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Alan wake remastered review embargo6/13/2023 ![]() ![]() And as an interactive action thriller, Alan Wake manages to evoke the thrills and plot twists of television largely without feeling stale. I never played the original Alan Wake (2010), but rather than feel dated, this remaster seems like it’s mostly aimed at reintroducing new players like myself to the game, rather than servicing an existing fanbase. It’s just honest-to-goodness camp-much like the dour theatrics of Remedy’s other popular franchise Max Payne, featuring a morose white leading man who has lost everything, and still finds more bits of his soul to lose. In the same vein, Alan Wake isn’t so much about the parallels between goodness and evil, or even Wake’s personal struggles against his own demons, as much as it wholly embodies a pulpy action thriller. Aside from just being a pompous jerk, this is pretty much in line with the releases that Remedy Entertainment are known for: games that are big on cinematic sheen and clear homages to the developer’s film influences, with most of their titles making for pretty entertaining, if not mindless, television. He even references The Shining at one point while being chased by an axe-wielding enemy, which seems like an extremely normal thing to do.Īll these demonstrate that Wake is, to a degree, aware that he’s the protagonist of his own straight-to-home movie release, or at least is prone to regaling his audience (himself) with his experiences as if he is in one. When she inevitably goes missing, he narrates his search for her with the self-importance and dramatics of a leading man, his furrowed brows and brooding visage the very image of a white, male action hero. He then gets into an argument with his wife and leaves her in the confines of a dark cabin, despite knowing that she suffers from a debilitating fear of the dark. In a rare vacation with his wife to an island called Bright Falls, a fan excitedly greets him when he enters a small diner, much to his chagrin he dismisses her as a bumbling airhead in a later episode. Alan Wake is a writer-a crime novelist, if you must-who has suffered from writer’s block for about two years. For one thing, the hero himself, who’s a bit of a prick, can be pretty hard to root for. But this dichotomy of dark versus light, black versus white, good versus evil isn’t always so pronounced in Alan Wake.
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