AestheticGamer1Alan Wake’s American Nightmare releases soon (during Q1 of 2012), and though it’s been a week since it’s reveal we are starting to get a lot more information on the game. These come from Xbox World and EDGE Magazine, which have several new details on the game.
From Xbox World:
–The game is open-world, having hub-like areas to explore and branch out to several locations to discover and make progress in.
–Players may return to the same area multiple times through the game.
–The game is, “significantly bigger than any episode of the original game.”
–The game’s story takes place two years after the events of Alan Wake 1.
–Alan Wake has become an urban legend in the real world, he disappeared in the woods of Bright Falls and in his place a maniac serial killer named Mr. Scratch returned. They say muttering Mr. Scratch’s name a few too many times will summon him.
–Mr. Scratch is leaving a trail of bodies in his ‘wake’ and leaving video evidence for Alan to discover while he goes off to accomplish his ultimate goal: to murder Alan’s wife, Alice.
–The fates of characters like Barry and Alice after the original game will be revealed.
–Enemies have new behaviors and variety, and as well Alan has new weapons like a crossbow, nailguns, and Uzis at his disposal.
If you want the full details from Xbox World magazine, it’s issue 113, which should be on shelves now.
From EDGE Magazine:
–After learning that Mr. Scratch is out to murder Alan’s wife, Alan attempts to escape from the Dark Place and ends up in Night Springs, Arizona. However, it’s unclear if this is a real place now, if Alan is in a piece of fiction, or some strange combination of the two.
–The whole world is like a Night Springs episode, including a narrator that voices over the game in riddles and cheesy dialogue.
–They again note that this game is open-world and not linear like the original Alan Wake, and it’s beautiful.
–The manuscript pages no longer tell of events that have to happen, but rather can tell Alan how to shift reality and fate. Doing the conditions of the Manuscript page will shift the story in Wake’s favor.
–New enemy types are included in the game, including an enemy named the Splitter, who upon shining light onto it will split the enemy into two, and then four, and so on. Each split makes the halves have weaker health, but more numerous. Another enemy, Grenadiers, hurl grenades that explode into vicious darkness.
–They say Mr. Scratch’s scenes are appropriately chillingly dark and well acted, along with a lot dark comedy as he continues his series of murders.
–Many of the game’s cutscenes are acted out by actors rather than the game engine, and they say the flow between the computer-generated FMV scenes and the live-action scenes is handled elegantly.
–Fight Til Dawn takes place in maps from the Story Mode, and has survive waves of enemies for 10 minutes, as well as featuring a score multiplier than counts to a maximum of x9 for being successful in a short amount of time, though getting hit or letting it dry out makes it go back to x1.
–They say the game addresses a lot of the issues from the original game and has a more substantial foundation with a good amount of formula twists that proves Remedy is more than capable of writing their own future.
To read more details as well as see some new screens of the game, check out EDGE Magazine’s January issue.
It really does sound like Remedy have been listening to the complaints of the original Alan Wake. Making the game open-world with much more exploration, a larger variety of enemies, a darker and more surreal location and story, as well as more game-defining set-pieces, it’ll be interesting to see how this title develops in the upcoming weeks. On a final note, the game’s boxart has been released on Live. We’ll bring you more news as it comes.
