TL;DR: This was the greatest 6/10 game ever made. The story is fantastic but the actual *game* is massively clunky!

Thoughts:

I started Alan Wake years ago, but never actually finished it because the console went with my ex.. In the summer sale, I decided to pick up AW1 (the original, not remaster) and Control Ultimate Edition on Steam. I spent the last 2 days playing through AW1 (not the DLCs) and I finished a few hours ago. I loved it, from a story perspective, but god was it rough in some of the polish.

Things I loved:

The story is catnip to me. I love Twin Peaks, Stephen King, In the Mouth of Madness, Silent Hill, all things metafictional. It was like it was tailor made for me. The manuscripts as a mechanic & narrative device really were fantastic too; hints for gameplay elements (thank you tornado tip) and an additional layer of the weird multi-threaded timeline of the story? So good. Some of the scenes were a little corny but I appreciated that too in a small town Americana pastiche kind of way. Back and forth, flashbacks, dreams, the Cauldron Lake "ideas to objects" sequence, radio shows, tv shows... It was so rich and full in every way. While the episodes actual lengths varied wildly, I felt that they followed really clear "episode thriller" arcs and felt natural (Episode 3 was a bit long though).

Most of the set pieces are really great climaxes or just exciting moments. The rock show at the Anderson farm is a 10/10 gaming moment, I loved the combine harvester fight too. The spinning bridge on the way to the dam was a really cool moment.

My favourite characters were Nightingale for all his writer names (the Dan Brown call out made me laugh out loud), and Weaver (love a Log Lady reference). Especially because Weaver came across as a not-particularly-happy-helper too. She was fulfilling her role and took it very seriously, but some of the yellow writing & her comments about being used made me tense there was a betrayal coming in that tunnel...

Music is 10/10. Both the in game ambient music, the random bits of Poets of the Fall or Old Gods to appear, and the episode credit songs. The TV structure in general lent itself really well to the use of full tracks, so I loved that.

What didn't I love?

The enemies were incredibly shallow. The variety over all was pretty disappointing, but I think made worse by their frequency. A lot of the forest sections are just "run 50m, aha! 3 more guys!" over and over. And I didn't personally mind the gameplay but "torch -> bang" on a loop for the same enemies gets a little tiring. Although maybe playing RE4:Remake recently with rambo Leon and his 40 weapons against hundreds of different enemies tainted my mind a little here.

Anything with the birds kind of sucked. They weren't difficult but a lot of the sequences on mine carts, cable cars, or narrow bridges felt far more annoying than anything tense, especially with the slow-mo "Oh look!" moment for birds constantly.

The constant removal of your stuff got kind of silly. Some made obvious sense: being arrested, Hartman's clinic. But some felt like a weird way to just thin out your resources for difficulty. You fall out of the helicopter, get a revolver and torch, survive 10 seconds in front of a door, then immediately get a rifle, flares, tons of ammo etc.? Why not just let him have his stuff and make the door moment more enemy-intense? Or even worse, you take the gun off the Sheriff from the dam, and you set off on your own. You're telling me you only take that gun??? Not even a torch Alan!? You drive 300m down the road and get a few random things, drive into the tunnel and get fully re-equipped anyway! I couldn't decide if it was a poor attempt at balance (you load up to defend the helicopter, have to lose it all so you're not OP after) or it was something weird about how the levels were made hah.

And there's some 2010 jank. A few segments had serious lag issues on my pretty serious computer. Especially when the enemy fog + lightning effects (esp. around the transformer station) and spawns all lined up things got real 1 fps a couple of times. I also had to set the game to Windowed before closing every time, or it'd black-screen forever. There are some online fixes for these and obviously the game got remastered. But it has real "first big ambitious project in years" energy.

Overall opinion:

If this was taken just for its story: this is a 10/10 gaming experience, one of the great examples of storytelling in the medium.

Stripped of its story: this is not tolerable in my opinion.

Together: it's a solid 6/10 that I thoroughly enjoyed. Like a poorly made indie film with the best acting you've ever seen and an experimental screenplay.

I want more.

What's next?

I vaguely know the setting & idea of Control. A friend told me that since I loved Fringe (tv) that I'll also really love that. And I know a fair bit about AW2 (seen a lot of clips, the song sequence, some of the cooler tech moments of forest transitions etc.). I'm very excited and I get the impression that the roughness of AW1 wasn't really carried over. But:

What do I play next after the two AW1 DLC?

I know Control shares the universe but is it important narratively to AW2? My plan is to play both DLCs of AW1 --> whatever should come next. Can I AW1 -> AW2? Or is Control an important stepping stone?

🫢

Part 2 of some of the best shots i took with photo mode, enjoy and tell me your opinion, did i nail it or not?

The story seems really interesting and I'd like to play it while my wife watches, but she is scared shitless of horror, Control was ok to her though.

Having such a blast with this game so far!!! Getting ready for Control 2

They were performing at a festival in Finland last weekend. It was one of the best or even maybe the best show of the whole event. They’re really good live band.

I’ve been replaying Alan Wake 1 on PS5 (PS4 version) the past few weeks, going for 100%.
That worked well enough for the main game but as I started The Signal I noticed there were no collectibles showing up. Not the first alarm clock, not the second one, not a paper stand thing…

Anyone else had this problem and knows how to fix this?

Things I’ve tried so far that haven’t changed anything:

- switched through all the difficulties

- restarted the game

- restarted the checkpoint

- checked for updates

- tried to get the first clock after killing all enemies

- tried to get the first clock after not killing all enemies

- searched different forums for answers

So yeah, I’m lost. Anyone got any ideas what I can do?

This story is a monster.

And monsters wear many faces.

I recently bought Alan wake 1 on steam just wanted to ask whether I should play this version or return it and buy remastered version on epic games

This is Diana, apparently.

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Hey guys,

I've been playing Alan Wake 2 on an RTX 5070 at 1440p using Path Tracing, DLSS Quality, and FG x3. The game was running smoothly at ~90+ FPS, but after entering the Watery chapter, I’m getting a severe performance collapse twice within a 3-hour session.

The Issue:

FPS drops instantly from ~90 FPS down to a locked 18 FPS.

GPU power draw plummets from 200W+ down to 41.5W, and GPU temperature drops to 48°C (the card basically goes to sleep).

VRAM allocation stays high (~10.2 GB out of 12 GB), but the GPU stops processing frames.

A full game restart completely fixes the issue and restores performance back to normal, but it comes back after ~1.5 - 2 hours of playing.

My Specs & Settings:

GPU: RTX 5070 (12GB VRAM)

RAM: 16GB

Resolution: 1440p

Graphics: High settings + Path Tracing + DLSS Quality + FG x3

Has anyone else experienced this specific DX12 / Northlight engine memory leak where the GPU power draw drops to ~40W? Is this a known issue with Frame Generation / Path Tracing overflowing VRAM in dense areas like Watery, or is 16GB system RAM creating a pipeline stall?

Any workarounds other than restarting the game every hour or lowering Path Tracing / Textures to Medium? Thanks!

Poți copia textul așa cum e. Comunitatea de pe Reddit îți va confirma repede că e vorba de bug-ul de VRAM/FG din engine!

So my Theory is Dr.darling create the entire lore for "Control" like The oldest house and multiple universe, at Drak Place by the help of Zane

Here is explanation:

So recently I been research the Finnish mythology after playing AW2 , I spend some time reading The 《Kalevala》，and find there are so much similarity and correspondence

A brief introduction to the Kalevala:

Thte creater of the world , Also known as the first poiet , Väinämöinen ，go to a Dark place call Pohjola to woo the maiden. He contract Blacksmith Ilmarinen to create an artifact call The Samepo as a gift , then the story turn into A battle over sampo, and it end up fell into The water god ahti's hand

So the Zane story is a reconstrciton of The first part of Kalevala , A poiet come to the dark place to find his wife

Then Let's shift our perspective to the sampo, According to wiki ,one version of the Sampo Described as:

The world pillar or tree is attached to the center of the sky, turning it around, while also working as a path between the different layers of the world. Vilhunen gave a detailed explanation of the Sammas which supports the theory of its nature as the world pillar. She described it as a golden pillar with a golden head and a copper foot. The golden head is Polaris, which attached the Sammas to the sky. The pillar went down deep underground like the roots of a tree and was attached to a copper mountain there. The dome of the sky spun around Polaris

This is obvious the prototype of the oldest house Because,The oldest house also described as a tree that link different dimention, and Jesse ,who have a alien being call Polaris, becomming the top of the FBC as director, marking the completion of the sampo

I being thinking that Under this story structure, which character in game corresponds to which character in Kalevala. My idea is:

Tomes Zane -> Väinämöinen

Jesse -> Polaris

The Oldest House -> Sampo

Ahti -> Ahti

These character can fit well in the mythology structure , just one character I could figure out , The Blacksmith Ilmarinen who create the Sampo, Until I saw the Easter egg at AW2 , Zane meet Dr.darling at Dark place , and invite him to help he escape. Quoted from Zane: Art and science , combine to from a unstoppable force

So The Blacksmith Ilmarinen -> Dr.darling, witch make him the creator of the oldest house

Think about it , Dr.darling ,who konw all the konwloge of control come to Dark place , A place that can make art to reality , and even meet Zane who konw the rule of Dark place, This universe coulde be widely expansion after their cooperat.

I konw this Theory have some seriouse logycal issue , like how can Dr.darling know these Knowledge if not all the lore of control exist in the first place? Well ,The mechanism of the Dark Place beyond time and causal relationships , and this This chaotic narrative of reversing cause and effect are the important part of Alan Wake story telling

Some additon information:

In the book 《The ART & MAKING OF CONTROL》 ,The game director Kaurinen when explain the Remedy universe as I quote:Kasurinen doesn't see the Alan Wake cameos as Easter eggs. "They are very much connected to the Bureau," he says. "Some were thinking they would be cut content or an Easter egg, but no, it's much more tide

I didn't check whether this is a fact , but Dr.Darling use the same voice actor as Alan Wake?

Ok, I played Alan Wake 1 and liked it

I played Alan Wake 2 and I LOVED IT

So I got myself "American Nightmare" too and I'm really confused about the context, is this right after Alan Wake 1?

Am I in the Dark Place?

Is this canon or a random spin off adventure with Alan Wake characters?

Why is Scratch a dumbass?? 😭 (compared to A.W.2)

Did anyone else see the scientist just walking around nonchalantly on the 3rd subfloor like nothing was happening. He was not taken

So I'm really thrown off right now. Going back for the platinum for the first game, on my Nightmare run and mopping up the manuscript pages as I go. I'm in episode 3 and I have two missing after Wake and Casey. According to the wiki, the first tone should be 'Nightingale in the Majestic' but a quick Google search suggests that's in episode 6, so I have no clue what I'm looking for now. Any help?

As explained in Alan Wake 2, Alan's actual powers are clairvoyance of future events, which he used to write his books and while in the dark place. The whole rewriting reality is mostly his seer's powers combined with the cauldron lake's powers to turn art into reality plus possibly the typewriter becoming an OOP, and the clicker as an amplifier.

So for no reason I was thinking of which direction AW3 could go, and since Alice went inside the dark place to save Alan, is only natural for Alan to do the same go back to the dark place to save her. But unlike the first few times in AW1 where he just YOLOed it, he would prepare beforehand, like Alice did, in order to save her, but also himself, possibly the Anderson brothers and maybe even Tim Breaker if he doesn't manage to do it by himself, but remedy might marinate Tim until they make the "doors" game.

Anyways, since remedy games take place in the year they release, and god knows when AW3 will be released, remedy could explain Alan taking so long to take action as him preparing to raid the dark place, but also him taking some time to train with his seer powers. So I was thinking how Remedy could implement his powers in the combat, and remembered Jojo Part 5 King Crimson's powers, one of them being foresight, where the user basically sees a "ghost" of an attack the enemy is about to throw at the user, being able to avoid it or take action to prevent it from happening.

So the player could press a button and every enemy attack in a radius around Alan would create this foresight ghost and Alan would automatically get out of the way with minimal effort anime style like king crimson (or maybe it could require a player input to dodge instead of being automatic), like a fancy but way cooler looking dodge, but would be a guarantee enemy miss unlike normal dodges that would have their iframes removed or significantly reduced. Also, maybe the use could be limited by a stamina bar like Jesse's powers or a flat cooldown timer like god of war runic powers. Alan could maybe always predict long range attacks path trails with this foresight power (idk about other people but I could barely see those axes the taken threw at us in AW2). Maybe also implement it in puzzle solving, like you find an object or place on the map that gives you a hint in the form of a glimpse of the future of how a mechanism behaves when active for example, or as a premonition to traps in the dark place, like the totems in Until Dawn.

https://reddit.com/link/1w3wjc1/video/3taz87zeysmh1/player

Also on the topic of combat, I think it would be cool if they embraced the clear john wick inspirations they had going AW2's visual of Alan, by also implementing some his gun fu in Alan Wake 3's combat, at least slightly, like mostly the moves john does in close to medium range but maybe without the judo tackles since it might look a bit much against enemy taken lol. I mean if Alan is going to prepare to save Alice for a few years, it would just make sense for him to train his skills with firearms. Mostly stuff like this:

Before someone say we already have the control series for super hero action games, I don't think those additions to combat and the slight horror game elements associated with the Alan Wake games are mutually exclusive. Alan can become a more badass protagonist (like Leon from RE) but at the same time the game can also happen in dark alleyways, macabre shacks, haunted hotels, abandoned places, etc, inside the dark place, on bright falls or places near it, with creepy old ladies doing jump scares out of nowhere for us players to shit ourselves lol.

As for the resource management aspect, well they could always add more taken enemies to account for the increase in shooting that is bound to happen if they choose to make the combat a bit inspired by john wick, they could tone down the resource management mechanic, or abandon it entirely, since the original Alan Wake was way more "action" than "survival" oriented, where resources always felt plentiful in normal difficulty, and inventory management didn't exist. Also, they could use the opportunity of Alan goin all "professional gunslinger" style because of his training, and make him use a pistol with a tactical light, it would make SO MUCH SENSE for it to be used in the Alan Wake games that it actually confuses me as to why it hasn't been used yet.

The main takeaway from this post it that I hope we see Remedy explore Alan's seer powers in the third game (or maybe beyond) , both for combat and level design. But I'm likely completely wrong on the direction Remedy takes, and Alan Wake 3 might end up with us playing as Alice, since she got in the dark place with a plan to free Alan, so she must also have had a escape plan for herself, maybe with help of a third party that hasn't showed up yet (Chester Bless maybe? lol), so there's a chance Alan might even no be playable as a protagonist or co-protagonist.

Gotta say that Dylan's place engulfed in darkness seems pretty sick.

Im starting my first playthrough of Alan Wake and i wanted to ask that can i get all of the collectibles on my second Nightmare playthrough, i feel like this is a very story driven game so having to look at a guide every 2 steps feels kinda bad and i want to focus

I know some collectibles are exclusive to the hardest mode but do all the ones i could get on normal appear on Nightmare too or is it kinda like Madhouse from Re7 with the coins? Thanks in advance

I recently bought Alan Wake 2 and have been excited to experience it. Unfortunatley I'm experiencing pretty huge framedrops to the point that the game sometimes turns into a slideshow. The game consistently drops frames when loading areas, but also seemingly does it at random. I've tried lowering settings to low with dlss on ultra performance with little to no difference. I know it's a graphically intense game, but my pc can run anything else I throw at it.

My specs are:
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 8-Core Processor
16 GB SSD

EDIT: Apperantly increasing the target framerate in the games config file seems to have almost completley fixed the issue

Playing it on a RTX 3060 with the Low preset and direct lightning at 1080p, DLSS Quality. Pay closely attention to how just by moving a little the framerate changes massively.

Yes, I know the game is very demanding even on the lowest settings, but something weird started happening to me in the later chapters with Alan. In certain sections, for seemingly no reason, my framerate would drop to absurdly low levels, but only when RT Direct Lighting was enabled.

It happened very rarely in a few spots on the streets, but I also noticed it at this entrance to the theater, where the framerate drops to single digits just by standing there.

Fortunately, it only seems to happen in a few specific areas (AFAIK), but it's still very strange that one setting can cause such a massive drop that feels random. At worst, I'd expect it to drop to somewhere in the lower 20s, not single digits. I mean, it doesn't happen with RT Transparency high + high preset + 1080p native instead, running at a stable 30 fps, lol.

Is this something specific to my PC, or has anyone else experienced a massive framerate drop when going through very specific areas?

Thoughts on a possible Alan wake 3 story?

One thought I just had after finishing the final draft…

Spoiler warning ahead…

When Alan comes back to life and says he’s master of many worlds now, it feels like a new found power he has. Especially with the “third eye opening” kind of reference from the bullet of light. Like an enlightenment.

This makes me think maybe Alan would be a lot more powerful in Alan wake 3. Maybe more like a superhero. Perhaps it would be more “action adventure” than “horror”. Sort of like how Alan wake 1 was a horror but played very adventure adjacent.

Any other hints/clues you think give an idea about Alan’s future and a next game?