Alan Wake 2's Story Explained
Вставка
- Опубліковано 30 тра 2024
- Alan Wake 2 replicates the creative writing process in video gameplay form.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Horror and Control
03:22 Saga's Story
14:15 Alan's Story
19:22 Loop or Spiral?
20:35 Alan's Story Continued
27:42 The Ending - Ігри
I always kind of suspected that writing, especially writing fiction, was more like looking through a window into another world rather than actually making things up.
That, and to me a mirror. Reflecting reality as we know it, but slightly off.
I find it more like possession in both directions. I possess the character and if they have strong personalities then some of their traits become mine to an extent. Habits. Certain compulsions. You tend to spend a good deal of time being someone else that it is going to bleed over.
For example, I was writing from the perspective of a Spirit of Famine and until I finished the story I felt gnawing hunger that I had to ignore and find ways to cope with. One character was a habitual pill popper and I had to keep a tin of Altoids in my pocket for when my real world stress overlapped with the feeling. Another wore rings to weigh down his hand and remind himself to maintain control.
I could go on, but it becomes a matter of overcoming both your own self and the stories you write. In a way, you are living the lives you detail when writing a story.
Interesting. I tend to think of settings more, the characters and mythology are sort of a vague concept to me, like "how would XYZ setting impact the people that live in that circumstance?" (like how a poor warrior steppe population might decide to become mercenaries in order to bring wealth into their communities).
A character pushing back at the author in a sort of 'possession' is something I've never thought of (I'm not a writer, so I only have an outside perspective).
Art has to be connected to reality in some form because that's all there is. An artist's metaphysical value judgments, or their sense of life, will be exposed in their work.
"fiction is a distorted mirror of our reality"
The scene you showed with Saga losing control for the first time in the diner also features the camera moving away and following Rose instead, placing Saga out of frame and visually signalling her loss of control just before Rose starts talking.
Now you mention how the Dark Presence has been changed over the course of the game series, it makes me wonder (seeing how focused Alan's sections of the game is to the creative process) if the Dark Presence is meant to now be representative of a creative block.
Think about it, Mr Scratch is Alan, but a dark, angry nightmarish version who acts purely on violence. This is where we see Alan at the beginning of the first game, hating his fans and physically attacking paparazzi and media representatives. Alice said she was scarred of Alan when he was like this and sought out Emil Hartman to help Alan overcome the block. I think this is further supported by the fact The Dark Presence only manages to possess Alan *after* he gives up hope in trying to write Return, unable to find a way to create a narritively satisfying story.
The Dark Presence is also your Plot holes, the Darkness you didn't fill in. Alan couldn't write the End. So, the Darkness fills Alan to "finish it". The Unconscious Gaps in the Plot. The things you Cannot See because they aren't there. Until you get the Clicker and make them permanently there.
This also applies to Thomas Zane bringing Barbara back. He didn't write how she came back. So, the Dark Presence filled that Plot hole by literally filling Barbara's body, and making her the Witch. Thus, the Dark Presence "saved" her.
Actually I think Its something else.(SPOILERS)
Like the Dark Presence seems to be a representation of Alan's rage and Loss of control over himself. In the First game We see the Dark presence be cunning and smart, Taking control of people at the right place at the right time. But when alan was trapped and started writing the dark presence started shaping itself around him. And when alan eventually finds out about alice "dying" and gets really mad, The Dark presence reacts strongly and forms this dark cloud and kills him (Almost like its replicating Alan's actions). Like the Symbiote from the recent Spider Man 2, It was all good and fine till it honed in on Peters negative emotions, Shaping and structuring itself to the Venom We all know and love
(Notice how we dont really get a really good look at the dark presence till he kills his past Self)
(Also notice how it acts differently compared to the last time we face it).
My favourite part of this game is the foreshadowing of Alan surviving the light bullet, when Zane survives Alan shooting him.
I think the concept of the spiral versus the loop has less to do with the idea that the endless revisions will eventually lead somewhere, but instead describe a potential way to solve the core dillemma. Alan via continuous revision has been spiraling inwards deeper and deeper into the dark place, if the story was a loop this may go on forever and even reversing course would still lead you back to the same spot. With a spiral however there are two directions you can go, you can spiral inwards, or you can spiral outwards, if this spiral were like a whirlpool that'd be the difference between spiraling downwards towards the depths, or getting back to the surface, there's a force pulling you one way but with enough will you can oppose it and claw your way back up.
I think the realization of "it's a spiral" is less about continuation down the current path, but the realization that there's a different direction to move in.
Yeah I mean Alice literally says "it's time for an ascension" at the end, basically saying Alan has been going the wrong way the whole time
@@Joe_Silly There's a small but I feel significant line that Ahti says to Alan during one of their encounters. I can only paraphrase, but it goes something like, "All these rules you force upon yourself" with clear bemusement and a little disdain of the idea. Alan is trying to abide by the "rules" and tropes of a horror story, but I'm thinking in order for him to finally ascend, he has to break those rules and subvert those tropes in order to not only escape the Dark Place/Presence, but actually defeat it in some way.
@@BababooeyGooey yeah part of me feels like the dark place is almost designed to be broken out of. Kinda like the ultimate test for an artist to use their art to outsmart the system
@@Joe_Silly Idk man, Thomas Zane is just chillen down there for decades lol. Seems pretty tough to get out
Unless this whole story was part of Thomas Zane's writing from decades ago and he just wrote his escape this far ahead, which is possible. In which case dude is an awful escape artist lol
Also Tim Breaker is down there as is dimension hopping Mr. Door. The Dark Place feels more cosmic than that to have such a simple role as "escape room for artists"
@@PantsaBear Tim being down there is a bit odd but I am sure it is for a real reason. I mean Odin and Tor, and presumably still Saga and Casey are all down there too
I love the idea that true horror comes from a loss of control. Control in of itself is just an illusion. Anything outside of your consciousness, even you're very body is not something you have complete control over. The only thing you do have control over is you or more specifically how you deal with the limitations of you. How you choose to deal with your body, how you choose to deal with the physical world around you, how you choose to deal with other beings in that physical world. Everything else will carry you like the waves of the ocean. You cannot fight against the current of reality. All you can do is flow with the water or drown.
Spoopy af
What a banger of an analysis, the low view count is such a shame. Don't let it get to you bro, we'll never stop appreciating these.
Absolutely agree! This chanel just popped up in my recommendations and instantly hit the spot. Awsm analysis!!!
12:52 I think Saga trying to profile Scratch was partly why she started succumbing to her doubts and fears. He got inside her head.
Remedy & Sam Lake are geniuses
I know it has been said by others, but I want to echo that I appreciate that you let the scenes play out in full and let them breathe instead of interrupting every couple of seconds to say “see that??”. Very effective to illustrating your point.
In my opinion, Saga starts to lose control when she reads the first manuscript page, as she mentions in the Dark Place that she kept the pages manage her investigation instead of her own deductions. Also, very early at Cauldron Lake, Casey tells her to be careful of not getting swallowed into the story, and she says it is too late, that she is sold with this case.
When Alan gets taken by the dark presence in that scene. The dark presents looks like the spike ball thing from Control.
Saga is such a well written character. She's a force but also vulnerable too, and that vulnerability is what makes her more powerful. Amazing character!
Jesse Faden might be getting involved as well. Excited to see how the DLC shapes the narrative
... I need to replay every Remedy Game again. Worlds on top of worlds. Sam Lake is Alex Casey(FBI), who is also Alex Casey(Dark Place), who is also Max Payne. We know Alex Casey is Max Payne because in Alan Wake 1, an Alex Casey Novel quotes May Payne II verbatim. Now, if Jack Joyce is Tim(e) Breaker, and constantly has dreams of Mr. Door(Mr. Hatch), then... There are 7 layers of reality from our own to Max Payne?
"And I hope it comes a bit quicker this time". I feel you. Now I really need to know how it ends. BUT I think we both agree, we would rather wait 13 years again for a game like Alan Wake 2, which is mostly perfect in almost every aspect, than getting a half baked game. :D So please Remedy, take all the time you need to give us the perfect ending
What I theorize is that sagas daughter isn’t dead but probably in the dark place. Sagas seer powers make her immune to the stories effects like it does with tor and Odin. And we know the seer powers are genetically passed down. It effects sagas husband because he’s not a seer and is prone to the stories changes. But sagas daughter most likely has the powers and with her being written as dead she’s probably not dead and was pulled into the dark place to keep the stories reality. That’s why sagas daughter didn’t pick up when she called cuz the ending was changed not the events of the story, saga probably has to find her daughter in the dark place and save her there
It doesn't affect Jesse Faden also. She wasn't affected by the Thomas Zane being a filmmaker story (a.k.a parts of Return by Scratch). Parautilitarians seems to know how to ser being the story.
It actuallyis effected, she's just more resistant than most people, some of the key scenes of the AWE expansion touch on how Alan, likely inadvertently, caused Control to happen, how he made the Hiss (or at least shaped it, but I'm leaning toward the former) and that the Dark Presence is something similar in its baseline effects, but far stronger. She was told repeatedly growing up that Thomas Zane was her favorite poet, despite having been rewritten into a film maker. However, in the scenes in the Oceanview Motel, which isseemingly connected to the Oceanview Hotel in the Dark Place, we catch our first glimpse of how the Dark Place is affected by proximity. "It was powerful, but... far away" and even implying that The-thing-that-had-been-Hartman might have only been susceptible to the Hiss because of this distance from the whole. But when Faden opens the door and links the two places for a moment, something changes: Faden recalls Thomas Zane as a poet, but then corrects herself, saying that she always miss-remembers him as a poet, but he's actually a film maker, showing that if she gets too close, the Dark Place can affect her too.@@weirddreams_fe
I feel like the rock opera is also Tor and Odin's way of helping Alan remember who he is and what he's been through so far, so he doesn't completely forget on the next loop of the spiral.
It's interesting that you made the comparison to PT in your last video. Because if you go back and play or watch PT, you'll notice that it too is not a loop. It's also a spiral. Right turn in the hallway, down a few stairs, right turn down the hallway, down a few stairs, etc. PT spirals downward, almost descending into hell. I wonder if Alan Wake will also take that route.
Alan's nightmarish scenario is probably what every director feels like working for the MCU.
The Dark Presence forcing Alan to write an MCU film would be true horror. "Wake you must make all these characters bad comic relief who never develop and laugh off the deaths of their friends and family like psychopaths."
They better not wait 13 years to do make sequel! I though the first AW was a great concept and fun story but found most the gameplay tedious and sometimes downright awful (driving). AW2 does everything the first game did, takes it further and has fun gameplay to boot. It’s one of the best games I’ve played this year and this year has had some blinders!
Funny enough Brett I had the same theory about this as a take on the creative process of writing. Really hit the nail on the head bud.
The changes to scratch and the dark presence are spot on but they aren't revisions of how they functioned. Alan "defeated" the dark presence and the other entity of scratch in the first game and American Nightmare. How they are presented in this game feels like a leftover of what they were, not fully gone but severely weakened.
One thing about the ending that is going to rub some people the wrong way, and that Remedy have done themselves in Control and in Alan Wake 1, is that it is written in a way to allow for extra DLC content to continue on from afterwards. Before release, Remedy had already confirmed 2 DLC packs to come. As much as I'm loving the way that they're building this connected universe, it is worth pointing out that we also haven't gotten the "complete" story yet.
When you finish the new game + you do get a conclusive answer to the fate of Saga’s daughter.
I wonder if the Dark Presence's change in behavior is down to the end of Alan Wake 1?
We know that at the end when Alan defeats it he significantly wounds and weakens it, but doesn't kill it. Could it be that in it's weakened state the Dark Presence is now being controlled by the story instead of the other way around?
God damn, this video was so well done and had tons of great interpretations of things on how the story was done. Great job Sir!
You are a very talented orator with high comprehension skills.
I’d say the story isn’t quite over yet we still have 2 pieces of dlc to come out before the story of Alan Wake 2 is completely concluded.
Man you gotta do movie and television show characters I'm in vested in these breakdowns love the content.
Paper mario ttyd Chapter 4 music goes so well thank you
Thanks for giving us the music he won’t share in the description 😅
Ikr
really cool summary and explanations :)
this analysis is superb nice job
24:03 The Dark Presence also took advantage of Alan slowly going mad and losing hope that he'd ever escape the Dark Place.
Thank you for clarifying what it meant by the story being a spiral. That stumped me for a while. XD
U should totally do videos on control and quantum break
Your analysis of AW2s story is quite insightful! Just subscribed! I also wonder how the story will change after New Game Plus and the DLCs arrive.
You have a great gift 9f understanding, you helped me get more of the meaning of this beast of a story
great analysis. thanks for the ideas.
I feel the two things people will remember from Alan Wake 2 are:
- *CONTROL*
and
- *_Sam Lake, you hack!!_*
Writing quite a lot myself, I like to cheekily remark that I have no power inside my own writing. I can't drop a karmic anvil on the most vile of characters or throw a rope from above to save another. The story merely has to play itself out, with me just being the one who writes it. Whatever occurs is up to the characters within to figure out, or not. I am, in relation to my text, if not dead at the moment, very much missing. Getting to the point of this almost paradoxical state is a very powerful, personal, and joyous occasion as a writer.
Logically, none of this makes not a lick of sense. But art isn't logical, nor is any creative process. Spin thoughts of how it works and the layers upon layers of meta narratives around long enough, and it can feel very overwhelming, forcing one to pull back from it to take a rest. To not...if you pardon my expression, drown in the thoughts.
I'd like to think fully understanding all of this and spending enough time writing to develop the skill does allow for some fascinating things to happen. That drowning sensation if implemented well enough can be channeled towards the reader too, after all. A simple collection of words on a page can reach out and touch the reader, as if it were. Or poke. Or prod. Perhaps terrify? To invoke thought? Or just to point toward, in order to demonstrate that they have as readers volunteered to become a part of the story for as long as they decide to continue that choice. For some, this influence will even with luck linger far beyond what time they actually spend reading such scribblings.
Isn't all of that very interesting, my dear reader? Or perhaps not? Who can say?
I recognise the VA for Rose. She played a different character by the same name in the show Two and a Half Men
Best content on youtube
I swear that that flickering lamp in Alice's videos is some sort of message. But I'm too lazy to figure it out
The Symbol for the Dark Place is in fact a spiral, but a spiral in the right circumstances can be a symbol for water, it looks similar to the effect of a drop of water has onto a body of water.
Awesome video, and incredible game 👏👏
Please cover Control 😭😭🙏🏽. It’s my favorite video game and I would LOVE to hear what my favorite video game analysis creator has to say about it.
The loop stuff (remember….it’s a spiral) isn’t too convoluted! The reason everything loops is because the Dark Place follows dream (or nightmare) logic, which almost always operates in loops.
One thing I love is how Alan is constantly projecting blame onto Scratch throughout his sections and yet it is explicitly stated in the script of the game that in order to help Saga he has to write himself into the story by making edits to the manuscript. And how does he make those edits? By SCRATCHing out portions of the manuscript. So the answer is in front of you the whole time that he is Scratch. Even the fact that he's dressed nicely and has well kept hair implies that he is more Scratch than Wake within the Dark Place. Also think about the first line of the game "In horror, there are only victims and monsters." He couldn't have written himself in as a victim because that can't provide much if any help to your hero, so he HAD to write himself in as a monster. In a way a monster is the best way to help a hero by providing an obstacle to overcome making them stronger for it.
Then you get the meta folding in on itself when you realize that Alan is Sam Lake's Scratch for the sake of writing this story. Think about who is the last person possessed by the Dark Presence before the end of the game. It's Sam Lake's character, a character who by the way was the first video game character he wrote for, modeled after his own likeness, and even got the same actor to voice him (RIP). But then Lake also puts himself in the game as himself and it really starts to fry my brain at that point. The game has a Being John Malkovich quality to it where Sam Lake seems like an unassuming artist who I feel like I'm becoming obsessed with the more I think about this game. It's as if I got to see into his head in a way I'm almost uncomfortable with and I feel like I have to actively pull myself back from getting obsessed with him on a parasocial level.
There is one aspect about Saga that I've been thinking about. Cauldron Lake has the power to manifest art into reality. What exactly would one call what Saga does in the Mind Place? Like yes it serves a practical purpose for her job but you must admit there is a level of creativity to how she puts together her case files in such a way. Then think about why she does her job as an FBI agent, it's primarily to make the world a safer place for her daughter. So a part of me thinks that Cauldron Lake itself is taking her perception of the world needing to be safer for her daughter and twisting Saga's own creative process into putting Logan in actual peril. So perhaps in a way her need to solve this case is in and of itself what creates the reality shift once she's within range of the (Sam) Lake.
It's a surprising fun and engaging game.
You gonna post part 2 of that Kratos vid? It was my favorite one of yours
Why do I get SCP vibes from this entire story. Shoot Alan wake himself is basically an SCP.
8:56 - realized rewatching this they made a little goof. If reality has shifted and the only remnants of the way things were are the memories of Saga, the Old Gods, and whoever else shares their immunity to memory alteration, one confirmation of this should been Logan's number being missing from Saga's phone. She should have had to key it in manually and just seen the number, not "Logan" onscreen as the call went through. (And of course this would itself have been a source of panic for her.)
Caught in a Spiral. The Metanarrative goes Up and Down.
I finally finished the main story tonight, and I'm very excited to finally dive into this video... Tomorrow... Now I sleep.
Because I have Asperger and suffer from anxiety, I couldn't let go, and I have to write five chapters in advance for the next years, technically I am in a sabbatical, not writing stories, not publishing anything, but I couldn't stop myself, but then, in my idiocy, I deleted the five chapter by mistake, but I couldn't let go and I write the down again in a week and two days again.
The dark place is at the mercy of a Para utilitarian such as Alan Wake, whom can write anything into reality he pleases.
Scratch is the dark place's ultimate move - Scratch can always add another chapter to the story resetting any events put into place.
You can't stop the spiral because the story - like the dark place - is unending.
How has the new game plus “final draft” dlc affected your analysis of the story?
"It's not a loop, it's a Spiral". So, between this and Uzumaki I think I have a strange, obscure fear of spirals now. 😂. Also, play this game. It's a trip, they did some crazy live action stuff. And the metal band that keeps popping up exists irl. Seriously, play this thing 😂
Dude you're the matthewmatosis of the narrative angle of video games.
saga acting is a bit weird when it come to her daughter
she goes from level headed to just very panicky
at the drop of a dime
on a side note alan seem like he might become something like
Mr Door or Ahti by the end of the series
wasnt that saga the character written by alan trying to overwrite saga the real person?
@@trashman8080 i guess but its evil alan that did that
Great vid🙏 Brother we need kratos part 2 please🤞
It's probably like Dante's Inferno, where in order to get out of hell, he had to push forward through it. There's only one direction with a spiral, and it's downward.
Downward, in this case, means deeper into the subconscious of Alan Wake. The significance of the realization of the spiral is that there is an ultimate end. Alan is on his journey towards rock bottom and self-discovery.
This is what happens when one doesn't make their values judgments explicit to themselves. They automate implicit value judgments and live in a world of chaos where their emotions pull them every which way. Emotions being value judgments that we've automated over time. If those values aren't made explicit to yourself then you're being led around by your subconscious. So Alan doesn't understand the "why" behind any of his actions because he never introspected and made his values explicit to himself. His emotions are uncalibrated and wild.
If Alan's hierarchy of values was understood and made explicit by him he would understand where writing falls and where his marriage falls in the hierarchy. He would also understand his motives behind writing, and why it's important to him, and he would understand the values that draw him to his wife. I think Alan feels like a slave to others and has a need to please them and constantly meet their expectations with new material. This part of him is where the darkness grows and makes his passion for writing also his worst enemy. Which poisons everything in his life because writing IS his life.
This game, imo, is Alan desperately trying to introspect and find out where he went wrong in his marriage and how he can fix it. Literally, everything in the game that we see are the implicit value judgments of Alan Wake being shown to him by his subconscious mind. That's why paparazzi and outsiders who add pressure to Alan's writing career are viewed as dark monsters. In the first game he lost creative control from his editor which was Barbara and there was even a kidnapper who represented the deadline itself for his new book. Alan puts pressure on himself to write and that pressure builds inside him and destroys his marriage. Alan is Mr. Scratch because everything is a projection from Alan's mind. Alan IS the darkness.
I love Alan wake 2 it’s amazing
Yeah.. Losing control and feeling powerless does drive you crazy. I'm surprised, you speak like it's from personal experience. Accepting it is necessary to understanding what your options are moving forwards, but it won't help the pain of having the rug pulled out from under you.
Helplessness can be a feeling, but it can also be a fact. Sometimes you have no options, sometimes you do.
Identifying what it is you can still do, is very important. Much more than grasping at something you have no control over. Worst case scenario, control over yourself, and what kind of person you want to be, may be the only kind you have. But it is the only thing nobody can take away from you.
Yea I hope we don’t have to wait another 13 years tbh
You should analyze Xenoblade series stories.
Where’s the kratos vid man? I’m going through Brett withdrawals man. You’ve gotta give me that good shit.
Goty
We'll redo the loop in new game + that should have an alternative narrative with the real ending. So this isn't finished!
👍
Holy cow they dropped an exposition dump as an inciting incident and no one saw a damn thing
Why does he look like John Wick though
Sorry for my little out of subject message, but each time I see a new video in my notifications, I hope it's about Songbird from Phantom Liberty, and each time it's not XD
Second
The title of the video is very misleading! It doesn't explains the story. It's an analysis an explaination why AW2 is a horror game. But actually it doesn't explains the story 😥
Yes. It’s is that WHILE explaining what is happening in the story and why.
If you want a play-by-play, I mean...read Wikipedia...
I hate this story😭 my brain hurts. Just send in Jesse Faden to pull that boy out the water😂😂
L take
Wild trip this game was. Trying to figure out who the actual writer was, turns out it was SBI.
5th
I thought it was about mental health disorders going all the way into madness... It's not a loop It's a spiral or a downward spiral into madness... Just was my take on it...
no
Ok yeah but why does he look like Jared Leto now??
hair
Butt
Butt hair?
@@LockMatch yeah
@@LockMatch 💯
no.
this is as bad as death standings story... why is pretentiousness rewarded ?!
Saga ruined the game. Modern writers ruined the game. I feel bad for Sam Lake.
Skin pigment sooooo scary
@@mduckernz Not scary, disgusting.
@@LSK2Kwow bro. You have pigment too, you idiot. Crawl back into the primordial soup you f*cking troglodyte
I wonder what's the meaning of Saga and Alex drinking their coffee in perfect sync. The game draws attention to it several times, but it never goes anywhere.
Is it hinting at them being diegetically fictional characters?
I don't need an explanation, it's woke dgsht
Cringe, bro. Mega cringe. Grow up or something.
Ur woke dgsht
Did you even play the game?
@@SamsarasArt ahh yes, the typical response from window lickers. Yes yes, you played the game and saw nothing wrong with the sections with Saga and how everyone bends over backwards to lick her diverse bootie and shower her with praise.
@@SamsarasArt they probably didn't, like any person who thinks having a non-white protagonist makes your story "woke"