The Making of Alan Wake 2 - Full Behind the Scenes

Peggy 18 alen wake 2 is a psychological survival horror game and the player takes on the role of two different Hero characters the Title Character Alan Wake this story is a monster and a new character Saga Anderson glad you're on this case with me Anderson Alan Wake 2 has many Tools in it two narratives we are exploring Two Worlds it's not just Alan W this time we have this theme of dity and echo in Allen Wick too so we needed a Counterpoint like another perspective in the game that was a playoff of Allen's as well as having a character located in the Pacific Northwest so we could have both of those worlds present in the game and playable for the players even when we are not playing him there are a lot of things that tie the story to him and there are other ways how he is present in those moments as well the character of saga she's an FBI agent and relative newcomer to the bright Falls area she is a really capable investigator she is a mom she's a teller of bad puns what's not to love She's enthusiastic about her job she really enjoys what she does but I think her most defining quality for me is her kindness she's a very empathetic person and she brings that into her work at makes her a better detective and profiler these two different professions that are similar but different the artist is looking for inspiration the detective looking for answers you can see the parallel there but there's different approaches to those things we're obviously quite aware that the first game came out 13 years ago so we wanted to make sure that we had a hero character who would bring the perspective of new players we wanted to make sure that new players into the experience would be learning with her through the story we wanted to make absolutely sure that we find the right actor for the role and we were looking for quite a while for Saga hi I'm Melanie Li bird and I'm playing Saga Anderson in Alan Wake 2 this is my first time working in this medium and doing a game it's just nice to learn something new The Voice Over part of it can be very intense when you get in the booth but I've learned so much all of us have been working with Melanie and because of the writing process being ongoing there are always new ideas and writing more and more specifically to her as a role I'm excited for the world to see Saga because I think she's a brilliant role model and just to see a woman in this role a woman of color being a protagonist in a game that we don't see that often and just to have a lifestyle that she has doing her best to balance work and a family and I just think that's really relatable for a lot of people while you know we wanted to create one cohesive experience we wanted to give each kind of playable character in their world its own style mood something's not right in a setup for saga's experience she's investigating these ritualistic serial killings when we were looking at like from a narrative and tone perspective looking at things like True Detective we actually have a lot of like '90s references in terms of like things like seven the events that bring her to specific Northwest are a series of murders and they think there might be a serial killer somewhere lurking in the area part of this experience taking place in Pacific Northwest is centered around our fictional small town of PR Falls this idolic slightly quirky small town that clearly then under the surface has shadows and darker things waiting and and a mystery waiting in the first game you didn't really get to explore the environments but now you will be able to walk around the streets discover the town a bit more and revisit existing locations like the diner for example quite a lot of research was done uh to prepare for this project I spent several weeks reading research papers Gathering data on Forest surveys learning about key species of the area to properly do justice to the Pacific Northwest the photogrametry side of it uh means that we can actually scan trees on site ourselves the trees that we are seeing in the game are literally the trees that are from this area in the Pacific Northwest player will be going back to cauldron Lake which is obviously a key part of the story be exploring all the forest that around there and because we kind of are more slightly open area based the player can freely explore the player can kind of go back and V revisit locations as part of their playr Saga Anderson she's not just any FBI agent coming into this case there are elements to this that that very much tie to kind of who she really is and and a journey a a mystery to be discovered there as well first things first what's your name so where has Alan Wake been these 13 years he went missing at the end of the first game that is the question we knew from the beginning that that when wake ends up in the dark place uh getting out from there is going to be a long hellish Journey uh and a hard struggle and I guess that that where we are now is fiction becoming [Music] reality I was playing a lot of Fantasy games before I really had ever heard about alen wake and a friend recommended it and it had a big impression on me just because of how complex the characters were seeing a game that rivaled other mediums with its complexity of character was really inspiring to me hello the game that sort of nailed remedy on their storytelling I was mostly impressed by the atmosphere and the the lighting and especially the I think the use of Music it was unlike anything I'd ever played and it felt like I was transported into this playable Stephen King novel with this weird story taking me for a crazy ride it was first of all proving that we can do bigger games in Finland there's this Finnish flavor in it that you you cannot really put your finger on it and I like it dearly they are kind of like cherishing our our our you know culture and what we are known for our quirky little things and manners obviously before Alan Wake you had Max Payne which was quirky and strange but I would say Alan W kind of took those qualities and ramped them up to 11 and it's very rare to see a game that is equal parts horror humor and strangeness Al please tell me we're headed for the nearest you're now leaving brightfalls come back soon sign it was very very important to me to come up with a hero character who is not a professional hero him being a writer allowed me to explore the idea of creative process and writing process as part of the plot which keeps on being an element of course in in Alan Wake too as well I think it's kind of common knowledge that we took a lot of inspiration from Twin Peaks and there was nothing quite like that at the time we tried to in that game integrate the story Into the gameplay more so with the manuscript Pages the player found kind of try and find novel ways to kind of tell the story these projects are huge Endeavors and many many things many of them out of totally out of your control need to click into place for a big game to happen there is an element of luck the same very cool concept at certain point in time might not get any interest or excitement around it suddenly everybody wants it fuse boxes missing a fuse horror as a genre in pop culture overall has been growing in popularity a lot and I think that that was the missing puzzle beast in creating a concept of Alan Wake 2 where everything just suddenly clicked into place and was very exciting in the buildup to the game awards announcing Alan Wake 2 was huge for us it was huge for the team because this is an idea that has lived in Sam's brain for 13 years and now we finally get to present at least a sliver of it to the world this is so exciting Allan Wake 2 it's been a decade fans have been asking you for it why is now the right time to bring him back we knew this is going to be a pretty scary experience now we are convinced everybody is ready you are ready we showcased a a demo of the game when we were at the summer games Fest we chose a mission which takes place on Saga side and it showcases the Pacific Northwest she's investigating there's a lot of Supernatural weirdness for fans of the franchise it's a return to cauldron Lake an old friend and it's got Casey in it remedy's really found its Niche we know our strengths we know what we are good at we know that that is World building that is atmosphere and we keep building on these strengths and we keep investing into all other areas and seeing how can we do more how can we go bigger how can we go Bolder it's a story that you're not told it's a story that you play and the team has done a lot of really great work in coming up with unique and interesting ways to make that experience playable between every game project that we have made we have done a new concept of Alan WG 2 it's been frustrating Through The Years not being able to get it started and be excited about it and then it's not happen happening I think that the game we are now making is by far the most exciting the most interesting and ambitious one out of all of those Concepts and I'm really really happy that it's this Allan W to that we are making and none of the early Peggy 18 The Saga experience that takes place in the Pacific Northwest is only one part of this experience the other side is US returning to players alen wake and revisiting a location not only from his past but also from remedy past at the end of the first game uh Alan Wake dove into cauldron Lake and ended up in the nightmare Dimension underneath the lake or connected to the lake there is a whole world there waiting and he's been stuck there ever since it's a nightmare reality based on the person subconscious for Alan Wake himself he's gone back to a place from his past New York this fictional version of New York has a certain magic to it it's this archetype of a big city to me that feels like the right place he is a writer from New York City a lot of his books were these gritty nor grimy version of New York City and so we're starting to see this almost replica of his own internal image of New York start to build itself around him there's a lot of history that's happened there from a narrative experience related to his wife Alice there will be characters that turn up in New York that kind of are connected to some of those books that he wrote as well the New York we refer to is an echo of the hard boil crime no City present in the Alex Casey book which is the novel written by Alan Wake another place to use in this story we only use used the very old school graffiti from the 7s and the 80s and we kind of came up with our own version of it which has a bit of a Twist of like horror and Nightmare so we created something that we call nightmare graffiti if you pay attention to details even the smallest sign has something to say to you and we want to create the feeling that the dark place is talking to Alan and the player it's sort of a surreal everchanging ever modulating Dreamscape we want to make the player feel uneasy at all times he has learned a lot so we come back to him and in some ways he is the master of the supernatural now is he better off because of that no quite the contrary and that to me also is a big part of the horror of it like he's really really lost and really really struggling for him it could be one or a thousand years he is just in this room with a typewriter and that's his world at this point he's just writing and writing and writing and working through a way out like trying to find an escape through the only tool that he has which is writing life Saga is fighting for Life while Alan is fighting for his own sanity it's really about like paranoia confusion will you take the risk of revealing the shadow even if there is a monster hidden behind in the Pacific Northwest playing as Saga I feel there's more of an EB and flow or at least it will feel that way to the player they'd come back to Saga as a part of the game and feel maybe a little bit of relief not to say that the Pacific Northwest doesn't have its own dangers cuz we definitely do to me IL cavil the physical actor of Alan Wake and Matthew petta the the voice actor of Alan Wake that is who Alan Wake is there was never any question or of Alan W being portrayed by anyone else this is how how it works Ila will paint a picture and then he'll send it to me and then I'll I'll paint the paint a little bit on the picture and then I send it back to him there's this kind of collaboration that we do and it's very rare that you see us in the same place together it's singular and it's it's ours did you write these Pages Mr W I'm trying to remember it when we were making Alan Wake one we always used to say that he's terrified but cool I don't think that a lot of the coolness is is left he's in deep trouble There's No Escape you will never Escape you will drown here you are stuck in a loop you don't have a clue you are lost there's a Humanity to him that you're going to see in this game that you didn't get in the first game there's a death we have a great show for you here tonight hi my name is David hwood and I'm playing a character called Walling door in Alan Wake du this is my talk show in between with Waring door Alan Wake is here Alan one of my all-time favorite writers and guests on the show he seems fairly affable and friendly and fun but as the story develops I think you get an idea that dor is not quite the person who he seems to be as an actor and a gamer it's just really cool to be not just in a video game but to be in a video game made by who I think are probably some of the best video makers their storytelling is fantastic and some of it's really really darkg as a writer you're always thinking well my stuff isn't good enough is this you know going to actually work and I think Allan is getting that feedback in a much more tangible and consequential way it's interesting taking your own profession and applying it as a threat to a character I I know you from somewhere you've just forgotten again we're together don't worry we have been working hard to make sure that Alan W 2 is a very satisfying continuation to Alan wake's Journey it is not the story that you would expect but in my opinion it is the better for it and you will be surprised and I hope pleasantly one of the the key components in creating these kind of atmospheric experiences is definitely sound that's not like a rule book for a playbook for like okay this is how you how you make horror horror is is more to do with the the the subconscious the drawing on fear like really trying to manipulate the the player into feeling something and feeling anticipation and Dread and that is one of the hardest things and one of the most exciting things that a sound designer could actually do to be able to create those sort of tension moments we have to focus quite a lot on how the player feels focus on fing and breathing for example because fol and breathing within that world will bring the player so much closer to the characters FBI show yourself before you hit those tensions before you build up to these moments then you have to get the player to feel like Allan or like Saga and it's a lot of focus that goes into getting that correct if you have ever experienced something that shocks you it takes a little while to really understand what happened that's called the nervous delay or nerve delay basically if you delay that sound effect for just a little bit it increases your own bodily effect and it becomes much more powerful that way we play the game a lot ourselves and go okay what are you feeling at these points but we often are chasing something that we've seen somewhere else like P facing of the scenes is really important um looking at like how TV shows are paced and how we build the narrative across time throughout the entire [Music] game we had to use some extraordinary instruments among them Marvin it's interesting to play those instruments because they aren't equipped with a keyboard or despite the fact that you bow them they don't reproduce anything that resembles even closely any string instrument or whatnot they are just producing [Music] noise we did a lot of recordings on instruments as well on the audio design side so we were smashing them up submerging them Bo them we send these to Petri Petri sends us his stem so it's a very collaborative effort and specifically in the dark place place because we want to blur the line between sound design and music hello wake music is part of the storytelling and an important component when Petri Alano was working on the soundtrack of the first game it was a wonderful experience and collaboration I feel that looking back to the soundtrack that went on to win multiple Awards it's a huge part of the feeling emotion and it captures the Pacific Northwest Landscapes and the scary parts of the experience so well remedies quite clearly in A League of Their Own when it comes to storytelling characters and so forth it's important to me as a composer because they sort of give you the brain food for the themes motives and orchestration I I really really wanted to keep on working with Petri there was no question about him not returning to Alan Wake 2 it's been wonderful having him back working on the soundtrack for this [Music] game the relationship that we've had with poets has been going on for a long time and it's been really cool to watch them grow and get more used to what we have to do we've been collaborating with Port of the Fall ever since Max Ban 2 and the big step forward in that was the idea of them assuming the role of an inor fictional band of old gods of ascard for Alan Wake and songs that were custom made to comment on the plot and the lore of the world when Sam came back to me and and said that they're actually doing more Allan Wake and they wanted old gods to have an even sort of bigger role in it and that was very exciting I don't think there was ever a question in our minds about whether we would do it or not it's always been so much fun to do that stuff and it's challenging in its ways but it's also um educational from the get-go it was like yeah let's do this we have absolutely stunning pieces of music that we are using to give you a further perspective into the story custom made for Allan so all weight 2 obviously gameplay mechanics kind of creating that survival horror experience is very important there's going to be a lot to handle but the player will have all the tools in their disposal to fight the darkness Saga Story start relatively classic orror movie it's like someone from The Real World entering this quirky town coming here to do a job she has this uncanny intuition that allow her to solve difficult case she kind of perceives that threat through the lens of this case board the case board is a mental projection where she kind of gets to stash data that she's gathered and that's where she makes sense of it she's profiling suspects who appear in vision-like way she calls it her mind place when she's confronted to her first taken suddenly the Supernatural is really present and she's excited about it she's curious it's something new for her when Kieran meet Saga for the first time it was interesting to have this feeling of like being protective like trust me you don't want to cross this line because when you see all the things that we've seen at FBC there's no coming back from this but when the supernatural threaten a family the stakes are much higher and she has to fight for her own life and the life of her loved one Logan mom Logan so Saga has her mind place and then because we've got the two experiences this idea of Duality we wanted to have the same concept mirrored on Alan wake's side so he has what we call the writer's room there'll be in a version of wake's cabin from the first game and then inside there we have different modules that the player can interact with one of those modules is what we call the plot board the player can see what they've done in the past it almost acts like a quest log in a traditional game and the player will be discovering inspiration for Allan so he'll be kind of coming across what we call Echo scenes something lingered here I have forgotten memory an echo these give Allan ideas that uh the player can then utilize on the board it's the idea of rewriting reality to be able to change the world around them I changed the story and with that the dark place changed this allows them to kind of uh progress through areas they would not be able to perform it'll uncover new narrative information uh potentially even uncover more dangerous threats in in that space some fed came looking for the C but it was a trap light is definitely a big part of alen Wick too we have this new mechanic that allows alen to place and remove lights in predefined scenes and uh since the dark place works in mysterious ways doing this actually has a physical effect on the world so for example a wall could turn into a doorway or a set of ladders this gives of course different opportunities for exploration and gameplay you need to use your light in a conservative way because sometimes it helps you to guide you away and sometimes it can actually hamper your progression Saga needs to use her flashlight to burn away in the darkness expose weak spot and finding new possibilities of taking down the enemies and for Wake it's a matter of figuring out what is real and what is not the danger will be luring behind every single corner you will never Escape definitely light is a weapon but it's also a way to survive from time to time you might get overwhelmed so you need to constantly push the threat back and seek refuge in the light and manage resources while doing all that we have put a lot of emphasiz on the physicality on the enemies way they animate and how they hit player one thing that is important in comparison to other games that we have made that player needs to very actively look at the enemy TS look at their combos time their Dodges time their attacks carefully to defeat the foe while preserving the ammo we have weapon that allows more silenced approach and then we have more close and personal getting the job done style of Weaponry Allan Wake 2 is built on the foundation of our previous games it's not just a step forward to me personally it it feel feels like a Leap Forward the elements in interactive storytelling that I have wanted to experiment on and and brought to our games they are all there present all pushed way forward in all kinds of unexpected ways it's all a very logical continuation on this journey alarm 2 is a horror game in horror stories we only have victims and monsters we've come up with a new take on the dark presence which is more dangerous and terrifying than ever show me that horror for me is something that connects my basic Primal fears with reality I love things like atmospheric horror psychological horror haunted houses I like it because the genre of of horror has the guts to look at the things that you are too scared to look at yourself I think a good horror can stick with you for days sometimes even years and I think if a good horror manages to give you that feeling they've really captured something Elusive and almost intangible and traumatize the audience in a really really good way I don't want be in the story just write me out of the story I really like writing it because I don't have to be surprised by it in a way I'm setting up surprise for other people I can scare them I don't have to scare myself I'm in control Alan Wake 1 was very much known for its narrative and it was telling a horror story but then there was a bit of the dissonance between the story trying to have this slightly more slowburn feel to it and the kind of fast-paced action gamepl so we just felt that there was much more of a cohesive fit between the genre of survival horror and the kind of story we wanted to tell for the sequel It's not so much about the body horror it's the every day weird things that look just perfectly fine and then a Twist comes and you're like okay what's what's going on here like using Dark Places an example every single Shadow a moving piece I'm looking at it okay what was there the flashlight only illuminates a certain part of a scene so it very easily focuses your attention in a certain composition having the the lighting and the Shadows dance around the environment quickly incites your brain to play tricks on you essentially what makes the envir scary is is the atmosphere so when you add the lighting and the music that's when the fun begins horror tends to be quite a you know personal perspective towards the issue itself at times I've noticed that I felt uneased even anxious it's really interesting to bring yourself towards that edge musically we've done a lot of sound design experimentation for example with the dark presence dark presence Roar what is that how do we make that so evil and we've listened to an enormous amount of different people screaming and animals trying to find the correct scream to fit the dark presence I think we managed to make it feel like it's a place with a personality with a pretty unique feel we're trying to avoid a lot of the cliches we're trying not to fall into those traps so the the sense of dread and anticipation is really there get away get away the live action elements are part of the horror for sure we are using Blended video on top of the game footage for these very strange nightmarish Visions Alan Wake as a franchise is very much Supernatural very dreamlike so it allows us to kind of lean on that and then utilize live action in a way that doesn't feel disconnected from that kind of overall experience using live action film footage in our games comes from several different directions our games are set in a version of present day and there I feel that building the world using the mediums that are present in our lives is important and makes it more believable and is just a very logical choice we are almost like shifting through layers of reality so we are falling into these liveaction bits that you see on the screen and experiencing that and then falling out of them again doing more live action is very very exciting for me yeah I love doing motion capture and all that but being with you in the same room I mean being yeah it's fantastic each shot and each seen is like different like a different story and it it's seemed great I've never done anything like this it's been cool cheers you always have an idea of what the game will be when you start out and then more cretive people who are better at your job than you are come on and do cool stuff this idea I had is kind of not exactly as it was when we started out but it's become this thing was even better than what I thought it was going to be I feel lucky that that I have been able to stuff all kinds of crazy experimental things into this experience atmosphere and horror and interactive storytelling and mixing of different mediums together all of that comb into what Alan Wake 2 is fans of the original game and people who may have not experienced Alan Wake be afraid be very afraid

Channel: Dan Allen Gaming

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Id: b2D8KVWMqdI

Length: 31min 50sec (1910 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 29 2023