
"Even if this is a horror experience, it's our version of the horror experience," adds Rowley. The game still has space for moments of humor, light against the dark you might say. The idea of having the entirety of Alan Wake 2 in the Dark Place certainly feels very survival horror, but it also sounds really intense. Where Alan is, it's not a nice place and some of that stuff would not have been possible to do without bringing a different perspective into it."

We can experience that small-town Americana, those quirky characters.


So we can experience Bright Falls, the Pacific Northwest. "So it made a lot of sense to us to bring this alternative perspective into the game, into Alan Wake, from this new character and also making sure that we can experience things that we consider a key part of the IP. "One of the key pillars of this game is this idea of duality, and that's something that's been there since the very beginning," explains Kyle Rowley, game director. There's the symmetry between her and Alan with their narration and seemingly the combat too – as you can read about in my Alan Wake 2 preview – but there's also the balance with Saga able to offer a different perspective for players into Alan Wake 2. "While she is peeling away layers of this mystery, we are peeling away layers of who she truly is, and how she is connected to what's going on"Īlan Wake has always been about balance, and I love the fact that the addition of Saga is only adding to that. She's a huge part of this, and she's exactly who she needs to be for this experience and this story," adds Lake. "In many ways, although this is Alan Wake 2, it's as much Saga's game as it is Alan Wake's game. Saga joins a short line of Remedy heroes, along with our old pal Alan, and more recently Jesse Faden from Control, but this is the first time Remedy has had two heroes vying for headline attention in a single game.

Now, even more than before, we're really conscious of that," Lake explains. "Looking back almost 30 years, if you think about the hero characters that we've created, there are not that many of them through the years. For Alan Wake 2, we'll have two playable heroes, spending just as much time playing as the new co-protagonist as we do the titular writer. Sam Lake has been pondering an Alan Wake game with two protagonists since making Quantum Break, but Remedy's creative director appreciates now how momentous an occasion introducing Saga Anderson is.
