Talking horror, style, and inspiration, with creator Sam Lake and director Kyle Rowley.
For all its emphasis on nightmarish mystery and confounding dream logic,Alan Wake 2sounds frightfully coherent.
“Horror gives us a slower tempo,” Lake said.
“Less combat, through the whole experience, meaning that we can spend time on building it up.
“It’s a narrative driven game as well,” Rowley added.
In the demo that played out in a few ways.
The wind howls and trees rustle, a figure darts behind a cabin.
A witch’s hut sits unnervingly vacant - and dark.
While all this goes on, a separate timeline is playing out.
These can’t be switched between at whim, like in sayGTA 5.
So it needs to be approachable on its own.
All of these ideas require this kind of duality, as part of it.”
There’s no wrong way to play it, basically."
“The idea is, to play this game through, you will have played through both sides.
Or the other way round.
But you will eventually then come back and experience the other side as well.”
“We do have optional content in the game that’s not on the critical path.
All of this has a kind of “dreamlike element,” Lake said.
“The stories do echo each other and the characters do see visions of each other along the way.
And there are certain events that mirror each other.
But if you play through it, it gives you a different perspective and understanding on it.
I think modern horrors - they do that very well.”
when asked to explain the meaning of your work.
Lynch’s influence is also still very strong, just as Lake told us.
