I didn't have Xbox One but I did have Alan Wake on 360 and it was a solid game but it doesn't have replay vaule to me and didn't understand why would need to be remastered on Xbox One?.
Possible Alan Wake Remaster or Sequel for XBOX ONE - Alan Wake 2 mentioned
- Thread starter Kamikaze Revy
- Start date
Grand Conde
Superstar
X-Box needs games, any games.
Well, I wouldn't worry about it then but I have my PS4
Look down from the balcony at a bunch of starving peasants and tell them to raise their hands if they want a spam sandwich brehs...
Very much so
Counter react to God of War 3 being remasted with alan wake brehs 
At least ask for the cool forgotten gems like jades empire
At least ask for the cool forgotten gems like jades empire
Counter react to God of War 3 being remasted with alan wake brehs
At least ask for the cool forgotten gems like jades empire
Counter react to God of War 3 being remasted with alan wake brehs
At least ask for the cool forgotten gems like jades empire
at the bold....YOU GOT THAT RIGHT.....WE WANT JADE EMPIRE
Alan Wake is Microsoft's ocean of possibilities
“It’s not a lake, it’s an ocean”.
As the first episode of Alan Wake’s weirdly wonderful eponymous game drew to a close, I was in smitten. The setting was intoxicating – a heady mix of Twin Peaks, Stephen King and that special Remedy magic – the style was right up my alley. Nick Cave’s “Up Jumped The Devil” played over the episodes credits before the second episode began (completely with a “Previously on Alan Wake” catch-up). Episodic gameplay is all the rage these days of course, but back in 2010 it was truly novel. More novel, the entirety of Alan Wake’s adventure was on the disc; its episodic stylings were just that – style, an attempt to evoke those cliff-hanger endings of TV shows and pulp horror novels that developers Remedy obviously loved.
So, why write about Alan Wake now? Remedy have since moved on to the upcoming Quantum Break and there hasn’t been movement on the franchise since 2012’s digital-only Alan Wake’s American Nightmare (an off-beat action orientated time-loop, inspired by cult TV shows like The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone). Well, rumour has it that a HD remake is in the works for Xbox One has a pre-order incentive for Quantum Break (if true, I am ALL over THAT!), but there’s more to it than that. For me, Alan Wake is a unique franchise and one Microsoft is very lucky to own. It’s a franchise that, first and foremost, deserves to have its, as of yet, incomplete story completed. It’s a franchise that, as American Nightmare proved, is flexible enough to suit different genres. Finally, it’s a franchise that can straddle media just like Halo – it’s ready made for TV, graphic novels, books and god knows what else. All it needs is a bit of faith from the big M.
“One thing is certain, this scene takes place in another time and another place... far, far away... from Night Springs”.
So why is it a franchise that doesn’t appear to be a major player for Microsoft? Remedy certainly have a lot of love for it; creative chief and all-round legend Sam Lake has confirmed his ambition to return to Wake on a number of occasions. On the surface, it’s commercially successful with the main instalment shifting over 3.5 million lifetime units. But that doesn’t tell the whole story – that 3.5 million includes Xbox 360 AND PC sales, with a big chunk of those being given away as free in an Xbox 360 Xmas console bundle back in 2011 and a PC charity humble bundle. Those sales also came over a 4 year period – not ideal and not an amazing set of figures for a console exclusive.
So why the struggle? Wake was a critical darling (TIME magazine voted it as its number one game for 2010) and had all the correct ingredients for success – a strong hype campaign, terrific, innovative gameplay and an easily marketable protagonist. One thing Microsoft probably didn’t see coming was the level of piracy; Wake is said to be the most illegally downloaded Xbox 360 game with a staggering (and estimated) 1.1 million illegal downloads. Another major issue was Wake’s episodic nature. In 2015, your average gamer is savvy enough to understand what episodic is and we’re comfortable with DLC and digital vs physical. Not so much 5 years ago. In 2010, no-one was really sure what episodic meant – especially in Wake’s case where the entire game would be available on disc, but split into bite sized chunks. It’s tough to sell a game to customer who isn’t sure just what it is they are buying.
Nowadays, that isn’t a problem. Episodic gaming is only getting bigger and Alan Wake was practically built for it. American Nightmare was a toe in the water; a digital experiment to see if that type of distribution was viable – as well as trying a more action-orientated approach and changing the style of the narrative to a more ‘Outer Limits’ Americana as opposed to the original’s surreal thrills. It was a resounding success in all quarters.
“It was a beautiful place. I told myself I could rest here, sleep here and forget about my work”.
If the rumours are true, Microsoft still have Alan Wake on their collective mind. I’m not a huge fan of the steady stream of HD remakes released at full-price plaguing this new generation, but Wake as a free pre-order incentive could be a stroke of genius – not only for Quantum Break’s commercial chances but as a kick-start for Alan Wake’s fortunes. It’s also a tantalising glimpse into Microsoft’s future plans – a Conker: Live and Reloaded remake to entice you into buying Rare’s next game or how about a HD makeover for Crimson Skies to ensure your hard-earned is given over for Crackdown 3? But I digress.
Attaching Wake to a game as tantalising as Quantum Break would ensure an increase in mindshare for the property – and a cult following already exists. Type “Alan Wake” into your favourite search engine and the top result is “Alan Wake 2”. The demand is, quietly, there. And there’s endless possibilities. Wake is about a world created by the imagination and words of a writer, a world where one man’s creativity can unleash anything. Therefore, Alan Wake 2, Alan Wake the TV show (hopefully of a higher quality than the games in-world tongue-in-cheek horror TV show Night Springs!), Alan Wake the novel could be about anything, anywhere, anytime. Microsoft and Remedy just need to get creative to unlock the potential this universe clearly has and give it the future it richly deserves.
If the Alan Wake HD remake see’s the light of day, I implore you to (legally) download it. If you’re still gaming on Xbox 360 and have never played the series, download them now through the marketplace – they’re chip as chips. Same on PC. Give Wake a chance and I’m confident you’ll fall in love like I did. As old Alan might say, let’s send Microsoft a signal. They’re sitting on an ocean of potential and we want more. Alan Wake was ahead of its time in many ways, and that time might just be now.
“It’s not a lake, it’s an ocean”.
As the first episode of Alan Wake’s weirdly wonderful eponymous game drew to a close, I was in smitten. The setting was intoxicating – a heady mix of Twin Peaks, Stephen King and that special Remedy magic – the style was right up my alley. Nick Cave’s “Up Jumped The Devil” played over the episodes credits before the second episode began (completely with a “Previously on Alan Wake” catch-up). Episodic gameplay is all the rage these days of course, but back in 2010 it was truly novel. More novel, the entirety of Alan Wake’s adventure was on the disc; its episodic stylings were just that – style, an attempt to evoke those cliff-hanger endings of TV shows and pulp horror novels that developers Remedy obviously loved.
So, why write about Alan Wake now? Remedy have since moved on to the upcoming Quantum Break and there hasn’t been movement on the franchise since 2012’s digital-only Alan Wake’s American Nightmare (an off-beat action orientated time-loop, inspired by cult TV shows like The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone). Well, rumour has it that a HD remake is in the works for Xbox One has a pre-order incentive for Quantum Break (if true, I am ALL over THAT!), but there’s more to it than that. For me, Alan Wake is a unique franchise and one Microsoft is very lucky to own. It’s a franchise that, first and foremost, deserves to have its, as of yet, incomplete story completed. It’s a franchise that, as American Nightmare proved, is flexible enough to suit different genres. Finally, it’s a franchise that can straddle media just like Halo – it’s ready made for TV, graphic novels, books and god knows what else. All it needs is a bit of faith from the big M.
“One thing is certain, this scene takes place in another time and another place... far, far away... from Night Springs”.
So why is it a franchise that doesn’t appear to be a major player for Microsoft? Remedy certainly have a lot of love for it; creative chief and all-round legend Sam Lake has confirmed his ambition to return to Wake on a number of occasions. On the surface, it’s commercially successful with the main instalment shifting over 3.5 million lifetime units. But that doesn’t tell the whole story – that 3.5 million includes Xbox 360 AND PC sales, with a big chunk of those being given away as free in an Xbox 360 Xmas console bundle back in 2011 and a PC charity humble bundle. Those sales also came over a 4 year period – not ideal and not an amazing set of figures for a console exclusive.
So why the struggle? Wake was a critical darling (TIME magazine voted it as its number one game for 2010) and had all the correct ingredients for success – a strong hype campaign, terrific, innovative gameplay and an easily marketable protagonist. One thing Microsoft probably didn’t see coming was the level of piracy; Wake is said to be the most illegally downloaded Xbox 360 game with a staggering (and estimated) 1.1 million illegal downloads. Another major issue was Wake’s episodic nature. In 2015, your average gamer is savvy enough to understand what episodic is and we’re comfortable with DLC and digital vs physical. Not so much 5 years ago. In 2010, no-one was really sure what episodic meant – especially in Wake’s case where the entire game would be available on disc, but split into bite sized chunks. It’s tough to sell a game to customer who isn’t sure just what it is they are buying.
Nowadays, that isn’t a problem. Episodic gaming is only getting bigger and Alan Wake was practically built for it. American Nightmare was a toe in the water; a digital experiment to see if that type of distribution was viable – as well as trying a more action-orientated approach and changing the style of the narrative to a more ‘Outer Limits’ Americana as opposed to the original’s surreal thrills. It was a resounding success in all quarters.
“It was a beautiful place. I told myself I could rest here, sleep here and forget about my work”.
If the rumours are true, Microsoft still have Alan Wake on their collective mind. I’m not a huge fan of the steady stream of HD remakes released at full-price plaguing this new generation, but Wake as a free pre-order incentive could be a stroke of genius – not only for Quantum Break’s commercial chances but as a kick-start for Alan Wake’s fortunes. It’s also a tantalising glimpse into Microsoft’s future plans – a Conker: Live and Reloaded remake to entice you into buying Rare’s next game or how about a HD makeover for Crimson Skies to ensure your hard-earned is given over for Crackdown 3? But I digress.
Attaching Wake to a game as tantalising as Quantum Break would ensure an increase in mindshare for the property – and a cult following already exists. Type “Alan Wake” into your favourite search engine and the top result is “Alan Wake 2”. The demand is, quietly, there. And there’s endless possibilities. Wake is about a world created by the imagination and words of a writer, a world where one man’s creativity can unleash anything. Therefore, Alan Wake 2, Alan Wake the TV show (hopefully of a higher quality than the games in-world tongue-in-cheek horror TV show Night Springs!), Alan Wake the novel could be about anything, anywhere, anytime. Microsoft and Remedy just need to get creative to unlock the potential this universe clearly has and give it the future it richly deserves.
If the Alan Wake HD remake see’s the light of day, I implore you to (legally) download it. If you’re still gaming on Xbox 360 and have never played the series, download them now through the marketplace – they’re chip as chips. Same on PC. Give Wake a chance and I’m confident you’ll fall in love like I did. As old Alan might say, let’s send Microsoft a signal. They’re sitting on an ocean of potential and we want more. Alan Wake was ahead of its time in many ways, and that time might just be now.
Krazy
Rifle weh taller dan palm tree
Game was steaming garbage boring as fukk.
Should've been truly open world.
Should've been truly open world.
HarlemRiverDrive
Discount Meat Co. off 79th
Game sold 4.5 million copies. as of 2011 it sold 1.5 on 360. Guessing the other 2- 2.5 million are PC sales.
Alan Wake is a good game.
Alan Wake is a good game.
Introducing the Alan Wake 2 you will never play
The prototype
It's one thing to want a sequel to your game. Even planning the story out for a sequel isn't that surprising. But Remedy has a working prototype, one it created about five years ago to show off Alan Wake 2.
It used that prototype to create a pitch video to shop around to potential publishers. Lake said the video is not meant to be the opening of the sequel, but a taste of what was to come.
"It's more like a mood piece," he said. "The high-level thematic elements of what's there.
"Clearly in the prototype we see Alan Wake himself as a more experienced player in the secret war against the forces of darkness."
The prototype also shows off enemies not seen in the original game, new settings and a new mechanic that the team was excited about.
"You can see a glimpse of rewriting reality in the video," Lake said. "Those were new things that we started prototyping and working on."
Narratively, Lake said, the idea was to continue Wake's journey and his struggle with the rising force of evil in the sequel.
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3620986/AW2_2010_reality_tear_01.0.jpg)
Concept art for Alan Wake 2: A reality tear
"It's clear that escaping from the dark place can't be too easy and there should be a price to pay," he said. "So going into the sequel, there needs to be further journey and story arc for him to escape."
As it turns out, the prototype Lake showed Polygon (which you can see above) isn't the team's only prototype. It's just the most polished piece of gameplay the studio has for Alan Wake 2, the one it used to pitch the game.
"We had different gameplay tests and elements and some assets."
"There were a lot of rougher gameplay prototypes," he said. "We had different gameplay tests and elements and some assets."
Eventually, many of those bits and pieces ended up in Alan Wake's American Nightmare, a sort of stand-alone story told within the universe of Alan Wake. That downloadable game, released in 2012 on Xbox 360 and later on Windows PC, was, it seems, Remedy's final realization that Alan Wake 2 wasn't happening anytime soon.
"The setting, even some of the enemies, ended up in American Nightmare, which was a fun, small project with very limited resources," Lake said. "You can glimpse certain aspects of American Nightmare in the prototype."
It's unusual for a studio to allow an outsider, let alone the public, to see a prototype for a game that was never published.
My first thought was that Alan Wake 2 was completely dead.
When Remedy first told me it was going to let me look at the prototype, my first thought was that Alan Wake 2 was completely dead.
But that's not why Lake and the rest of the developers at Remedy were so comfortable releasing it.
"The thing that made this idea of releasing this prototype demo OK is that it is very much on a high level," Lake said. "There are no spoilers in it. That being said, I do hope we get an opportunity to work on Alan Wake 2. I want to do more Wake at some point."
Last year, Lake publicly told all of those Alan Wake fans that the sequel wasn't in the works because the studio didn't feel like the time was right. The scope of what Remedy wants to create didn't match with what it was able to do while working on Quantum Break.
"It wouldn't have been the sequel that Alan Wake deserves to get," he said. "But the possibilities are still out there."
And the timing certainly has improved.
Alan Wake 2 to Quantum Break
While Remedy had a publishing deal with Microsoft for the original game, the studio owns the rights to the Alan Wake franchise. So once it was happy with the early work prototyping Alan Wake 2, Remedy began to take the video around to a number of publishers.
Eventually, it arrived once more at Microsoft.
"They have been really supportive about Alan Wake and [now head of Xbox] Phil Spencer has been awesomely supportive when it comes to Remedy and Alan Wake along the way," Lake said. "We showed it to Microsoft and I guess at the time Microsoft was looking for something slightly different for their portfolio.
"Quite quickly our discussion about Alan Wake 2 turned into something else and that something else turned into Quantum Break, which was great and very exciting."
Quantum Break was first shown to the outside world during the Xbox One reveal event on Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus in May 2013.
Like Alan Wake, Quantum Break is a third-person action game, though it seems to rely more heavily on shooting. The game takes place after a time-travel experiment goes awry on the campus of a fictional northeastern university. One of the major twists to the game's design is that it will include a significant live-action element. After playing through an episode of the game, players watch an episode of the show. The show, and the game, are both impacted by player choice.
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3620988/AW2_2010_reality_tear_03.0.jpg)
Concept art for Alan Wake 2: Wake navigates a reality tear
While Quantum Break was initially set for a 2014 release, it was later delayed to 2015. This year, the game was pushed back to 2016 to give Remedy the time to polish the game, and move it away from Microsoft's other exclusives due to hit by the end of this year.
"The team and the work is very much focused on Quantum Break," Lake said. "We are living in Quantum Break land and enjoying ourselves, but at the same time we are in a place where we are starting to look into the future and starting to have discussions about what is next."
There are multiple possibilities, Lake said. The team could, for instance, work on another game in the Quantum Break universe — a backdrop that, as with Alan Wake, was not created for a single game.
"Among other things," he added, "we are discussing the possibility of an Alan Wake sequel with multiple partners, but nothing has been decided."
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3620984/AW2_2010_arizona_nightdesert.0.jpg)
Concept art for Alan Wake 2: The Arizona desert would later appear in American Nightmare
Whatever happens, Remedy needs a next big thing. The studio has grown quite a bit working on Quantum Break, a game Lake describes as a very ambitious project. Where Remedy had a headcount of 85 as Alan Wake was wrapping up, the studio is now up to 135.
Microsoft's Spencer, a longtime and public supporter of both Remedy and Alan Wake, told Polygon he remains a fan of the franchise.
"It was one of the most engrossing and cinematic games of the Xbox 360 generation and I think it would be interesting to see what Remedy would do if they decided to revisit the IP again," he said. "In our industry, for better or worse, we sometimes have a tendency to let the success of a game immediately dictate the next project, but Remedy is a studio that follows their own passion.
"I love what they are doing with Quantum Break — they're focused on making a great game. After that, I'm sure they will spend time deciding what they are passionate about next."
Alan Wake 2
A lot has changed since 2010, and not just in games.
Since the release of Alan Wake, the notion of standardized television programming has been torn apart and reassembled. Big, original shows like House of Cards, Daredevil and Transparent are released an entire season at a time. Cable television stalwarts like HBO now offer stand-alone service to cord-cutters.
Where episodic gaming was once unusual, it has now found a champion in Telltale Games' wildly popular Walking Dead series.
The shift in the way entertainment is now consumed is likely to impact any future Alan Wake games.
Could a potential Alan Wake 2 be released one episode at a time, instead of on disc, as a sort of gaming service, I asked Lake.
"Thinking about it, episodic and in some ways the concept of game as a service, is doing really, really well out there," Lake said. "Episodic is just very much part of how we pace our experiences, as it was with Alan Wake, as it is with Quantum Break now. In some ways that would make sense; not saying that some other approach wouldn't work just as well. But I'm sure that would be part of the discussion, at least."
And, Lake points out, there continues to be "awesome, revolutionary" storytelling going on in television.
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3620992/AW2_2010_watery_flood.0.jpg)
Concept art for Alan Wake 2: Wake wades through a flooded city
"It continues to be an awesome source of inspiration for our storytelling," he said. "Things like True Detective and other great TV series out there. And talking about Alan Wake and what were our sources of inspiration for the original Alan Wake, there are interesting things happening about that as well.
"Both Twin Peaks and X-Files are coming back, which is something I'm really excited about and looking forward to."
With Quantum Break winding down, and Remedy's interest in an Alan Wake sequel scaling up, it feels like the timing could be right. Add to that renewed interest in the sort of storytelling that Alan Wake comes from, and a desire to see original episodic programming in places other than cable, and you might have a perfect storm for a next Alan Wake game.
Does Microsoft have the appetite now for Alan Wake 2, I asked Lake, or is it still looking for something different?
"I wouldn't start guessing," he said. "But definitely we'll have those discussions."
And what are the odds of us seeing an Alan Wake sequel published with or without Microsoft?
"It's hard to guess," he said. "I would love to do that ... it feels that time has only refined the ideas of what the sequel would be, which is great. It's almost, in some ways and on some level, that all of this extra time to think it about it has made it tastier and more exciting.
"Only time will tell."
http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/20/8450329/alan-wake-2-prototype-video-interview
The prototype
It's one thing to want a sequel to your game. Even planning the story out for a sequel isn't that surprising. But Remedy has a working prototype, one it created about five years ago to show off Alan Wake 2.
It used that prototype to create a pitch video to shop around to potential publishers. Lake said the video is not meant to be the opening of the sequel, but a taste of what was to come.
"It's more like a mood piece," he said. "The high-level thematic elements of what's there.
"Clearly in the prototype we see Alan Wake himself as a more experienced player in the secret war against the forces of darkness."
The prototype also shows off enemies not seen in the original game, new settings and a new mechanic that the team was excited about.
"You can see a glimpse of rewriting reality in the video," Lake said. "Those were new things that we started prototyping and working on."
Narratively, Lake said, the idea was to continue Wake's journey and his struggle with the rising force of evil in the sequel.
Concept art for Alan Wake 2: A reality tear
"It's clear that escaping from the dark place can't be too easy and there should be a price to pay," he said. "So going into the sequel, there needs to be further journey and story arc for him to escape."
As it turns out, the prototype Lake showed Polygon (which you can see above) isn't the team's only prototype. It's just the most polished piece of gameplay the studio has for Alan Wake 2, the one it used to pitch the game.
"We had different gameplay tests and elements and some assets."
"There were a lot of rougher gameplay prototypes," he said. "We had different gameplay tests and elements and some assets."
Eventually, many of those bits and pieces ended up in Alan Wake's American Nightmare, a sort of stand-alone story told within the universe of Alan Wake. That downloadable game, released in 2012 on Xbox 360 and later on Windows PC, was, it seems, Remedy's final realization that Alan Wake 2 wasn't happening anytime soon.
"The setting, even some of the enemies, ended up in American Nightmare, which was a fun, small project with very limited resources," Lake said. "You can glimpse certain aspects of American Nightmare in the prototype."
It's unusual for a studio to allow an outsider, let alone the public, to see a prototype for a game that was never published.
My first thought was that Alan Wake 2 was completely dead.
When Remedy first told me it was going to let me look at the prototype, my first thought was that Alan Wake 2 was completely dead.
But that's not why Lake and the rest of the developers at Remedy were so comfortable releasing it.
"The thing that made this idea of releasing this prototype demo OK is that it is very much on a high level," Lake said. "There are no spoilers in it. That being said, I do hope we get an opportunity to work on Alan Wake 2. I want to do more Wake at some point."
Last year, Lake publicly told all of those Alan Wake fans that the sequel wasn't in the works because the studio didn't feel like the time was right. The scope of what Remedy wants to create didn't match with what it was able to do while working on Quantum Break.
"It wouldn't have been the sequel that Alan Wake deserves to get," he said. "But the possibilities are still out there."
And the timing certainly has improved.
Alan Wake 2 to Quantum Break
While Remedy had a publishing deal with Microsoft for the original game, the studio owns the rights to the Alan Wake franchise. So once it was happy with the early work prototyping Alan Wake 2, Remedy began to take the video around to a number of publishers.
Eventually, it arrived once more at Microsoft.
"They have been really supportive about Alan Wake and [now head of Xbox] Phil Spencer has been awesomely supportive when it comes to Remedy and Alan Wake along the way," Lake said. "We showed it to Microsoft and I guess at the time Microsoft was looking for something slightly different for their portfolio.
"Quite quickly our discussion about Alan Wake 2 turned into something else and that something else turned into Quantum Break, which was great and very exciting."
Quantum Break was first shown to the outside world during the Xbox One reveal event on Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus in May 2013.
Like Alan Wake, Quantum Break is a third-person action game, though it seems to rely more heavily on shooting. The game takes place after a time-travel experiment goes awry on the campus of a fictional northeastern university. One of the major twists to the game's design is that it will include a significant live-action element. After playing through an episode of the game, players watch an episode of the show. The show, and the game, are both impacted by player choice.
Concept art for Alan Wake 2: Wake navigates a reality tear
While Quantum Break was initially set for a 2014 release, it was later delayed to 2015. This year, the game was pushed back to 2016 to give Remedy the time to polish the game, and move it away from Microsoft's other exclusives due to hit by the end of this year.
"The team and the work is very much focused on Quantum Break," Lake said. "We are living in Quantum Break land and enjoying ourselves, but at the same time we are in a place where we are starting to look into the future and starting to have discussions about what is next."
There are multiple possibilities, Lake said. The team could, for instance, work on another game in the Quantum Break universe — a backdrop that, as with Alan Wake, was not created for a single game.
"Among other things," he added, "we are discussing the possibility of an Alan Wake sequel with multiple partners, but nothing has been decided."
Concept art for Alan Wake 2: The Arizona desert would later appear in American Nightmare
Whatever happens, Remedy needs a next big thing. The studio has grown quite a bit working on Quantum Break, a game Lake describes as a very ambitious project. Where Remedy had a headcount of 85 as Alan Wake was wrapping up, the studio is now up to 135.
Microsoft's Spencer, a longtime and public supporter of both Remedy and Alan Wake, told Polygon he remains a fan of the franchise.
"It was one of the most engrossing and cinematic games of the Xbox 360 generation and I think it would be interesting to see what Remedy would do if they decided to revisit the IP again," he said. "In our industry, for better or worse, we sometimes have a tendency to let the success of a game immediately dictate the next project, but Remedy is a studio that follows their own passion.
"I love what they are doing with Quantum Break — they're focused on making a great game. After that, I'm sure they will spend time deciding what they are passionate about next."
Alan Wake 2
A lot has changed since 2010, and not just in games.
Since the release of Alan Wake, the notion of standardized television programming has been torn apart and reassembled. Big, original shows like House of Cards, Daredevil and Transparent are released an entire season at a time. Cable television stalwarts like HBO now offer stand-alone service to cord-cutters.
Where episodic gaming was once unusual, it has now found a champion in Telltale Games' wildly popular Walking Dead series.
The shift in the way entertainment is now consumed is likely to impact any future Alan Wake games.
Could a potential Alan Wake 2 be released one episode at a time, instead of on disc, as a sort of gaming service, I asked Lake.
"Thinking about it, episodic and in some ways the concept of game as a service, is doing really, really well out there," Lake said. "Episodic is just very much part of how we pace our experiences, as it was with Alan Wake, as it is with Quantum Break now. In some ways that would make sense; not saying that some other approach wouldn't work just as well. But I'm sure that would be part of the discussion, at least."
And, Lake points out, there continues to be "awesome, revolutionary" storytelling going on in television.
Concept art for Alan Wake 2: Wake wades through a flooded city
"It continues to be an awesome source of inspiration for our storytelling," he said. "Things like True Detective and other great TV series out there. And talking about Alan Wake and what were our sources of inspiration for the original Alan Wake, there are interesting things happening about that as well.
"Both Twin Peaks and X-Files are coming back, which is something I'm really excited about and looking forward to."
With Quantum Break winding down, and Remedy's interest in an Alan Wake sequel scaling up, it feels like the timing could be right. Add to that renewed interest in the sort of storytelling that Alan Wake comes from, and a desire to see original episodic programming in places other than cable, and you might have a perfect storm for a next Alan Wake game.
Does Microsoft have the appetite now for Alan Wake 2, I asked Lake, or is it still looking for something different?
"I wouldn't start guessing," he said. "But definitely we'll have those discussions."
And what are the odds of us seeing an Alan Wake sequel published with or without Microsoft?
"It's hard to guess," he said. "I would love to do that ... it feels that time has only refined the ideas of what the sequel would be, which is great. It's almost, in some ways and on some level, that all of this extra time to think it about it has made it tastier and more exciting.
"Only time will tell."
http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/20/8450329/alan-wake-2-prototype-video-interview
Alan Wake 2 Teased by Remedy Entertainment’s Sam Lake
Creative Director Sam Lake revealed in Game Informer’s 100 question Q&A session that Remedy Entertainment might eventually make Alan Wake 2.
There were several previous hints about the sequel, and now it seems that it is on the table of future Remedy projects. When Lake was asked “will we ever get to play Alan Wake 2?,” his answer was decisive and one word, and it was “yes.”
Alan Wake is a psychological horror game, and even after Lake’s answer, we still don’t know when will we see an actual reveal of its sequel.