Alan Wake 2 - Preview - It's Time For Detective Mode
Alan Wake 2 has a whole side to it we've never seen or expected, detective mode. New playable character Saga Anderson is an FBI agent and when trying to solve the murders you can go into her 'Mind Place'. It's really a deviation from what we were expecting and what we had in Alan Wake.
Transcript
00:00 So Sam has seen half an hour of Alan Wake 2. Now, so the first game was an action horror game and
00:07 this game is following much more of a recent trend of survival horror, at least it looks like from
00:11 the trailers, and yet what you've seen has another element to it that we haven't seen yet.
00:16 So I saw half an hour of gameplay from the new character, Saga Anderson, who is an FBI agent
00:24 who's coming in to investigate a series of ritualistic murders in the area of Bright Falls
00:31 and two other locations that you'll go to. But it's also introducing a load of different gameplay
00:35 mechanics, so because she's an FBI agent and they want to explain that she's really freaking good at
00:40 her job, you can go into her mind space, very Sherlock Holmes and everything else, mind palace,
00:47 I think it's called the mind space as a distinction. Trademarked by the H. Conan Doyle Foundation.
00:53 But it's really interesting, so you can go into her mind and you can take everything,
00:56 all of the clues that you found along the way, whether it's... but it's almost like that
01:00 Always Sunny in Philadelphia meme where she's like putting the clues on the board and literally
01:05 seeing the strings appear to then progress the mission story.
01:10 So it does help you to a certain extent where if you pin something on a board,
01:13 it'll go "well done, these two are linked". You might not... do you know how they're linked,
01:17 does it tell you that? Or you just go "okay, that is a connection there".
01:20 Yeah, I did ask them "can you get it wrong?" and they were very like "um, we're not ready to talk
01:26 about that yet, but..." but it would suggest that basically the story is kind of gated to you
01:31 finding the clues and then connecting them. So for example, at one point she knows that she
01:36 needs to go to a cabin and she needs to find a fuse. Until she knows she needs the fuse,
01:40 if you come across one you wouldn't have been able to pick it up because you don't know you
01:44 need it at that point. Or as later she finds out that she needs to do a kind of ritual in order
01:49 to get into this space, sort of kind of between the dark place and the real world, and she needs
01:54 a heart. But without the clues she wouldn't have known that she needed the heart or been able to
01:59 find it. It's very much more open world than the last game which felt very linear and kind of...
02:03 I do hope it's a bit more tuned in. I'm aware this is a much older game but the Phoenix Wright
02:06 sagas where like in that you just had to get it right and keep guessing until you got it right
02:11 and you sometimes didn't even know why the actor was right in the cork. Whereas I hope it's a bit
02:16 more like hand-holding, a bit a mix between that and like the Batman games where it's a bit more
02:20 like pointing you in a bit of a direction. Yeah because I think what happened was like
02:23 she found like a manuscript on a tree which she'd been led to by something that she found earlier.
02:30 So like the manuscripts pages that she finds that Alan is writing for her will be like
02:35 you need to find the witch and a heart and this tree. So you'll be like okay I know I need these
02:40 three things but maybe not how to get them yet. There are some trees over here I'll go wander
02:44 around. Yeah and it's really interesting just the way that it kind of connects together and
02:48 it seems really smart the way that they've done it and very much reminded me more of like LA
02:53 Noire kind of style. And it's interesting because she can also profile either the victims or like
03:00 suspects. So she kind of goes into this sort of meditative state and then the characters will
03:05 come to life and talk to her. These are like two different games. Yeah 100%. Like fair play to them
03:09 to be like we're gonna make an Alan Waint game but a large part of it or maybe even half of it
03:12 is a very different game. Her side of things is very much she's being called the co-protagonist
03:17 so it's very much as much as her game as it is Alan's. Obviously you will still play as Alan
03:23 who has been in the dark place for 13 years and has probably gone a little bit mental by this
03:28 point. But he's also created Saga Hans. Yeah potentially. This is very much like and having
03:36 spoken to Sam Lake and the other co-creators and developers about this game they have very
03:41 much enjoyed embedding this game with loads of lore and connected tissues between this and
03:47 Quantum Break and the first game and Control and everything else. So it's really I think
03:51 the more you dive into this the more research I did before this trip about like Saga Anderson is
03:55 a character that's appeared before and so has Alex Casey her partner and anyway there's a lot
04:00 of connected stuff. If you feel lost when you're looking at any of the trailers or even you start
04:04 playing Alan Wake 2 do not worry about feeling lost that is weirdly part of it. But it's also
04:09 it's quite interesting because they've also pitched Saga Anderson as like the newcomer to
04:13 this game in the same way that a lot of people will be coming to this game as their first kind
04:17 of remedy game. So she finds manuscript pages attached to the bodies and in the world as she's
04:23 exploring. So then it comes in Alan's voice and sort of explains the connected tissues between
04:29 the world that he's in and the world that she's investigating. So it's quite nice even when you're
04:35 playing a saga you've still got Alan coming in every now and then being like and she found the
04:40 book and opened the book in his sort of writerly tone that he's always had. So there's kind of
04:45 that's nice but is also she's like oh okay so if light seemed to work against these characters maybe
04:51 I'll use the torch and it's so you don't need to have played Alan Wake 1 technically or Control
04:57 or any of the other remedy games. So yeah and it's really it's really cool because they've still
05:01 connected her with the sort of traditional Alan Wake experience. So she obviously has a torch
05:07 because she's investigating things but you can bring it up whenever you want to. So
05:11 and she's obviously learning about how the light can impact the dark and she's dealing with these
05:16 cult members who also are protected by darkness in the same way as the enemies from the first game.
05:21 So she obviously has to shine the light on them to get rid of their barrier which is much more kind
05:25 of body horror than I expected it to be. It's not they're not going full gore with like dismemberment
05:32 and stuff. Yeah but if you shoot someone there's blood and they'll be like impacted and stuff which
05:37 has definitely felt like an upgrade on the original game. But there's quite nice tie-ins as
05:41 well because like do you remember like when you could stand in like the the lamp post light and
05:47 it would like regen your health and stuff. So you can stand in the light and it heals you but only
05:51 it'll only take you out of like critical state and then you've got to then think about oh do I
05:55 need to take some painkillers to boost my health to get back into combat. And you can only use the
05:59 lamp post safe haven once per combat round. So you've got to kind of decide whether to use it now
06:06 and then even when you do use it it's only bringing you up to like. Yeah and then you've
06:10 still got to like buff yourself so you're much more like Resident Evil there's like
06:14 you've got your bag with like inventory slots and do you remember the flask from the first game as
06:18 well. Vaguely. They were like there was a hundred or something to collect in the original game.
06:22 Oh that's why I vaguely remember because I was like nope. Yeah they're just silly collectibles
06:27 and I think they were a bit like well we're not going to make people do that again so we'll make
06:30 them like safe markers instead. So you'll go into a house and find a flask and that's when you'll be
06:35 able to actually at certain points switch between Saga and Alan because between the sections last
06:41 time all your ammo and your guns would reset in the original Alan Wake. It's really weird going
06:46 back to it now and being like I had a shotgun a minute ago why have I got to pick it up now.
06:49 Whereas this is much more like you can put your stuff in a safe box at these safe points
06:55 and you've got it whereas like when you're out and about you've got to like obviously
06:59 judge your ammo and make sure that you've got everything that you need and also monitor your
07:03 health you're not going to get points where it just kind of automatically regens. Yeah. It's
07:07 much more again a management system. Yeah much more and about pacing as well because like the
07:11 original game was quite relentless with its combat whereas they've admitted this has got a lot less
07:16 combat in it than the first game but the combat that you do encounter will be much more momentous
07:21 and have meaning. Really scary as well like there's a lot of jump scares in there and
07:27 it already looks claustrophobic as hell. Yeah and it's beautiful like even just looking at the
07:34 forest as you're walking around like it's stunning the way the sort of trees and dapple and they're
07:40 using weather in really like moody atmospheric ways which is really cool. So it definitely feels
07:45 like a like a real next gen game in terms of how it yeah. Because the original was 2010. Yeah 13
07:51 years ago which is madness. Yeah. But yeah this is I'm really excited about this game I feel like
07:57 it's got enough of the original in there to you know make me as a as an original Alan Wake fan
08:02 like really excited about it but then there's this other layer of like what Saga's bringing to the
08:07 table and how the two connect. Obviously we saw at the end of that gameplay trailer about you know
08:11 she's going to meet Alan or is it Alan we don't know. So it's just it's really interesting and
08:17 I'm super excited by it. Yeah so the game's coming out on October 17th. Yeah and speaking to them as
08:24 well it was it was interesting to see that they've been trying to make this game for 13 years and like
08:28 one iteration turned into Quantum Break and one iteration turned into Control and now this is
08:34 like if you want to go deep in remedy games you can go deep and they said they had a lot of fun.
08:39 Yeah oh my god. There's so much lore and so many like interconnections in it if you go on the Alan
08:43 Wake reddit like it's just glorious with like kind of lore divers going into like what could this
08:48 mean and what does her name mean. Anderson or Saga and her son. Alan Wake is one of the few like
08:53 universes where all those things could be true because it's such a like all these other games
08:57 like man you've gone way too down into that rabbit hole but Alan Wake is a rabbit hole that is
09:01 literally the point of it. It's just so mental. This is something new like Alan's got obviously a lot of baggage
09:06 he's a man who's been through a lot but also there's this new character to kind of balance that
09:10 madness and the darkness as well with like and she's really funny as well like she was like
09:15 commenting at one point on the cult she's like what kind of cult calls himself the cult like
09:20 it's really weird and then she kind of like. She is the self-referential like straight man to this
09:25 just be like this is all mental. Yeah because like replaying original Alan Wake it's like it's kind of
09:30 like cringy how kind of writerly he speaks all the time and they're like it but it's it's fun and I
09:36 think she is much more straight talking much more like the voice of the player to balance that out
09:41 which is which is really cool and it sounds like she's got her own history and ties to this place
09:46 as well because they're saying that she has Finnish roots so she's exploring her connection to this
09:51 place as well so whether it's she's a manifestation of Alan's scripts or whatever or a real person who
09:58 is connected to this because there's a new area of watery which has like
10:01 Finnish folklore collections which is really interesting connections rather not collections
10:06 so I think their Remedy team are also bringing their own roots into this like a very American
10:11 kind of southwestern thing as well which is hopefully even more interesting for the kind
10:16 of horrible things that they can tell through like classic folklore and stuff so. Can't wait.
10:20 Yeah lots of different levels much scarier much more cyber horror in terms of like the gameplay
10:26 style much more tense and also just like yeah I think this is going to be a really interesting
10:31 game for people who like detective games but also people who love Remedy games as well.
10:36 Seems like it's been worth the wait. Hell yeah. Let us know in the comments down below
10:40 what your favorite Alan Wake theory or like crazy thing that you think is going to happen is because
10:46 I bet you there are some mental ones out there that you've seen and subscribe to Games Radar
10:49 for any new information on Alan Wake 2 and the review when it does eventually come out.