Last year, legendary Finnish developer Remedy Entertainment stunned the world with their 13-year-long awaited sequel, Alan Wake 2. A game with a brilliant storytelling mixture of film, TV, and video game that never forgot its identity as the latter, wrapped up in a pretty nerve-wracking survival horror experience, Alan Wake 2 stood tall as one of the most memorable games in an already pretty memorable year.
Now, a year since its release and its two promised DLC packs, Night Springs and The Lake House, already out, are they worthy trips back to Remedy’s psychedelic, spiraling narrative?
Note: Despite the title, this review will cover both the “Night Springs” and “The Lake House” releases for “Alan Wake 2” as they will be experienced by patient players who waited for the Physical Deluxe Edition of the game, available now.
ADDENDUM: A PLACE BOTH WONDERFUL AND STRANGE
One of the greatest things about Alan Wake 2, which, in turn, is a great tradition from Remedy’s games, is the meticulous ways they have fleshed out a lot of incidental background detail you find in their games. So when the chance comes for said incidental stuff to become a focus, the results can be quite fascinating. The first DLC pack, Night Springs, used the concept of the in-universe TV show with the same name to provide three clever “what if” scenarios of the town of Bright Falls and the interconnected universe Remedy has brought to life. The second (and ostensibly final) DLC pack, The Lake House, fully merges the incidental involvement of the Federal Borough of Control from Remedy’s previous action packed game and takes the opportunity to merge its concept and aesthetic with the psychedelic horror and storytelling from Alan Wake 2 to more fully integrate both games as a shared universe.
As different as the two DLC packs may feel in concept, they are all tied together by the strings being pulled via Alan Wake’s own writing that makes the conceit for both DLC’s feel more cohesive than it actually feels at first glance. It allows Remedy’s writer and director, Sam Lake, to both poke fun and have a conversation about the nature of storytelling, story structure, theme threading, IP ownership, etc., that’ll make you cackle when you catch the meta commentary without ever crossing the line towards “fart smelling” pretentiousness. The DLC packs are fully aware of the story being told, and poking fun and having things to say about the nature of writing helps it not feel like a self-aggrandizing, self-congratulatory affair.
From the two DLC packs, The Lake House is the one that feels more at cohesion with the tone and structure of the main Alan Wake 2 game compared to the wilder swings of Night Springs. In concept, Night Springs is a more audacious diversion that feels closer in spirit to Remedy’s Alan Wake: American Nightmare, turning the Alan Wake 2 gameplay on its head, which can be seen as more “joyful” compared to the existential dread that pervades all over the main game. But as fun as the subversion of the concept can be, the concept and the story behind it is stronger than the “gameplay” side of it, which starts showing some cracks in the design.
ADDENDUM: CHAMPIONS OF LIGHT
The first of the Night Springs episodes, “Number One Fan,” is a hilarious look into the mind of Bright Falls’ Waitress as an obsessive simp for Alan Wake, and her obsession with the overrated author leading her on a shooting rampage against his “haters” is a brief, colorful look at the town of Bright Falls that’s a hilarious subversion to the town’s usual dark, moody tone. However, putting too much emphasis on shooting here just casts an unflattering light on the game’s shooting mechanics, which were an intentional step down from the studio’s previous shooting efforts so as to augment the survival horror slant and worked better when fighting for survival. They just don’t work as well in a more traditional “action” sense. The quirky tone and brief run time of the episode at least doesn’t make the clunky shooting put too much of a damper on things.
The second episode, “North Star,” gives you control of, err, Control main star Jesse Faden (here referred to as “The Sibling”) on an investigation looking for her missing brother, which takes her to Bright Falls’ playland park “Coffee World” from the main game for a bit more of a traditional “survival horror” experience. While it is interesting getting an “offshoot” version of Jesse stripped down to Alan Wake 2’s tone and mechanics, once the novelty runs out, “North Star” comes off as the weakest episode on offer here, providing annoying puzzle solving in one of the most annoyingly designed play spaces of the original game, capped off with a pretty bad “stealth” section that I’m puzzled as to why it was included. This episode relied more on the “what if” crossover novelty than anything else.
On the other hand, the third and final episode, “Time Breaker,” is an all-timer. It is Remedy’s most insane piece of content they have ever produced. Running on the conceit of working around not having ownership of the “Quantum Break” IP, Sam Lake and company break the literal and metaphorical fourth wall to fully embrace multiversal storytelling, stripping bare the nature of writing a story on not-owned property, and the different versions of working around the concept is seen in the way the episode switches its genre and storytelling methods, which, in turn, completely changes the gameplay style on its head. If they created this episode while having taken an edible, God bless them, because it’s a level of insanity that has to be experienced to be believed. It is Remedy at the peak of their game and confidence, and I had a stupid grin with the audacity and creativity on display. Even with the nature of only being able to experience this DLC by purchasing both together with the Digital Deluxe Edition upgrade, “Time Breaker” justifies, by itself, the asking price of the entire project. It is THAT good.
ADDENDUM: HERALD OF DARKNESS
Which now brings us to The Lake House and the final piece of DLC content for Alan Wake 2. This time, you control Alan Wake 2’s FBC agent, Kirian Estevez (played by Janina Gavankar), as she investigates a disturbance at the FBC base on Bright Falls’ Lake House. As I mentioned previously, The Lake House feels more congruent to the tone, vibe, and structure of Alan Wake 2 proper as a more nerve-wracking survival horror experience, complete with nail-biting combat and a lot of traditional survival horror backtracking tropes you could find in the main game.
The backtracking and puzzle solving is by far the weakest part of The Lake House, as the way the FBC base is laid out and lit can feel pretty disorienting at first. This can make you feel stuck for far longer in spots when you have to figure out specific keycode puzzles, which wasn’t as much of a problem in the main Alan Wake 2 game. Signposting was one of Alan Wake 2’s bigger weaknesses as a game, and it feels more exacerbated with the mess of the FBC’s office spaces.
Thankfully, despite that glaring weakness, the horror ambience of Alan Wake 2 being littered all over the Control aesthetic works so effectively well. As disparate as the two tones may have felt when playing that 2019 game before it was confirmed that it and Alan Wake existed in the same universe, The Lake House works well in making it all converge into a cohesive whole. Kirian Estevez’ investigation at the Lake House dovetailing nicely with Alan Wake’s continued stringing of events via his own writing is so effective, and the FBC analyzing the nature of Wake’s writing helps Sam Lake and company work in direct analysis on storytelling, writing structure, theme, and the like into the world’s narrative, which works shockingly well. If “Time Breaker” allowed the team to take that analysis from a fourth wall breaking perspective, The Lake House does it all in the text, enriching the story much more as a result and making me curious how they will build on that for the Control sequel and even a theoretical Alan Wake 3.
As for the gameplay, outside the weaker puzzle solving, the combat here has the same tension that you could feel in Alan Wake 2 proper. The survival horror nature of scrounging to make your limited tools work against overwhelming odds has been retained here, with the game on its Normal mode throwing slightly more enemies at you but giving you a bit more ammo to compensate for the slightly higher numbers that never go overboard like in “Number One Fan.” The Lake House does throw a new enemy type at you in the form of a paint monster that can be horrifying in nature when it pops suddenly, especially with no option to fight back until very late in the DLC. Outside some situations where this enemy pops out of nowhere, which can be pretty annoying, it is a solid addition to the survival horror toolkit Remedy has employed for this game.
Alan Wake 2 was already a presentational marvel when it came out last year, and most of that strength has been retained in all of their DLC offerings. Remedy’s Northlight engine shines the brightest in that mixture of light and darkness, and that specific look is at its most pleasing in the “North Star” episode and The Lake House. It’s when the game goes for a much brighter, colorful look when the presentation starts showing more shimmering that can spoil the game’s stylized, filmic look, especially if you are playing in its reconstructed performance mode (“ Number One Fan” being the biggest offender here). Voice acting and sound design remains an absolute strong point, and it’s taken to new heights the wilder the DLC goes, as seen with “Time Breaker.” Even without another legendary musical number like in the main game, what’s on offer on all the DLC packs continues the game’s excellence in a visual and aural manner.
ADDENDUM: WIDE AWAKE
It is no secret how much Alan Wake 2 was such a literal dream project for Remedy to be able to fulfill considering how long ago the first game came out, how long it was stuck in IP ownership limbo, and how hard they’ve worked to build an interconnected universe of games that builds upon Remedy’s own storytelling ambitions. Both The Lake House and the Night Springs DLC packs feel like slightly flawed but well deserved victory laps for this long-in-development project. And while some pieces feel stronger than others, they feel like such honest artistic expressions to the studio’s ambitions that it is hard not to be awed at the audacity and ambition seen in it. I’m grateful for them being able to complete their Alan Wake 2 journey now, and I wait with baited breath as their twisting, spiraling narrative continues in whatever form it takes next.
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