The Haunted Hoard: Alan Wake Remastered (PS5)
The written word can be an incredibly powerful thing. A journalist can use it to shift public opinion, the quality of an author’s words can determine if their story is a beloved classic or forgettable trash, and even the words you read now will likely impact how you feel about me or the game I’m about to review. Alan Wake doesn’t need to be told his words hold weight, he’s already a successful crime fiction author before the game begins, but after hitting some particularly painful writer’s block on trying to write something new, his life undergoes an incredibly strange turn. Pages from a book he wrote but does not remember writing keep appearing, detailing the very events he now finds himself caught up in, and unfortunately, it seems Alan wrote himself into a horror story, one whose course of events he can’t seem to shake.
Alan Wake Remastered is a remake of the 2010 action thriller simply titled Alan Wake and is mostly a graphical touch-up of an otherwise barely altered tale. Alan Wake and his wife Alice head to the small forest town of Bright Falls, Washington, Alan hoping for a getaway while Alice believes that the more serene natural setting will allow Alan to relax and rediscover his passion for writing. Unfortunately, things quite quickly take an unexpected turn, a dark force first separating Alan from his wife and then leaving him to walk through the mist-filled nights around the town where other citizens have been corrupted into shadowy dark versions of themselves called the Taken. A rather interesting and occasionally chilling choice was made with how those people corrupted by shadow speak, many of them repeating fairly normal conversational topics through their now pained and monstrous voices, often giving well-meaning advice even while their bodies are at work trying to kill Alan. However, Alan’s efforts to save his wife aren’t restricted just to night time avoidance of danger, the game’s five episodes often split between a day section where Alan tries to grapple with the strange sights he saw at night before the danger returns once the sun has gone down.
The most compelling element of Alan Wake Remastered is certainly the narrative element of finding pieces of a manuscript for Alan Wake’s next novel Departure. The words found on the page correlate exactly with what occurs to Alan over the course of the game, Alan even the main character within the novel’s story and each character lining up with someone he’s bound to meet. At first, this feels almost like a way of preparing you for what you face ahead, a danger foretold in the pages building up the tension of coming peril. However, the manuscript pages aren’t found in order necessarily. You can find a page speaking on events that won’t happen until hours later, or even uncover a page that talks about something well in the past by then. You can uncover some meaningful backstory element you had no idea about when steeped in the moment, or you can see something in writing that keeps you on edge as the event described feels like a hammer waiting to drop. You can even get excited as it speaks of some intriguing coming twist or scenario, or, as you come to know the extended cast, you can fear for their lives. Barry, Alan’s manager, is certainly a bit of an egotist, but his comedic behavior and genuine willingness to believe Alan despite the insanity of the situation makes him an enjoyable character where reading him in peril in a page can lead to a small feeling of dread on what might occur when that event crops up. Tor and Odin, two delightful old men who were once metal musicians, still carry on some of that wild attitude in the present, but then you might find a page where it sounds like they might not be trustworthy and you feel a tinge of pain as you experience more enjoyable and funny moments with them fearing that things might take a turn.
The plot becomes even more compelling when you start to uncover more and begin to consider the very nature of a work of fiction’s construction. This story Alan doesn’t remember writing was still written by him and about himself. It’s not clear immediately if he knew its events would come true or not, but he’s also an author with a good sense for how to pace a tale and deliver on conventional elements of structure and payoff, something that makes the fact Departure is a horror story even more concerning. Did Alan know his writing would lead to the deaths of real people? Would he sacrifice a close friend like Barry as part of a fictional story, or is Barry safe precisely because Alan wouldn’t put someone close to him through that kind of wringer? Does he even have much of a choice if he is trying to construct a narrative that grips the audience and invests them in the plot’s events? While of course Alan Wake Remastered is a tale written by someone in our reality, narrowing the focus on how a fictional narrative is constructed and the rules it needs to follow primes the player to start taking more of a look at the world around them, especially since the dark forces at play also seem to have some influence on how it wants the story to unfold while still being beholden to it. You’ll be left wondering where the planned peril gives way to the dark influence, but the day time sections are a nice way of establishing the small cast of Bright Falls before the night time comes with the corruptions and danger for the fine townsfolk.
Bright Falls does get enough work put into it to feel like a meaningful part of the plot, whether that be the small touches like the guy on the radio talking up the coming Deer Fest or elements of the place’s history that reveal their importance to what’s happening to Alan in the present. It is a bit of a shame the town is so steeped in forest as that leads to many moments wandering around the foggy woods, but then poking around the area a bit more can reveal things like television sets where a live action version of Alan opines on the act of creative writing or you’ll catch a glimpse of the T.V. show Night Springs. Night Springs is a fun parody of Twilight Zone that at first seems to be somewhat corny as it plays with concepts larger than the amateur actors involved can sell, but even this show can seem to come back around on opining on the nature of one’s relationship to fiction. The first you’ll likely find involves a man who made a device that can force himself to be in the reality where he can’t die, so if he tries to shoot himself for example, the gun will always fail. However, that condemns a version of him in some other reality to perish instead, but that doesn’t matter, since we’re not experiencing the tale where he perished. While some might be harder to connect to the message than others, it still feels like Alan Wake Remastered wants you to consider the nature of fiction and the weight of narratives if they are divorced from the certainty of their falsehood.
If Alan Wake Remastered were simply an interactive story it would be superb, its messages clearly conveyed at times to help give you a start on looking deeper at elements so you can start to search for their less immediately apparent purpose. However, while Alan Wake Remastered illuminates the player on many ways to start considering every piece of the game as something tied to its strong themes and compelling questions, it is also a game that is played and one that is perhaps heavier on combat than it really needed to be. The Taken you face during the periods where the dark presence threaten your life can’t initially be hurt, their vulnerability only assured once you’ve hit them with enough light. The most common method for doing so is to point a flashlight you have at them and focus its beam, the player then able to use weapons like a pistol or rifle after to fairly quickly kill the Taken save for a few burlier sorts that shake up combat with their more potent weaponry. Most Taken are unfortunately incredibly similar, many able to chuck an axe at you from afar or rushing in to swipe a blade at you. There’s not much to do during a fight but point your flashlight at them, managing its battery life important either by letting it recharge of quickly swapping out a battery. The Taken will often flinch away from light so a focused beam will stop incoming attacks, but only after their shadowy aura is broken can you then quickly gun them down. You do get some tools like a flaregun or flashbangs to more quickly kill them that as a result are limited in their distribution and rarely there might be something in play like a generator you can boot up to create some instant kill lights.
Sadly, besides maybe one standout moment, most of the combat in Alan Wake Remastered feels a bit weak and like a nuisance. At first it’s not too bad, but it wears itself down through repetition, the player sometimes ambushed by the almost spectral Taken who can appear from most anywhere and it loses it potency when an ambush can sometimes lead to a quick death that didn’t feel fair or a battle without much bite if you do get your tools working in time. When it’s more spaced out or a battle actually has more of a clear plan for how the enemy approaches you, it is a fine enough way to introduce some danger, and having some moments of peril that feel authentic because you aren’t exactly a gifted warrior feel fitting for the tale of suspense and dread you’re reading in the manuscript pages. It feels overdone, and it is quite a while before Alan Wake Remastered starts to really embrace the other idea it has for opposition, objects starting to come to life as if possessed and flinging themselves towards you. This can still be a bit fiddly as the objects bounce around in odd ways on occasion, but it is more interesting to need to take out a vehicle trying to run you over than just another group of shadowy men.
Alan Wake Remastered does contain two DLC episodes that were created for the original release free of charge, although it does hide them away in the Episode Select section and they do lean a bit heavily on combat as well. However, they also get more surreal and more importantly concoct some more intriguing uses for light. Mainly, the flashlight becomes a tool for possibly triggering elements in the world far more often, this lightly touched upon mechanic in the main game taking center stage as you can now activate traps on enemies or reveal resource reserves through flashlight use. If this had been a core mechanic of the main adventure and iterated upon more the battles could have had a better hope of shaking off their repetitive nature, far better than the moments where the game throws flocks of birds at you that just involve shining the light on them to discourage the charge. With how close the combat comes to jeopardizing the experience as a whole, I do not blame players who want to play Alan Wake Remastered on Easy since it seems to mostly lead to a reduction in time taken to clear out enemies whose overabundance makes you just wish to get back to the story sections instead.
THE VERDICT: The forces at play in Alan Wake Remastered make for a fascinating relationship between the expectations of fiction and the narrative you’re experiencing. A story written by the person now experiencing it yet unaware of what will unfold, Alan Wake Remastered asks you to consider genre standards, the structure of a plot, how a person can or should guide a narrative, and the impact of someone’s words, elements like finding manuscript pages out of order leading to intriguing shifts in perspective along the way. The light-focused combat is sadly rather rough, occasionally doing its job for adding some danger to this horror story but also demanding too much attention when everything else is so much more interesting and better handled. It can’t completely bring the whole game down, but more compelling or even negligible action would better allow the player to appreciate the themes and smart writing Alan Wake Remastered has to offer.
And so, I give Alan Wake Remastered for PlayStation 5…
A GREAT rating. Too many considerable stretches of having to put up with the poorly implemented Taken keep Alan Wake Remastered from being the fascinating bit of story-telling it had the potential to be. Naturally some danger should be present, part of the very plot is that this story needs danger and stakes to uphold the expectations we have for this kind of tale, but if the encounters with the Taken were truly transferred to the written word, they would feel a bit too often like filler or unusually long stretches of being hounded by the same few types of attackers. Rather than just throwing men at you between periods of atmospheric exploration out in the woods, Alan Wake Remastered needs to have more of the moments where there is a clear direction for the danger. There are times you are trying to dash through far too many Taken to fight to get somewhere or forced to stand your ground in an area with unique elements that do show the action has some potential when it’s not so beholden on waiting for your flashlight to wear a guy down, the DLC onto something when your light can actually trigger alterations to the world that can impact things positively or even negatively. Checkpoints and the game usually handing out enough batteries and standard ammo means you don’t have to worry too much about normal combat and having tools like the flashbangs also gives you a way to just opt out of more meddlesome looking conflicts, but it still comes down to the battles not really feeling like a great focus for how much of a spotlight they get. Alan Wake Remastered does have a good amount of story to chew on and once you start picking up on the purpose behind some elements and it provides an incredibly rich plot and setting to consider, but the gameplay mechanics do need a trip back to the drawing board.
It is a little funny I found myself pondering the nature of fiction back with Martha is Dead’s poor handling of a narrative, as Alan Wake Remastered shows how fulfilling a plot that actually engages with themes of our relationship to fiction can be when it’s truly the focus of a video game. The combat can distract a touch from it, but Alan Wake Remastered concocts a brilliant reason for why the themes should intertwine with its plot and even if you aren’t feeling like reflecting on the authorial intent of the creators, you still get the incredible benefits from small choices like the manuscript pieces being out of order or wondering how much misery or happiness a troubled man like Alan Wake might write for himself and if he can even get away with doing so since there’s more to how a story is told than just its creator’s desires.