Remedy Entertainment has started the marketing cycle for Alan Wake 2 in earnest, which means recent days have brought plenty of new story and gameplay details for the highly anticipated survival horror sequel. Several tidbits have stood out in that period, from the game featuring two playable protagonists – the titular Alan Wake and newcomer FBI profiler Saga Anderson – to how it will allow players to swap between them to experience the story however they wish. That, as you might imagine, is something that’s also going to add plenty of replay value to the game.
Speaking in a recent interview with VGC, Alan Wake 2’s developers touched on that topic in particular, and how they struck a balance between making sure that players can get a proper understanding of the story without having to play through the game multiple times, but still being encouraged to do replays to see and experience new things.
Principal narrative designer Molly Maloney described it as “a tight rope walk”, and added that exploration is also a key component of the game that will add to the replay value in multiple ways.
“We want to make sure the players end up with the minimum viable understanding and make sure that this all makes sense in a way that is meaningful,” she said. “But exploration was a key pillar of this game. And that’s not only physical exploration of spaces, but it’s also, you know, if you don’t talk to Casey in that moment, you don’t necessarily get to experience that conversation later. It’s there, and if you want to avail yourself of it, you certainly can.”
Co-director Kyle Rowley went on to explain the “layered” nature of the game’s story, and how it will encourage players to experience it in different ways across multiple playthrough, even if a single playthrough will give “a good understanding” of the overarching tale.
“The story has kind of been written in a layered way in the sense that on the surface level, on the critical path, you’ll get a good understanding of what’s happened,” he said. “But on subsequent playthroughs, there’ll be things that you discover which maybe slightly change your perspective, like the order in which you play Alan’s experience and Saga’s experience, you will get slightly different perspectives on the story, which can give you a slightly different perspective into the story as a whole. So yeah, we wanted to basically allow players to replay through the game.”
Alan Wake 2 is set to launch on October 17 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
