beer and sometimes gorilla sausage in the sauna uh in the well Loop you see a glimpse of people dancing the finished Tango this is not at all similar to the Argentinian Tango yeah I remember we didn't really talk about yeah but there's like the glimpses of like the group dancing out in the woods that's so cool uh by the way do you know what the Dreamcast logo is doing on that door in the old folks home of course we do uh let's see uh ravo says the music in this game is so incredible from the score to the old gods of Asgard to the end of chapter songs combined it feels like anything beyond beyond anything I've heard in a game my personal favorite is this road which plays at the end of each of Allen's chapters an interesting thing about this is that it's by po who's a singer songwriter whose career grinded to a halt after the rights to her own music got entangled in some ugly legal mess in the early 2000s this song which is a collaboration with Sam Lake seems to be the first thing she's released under her own name since then wow that's a cool backstory I love it um let's see Anthony Brown says I haven't finished much much of this section of the game but my future prediction for myself when I listen to this is that saga's profiling ability is her connecting with scratch somehow interesting what uh mayor Setter fan says just who is mayor Setter let's look at all the evidence we have mayor Setter won't roll over on the issues when you ask mayor Setter will speak mayor set is afraid of the rough questions then there's the name Setter when I tracked him down in watery and after patting him on the head I told him he's a very good mayor yes he is yes he is so he's a dog I think that's what's they're going for I think that's the idea I was wondering the entire time because they it always pops up as like this is an investigation note and it's like oh when's this mayor going to show up and what's what's the mayor into I did not realize just a dog somewhere I think it's the mayor the dog um let's see Chris Houston so he got turned into a was that an awe it's an awe that that was the second one the second one that they fixed yeah they fixed it just by making a mayor and then everyone was cool right um Chris Houston says while mystery meta fiction are innately confusing well hang on before I even read this have have we missed anything in the chapters has anybody have something they're dying to talk about so I'll remember it later yeah I really like the um the animation the dark tunnel animation of like going between characters I think that's incredibly well done I think it's like weirdly long and loud yeah do you know what it's like to trans person opinion on that W in this tunnel freaking go to all holla and die already s Christ um oh we never talked about why Norman never T is always wearing a towel oh yeah Norman towel um is he is he's always wearing a towel I've never seen him not in a towel I guess it's just kind of his defining characteristic that's fun uh let's see Chris Houston does write in then and they say well mystery meta fiction are inly confusing I'm afraid of how remedy is going to end it this game has answered a lot of questions while it doesn't have to answer all of them a part of me feels like the answers we do get are too convenient SL not dwelled on long enough things like Saga being a Seer are plainly laid out to us which is fine and essential to telling a story but the fact that they keep building and how meta it is makes me debate whether it's clever or just lampshading Haley how you feeling about how this thing is going to stick the landing or slip on it in a tub and drown they'll probably do what they did with Al make one which is which is Allen wig 3 will quickly answer all the questions we have about alen Wick 2 and then give us a whole new set of questions because that's what they did it's like they they were like this is what happened with Alan and you're like oh my God and like also who Saga you're like I don't know and now I just don't care about all the things I used to be confused about because things are way more complicated now and that's just kind of that type of media right like you get that little quick satisfaction like I knew it yeah ha and then there's something more interesting to care about like that's probably the easiest way to keep it going but eventually yeah I mean they're going to have to finish this like how does this finish finish um wait a minute wait a minute but I don't know I think they're handling it up to this point I'm I'm trusting them and I feel fine about what they're doing with it and it's not still not too much and it's still hitting me in the same way that first Dr door or Mr door thing hit me where I'm like oh my God what are they do and I love it it's still doing that for me but it is about sticking the landing right so I'm curious to see how this finishes yeah any any big predictions for anybody for the final chunk I hope Thomas isn't writing this whole time I hope it's not that it might be okay cuz but I think they're almost kind of making it so obvious that it's that that makes me think it's not that you know and Sarah wants Allen to die I mean he's kind of he's kind of already dead you know like the dark place like it's he's got of stuck like he's going to come to the real world and then just be murdered that's what you want Sarah yeah but I wish he could just like cease to exist he's done enough he's meddled enough he's earned enough lives do you want for Saga want her to live happily with her daughter and tour and Odin in bright Falls yeah I want them to lean a little whoever her husband David is yeah I there's something going on there I hope he's handsome um yeah I I hope they lean more into the Norse mythology stuff you know I think it's I think it's fun um yeah I I I don't know if I want Saga to have a moment at the end of like I'm all powerful like rising up and flying through the forest or whatever but Jeff who's the final boss oh what does it look like probably some version of scratch again just bigger super scratch I honestly I I wouldn't hate it if it was Thomas Zayn the entire time just because I like the idea of having a series named after a main character that you then learn actually he was a he was a figment of this other person's imagination the entire time who's been stuck there the entire time and everything that you've experienced is actually this other character trying to rewrite basically doing what Alan Wake is doing but he's through him he's just a yeah he's just a variation of it that that wouldn't disappoint me I guess yeah but I also hate Allan Wake so okay love hate which again you're supposed to so you know like like yeah honestly I I didn't I we didn't really loop around to that but like I don't think he's I don't think he's written poorly I think I think like you I don't think you're supposed to have a great impression of who Alan Wake is as a character and and the fact that like all of us kind of have come to this conclusion that he seems a little selfish for everything that he's doing here like I don't think that's um you know like I think Sam lak's sitting in with his head in his hands thinking like oh my God people don't understand this character he's supposed to be you know this great hero or anything like that right right right got would you be would you be mad jeffim if the last boss was Sam lakes's head if they went that way like and 10 out of 10 nice yeah Leo do you got any hopes and dreams for the last third um I definitely don't want too many questions answered I I always prefer having things left to think on you know I don't care too much about closing the book on every little thing and I but I do hope there are some some big surprises still in store God you should be a journalist man thank you uh Sarah I'd like to apologize for starting the episode when you spill on yourself I didn't know if you really wanted me to restart it it like it seemed like it wasn't that bad I was hoping I would I could get like a napkin or something but we were rolling yeah I was like maybe maybe we could cut it and then no one would know my shame that I can't drink out of a can i s I made the you selfishly did with the uh whatever you were wrong about I can't remember that's right cuz I cut it from your freaking mind as well cuz when I edit something it'sot it Ben will cut I'm forgetting I'm forgetting only his own embarrassments yeah Ben only cuts it when he looks bad hey everybody patreon remember having a really good point last episode I don't remember that I don't there wait I had one more question do you guys think the cult of the tree is evil no I thought it was clarified that they were the good guys yeah well there's more to them for sure way they're always like let us do our thing but they're being you know too obtuse about it and their thing is cutting people open and shoving the clicker into the chest that was only taken that was only taken they were only hurting taken and like people scratch was sending to the surface IO and yo are in the cult of the tree I'm in the cult of the tree I'm Pro Cult of the tree scared the beas out of the Bookers so that's one naughty thing Chas well they're not don't go into the woods you know they're trying to start a personal brand of don't go into the woods The Cult of the tree is there that's it uh huge thank you to everybody who is playing along I'm so thankful that no one's spoiled things in a big way yet uh to the hundreds of people submitting comments over there on patreon we can't thank you enough uh I would read all of your names again right now if I hadn't deleted in this Google doc as I went along but you all are are making this whole thing possible uh we would be so foolish and stupid without you so thank you for truly making this the best most discussion about alen W 2 on the internet couldn't do it with without you literally by submitting these comments and then doubly literally uh by supporting us on patreon so if you watched this on YouTube thank you you made it this far thank you uh if you enjoy this type of content please help support it because it's a foolish thing to do to spend this much time talking about a game so again you can go to patreon.com bmax with2 NS just as a tip jar or you can do that to submit a comment on the last chunk of Allan Wake 2 because we are collecting your comments on Sunday November 19th and that's going to be for the whole kitten Kaboodle that's everything else in Allen wake 2 and also you can unlock the podcast version of all the deepest Dives or previous deepest Dives we've done 27 of these things I think so far so they're all in that bonus podcast feed so you could you could drive around the freaking world listening to these deepest eyes if you really want to uh hey that's it anybody else got any wise things to say um sorry for razin yes few people who wrote comments you know I do appreciate every single person who wrote in and you're allowed to not like it for sure we do want to hear your perspective very true you're not allowed to not like the musical though I do want to make that clear we draw the line there if you don't like the musical be serious first off do do some internal work and come back and then leave a comment that's all I ask all right thanks so much everybody we'll see you next week for the grand finale of the deepest dive it's a fun ride thanks to you bye everybody oh I should have said we return next week oh do you want to re-record that now and then edit it in yeah let's take it from the top all right here we go 3 2 1 uh we return next week you can't see it but Jeff's laughing he's laughing okay bye everybody you can help support independent games media by subscribing to mmax on YouTube here or you can support us over on patreon to unlock a weekly patreon exclusive podcast called party chat you can call into our podcast you can put a picture of your choice on every mmax video mmax is a patreon about games friends getting better and we exist because of you any help telling a friends appreciated

Channel: MinnMax

Views: 14,791

Keywords: minnmax, game informer, ben hanson, video games, alan wake 2, the deepest dive, deepest dive, alan wake, leo vader, sarah podzorski, remedy, game club, alan wake musical, alan wake 2 musical, return, alan wake podcast, alan wake spoilercast

Id: ERGmnJ0Gyh0

Length: 187min 46sec (11266 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 15 2023