Some of Alan Wake 2's gnarliest and more memorable moments are when the game decides to flash horrifying footage of gory monsters and twisted villains across the screen. (Depicted above!) Don't get us started on that death screen. As humans, we hate when things get into our faces, be they cobwebs, gardening rakes, or an ill-judged cupboard door. Getting digitally slapped in the face in Alan Wake 2, with the game's impressive and unsettling visuals, can be a terrifying experience. But upon release, a significant amount of players complained that it was a trick Alan Wake 2 leaned on a bit too hard. But one the base game leaned on very hard.
"It's difficult," says game director Kyle Rowley when we ask how the team balanced making them effective with trying to avoid feeling cheap. "I feel like we kind of overdid it a little bit looking back." Whenever a new foe is on the prowl, you could be sure they'd pop up to say hello with a horror sting.
"Thematically, story-wise, they're meant to be like a psychological attack on the character who's receiving them," Rowley explains. "Especially in the base game, you know, where you're getting introduced to Overlap Guardians, whether that's Nightingale or Cynthia, they're meant to be this kind of mental assault."
Tech fear
But, as keen-eyed players would notice, the scares could be used as a sneaky little cover-up to adjust the environment around you, objects moving or your surroundings changing slightly in the mere seconds in which the screen is covered in a jump-scare. It's so quick that you end up doubting yourself a bit. Was that always there? It's a great opportunity for a horror game to unsettle.
"We do use them just for technical reasons as well, from a mission flow and level design and gameplay design perspective," notes Rowley. "We had these two reasons, and they kind of were serving slightly different purposes. But for a player, it came across basically as a jump scare no matter how we utilized it, whether it was through this story narrative reason or for gameplay reasons."
After all, no matter the intention of a jump scare, it can ultimately read as a simple trick for a standard playthrough. It's only really the game design nerds like me or you reading this that can chuckle and lean back with a nod, observing some smart and subtle shuffling of assets. To everyone else, they're just getting the rake.
Alan lake
"They are still a key part of our way of getting across the mental state of characters and the way the supernatural works"
Kyle Rowley, game director
For Alan Wake 2: The Lake House, with its tight and (presumably) single-area setting – an FBC facility in the outskirts of Bright Falls – retooling the jump scares was just one consideration for dialling up the chills. But make no mistake, jump scares are back, and even this early on with the DLC we've already been menaced by two sets of faces staring back at us through the screen – the cursed husband-and-wife overseers of the Lake House facility, and one of the absolutely terrifying goopy paint monsters.
"For this one, we've tried to make sure that we utilize them – and maybe in a slightly more reduced manner – but they are still a key part of our way of getting across the mental state of characters and the way the supernatural works and the way the psychological elements of the game works," says Rowley. "We wanted to keep them as part of our repertoire of tools to kind of scare the player and get across some narrative beats."
Alan Wake 2: The Lake House is the game's final release before wrapping up work on the project (beyond smaller updates and patches). The Lake House itself was a concept from "very early on", which is why you could find it teased so heavily within the story itself. There's even the option to play it within its correct place in the storyline.
Triple threat
Within the DLC you play as FBC Agent Kiran Estevez, but the chance to inhabit this character wasn't the only plan to expand beyond the base game's Alan and Saga. The multiple heroes of the previous Night Springs DLC were also something the team wanted to explore from early on "as part of the core experience".
But, for project scope and pacing reasons, this was dialled back with a view to consider returning for the DLC. Between The Lake House and Night Springs' three characters, it made sense to focus on those ideas as expansions because, Rowley says, "they fit very well in that into the game, and then also as a set, as their own kind of separate pieces of content that can be consumed independent of what you experience in Alan Wake 2."
Saying goodbye to Alan Wake 2 will be a tough one. "It's been almost six years," says Rowley. Next January will mark the anniversary. "When I finished working on Alan Wake 2, the base game, I almost felt numb to it. I was like, 'Okay, that was a really hard project.' And then I was like, 'Okay, but now we have to start thinking about these expansions and stuff.' So I kind of couldn't stay in that phase for a bit too long."
Rowley will be taking a much-deserved holiday before moving onto the next project. "It's going to be bitter sweet in the sense that I've really enjoyed working with the team, and really enjoyed working with Sam [Lake], and I was very excited about the reaction and doing all [those] award shows and everything was amazing. Doing all the reveals like this kind of been a unique experience for me personally," says Rowley. "But, you know, it's good to kind of put a pin in it, and then start thinking about other things."
