The developers of Alan Wake 2 have revealed that during development, they used an unexpected tool to check the game’s story.
The developers of Alan Wake 2 used the fan wiki to keep track of the story’s details while writing the plot. The use of such tools may seem surprising to some players at first. However, the history of AW2 is complex. Several fans played Alan Wake 1 before the sequel. So it’s essential to keep even the smallest facts accurate not to disappoint even the most die-hard fans of the franchise.
Alan Wake 2 was released last month to positive reviews from most quarters, with the game’s story and atmosphere being praised the most.
Given that AW2’s story takes place in the same universe as Control and the first game, the writers had to remember many small details.
Now Alan Wake 2 co-directors Sam Lake and Kyle Rowley have revealed more about how they remembered details of Alan Wake 1’s story in an interview with the Friends Per Second Podcast. At about 1:47:10 of the video, the show’s host asked the duo how they kept all the references and back-references. Sam Lake then thanked the community and admitted that there were some obscure details that even the writers didn’t remember. So, the team used fan wikis to refresh their memory. According to Lake: “I confess, I trust these people (the fans). I’ll be thinking, ‘We said something about this in the original Alan Wake, but I can’t for the life of me remember the details.'”
However, that doesn’t mean the Remedy team didn’t put significant effort into keeping the story straight. Lake and Rowley said that Remedy had both a narrative team and a writing team working on the game. They tried to track every single aspect of the story with internal documentation.
However, due to the complexity of AW2’s narrative and the many plot changes that occurred during development, some aspects could be significantly challenging to remember.
Saga Anderson and the case of parallel dimensions in Alan Wake 2
FBI Agent Saga Anderson arrives in Bright Falls to investigate the murder of Special Agent Robert Nightingale. She then finds herself held captive by the same mysterious forces that hold Alan Wake. For many fans, Anderson appears as a brand new character, but in fact, she has already appeared in Remedy’s previous game.
There was a live-action easter egg in Quantum Break called Alan Wake: Return. In it, two FBI agents arrive in Bright Falls to investigate a murder. Alan Wake is a suspect in the murder.
The game’s director, Sam Lake, lends his likeness to FBI agent Alex Casey, who later dies, leaving Anderson to find his killer.
But Anderson was “heavily reimagined” for Alan Wake 2. So much so that instead of the former Finnish actress Malla Malmivaara, who also appeared in the Netflix series Deadwind, the English Melanie Liburd plays the character, which – in addition to changing the character’s skin colour – also affected the actions and behaviour of the entire character. At the same time, we cannot consider Anderson an entirely new character. The similarities are too significant to ignore. Underneath the Reddit post discovering the change, a pretty mental discussion unfolded about why Anderson’s appearance changed. Also, what is the symbolic significance of the character – which is a legitimate question for all Sam Lake games?
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