- Tested on PC using a code provided by developers.
- Test configuration: RTX 4090 + i9-9900K = 4K 60 FPS near-constant, with all the potashes including path tracing (with DLSS in Quality + Frame Generation mode).
- Game finished in 25 hours taking my time.
- Alan Wake 2 As part of the Remedy-verse, the game is full of interesting documents that feed the established lore. Play quietly and take the time to consult them all!
- Critique written with fever following a carabinated flu.
An error for Alan Wake 2 would have been to fall into the trap of « ever more » specific to the suites. A trap that is all the harder to avoid in today's time when the concept of creative risk-taking is hardly compatible with the massive financial and human investment of triple-A production. Alan Wake 2 comes out 13 years after the original. See, thirteen years! An eternity in the world of video game. What's the result? Verdict below.
It's not a lake, it's an ocean
At the time, in 2010, the first Alan Wake is driven by a Remedy still grappling when it comes to making an ambitious narrative game. Their first title, Death Rally (1996), is a game of cars seen from above while the first two Max Payne, although brilliant and fun from a gameplay point of view, feature mainly cinematic stories told by strip thumbnails.
The first Alan Wake had been able to distinguish itself from the torrent of TPS, which ran in the wake of the success of Gears of War. With its atmosphere at the Twin Peaks, masted Fourth dimension, the title had been able to draw its pin from the game. For having recently re-tested on MaG, the charm still operating. Alan Wake, contrary to Silent Hill 2, Dead Space, Resident Evil 4, or Silent Hill 3 to a certain extent, however, never managed to stand out as a fully singular work, the fault to a cursor « action » overtly in relation to his speech, to a kind of hesitation in what he intended to embody among the pillars mentioned above.
In other words, it is not enough to use a PNJ with a log in his arms or to make his main character addicted to caffeine to correctly transcribe the ouat atmosphere and nightmare distinct from the Twin Peaks David Lynch and Marc Frost. No, the malaise of Lynch's films often comes from the unspeakable, invisible, the unspeakable, as reflected in the famous and terrifying scene dinner in Mulholland Drive. Alan Wake So it had remained at the childish stage of the wink. Successful, of course, but the player remained there.
The same for his tribute to The Fourth Dimension which was reflected mainly in the excellent scenes of the television series Night Springs, which the player could view in an intra-diegetic way. FMV (a Remedy specialty that later became stronger) was then embedded in some cathode-ray tubes distributed through adventure. What if I told you thatAlan Wake 2 I don't care about all these youth experiments?
The future in ideas
Let's say it frankly: Alan Wake 2, in the current triple-A industry, makes almost the figure of UFO. Oh, apparently, we'd be fooled by far! Indeed, with the exception of facial animations that remain the guarded hunting of Naughty Dog, Alan Wake 2 offers the most licked graphics to date The Last of Us: Part 2, especially through the implementation of path tracing, which makes light games more real than nature.
This technological advance has a price: it will be necessary a recent graphic map to enjoy it, under penalty of being condemned to play 30 FPS, with the DLSS activated in Performance mode. The majority of players, however, reassure themselves: Alan Wake 2 is sublime, even without path tracing. However, his artistic direction was designed with this technology at the top from beginning to end.
To make it simple, I had never seen my life as a player of such beautiful and credible light effects, to the point of often flirting with photorealism. Next door, even Cyberpunk 2077 in 2.0 seems a little less successful. Beyond the credibility of its natural lighting, it is when the title chaines the clear obscurs way Suspiria Dario Argento that path tracing is taking on its full scope. A visual slam to grab the jaw and introduce a new technological standard.
A dream within a dream
You will understand, Alan Wake 2 is beautiful, even beautiful. But this is not what makes it a major work. Also, don't go looking for a revolution on the TPS gameplay side, very close to the first game, which is classic and effective (we light up our target then shoot it). No, what drives Alan Wake 2 As the most ambitious work ever developed by Remedy, it is the way it intertwines narrative and staging.
A skillful alternative to the player's goodwill between Alan Wake and FBI inspector Saga Anderson, Remedy's jewel excels in his ability to deliver the story to us in fragments that we spend his time putting the temporality or even the truth in question. The story takes place in this way through in-game dialogues, kinds of echoes of conversations that see FMV shadows come to scrutinize with elegance on the line of escape of the decor (cannot do justice to the genius, relevance and elegance of this process by means of screenshots) and real scenes shot by actors in flesh and bone, including the famous writer Sam Lake, pillar of Remedy and face of Max in Max Payne 1 and 2. This inlay gives rise to memorable scenes, one in particular, absolutely delusional, will probably trot you in mind forever.
This whirlwind of means of expression, most of which evoke the artifice of the theatre, is one of the main forces of this suite, which creates a new type of staging, both raw and scraped, never seen in a horror video game. It's kind of the sensational brutalism of Control applied to the narrative.
Lalanne Wake
It is difficult to put exact words on Remedy's success. Alan Wake 2 has an atmosphere to cut with a knife, especially on the side of Alan who has been wandering for 13 years in a parallel New York neighborhood lost in the limbs of the Black Antre. The horror is diffuse, deaf, latent; Infinite darkness and thick as ink. When Alan tries to communicate with Saga Anderson to the world of the living, the two protagonists perceive only bits of words one from the other. This cursed dimension, sort of haunted beyond in suspension in space-time, between the Dead and the Living, Darkness and Light, does not meet any logical rule. He then returned to Alan to write the story of his escape, with the help of Agent Anderson. I won't say any more.
Unlike the first Alan Wake, the second opus continues to vary the places visited. If you spend time in the forest, this is only one of the very detailed areas you will have to go through. All equipped with a level of design with small onions, neither too small nor too large for our characters less perennial than a Léon Kennedy at gallop, these play areas all offer a distinct atmosphere, both visually and on the sound plane. It should also be noted that, as often with Remedy, music plays a leading role in directing, whether it is to make the atmosphere heavy or to create an absurd shift.
To the great words the great Remedy
I'm coming out of here.Alan Wake 2 Surprised, marked and deeply subjugated by what I have experienced, by this dense and hyperbolic narrative which I have until the last second questioned the real side or not, one of the central themes of the title (interrogated, inter alia, by the question of the senility and dementia of the elderly). At the end of the first game, Alan left us on this realization « It ». When the creditsAlan Wake 2 fall thirteen years later, we think thatAlan Wake 2 is more than a sequel, it is a renewal, in all points higher than the original, and a new standard for industry.
Alan Wake 2 is not just « Alan Wake Better »It is an innovative title, a work that dares, questions and surprises. A little like David Lynch who didn't give his fans exactly what they expected in season 3 of Twin PeaksRemedy chose to assert by creating a follow-up against the current of this to us are accustomed, sometimes terrifying, sometimes amusing, at the border of reality and at the crossroads of genres and scenes.
When you launch Alan Wake 2, take the time to immerse yourself, to listen to the sound of the trees that grow in the forest or to reflect in front of his survey table which details the plot. Much less action oriented than the first, it is the words that take precedence, more than the powder which, when you think about it, is ultimately much more logical for a writer.
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