A few days ago we here at PlanetXbox360.com had the pleasure of sitting down with Mikko Rautalahti and Oskari Häkkinen of Remedy Entertainment to talk about the company's upcoming action-horror game Alan Wake, coming exclusively to the Xbox 360 on May 18, 2010, for the launch of a brand new feature here at the website that will be known as "Behind the Game," where we look at exactly what it takes to create a triple-A video game in this insanely competitive market and the people behind the title. We discussed Alan Wake's gameplay, source material, marketing/PR, exactly what the studio is working on next, and much more. The whole team at Remedy truly is talented (our detailed Alan Wake review will go live on Wednesday of this week - so watch for that) and we want to thank them for taking some time out of their hectic schedules to sit down and discuss the oh-so scary game with us; read the entire interview below.
PlanetXbox360: Quickly as possible explain to our readers exactly who lead-character Alan Wake is, what his purpose of being in this rundown town is, and what inner-elements are causing him to have the insane experience he is; as well as where he is headed and what personal goals he has in Alan Wake.
Remedy: Alan Wake is a writer. He’s a fixture on the bestseller lists, thanks to his popular Alex Casey character, a hard-boiled private detective. However, in his last book, he killed off Casey and started all over from scratch – but it turns out it’s easier said than done. Wake’s suffered from a writer’s block for the past two years, and little by little, it’s made his life miserable and almost wrecked his marriage. To get a bit of a break from this sorry state of affairs, his wife Alice and he take a trip to the picturesque small town of Bright Falls in Washington. It should be a nice little breather for Wake, but it turns out to be a pretty harrowing experience: his wife goes missing, homicidal shadowy men start crawling out of the woodwork, and his very sanity is in doubt. So, you know, probably not the best vacation you ever had, but it makes for an exciting game.
PlanetXbox360: This mysterious book has been part of Alan Wake since the early days, and from the little bits of video or screenshots that the public has been allowed to see can you explain what is the book and how it directly impacts the story and whether or not Alan Wake survives this horrible journey.
Remedy: The manuscript pages are one of the main mysteries in Alan Wake, so obviously I can’t tell you exactly what they’re about. But Wake keeps finding them, and they have an unpleasant habit of coming true. What’s more, they read like his words, but he has no memory of writing them – after all, he’s been suffering from writer’s block. The pages seem to offer clues to what’s happening, so Wake tries to find as many of them as he can, but unfortunately, he’s not the only one who wants them. So all in all, the pages are a big part of the whole mystery we’ve got going on.
PlanetXbox360: What has been the hardest part about marketing a game like Alan Wake, one that has gone through so many trials in early-development; also what were some of those game-changing decisions that had to be made so the game could at the very least finish development.
Remedy: A lot of things changed, of course, but I don’t think this process was nearly as dramatic as you might think. I think a key thing in any major project is to accept that there’s no such thing as perfection. It’s an ideal, not a realistic goal. But change is a constant, because making games is an inherently iterative process: you come up with something, you refine it a little, you play it, you tweak it, you keep doing that until it works. The hard part is recognizing when something doesn't work, because then you need to take it out, and that can be difficult because if you're spent a lot of time and effort on something, there’s an emotional investment. You need to let go of that ego. Anyway, I don’t think Alan Wake’s development time has much of an impact on its marketing. There are plenty of people who already know all about Alan Wake, but by now they know whether they’re interested in it. They’ve already got that pre-order in, or they’ll read the reviews and hear what their friends think, and then they’ll make an informed decision about it. I think marketing is at its most useful when the target audience is the people who don’t really know the product yet, and with them the development time is probably a kind of a non-issue. The biggest marketing challenge may well be the fact that our game isn’t about some kind of a grizzled super soldier with a huge gun – it’s a thriller. We thrive on atmosphere and suspense. But the recent success of very story-driven games makes me kind of optimistic.
PlanetXbox360: Do you see Alan Wake as a single-game, one that ends with a definitive answer, or is it something that could turn into a long-running series; if so will Alan be present throughout the entire storyline (all hypothetical) or are there places in the story for new "main" characters to be introduced; any chance of books, comics, movies, action figures, branded flashlights?
Remedy: We certainly wanted to build a game that has a lot of storytelling and franchise-building potential even after this first instalment of it is finished. There’s a lot more story we can tell here; I suppose it mostly depends on whether people are interested, and nobody has a crystal ball. But it’s no secret that we would like to do a “second season” of Alan Wake. Hopefully we can. Beyond that, who knows? That said, we do have a very definitive ending for Alan Wake. We spent a lot of time on that, and it was always clear to us that we didn’t want to end things in a major cliffhanger – you know, Wake rounding a corner at the bad guy’s lair, finding the unmasked Dr. Evil McMalevolent there, going “Oh my God, it’s YOU!” – but we cut away before you see who the bad guy is, roll credits. Or something like that. I mean, that kind of a thing can be great if you do it well, but we just didn’t want that. Of course, I’m not saying we resolve everything. There’s much more we’d like to do with our world and characters. But there’s a very definite arc to our story, and we take it to its inevitable conclusion. I know there’s been a lot of speculation about what’s going on in the game, or how it ends, and I think I can fairly say that it’s not what most people expect. I’m not even talking about what actually happens at the end, I just think the tone and the drama there are going to take a lot of people by surprise. It gets pretty emotional. I hope that’s how the players feel about it.
PlanetXbox360: Alan Wake has been compared to Resident Evil and Silent Hill a lot, more recently the eyes turned on Heavy Rain; what can AW do to differentiate itself from these titles and explain the exact type of game Alan Wake is in 5 sentences or less.
Remedy: Heavy Rain is a fantastic game, but I’m not really sure if comparing Alan Wake to it serves any real purpose, because if you take any one minute of gameplay from Heavy Rain and compare it to any one minute of gameplay from Alan Wake – or just about any game, really – the differences should be glaringly obvious. The comparisons to Resident Evil and Silent Hill are a lot more reasonable, but Alan Wake isn’t really like them, either. Our action sequences are very smooth and fast-paced, and we don’t really do monsters – which is not to say there isn’t anything mysterious or supernatural afoot in Bright Falls, but we’re more about tension and atmosphere than we are about spilling blood and guts all over the place. In the end, I think those games tend to be a little more rooted in fantasy than we are – we strive for a certain degree of realism, or at least an enduring illusion of realism.
This feature interview concludes on the next page, please click below to continue with the team from Remedy Entertainment as they go into more detail on Alan Wake.
