Remedy Entertainment has taken to the stage at Summer Game Fest 2024 to reveal the first Alan Wake 2 DLC, and better yet: it's releasing for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X on June 8. If you paid close attention during Alan's spiral through the Dark Place, you'll know that the the author collaborated on a brand new season of Night Springs with host Warlin Door – the enigmatic Parautilatarian who spends much of the runtime leading poor Alan Wake down increasingly perilous paths.
Alan Wake 2: Night Springs will let you explore three episodes of the season, the scripts penned by Wake in a failed attempt to write his escape – each act inspired by echoes of characters that slipped through the veil of his reality in the Dark Place. Each episode runs about an hour in length and will give you the chance to play Night Springs variants of previously known characters: The Actor, played by Shawn Ashmore and based on Tim Breaker; The Sibling, played by Courtney Hope and based on Jesse Faden; and The Waitress, played by Jessica Preddy, based on Rose Marigold.
Here's a synopsis of each of the Alan Wake 2: Night Springs DLC episodes, and then we'll touch base with Remedy to get some exclusive details on the expansion.
- Time Breaker – The Actor, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Bright Falls sheriff Tim Breaker, is a multiversal hero in the game "Time Breaker." His character must track down the Master of the Many Worlds and prevent him from murdering the multiversal hero’s different selves across parallel universes.
- North Star – The Sibling, an unknown woman who bears a striking resemblance to FBC Director Jesse Faden, is trying to find her missing brother, who is being held captive at Coffee World.
- Number One Fan – The Waitress, who bears a striking resemblance to Oh Deer Diner waitress Rose Marigold, must save her idol, the writer, from the danger he finds himself in. To do so, she must confront the Writer's critics, and the Bad Boy who is the Writer's evil twin.
Let's get weird with it
Let's start with Time Breaker, the episode that focuses on a 'multiversal hero' played by one Shawn Ashmore. I asked Alan Wake 2 game director Kyle Rowley how far Remedy can reasonably take its Quantum Break nods before Microsoft starts knowing at their door. "Erm, where's legal?" he laughs, before giving some more detail on how Night Springs is being framed. "These aren't the characters from the actual stories of Alan Wake and the other games that we've made. They're Night Springs echoes of them, so there's nothing directly connected to any of the stuff that we've done in previous games lore-wise or name-wise or anything like that." Lead writer Clay Murphy adds: "These are characters inspired by the real people that Alan Wake has seen visions of in the Dark Place, a process we established in the main game."
Okay, so we're no closer to Quantum Break becoming a part of the wider Remedy Connected Universe. Nor are we any closer to seeing FBC Director Jesse Faden make second contact with Wake in the Dark Place – I wager we'll have to wait for the second Alan Wake DLC (The Lake House) or Control 2 for that one. Still, Alan Wake 2: Night Springs will offer up the opportunity for more action-focused experiences, with these self-contained levels set across warped areas from the base game with a focus on letting those heavy combat systems shine.
"We have a lot of Night Spring twists on a lot of our mechanics," says Rowley. That will come through in a variety of ways across the three episodes, but perhaps Number One Fan paints the most obvious example of a well-intentioned shift. "The core combat loop in the base game was very much a survival horror, more tactical with resource management. But in the episode you just saw, the mandate was: we don't care about resources, let's lower the health, and make this a power fantasy of the waitress who has the awesome weapons she needs to blast away and save her hero."
"It's actually been really refreshing for us, and a fun creative challenge," says level designer Nathalie Jankie. "In the main game, we really lent into this feeling of vulnerability. But in Night Springs, it's been fun to subvert a lot of those themes, and explore some of the other themes established in the main game – some of the silliness and the wackiness."
For me, that point is actually why I'm so drawn to the prospect of the Night Springs DLC. If you read my Alan Wake 2 review, you'll know that I was pretty blown away by the core experience – the strength of its mechanical design, the immense visual fidelity, and the ambitious narrative framework which sought to blur multiple layers of reality. It was an incredible improvement over the original Alan Wake, although I did miss some of that game's off-beat humor and style – the absence of Barry Wheeler in the sequel was notable.
While there's no confirmation on whether the free-wheeling agent is returning here, the general shift towards something more absurdist is something I'm exceptionally excited to dive into. These episodes offer Remedy a chance to do what it does best: be creative, push boundaries, and produce moments of explosive action interspersed with ideas which twist the reality of worlds and characters we thought we once knew. "It's been nice to be able to creatively stretch our legs," says Murphy, "especially after making something for so many years that is quite dark, and it's been fun to push tone in extreme directions and see what comes of it."
As Remedy nearly breaks even with Alan Wake 2 sales, Sam Lake tells investors "we strive to create commercial hits" but "we must never lose" the studio's special sauce
"Many times it seemed the game would never get made": Alan Wake 2 is "finally complete" thanks to its new DLC, but even its director says "no one knows about the future"
