Corwin
11-02-2006, 11:39 AM
I almost never buy gaming magazines, but I just had to make an exception for one starring Alan Wake on front cover. I did what I could to translate the 6-pages preview in a hurry.
ALAN WAKE
The creators of Max Payne reveal their next game. Welcome to Bright Falls, antechamber of the madness.
It’s hard not to think about Max Payne when you arrive in the Remedy’s quarters. However, if the many posters and awards found in this little high-tech building of the capital of Finland remind of the game that made it famous, the team has turned the page. As a matter of fact, Alan Wake, their new project, doesn’t have anything to do with the wanders of a desperate cop or films noirs. In fact, Remedy presents this next title as a “psychological” thriller, which is, you’ll surely agree, a pretty strange description in these times when all games seem like they come from the same oven.
Our first contact with Alan Wake begins by a quick presentation of the title, performed by Sam Lake and Petri Järvilehto, respectively storywriter and leader of the project. You incarnate Alan Wake, a writer specialised in the fantastic genre. Suffering from troubles to sleep and from a high sensibility to the light, Alan is clearly an anti-hero, an almost ordinary man who lives extraordinary things.
His story starts a few years before the beginning of the game, when he meets the one who’ll become his fiancée and muse: Alice. Right after he met her, he starts having strange dreams, which he writes down on paper. His first book is a success. But when Alice disappears, Alan Wake’s inspiration seems to dry completely. Not only can’t he write anymore, but he has the worse difficulties to fall asleep. Suffering from strong insomnias, he then decides to get himself cured in a clinic specialised in this kind of problems. That’s how he arrives to Bright Falls, a small town lost in the countryside of Washington State, in the north-west of the USA.
_______________________________________________
BUT WHERE IS MAX?
Everyone desperately waiting for a Max Payne 3 will have to keep waiting. Remedy is definitively not working on this project. The necessity to add content to give a sequel to the adventures of the cop or just the will to explore new horizons have decided the team to work on something else. Furthermore, the rights are no longer their property but belong to Rockstar, who, on their side, didn’t announce a possible next episode.
________________________________________________
In the first times, his cure seems to give results. Alan is able to sleep again. Better, he meets a mysterious woman resembling like a sister his lost love. Thanks to that, he is also able to dream. His dreams soon turn into nightmares, giving him a few ideas for a new book. But, after a few days, some strange events happen in Bright Falls. But what is the most bizarre is that they closely look like what Alan wrote. Since then, the writer will have to understand what’s going on in town, or maybe in his head...
You might have understood, the intrigue of Alan Wake is to be complex and original. Far from being an excuse for never-ending action, the scenario is no doubt the main interest of the game. Remedy has been extremely attentive to creating a captivating and high-paced story. We’re talking about a script of more than 650 pages, considering that a page should approximately equal to a minute on the screen. Like the next Alone in the Dark, Alan Wake should be highly inspired by the writing for TV series. Instead of taking a “classic” story and spread it on about 10 hours, Remedy elaborated an intrigue divided into a few episodes, each one with its own pace, cliff-hangers and other exposition scenes. Like in 24H or Prison Break, the player doesn’t have time to be bored and see the story progressively going on. The other fundamental element of the game is its unique ambience. Highly inspired from the Twin Peaks or the writings of Stephen King, Alan Wake wants to be a descent into a really immersive universe where horror is part of the almost-casual day life.
And so, the real star of the game isn’t who we think. If the hero of Alan Wake is important, it’s actually Bright Falls who’s stealing him the spotlights. This little town, a priori without stories, could look like any lost place anywhere on the planet. But behind its drivers’ restaurants and its typical grocery store, are hiding large mysteries and inhabitants who all seem like they have dead bodies in their closets.
The team responsible from the design of the game didn’t put any barrier to the creation of the illusion of day life and reality. They visited the north-west of the USA for weeks, taking thousands of pictures and collecting tons of documents. Consequently, the region of Bright Falls looks like a packed version of this trip with a few additional figures such as the mine or the abandoned lighthouse, the lake, deep in the forest, some immense farms or even an woody hostel, modelled directly from the one which served in the series Twin Peaks.
The inhabitants should be pretty special too, even if the team didn’t want to show much about them. A priori, their behaviour shouldn’t be completely scripted. Each one will have his activities, his schedule, and his personal and precise motivations. Of course it’ll be possible to talk with a few dozens of characters in town. Without using branching dialogues, these conversations should still be based on emotions and vary according to the mental state of the hero, but also from the mental state of the character.
Let’s talk about gameplay. To illustrate what Alan Wake will be in terms of interactivity, we have had a demonstration of the game as short as convincing. From what we’ve been able to see, it’ll be a third-person game, altering walking and driving phases, in the vein of Grand Theft Auto. Alan will be free to visit the land of Bright Falls to complete different quests given by the non-player characters. The story will be pretty linear, but should contain enough side quests and secondary objectives for the player not to feel like he’s being directed. However, don’t expect to be able to spend hours customizing your character at the barbershop or becoming mayor of the town. The interest of the game will be elsewhere, particularly in his fantastical elements. Talking about that, the way the unnatural is handled and integrated in the story should be pretty subtle. It’s not about hunting zombies or seeing a giant lizard destroying Bright Falls. A case we’ve seen was showing Remedy’s recipe: as he just finished a chapter of his book, in which a dead hitchhiker came to haunt the driver who ran over him, Alan decides to take his car and go for a drive. On the road, he reaches the scene of an accident. A car, trying to avoid a truck, has run over an hitchhiker on the side of the road. A few hundred meters farther, the dead man is standing next to the road, and has now something against the writer.
Despite all our efforts and ruses, it wasn’t easy to get a few comments about the gameplay. If the team has a very precise idea of what will or won’t be possible to do, they don’t want to talk about it. Not that they don’t want to be copied or criticized, but simply because they don’t want to reveal too much about the story and so about the experience Alan Wake will bring.
However, a scene of the presentation gave us a hint. We see Alan lost somewhere in the forest. The hero is standing in the middle of a way border by a few streetlamps, proof that he shouldn’t be that far from civilisation. All of a sudden, murmurs are heard around him, and with a music made of strange sounds starts playing. It seems like there’s a silhouette within the darkness, looking like an imprecise silhouette made of shadows. Visibly, it’s far from friendly to the writer, and starts approaching him. With each step it takes, the light goes lower, and one by one the lamps bordering the alley explode. Start then a desperate chase in which Alan must run as fast as he can not to disappear in the darkness. This sequence, even if it lasts only about ten seconds, hit us. The tense is at its maximum and indicate the direction taken by Alan Wake: it’s not a Max Payne with monsters, nor a survival horror in which you can fight fear with your big guns. Not only is the writer really threatened and menaced, but everything is done to bring doubt. What if everything happening to him is just his imagination? What if the monsters were only in his head?
One thing’s for sure, the light will have a critical importance. It’ll be more or less the only efficient weapon for Alan Wake to survive along this long nightmare. Light will be provided by many different sources, from the simple lighter to the car front lights, all possibly used by the hero to defend himself. Alan will dispose of a few light sources he’ll possibly carry with him, lamps replacing ammunitions. There would even be some situations revolving around mirrors and reflections, allowing him to escape from a difficult position.
The day/night cycle will have a strong implication in the adventure. The day will be synonym of rest and will be best for finding clues, while night will be dangerous and closer to a horror movie.
______________________________________________
SMALL BUT STRONG
In these times when development team are growing as surely as scenarios get weaker, Remedy went for the inverse process. There are only around 30 people working for the society, with a strong family-spirit. It doesn’t prevent them to be capable to create themselves almost the whole game, especially the graphical engine. However, the coming of Windows as editor allowed them to find new budget. Therefore, certain models, like vehicles, have been realised by specialised companies. And if the company handles itself the motion capture for the animations for its “prototype”, professionals working with Hollywood should contribute to the final version.
______________________________________________
If Remedy doesn’t tell much about how Alan Wake will play, it however agrees to share comments about its means for the development of the game. We have to admit it’s difficult not to be impressed by the realisation of this new project. To best depict the forest environments of the north-west of the USA, Remedy created a specific graphical engine which seems to use all the last effects planned by the graphic cards constructors. With the complex shadows, the mapping or other pixel shaders, nature is looking as convincing as alive. In good weather conditions (the day and without fog), the view goes up to 2km and each element of the environment, from the mountain to the grass, beneficiate from a high graphical level. The graphic teams created a system of biotope which allows each part of the land to be covered “logically” by the vegetation. This way, the trees weren’t planted one by one, but generated semi-randomly, depending on the biotope chosen. It also defines the type of ground, grass, etc. present in the area. Take note that a few biotopes can be attributed to the same place.
Additionally, a real-time weather system allows controlling the overall lightning as well as the weather effects. After all, this land is known to be the most “wet” of the USA, with a weather going from a small rain to the tornado. Remedy actually shows us a little demo about the damages provoked by this kind of phenomenon. A tornado attacks an isolated gas-station, throwing everything in the air. Nothing is pre-calculated and all the elements of the envirronment fly depending on their parameters, imposed by the physical engine as powerful as well-thought. Finally, we have to talk about the fog, omnipresent in this area of the world. Adding a threatening atmosphere and a scary feeling when you perceive a shape in it, the fog is very well rendered in the game. Along with Crysis, Alan Wake is surely standing as one of the most visually impressive titles of the next few months.
It was the first time Remedy allowed the press in their building and we’re far from being deceived. However, this day at Remedy was off too early, too quickly. Despite many efforts, we won’t be learning anything more for now, and it leaves us with this feeling of not having seen enough. No doubt that we’ll hear more about Alan Wake in the next few months, when its content is less confidential. When asked about the release date, the company stays really vague. A priori, it would be “when it’s done”. From what we’ve seen, it won't be so soon. End 2007, 2008? The wait will be long...
ALAN WAKE
The creators of Max Payne reveal their next game. Welcome to Bright Falls, antechamber of the madness.
It’s hard not to think about Max Payne when you arrive in the Remedy’s quarters. However, if the many posters and awards found in this little high-tech building of the capital of Finland remind of the game that made it famous, the team has turned the page. As a matter of fact, Alan Wake, their new project, doesn’t have anything to do with the wanders of a desperate cop or films noirs. In fact, Remedy presents this next title as a “psychological” thriller, which is, you’ll surely agree, a pretty strange description in these times when all games seem like they come from the same oven.
Our first contact with Alan Wake begins by a quick presentation of the title, performed by Sam Lake and Petri Järvilehto, respectively storywriter and leader of the project. You incarnate Alan Wake, a writer specialised in the fantastic genre. Suffering from troubles to sleep and from a high sensibility to the light, Alan is clearly an anti-hero, an almost ordinary man who lives extraordinary things.
His story starts a few years before the beginning of the game, when he meets the one who’ll become his fiancée and muse: Alice. Right after he met her, he starts having strange dreams, which he writes down on paper. His first book is a success. But when Alice disappears, Alan Wake’s inspiration seems to dry completely. Not only can’t he write anymore, but he has the worse difficulties to fall asleep. Suffering from strong insomnias, he then decides to get himself cured in a clinic specialised in this kind of problems. That’s how he arrives to Bright Falls, a small town lost in the countryside of Washington State, in the north-west of the USA.
_______________________________________________
BUT WHERE IS MAX?
Everyone desperately waiting for a Max Payne 3 will have to keep waiting. Remedy is definitively not working on this project. The necessity to add content to give a sequel to the adventures of the cop or just the will to explore new horizons have decided the team to work on something else. Furthermore, the rights are no longer their property but belong to Rockstar, who, on their side, didn’t announce a possible next episode.
________________________________________________
In the first times, his cure seems to give results. Alan is able to sleep again. Better, he meets a mysterious woman resembling like a sister his lost love. Thanks to that, he is also able to dream. His dreams soon turn into nightmares, giving him a few ideas for a new book. But, after a few days, some strange events happen in Bright Falls. But what is the most bizarre is that they closely look like what Alan wrote. Since then, the writer will have to understand what’s going on in town, or maybe in his head...
You might have understood, the intrigue of Alan Wake is to be complex and original. Far from being an excuse for never-ending action, the scenario is no doubt the main interest of the game. Remedy has been extremely attentive to creating a captivating and high-paced story. We’re talking about a script of more than 650 pages, considering that a page should approximately equal to a minute on the screen. Like the next Alone in the Dark, Alan Wake should be highly inspired by the writing for TV series. Instead of taking a “classic” story and spread it on about 10 hours, Remedy elaborated an intrigue divided into a few episodes, each one with its own pace, cliff-hangers and other exposition scenes. Like in 24H or Prison Break, the player doesn’t have time to be bored and see the story progressively going on. The other fundamental element of the game is its unique ambience. Highly inspired from the Twin Peaks or the writings of Stephen King, Alan Wake wants to be a descent into a really immersive universe where horror is part of the almost-casual day life.
And so, the real star of the game isn’t who we think. If the hero of Alan Wake is important, it’s actually Bright Falls who’s stealing him the spotlights. This little town, a priori without stories, could look like any lost place anywhere on the planet. But behind its drivers’ restaurants and its typical grocery store, are hiding large mysteries and inhabitants who all seem like they have dead bodies in their closets.
The team responsible from the design of the game didn’t put any barrier to the creation of the illusion of day life and reality. They visited the north-west of the USA for weeks, taking thousands of pictures and collecting tons of documents. Consequently, the region of Bright Falls looks like a packed version of this trip with a few additional figures such as the mine or the abandoned lighthouse, the lake, deep in the forest, some immense farms or even an woody hostel, modelled directly from the one which served in the series Twin Peaks.
The inhabitants should be pretty special too, even if the team didn’t want to show much about them. A priori, their behaviour shouldn’t be completely scripted. Each one will have his activities, his schedule, and his personal and precise motivations. Of course it’ll be possible to talk with a few dozens of characters in town. Without using branching dialogues, these conversations should still be based on emotions and vary according to the mental state of the hero, but also from the mental state of the character.
Let’s talk about gameplay. To illustrate what Alan Wake will be in terms of interactivity, we have had a demonstration of the game as short as convincing. From what we’ve been able to see, it’ll be a third-person game, altering walking and driving phases, in the vein of Grand Theft Auto. Alan will be free to visit the land of Bright Falls to complete different quests given by the non-player characters. The story will be pretty linear, but should contain enough side quests and secondary objectives for the player not to feel like he’s being directed. However, don’t expect to be able to spend hours customizing your character at the barbershop or becoming mayor of the town. The interest of the game will be elsewhere, particularly in his fantastical elements. Talking about that, the way the unnatural is handled and integrated in the story should be pretty subtle. It’s not about hunting zombies or seeing a giant lizard destroying Bright Falls. A case we’ve seen was showing Remedy’s recipe: as he just finished a chapter of his book, in which a dead hitchhiker came to haunt the driver who ran over him, Alan decides to take his car and go for a drive. On the road, he reaches the scene of an accident. A car, trying to avoid a truck, has run over an hitchhiker on the side of the road. A few hundred meters farther, the dead man is standing next to the road, and has now something against the writer.
Despite all our efforts and ruses, it wasn’t easy to get a few comments about the gameplay. If the team has a very precise idea of what will or won’t be possible to do, they don’t want to talk about it. Not that they don’t want to be copied or criticized, but simply because they don’t want to reveal too much about the story and so about the experience Alan Wake will bring.
However, a scene of the presentation gave us a hint. We see Alan lost somewhere in the forest. The hero is standing in the middle of a way border by a few streetlamps, proof that he shouldn’t be that far from civilisation. All of a sudden, murmurs are heard around him, and with a music made of strange sounds starts playing. It seems like there’s a silhouette within the darkness, looking like an imprecise silhouette made of shadows. Visibly, it’s far from friendly to the writer, and starts approaching him. With each step it takes, the light goes lower, and one by one the lamps bordering the alley explode. Start then a desperate chase in which Alan must run as fast as he can not to disappear in the darkness. This sequence, even if it lasts only about ten seconds, hit us. The tense is at its maximum and indicate the direction taken by Alan Wake: it’s not a Max Payne with monsters, nor a survival horror in which you can fight fear with your big guns. Not only is the writer really threatened and menaced, but everything is done to bring doubt. What if everything happening to him is just his imagination? What if the monsters were only in his head?
One thing’s for sure, the light will have a critical importance. It’ll be more or less the only efficient weapon for Alan Wake to survive along this long nightmare. Light will be provided by many different sources, from the simple lighter to the car front lights, all possibly used by the hero to defend himself. Alan will dispose of a few light sources he’ll possibly carry with him, lamps replacing ammunitions. There would even be some situations revolving around mirrors and reflections, allowing him to escape from a difficult position.
The day/night cycle will have a strong implication in the adventure. The day will be synonym of rest and will be best for finding clues, while night will be dangerous and closer to a horror movie.
______________________________________________
SMALL BUT STRONG
In these times when development team are growing as surely as scenarios get weaker, Remedy went for the inverse process. There are only around 30 people working for the society, with a strong family-spirit. It doesn’t prevent them to be capable to create themselves almost the whole game, especially the graphical engine. However, the coming of Windows as editor allowed them to find new budget. Therefore, certain models, like vehicles, have been realised by specialised companies. And if the company handles itself the motion capture for the animations for its “prototype”, professionals working with Hollywood should contribute to the final version.
______________________________________________
If Remedy doesn’t tell much about how Alan Wake will play, it however agrees to share comments about its means for the development of the game. We have to admit it’s difficult not to be impressed by the realisation of this new project. To best depict the forest environments of the north-west of the USA, Remedy created a specific graphical engine which seems to use all the last effects planned by the graphic cards constructors. With the complex shadows, the mapping or other pixel shaders, nature is looking as convincing as alive. In good weather conditions (the day and without fog), the view goes up to 2km and each element of the environment, from the mountain to the grass, beneficiate from a high graphical level. The graphic teams created a system of biotope which allows each part of the land to be covered “logically” by the vegetation. This way, the trees weren’t planted one by one, but generated semi-randomly, depending on the biotope chosen. It also defines the type of ground, grass, etc. present in the area. Take note that a few biotopes can be attributed to the same place.
Additionally, a real-time weather system allows controlling the overall lightning as well as the weather effects. After all, this land is known to be the most “wet” of the USA, with a weather going from a small rain to the tornado. Remedy actually shows us a little demo about the damages provoked by this kind of phenomenon. A tornado attacks an isolated gas-station, throwing everything in the air. Nothing is pre-calculated and all the elements of the envirronment fly depending on their parameters, imposed by the physical engine as powerful as well-thought. Finally, we have to talk about the fog, omnipresent in this area of the world. Adding a threatening atmosphere and a scary feeling when you perceive a shape in it, the fog is very well rendered in the game. Along with Crysis, Alan Wake is surely standing as one of the most visually impressive titles of the next few months.
It was the first time Remedy allowed the press in their building and we’re far from being deceived. However, this day at Remedy was off too early, too quickly. Despite many efforts, we won’t be learning anything more for now, and it leaves us with this feeling of not having seen enough. No doubt that we’ll hear more about Alan Wake in the next few months, when its content is less confidential. When asked about the release date, the company stays really vague. A priori, it would be “when it’s done”. From what we’ve seen, it won't be so soon. End 2007, 2008? The wait will be long...