Alan Wake 2 Devs Discuss Dual Protagonist Structure, Confirm Lots of Detective Gameplay

Alan Wake 2 got its first gameplay demonstration at Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest 2023. Following the live event, Remedy also presented the game to the press. We’ll have our own report soon, but in the meantime, YouTuber Danny Peña posted an interview with Co-Directors Sam Lake and Kyle Rowley.

Sam Lake discussed how Alan Wake 2 deals with the dual protagonist structure, leaving a lot of freedom in the hands of players when it comes to using Alan Wake or the newly added Saga Anderson.

Once that introduction with Saga is done, then the player in certain locations is free to switch between them, switch to play Alan Wake in the Dark Place, or switch to play Saga in the Pacific Northwest, and there is no wrong or right way to play from that point on.

If you want you can keep on playing as Alan Wake through the Dark Place experience almost to the end or you can keep on playing a saga almost to the end. Or you can keep on switching at every opportunity you get between them to proceed both sides of the story threads of this experience.

The story of Alan Wake 2 has been structured and built in a way where these two threads are very connected. There is a lot of echoes between them, foreshadowing, and visions between them. They are trying to communicate with each other between the worlds. Depending on which side of any given moment you play first you have a slightly different point of view into what is going on and how this is shaping up. That is the experience.

Alan Wake 2 will differ from the previous games made by Remedy in a few ways. It’ll be their first survival horror game, to begin with, but it also includes puzzles and detective gameplay given that Saga Anderson is an FBI profiler. Players will get to sort the chaos through a Mind Palace feature.

From my perspective, in terms of ambition, I think narratively we are doing very ambitious stuff. Like the different methods we have of telling the story I think is kind of important for us. We do obviously have more linear storytelling like cinematics, we are utilizing live action – we don’t showcase that much in this demo but we are utilizing that, too. Also, in terms of how we utilize it in the game world, that was something that we started with Control. But then also just the breadth of mechanics that we want players to have access to. The first game was very much heavily reliant on its combat. In Alan Wake 2, we wanted to fully embrace the idea of being a profiler, an FBI agent with Saga, so how can we bring gameplay that sells that fantasy?

We have this concept of a Mind Palace that you retreat to and how you utilize the case board to solve puzzles. We wanted to bring more breadth for the player to utilize on a feature level.

Alan Wake 2 is set to launch on October 17th for PC via the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.