"Alan, wake up..."

We've been waiting for Alan Wake for a fair while now, and with good reason. Created by the makers of Max Payne, this psychological thriller possesses serious pedigree, but has been on the Xbox 360 release schedule for almost as long as the console itself has been around, suffering more slippages over the past few years than Didier Drogba in an opposition penalty box.

Erring ever closer

Thankfully Alan Wake's May 2010 release date appears firmly 'set in stone', and with it erring ever closer we were finally given the chance to see the game in action, and even have a go ourselves. We weren't disappointed.

Our hands-on began with a nightmare sequence, which doubled up as the obligatory tutorial. Far from your run-of-the-mill scene-setter, however, it proved really quite abstract and unnerving, seeing Alan hit a hitchhiker in his car, only to watch him disappear before his eyes, before being pursued by darkness-possessed townsfolk through a dense and creepy wood in the dead of night.

After ten minutes of play we really had very little idea what was going on, but we felt suitably freaked out and curious, which we reckon is just what the designers intended.

Our first impressions of the controls were a little more mixed. On one hand you've got some of the typical conventions of third-person action and adventure gaming: movement on the left stick; camera on the right stick; aiming on LT and firing on RT. But then you've got a few things that weren't so immediate: sprint is activated by holding LB rather than A, as is the norm in Xbox games like Gears of War and Fable II; interaction happens by tapping B instead of A; and A is instead reserved for jumping and dodging enemy attacks during combat.

Flash, bang

After getting our heads around that, there was more unconventional gameplay to come. Combat in Alan Wake isn't typical shooter fare; instead you have to burn off the darkness protecting your foes before you can deal firearm damage. You do this with that deadliest of all weapons… the humble flashlight. It's an unusual twist, but proves interesting from both a combat tactics perspective, and a resource management angle.

Stand around with your flashlight tucked into your pocket and if it hits an enemy, it'll deal minor damage. Raise it up by aiming you gun with LT though and just a few seconds of concentrated contact on a possessed villager will leave them ripe for death by bullet. The downside is that the latter drains your torch battery, which will slowly replenish if you don't let it drain completely, but will require a replacement if you do. As a result, we found ourselves shuffling Alan's torso to point the beam at enemies from afar, and only raising our pistol when they got up close. Effective, but also a little bit risky.

With the basics down, Microsoft's PR team jumped us forward into the game proper. That intro, as it turned out, had been Alan's latest in a long sequence of freaky dreams, foretelling the visit of him and his wife to the town of Bright Falls, where as it turns out, he's something of a celebrity.

Fame unfortunate

A famous suspense novelist, Alan is in Bright Falls to try and overcome the writer's block that's plagued him since his last published hit. Entering the town diner he's greeted by a cardboard cutout of himself in the window, and a fanatical waitress who couldn't be happier to see our hero. "I've read all your books!" she exclaims with glee. "Fans always make me nervous" rumbles Alan's inner monologue as he goes searching for the owner of his pre-booked accommodation. Instead, he comes across a menacingly hooded woman who hands him the keys he seeks and insists he make his way to the cottage at the centre of the lake.

Apparently not wanting us to get too clear a picture of events, Microsoft again step in and jump us forward in the story. Alan is once again in the woods in the dead of night. But something isn't right. His wife is nowhere to be found; shadow-covered villagers are attacking him for real this time; and as we discover upon searching the forest, Alan has a week-long gap in his memory, during which time he apparently wrote a manuscript detailing everything that's now coming true, pages of which are now scattered throughout the wilds.

Just what happened in that missing week? Where's Alan's wife? And how can his phantom-written novel be playing out before his eyes?

We ploughed on, the level's linearity being well-hidden by the dense vegetation, blackest night and plenty of surprise cliff-edges which caused us several instant deaths. As the brush cleared, we even encountered our first puzzle; a generator needing to be activated and a crane moved to create a bridge of logs to run along. All of which built up to a fateful climax, seeing us fending off an army of shadows and killing their leader thanks to some swift dodging and a handily-placed shotgun.

Headspin city

It was then that the biggest headspin happened. Meeting the local sheriff, Alan told her of his plight, only for her to reply with something which couldn't possibly be right. "There hasn't been a cabin in the middle of the lake in years", she protested. Alan took her back to the lake... and it was true.

What the HELL!?!?

Cue the end of the chapter. We have no idea what to expect next, but we can't wait to find out. And with that May release date unmoving, it won't be long before we – and YOU – get to do just that.

Preview by: Mark 'Cliffdiver' Scott
Version Tested: Xbox 360
Preview Published: 26.03.10

Remedy writer Mikki Rautalahti talks LOST, psychological horror, Natal and chapters 1 AND 2 of Alan Wake...

Alan Wake is built on open-world technology, but the first few hours we've played are a relatively linear experience. Will that change later on in the game?

I think the key word here is "relatively". Some of our play areas are pretty wide, but this is not an open-world game. We let that idea go when we decided that what we really wanted Alan Wake to be was an intense, story-driven experience. But the technology was already there, so we take advantage of it. It lets us do some nice things – our play areas can be very large, there's a lot of freedom to building our environments. We really wanted to make sure the Pacific Northwest came to life, and a big part of that was making sure the game felt like there was a lot of room under the sky – that the player wasn't just going through the video game cliché of endless corridors or something. We don't spend a lot of time indoors in Alan Wake.

Horror games have typically gone down one of two routes: Resident Evil is hammed up to the max; Silent Hill can get grotesquely disturbing in places; Alone in the Dark is a little bit in between. How does Alan Wake compare; what does it do differently?

Well... we don't really think of Alan Wake as a horror game, to begin with. I know the distinction is a little hazy, but we like to call it a thriller to differentiate from those other games that typically have a lot of weird creatures, monsters, blood and guts, etc. We're really all about the atmosphere and the tension, the weird moments and the suspense. That's what we thrive on.

And we also have very fast-paced and intense action sequences in the game. You need to mix things up, have variety in there; otherwise you just become numb. It's all about that contrast. And I think we stand out quite a bit there.

You're citing Lost as one of your inspirations in making Alan Wake. As good as Lost is, some people got frustrated with and gave up watching it. Why do you think that was, and if Alan Wake is very similar, is there a worry that the same thing might happen with players putting the pad down halfway through the game?

YI think the biggest problem with Lost is that you get a new episode once a week, and if you watch it like that, it's very easy to get confused, because it's a really dense story with an ensemble cast and a lot of things going on in parallel. There's the old Lost complaint – you know, "they never resolve anything!" But the thing is, I think they do. They answer a lot of questions all the time, but you may not even realize how much it progresses unless you watch the episodes back to back. So to me, it's definitely a box set series. I would never watch it at the glacial pace television doles it out to us. I just don't see the point.

But with Alan Wake, that's not really an issue, because when you've got the game, you've already got the equivalent of the box set. Lost is in its sixth season now. They've been telling that story for a good while now. I don't think any series is ever going to have universal staying power over that kind of a period of time; some people are always going to lose interest.

In any case, Lost is definitely an inspiration for us, but that doesn't mean we're emulating it, or trying to do what they're doing. Our story is very different, for one thing. But we do appreciate the way they maintain the mystery and the tension.

PS3 and PC owners aren't going to get to play Alan Wake. Why? Any plans for a multiformat release somewhere down the line?

Alan Wake is an Xbox 360 exclusive. We're a small studio. I think we have 45 employees right now, and by today's standards, that's really a tiny crowd. That means we have to concentrate on one thing at a time, and for us that is the Xbox 360 version.

Any plans to make Alan Wake Natal compatible?

Natal is an exciting new way to play games, but there are no Natal plans for Alan Wake at the moment.

From a control perspective, how do you think an in-depth, story-driven Action-Adventure like an Alan Wake would work with Natal?

We haven't really talked about Natal a whole lot here, and we don't have any plans for using it. But I have no doubt that it's going to be interesting once Natal launches; I do believe that motion control is going to become more and more prevalent in the future. I'm not sure what that means for games like Alan Wake.

I think a lot of people just assume that as soon as you bring in any degree of motion control, you're going to be standing in front of your television, sweating and panting and looking like an idiot, but that's not necessarily true. There are a lot of things you could do with that stuff, things that don't take away from the traditional gameplay – which, as we all know, is a lot of fun. That's not going to go away I think people are going to want to press buttons for a long time to come.

But I can see a lot of applications for this kind of stuff. You could do really interesting puzzles, or things that are related to our light-based gameplay, for example. I think it's just a question of how well you integrate it into the game, and most importantly, whether it feels fun and natural. But to be clear, these are just thoughts; we don't have any of the Natal technology here, we're not working on it.

You've mentioned you're planning to make a chapter 2 of Alan Wake. Without asking you to give too much away on the first game's story, will the sequel follow directly on from the end of it, or might it be a separate story starring the same lead character?

Well, we know we want to make more of Alan Wake and we've made sure we have planned the story and the world to allow us to do that. We want to build this whole franchise and explore these characters further. But ultimately, the success of the first game will decide whether that will happen or not.

That being said, it was vital for us to have a definite ending for the game. It was important to us that we don't end on a cliffhanger that leaves everything hanging, so we made sure there's an arc to the story and an ending that resolves certain very important key questions. At the same time, though, there are definitely story threads that we want to pick up later. So it's not a situation where the game ends and every character goes home happy and satisfied, and you can close the book on them. But it's not a "holy crap, did they die in the explosion?!" thing, either, if you know what I mean.

Alan Wake took five years to make – how long can we expect to wait for chapter 2?

It's too early to speculate when we haven't even started working on it yet. But I can tell you that Max Payne 2 went a lot faster than Max Payne 1. The technology had been perfected, everyone was familiar with the tools, everyone knew what core gameplay was like – in short, we knew very clearly what we were doing. So that sequel was created much, much more quickly than the original game. I think Alan Wake 2, if we get to make it, is very likely to be completed under similar circumstances. We're working on the Alan Wake DLC now, and I've been amazed by how quickly our guys can put new, playable stuff together.

Are you considering making bite-size, smaller chapters available to download through Xbox Live?

Well, we do have DLC coming up. I can't really say much more about that than I already have, but it's no secret that it's going to be playable content. We're pretty excited about it; it's a lot of fun to be able to brainstorm and come up with brand new stuff. You can't really do that when you're in full-on polishing mode, because so many things are locked down, so it's a welcome change of pace.

Alan Wake's combat is pretty accomplished – any plans for a multiplayer mode?

We're pretty much dedicated to making great single-player experiences, so no, not really. As far as the sequel goes, who knows? I'm a never say never kinda guy. But I don't think there's any point in making a multiplayer mode just for the sake of having a multiplayer mode. Just throwing in deathmatch and CTF isn't gonna cut it; if we were to do it, it'd have to be something unique and fun, something that's worth the effort. Otherwise it's just a me-too feature that may make a great bullet point on the back cover, but if it isn't something that people can get genuinely excited about, what's the point? We're a small team, we have to be careful about what we put our resources into.

Lastly, picture the scene; Alan Wake launches; goes HUGE, and takes over the gaming world. Will that mean we've seen the last of Max Payne?

Well, let me tell you, that's a great scene, absolutely wonderful. Very enjoyable! But as far as Max Payne goes, there's really no connection between that and the success of Alan Wake. I'm not sure people realize that we haven't owned the Max Payne IP for almost a decade now. We couldn't just decide to make a Max Payne game any more than we could decide to make a Mario game. We just don't own the property.

Thanks Mikki

Interview by: Mark 'Let The Light Shine In' Scott
Interview Published: 28.04.10