The Dark Presence - A Deconstruction of Villainy
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- Опубліковано 28 тра 2024
- The Dark Presence of Alan Wake may be indefinable, but it is still undeniably evil.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro
01:05 The Dark Place
07:16 The Dark Presence
14:13 The Downfall - Ігри
Alan Wake is a masterpiece to me ! Like the description says, the Dark Presence is an indefinable, yet undeniably evil that corrupts and manipulate both minds and desires, an embodiment of the fear of the unknown. A twisted entity of sheer supernatural horror.
I don't think it just does that but also express the creativeness and arts in dark ways the description of bright fall is about how many artists engineering and others made their dreams come true and by the end of the game Alan wake states that Calderon lake isn't a lake it an ocean meaning he had a bigger task ahead of him and that this world is full of the dreams and ambition of creative writers and artist who came here before,this world buried deep with the sea manifesting itself to the other world which is earth hope Alan wake two doesn't screw this up an entire Franchise and series could be made of this I also want them to add aztecs mythology since I see no other developers ever really made something showing Aztec mythology I not saying it should be the main maybe it should be in the next installments,I want to put as a sidenote and to explore the artist and writers who made their ideas co exist with this world beneath the waves.
There may be a couple of misconceptions in this video. The power of the Dark Place can't actually create something wholecloth, it can't create something out of nothing. Alan wasn't fictional and wasn't created by Thomas Zane or the Dark Presence, he was drawn into the story that already existed and then changed that story himself. In this setting, powers have to work from things that already exist in reality in some fashion. Control delves into this further by showing how these are places, items, events, and people that are changed rather than created.
The cosmology of the Remedyverse is built so that places beyond our reality, what Control refers to as thresholds, demonstrate that reality can be shaped by the will of sapient minds, both consciously and unconsciously. When the collective unconscious of humanity invests enough attention in an item or an idea, you get Altered World Events and Altered Items. The power of the collective unconscious interacts with this metalayer of reality to pour power into something, altering it. When you put an author like Alan Wake in the middle of a threshold like the Dark Place, his conscious work to create a story shapes reality to draw things together to make that story happen. And the Dark Presence is trying to do the exact same thing.
I think it can create them, its just not beholden to time.
Basically Alan created Zane, who then created alan in the past.
Alan meets saga, writes about her wich creates her to meet alan, saga didnt exist until alan wrote about her, at wich point she had always existed.
Imagine it like a book youve never read.
Until you pick up that book and read it the charecters and plot do not exist, but once you do they where always there in the story.
@@cthulhluftagn3812 It's actually stated specifically in the games that the Dark Place can't create new things out of nothing, only change them. Thomas Zane didn't create Alan Wake and Alan Wake didn't create Thomas Zane, but they did weave one another into their stories. There's also a degree of foresight involved. When Alan is in the Dark Place, he can see the truth of things that are in the outside world, as well as see things that are going to happen but have not happened yet. Along with that, other people in the setting have the ability to see past the current story as written and remember the truth that the story covers up.
I think of it more like a theater where you've got an empty stage, along with a bunch of actors, costumes, sets, and props. You can't build anything new, but you can repurpose the ones you have. You can put your characters in different costumes, swap around props or give them different functions, and repaint and move around the sets. You can rewrite the stories, but the pieces you're playing with remain the same.
Also, I think your idea of the book you haven't read is cool, but that's also different from how the Dark Place operates. You can read the story over and over again and change it a little each time, so the things don't come into being when you read the story and they aren't fixed that way either. That's why there are so many loops across the entire Alan Wake setting, every time Alan writes a new draft he's going through the story we play in the games again.
@@korrasera2417 from what i rember, and i may be wrong, but the context of the statement is that the dark place cant create thinhs because it has no imagination, it needs creative people to create things it can then make real and twist.
The closer a person is to the center of the lake/dark place the more real its creations can be. A artist on the shore paints a storm amd some time later a storm happens, a artist in the lake painted a storm and the weather instantly switches to stormy.
Its like the clicker, making anything created within it true even retroactivly.
@@cthulhluftagn3812 That's close, but they do clarify it in the games. First in one of the Alan Wake DLCs and then again in Alan Wake 2. The clicker actually did exist before hand, but it was turned into an object of power by Alan's actions in the Dark Place, feeding off of the story he created for Alice. The weird part is that he may have created that story because Thomas Zane saw the significance of the clicker and pushed it into becoming Alan's object of power. They do make it clear that the objects, people, places, these things all have to exist prior to being changed, and what gets changed is how it's all arranged, what things mean and where they are.
If you're familiar with Control, it explains a lot more about how the setting works at a basic level. Even though Control doesn't involve the Dark Place, it gets into the way that reality can be influenced by attention via the collective unconscious. Things exist in reality first, as real objects or places or people. As more and more attention is paid to them they gain a charge, just like connecting a wire to a battery. If the right circumstances arise, the circuit is completed and that power manifests, changing the thing into an altered item or an object of power. Think of it like a bunch of empty buckets that slowly get filled up until something happens and they overflow, turning into an altered item.
That's why so many of the altered items in Control are at the center of urban legends or conspiracy theories, because they're natural focal points for attention. We tell stories about them. So a fan in a closed room in a place where everyone's worried about the urban legend of fan death turns into an object that can extract all of the oxygen from an enclosed space.
That's also why you can't bring modern items into the Oldest House. Since we're all talking on our cell phones all the time, a huge number of people are paying attention to cellphones out in the regular world. The concept of 'cellphone' is already at a really high state of charge. And because the Oldest House is one giant thin spot between the worlds, bringing a cellphone into the building will at best make the phone explode and at worst might make something incredibly dangerous happen. To deal with this, everything that the FBC uses inside the Oldest House needs to be old tech that no one uses anymore, so that it carries a relatively low attention charge. Hence the WW2 era guns, the vacuum tubes, and a total lack of modern electronics.
As a side note, the Dark Presence has imagination and creativity, but it doesn't seem to be able to harness the power of the Dark Place by itself. It has to work through a creative human mind in order to create a path that will allow it to escape the Dark Place. Keep in mind, it's the one crafting much of the horror story of Alan Wake, Alan is actually trying to rewrite the story that the Dark Presence has been trying to create. In the first game he talks about how he writes a story and then the Dark Presence (in the form of Barbara Jagger) keeps rewriting it, editing it into a horror story. I think that's the best metaphor, it's like the Dark Presence is an editor without a writer. Still able to influence the story and craft the narrative, but lacking the raw materials.
There's something fascinating about villains who aren't human, You can even argue that Dark Presence isn't evil per say, it just wants out. And who wouldn't after god knows how long in the dark.
It's not something humans can understand.
"a life form with neither life nor form" is one of the creepiest ideas I've heard
A true lovecraftian entity is one where you have all the clues, all the peices to the puzzle, but no matter whay you do you cant fit them together in a way that makes sense..
Alan Wake dose this very neatly.
I used to hate mysteries you can't solve but now I find them unique and can be cool if done right.
This sounds like the concept in the The Never Ending Story, where something doesn't exist until it is wished to become real, and after this thing becomes real, it has existed since the beggining
A wise dwarf once said "if you love your character make them suffer"
you know there is a question you never asked, it is stated that by Alan himself during a narration, That the Dark Presence was sealed in cauldron lake long ago. So that begs the question, who sealed it there in the first place.
It may not be a "who" but rather a "what", maybe the Dark Presence comes from a completely different dimension and had been sealed in the Dark Place by an another entity. Or the Dark Presence chooses to go in the Dark Place to take advantage of the shifting abilities of this dimension, but ultimately fails and get stuck there instead.
18:42
No? Alan re-emerges in the cabin and writes Departure for over a week until he writes in Zane/the Bright Presence to help him escape. That's when the cabin sinks to the Dark Place and Alan has to dive deeper to get there. Sure, you could argue the cabin sank while Alan started writing Departure, but I think that's more of a visual representation of Alan's mind while he wrote the book, since we see in the CCTV footage we find along the game (Writer in the cabin) that there are trees outside, something that isn't there in the Dark Place.
19:02
No, Alan _still_ kept writing Departure. He just changed the details so _he_ could be the protagonist and have a fighting chance against the Dark Presence and saving Alice. He didn't just stop writing the book and started writing a new one, he changed the story to accommodate him as the protagonist, turning a third-person story with an ambiguous narrator into a first person self insert story with himself as the narrator.
20:07
No, the Dark Presence's objective, up until episode 5, was recapturing Alan to make him write the ending _it_ wants. Up until Zane/Bright Presence freed him, Alan would write an ending where the Dark Presence would take over the entire world.
20:32
The answer, according to the game, is both. Alan wrote all the scenes in the book, but the Dark Presence edited them to make them horrifying and disturbing. And again, the Dark Presence wasn't trying to stop Alan from finishing his journey, it was trying to get him to write the story it wants.
23:37
I don't think so. The Dark Presence, at that point, would be free to do whatever it wants. If it wanted to, it'd turn everyone into Taken and use the few remaining artists as puppets to write stories that give it more power. At that point, there's no use in subtlety.
25:24
That isn't the Dark Place, that's Diver's Isle in the missing week. We even see a tree there. If it was the Dark Place, we wouldn't be seeing trees, but dark shadows clinging themselves to the windows.
25:45
Alan wasn't even in this story before the last episode of Writer in the Cabin, where he says "I've wrote myself into the story. I am now the protagonist", which means he was uninvolved directly from the events before that point, right before he writes in Thomas Zane into the story.
26:50
Technically, it was because he needed the Clicker and needed to understand the powers of Cauldron Lake, as well as read the last page in the typewriter in the cabin to finish the story properly. It was thanks to the Andersons, Cynthia and Zane that he was able to write the ending.
27:18
That's probably one of the most debated theories online, but honestly, that really isn't the case. Zane didn't write Alan, Zane wrote a page about the Clicker in Alan's life, that retroactively added the Clicker into his backstory. You can't create something out of nowhere in Alan Wake, that's clearly explained in Alan Wake 2.
30:22
That isn't the Dark Presence, that's just the nature of the Dark Place, it wants people to surrender to their insecurities. This happened to Alan in the Signal and the Writer DLCs and it happened to Saga in Alan Wake 2.
maybe what the dark presense is what this whole game is themed on: a story; a story corrupted and twisted and like any story, it can't die since that's how it was written, so presumably, only way to stop it would be unwritting the dark presense, find its original story and destroy it
The Alan Wake game is so good and I just started playing the second one since it just released today and my God I'm only a few chapters in and it is already terrifying the heck out of me but in a good way
Witching this while a little more than slightly drunk may be a bad idea. But there is no one here to stop me.
It is implied the Dark Presence is attached to the Host body(ies) desires, specifically the negative version of them. They spread the Collective Unconscious of the Negative side of Human's Hearts. They give you your nightmares.
If FatBrett ever did a deconstruction of villainy for ULTRAKILL's V1 I would die happy.
Don't lie you're a monster in that game. It's not unlike the Dark Presence. No explanation, just bloodshed.
I'd choose Gabriel just to hear Gianni speak more. 😅
I think the Dark Presence symbolizes not just evil in general, but the more sinister side of creativity and imagination. The kind of thoughts a sadist has towards a victim. The lies invented by a malicious schemer. The fleeting moments when we consider doing something that we know is wrong. It represents the worst desires in all of us. It's our responsibility to keep those thoughts restrained.
New video by Brett. It's a good start to my Friday.
ya know..somethign occurs to me. ina realm where your creativity is powerful enough to literally shape reality around you..couldnt a focused enough or creative enough writer just..write the dark presence out of existence by the virtue of the dark places power having essentially no limit as long as you know how to use it?
It doesn't work like that. Even in the Dark Place where the rules barely apply, there are still certain rules of drama, it's why Alan can't just write himself back with Return right after he wrote Departure, and it's why he had to write Initiation beforehand.
The Mystery is a Darkness. Maybe that is part of the point.
I hope you will make more GoW vids. Theye are sooo good
I've been on an Alan Wake and Control story analysis binge and yours is one of the best that makes sense of so much!
I wish I knew what was being spoiled before clicking the video...
Dude, i think you're gonna become a personality like Wendigoon, like, your analysis of all this characters trough multiple videogame sagas are amazing, it's like listening to a professional writer disect another writer's characters
My idea about the Dark Presence is actually inspired by how Control depicts Objects of Power. Dr Darling says that OoPs come form from the collective unconscious of humanity, fear of nuclear launches during the cold War caused a floppy disk with nuclear codes to give a parautilitarian the telekinetic "launch" power. A large metal safe granted the use of a shield ability, etc. By this logic, I believe the Dark Presence is literally the darkness within the human subconscious, and why it preys upon, manipulates, and amplifies the darkest thoughts within those it influences. It could be considered an Entity of Power, much like The Hiss. I agree that the Dark Place is distinct from the Dark Presence and that it is a crucible of creation, but I wonder if the Dark Place was always dark, or did it become that way after the arrival/formation of the Presence? But if the Place and Presence are more intrinsically linked, I've also considered the possibility that the Dark Place is hell itself, giving Alan his own personalized hell.
Now I'm suddenly imagining a cosmic entity...
The pov enters what looks like a normal building, but they find themselves in what looks like a living room, wrecked and broken, orbiting an inaccurately depicted black hole, the room exposed to the void outside. The pov suddenly feels... A presence, pressing over so slightly against their mind. There's nothing the pov can comprehend, only that there's something like a mind there with them. There's no way of knowing where the mind's body is, what it is, there's no mutual mind reading, so there's telling if it's good or evil or even sapient at all, it's just THERE. Maybe it's simply content to exist as a stationary force, but what if it's not? What if it does something the pov can only perceive as spontaneous? Is there intent, intelligence? The pov is certain of only two things; It is THERE, and it is UNKNOWN.
Damn bro I had no interest in this game, but your analysis is making me want to play it so bad. I can't afford such quality video essays lmao
Same here, the whole game sounds really cool!
As a creative, the premise immediately gripped me!
Never played it, but Loved your vids!
6:11 There's a theory that Odin and Tor Anderson are the mythological Odin and Thor reincarnated and use the Dark Place to channel their powers through their music.
Alan Wake 2 establishes that no one can be written into existence. He can only ever use existing people as characters and influence events around them
It might be a stretch on my part, but i think that the nature of the Dark Presence is mystery itself- those possessed by the Dark Presence are weakened by light. Shining a light on a mystery, the act of revelation, is the undoing of a mystery.
The Dark Presence's most dangerous creation was when it used rumours spread about Alan being a serial killer to turn Mr Scratch into his evil half.
This video reminds me of the videos of Alan Wake by a guy called Gaming University.
The old gods of Asgard band member with the eye patch is literally the same exact person as Odin in God of war Ragnarok. What if the dark place is where Atreus banished Odin's soul multiple millennia ago, and Allan Wake got him out?
I'd love if you did some story analysis stuff with Spiderman 2. But any video is good
Darkness, imprisoning me, all that I see, absolute horror
I like other worldly entities. I like gods. I like devils. And I like all stories that have unknowability to them. So when I played this game saw the story and all that I was like a giddy kid who had first read H. P love crafts books Absolutely thrilled out of my mind my heart is racing Yet I have no idea what the heck I just read
where is kratos video part 2?
Yes yes yes!
Great choice, great content!
Thank you!
Good shit!
You know, seeing how you phrased this video. It makes you wonder if the dark place made humanity because the dark presence needed a way to get away At one point there was truly nothing within this Underbelly of existence there is meaning but this meaning is given form. Hence why the dark presence wants it so much. In its realm, everything it creates is instantly destroyed. It has no meaning, so what it wants to influence means nothing
I believe in some capacity. The dark presence is like the writers. It wants to give meaning to its stories. But the only way to do that is to give itself. The same power is that we have, which is true existence. What we write is fiction, but we aren't, and it doesn't want to be
But given the same context, it also means that, whether or not, it existed before the first guy. It doesn't matter because it truly doesn't. It could be his worst influence given form. It could just be a side effect of trying to bring back something that should never have come back to stay dead to not play god. Or it could have always existed, and the very actions that killed his wife could have been the dark presence. We know that it's done this type of thing with Allen. So it's not that hard to believe. On the other hand, it also brings a question of before this guy shows up and gives it some power. How did they influence the world before that just saying
But all that culminate together to make something that we can never understand, and we get a god in the cage scenario. We don't know if what it truly wants is bad because it's a prisoner. How do we know it's that bad? But at the same time, its actions and its influences show how bad it's willing to be. And how far is it going to go? Also, something called the dark presence. It's gonna take a person with no brain being manipulated and brainwashed. And they still probably think that's a person a little shady
Small correction. Alan was a crime noir writer, not a supernatural thriller writer.
Imagine if brok met Tor and Odin Anderson
UA-cam unsubscribed me but luckily this got recommended :)
After giving it some thought I think the dark pressence was created. Thomas Zane tried to recreate Barbara Jagger, his muse. And what do you need to do to make a good story? You need to hurt the characters. You need to push people to dark places. I think Thomas just leaned too much into the muse angle of Barbara when rewriting her.
This is why i dont. Fear scientific horror, but dread supernatural horror
Rose must be like 3 and a half feet tall. Her head barely comes up to the door handle of that trailer 😂😂😂
It really is kinda disappointing that Allen Wake wasnt able to come out as a free roam sandbox mystery horror like it was originally showcased. Not to say I didnt enjoy it it was a fun narrative ride. But i definitely feel like the devs at Remedy had their hands tied to make the game release quicker and it was already a crazy amount of time since their initial presentation.
Deadly Premonition is basically a highly dulled down and very cheaply made version of what Allen Wake was initially going for. A very Twin Peaks inspired horror thriller in a sandbox setting. Both are still great games despite each one having their flaws of circumstance, but an Allen Wake that was able to release as it was initially intended would have been a masterclass of legitimate survival horror in a small rural sandbox setting where you can be jumped at almost any time during the circumstances. Deadly Premonition was just a much more dulled down reality of that that relied more on the quirky worldbuilding inspired by David Lynch's weird yet captivating style of Twin Peaks writing that made characters creepy, unique, bizarre, and even funny. All to make a weird unsettling experience that just feels abstract and out of place.
Id absolutely love the sequel of Allen Wake to be able to do what its predecessor wanted because that would make for a genuine one of a kind horror experience. Theres just an untapped feeling of dread at the idea of the dark presence waiting to attack you in the shadows of an open world at any time if you so much as step into an alley way looking for a hidden secret.
I love the game for what it is, not what it isn't. I had a great time and fell in love.
Asking for more wouldn't feel right.
Oh wow, hearing that it was originally supposed to be free roam and got edited into a more linear experience because of time/budget constraints makes a lot of sense in light of certain aspects of the end product (e.g. the out-of-place driving bits in big but empty and low-detail environments). Would love to one day see it remade so as to fulfill those original game design ambitions as well as it does the narrative ones, but realistically Sam Lake only has so many more projects in him and he'd probably rather focus on entirely new things.
"Weird fiction" there are already ten names for that genre ad the themes in it. I do not get why people felt compelled to create yet another one.
As much as I want to know more about The Dark Presence at the same time I don't want to. Thats what makes this presence so terrifying and threatenin. We know little to nothing about it. Fear of the unknown. We just know it wants to escape into the real world and that would be bad for everyone.
*SPOILERS for AW2*
But I saw you made a video on AW2 already.
Honestly disappointed by how much less of a character the Dark Presence is in AW2. They somehow managed to make Mr. Scratch less interesting than Barbara Jagger by basically just making him act like any other Taken.
Bro you gotta stop making excellent videos that make me wanna buy more new games. Please I’m begging you my family is starving.
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