I'm just weirded out that they have the balls to end the game on a cliffhanger. On one hand, cool more upcoming Alan Wake contents, but on the other hand I'd rather not wait another 10 years for another mainline entry in the series.
but it's not a cliffhanger, i think. Saga's and Alan's journeys had a conclusion. Saga found her family and Alan showed Alice he sacrificed for her. there's room for more, but i liked it
@@victor1625also it's not a loop it's a spiral basically means that Alan found a way out. And the game is a huge success unlike the first one so we won't be waiting another 13 years for alan wake 3
@@victor1625 Saga's journey had a conclusion if the datamined DLC/NG+ contents are any indicator. Meanwhile Alan is still stuck on his spiral by the end of the game.
@Dr.Yakub22 Is it a success? It's getting good reviews but no mention of sales has been talked about. These companies always like boasting about sales but nothing has been said at all.
You can disable the epic game achievements by using shift F3 to bring up the overlay and check do not disturb. You can only do it on the in game overlay and not on the actual launcher before hand
Thing is it didn't made you feel like a detective looking for clues since all the clues are extremely guided and automatic the game manage to make you feel like a baby watching a detective finding things himself and telling you are the one who did it
Amazing to see finnish media being rarely appreciated, Alan Wake is held as a national treasure to us all finnish gamers just like Max Payne, or The Witcher to the polish people, I just love seeing it get the attention it deserves.
Well for what it's worth it was one of my favorite games of all time. Remedy is one of my favorite developers, every game they make is an insta buy. Plus, Ahti is my favorite game side-character since Mirmir.
I missed Barry so much in this game, we need that comic releaf, the game on some point turned so dark and exhausting that you need some Barry material to rest a little.
I enjoyed the game and piecing together the story, lore and tidbits of information connecting the other games (Quantum Break and Control) I've been on a binge of Alan Wake lore for some time and for this game's release. Can't wait for the new game plus and Control 2. For the ammo count and item management, I suggest playing on the hardest availabile difficulty. It really makes you take consideration into fighting or sneaking around to save ammo or healing items.
Yeah, after running out of ammo in the Nightingale fight, having to run around grabbing some before killing him with just a few bullets left, i ended up playing really conservatively then running out of storage space with Saga late on. (on the hardest difficulty btw)
I knew from the very first sip in the car that it'd be a part of their character. I love how subtly absurd some elements of Remedy's stories are... I especially love the extremely absurd elements.
The map can be infuriating to access on a controller because you have to hold a button, otherwise it will put you into the mind palace. The controls between map access and mind palace for controllers should be reversed in my opinion
I really enjoyed Alan Wake 2, but I don't think it'll hit with the general audience. The game is quite far from your standard gaming fare, much more so than the first game. Most gamers just don't jibe with post-modernism very well. I think it is a wonderful example of survival horror with very cerebral storytelling. It even has a mechanic similar to Silent Hill's otherworld. It's not perfectly polished. There are flaws and blemishes here and there. But it does provide a great experience if you are into what it is. I can't really make a definitive judgement just yet since I'm betting New Game Plus will give you the true ending (in a similar way as something like Nier Automata)
Saga might come off as a little dull, but I think that was intentional. Saga seems like a very well adjusted person. She doesn't have any really apparent flaws. Though she's a workaholic, she seems to have a happy family life. She gets along with her co-workers. She supported Casey when he was at his worst. Even at the end of the game when it goes into her doubts and fears, they are pretty standard. The thing that stands out so much about Alan is how flawed he is and those flaws manifest in destructive ways. He is a jerk to people around him, his wife, reporters, his fans. And that attitude has had a negative effect on his life. I think that's why the Dark Presence preyed on Alan, apart from his creative talents. It grasped onto Alan's inner darkness and created Scratch out of Alan's worst traits. I think Saga was written like she was to contrast her with Alan. She doesn't have a great deal of darkness inside her so the Dark Presence didn't have much to get its hooks into. A personal tragedy had to be contrived (probably by Scratch) to try to break her will. Unfortunately, we don't see Alan and Saga interact much to really see that contrast in play. Though I would have personally like to play as Casey, I think he was too similar to Alan (with all his self-destructive traits) to be particularly interesting. One thing you don't want to do in a sequel with a new co-lead is making that new character the same as the previous lead. Imagine in MGS2 if Raiden was very similar to Snake. It wouldn't have been interesting because their personalities don't contrast.
There is a difference between well adjusted and not having any self doubts or issues until the end of the game. Saga is a character with great potential, but by the middle of her story I was still saying "I wish I KNEW Saga." You can add her doubts, character flaws, and worries along the game so it builds to a breaking point and hero moment at the end. All she ever did was argue the story wasn't real. Melanie did great, but, she's not presented as a dynamic character like Alan, Jesse, or hell Alice.
@@libertyrae1351 Do you really need the game to spoon feed you scenes of her doubting herself or do you think maybe they were subtectual in the way she responed to events? Because I don't need my adult media being dumbed down to YA novel tier writing tropes.
@@magvad6472Damn you really hit up every single comment on this video of anyone critical of the race baiting SBI character ready for defense huh. Hope this amount of dedication came with a paycheck
If anything, it seems like a product made with a lot of love. And I can imagine the daunting task of making a sequel to this of all things, and getting it right!
Not just love but to take risks. Almost all AAA games are so risk averse these days it's good to see a studio do such out there stuff like the musical section.
That's a perfect descriptor for Remedy. They are a AAA studio that makes games like they were an indie studio. AW2 is definitely not a game that would come out from pretty much any other AAA studio. It's too weird, too niche, too cerebral for what publishers think the mainstream audience wants.
Although i enjoyed the game, i felt Saga’s stuff was drawn out and Alan’s was too short. In an Alan Wake game, I want to play as Alan the most. I am worried that Saga is going to replace Jesse in Control 2 now that they established she has powers.
Your channel is the first ever channel. The first channel for my bell notifications! I love this style of reviews is amazing, I love the lengths of videos as well as I love UA-cam reviews of stuff I'm interested to be great for watching fully awake or trying sleep well. Love your videos genuinely ! :)
The funny music and dance shenanigans happens too on Control with Dr. Darling videos. You really should play Control. It's also a flawned but unique experience from Remedy. Still my favorite. But be prepared, if you hated characters talking too much, Jesse's inner dialog can be really, really, REALLY annoying. And that's comming from a huge fan of that game.
Control is more of an action game, so the controls are much more dynamic and fast. Jessie talking to herself does have plot reasons since there is another entity who lives in her head.
I didn't expect you to mention Diabetus Fetus' involvement in writing AW2, and damn has my respect gone up for you lol. Such a shame that Saga was neutered as a character by those hacks, you know for a fact that she would've just as eccentric and cool as Casey and Wake if AW2 was only written by Sam and co.
@@3ndlessL00p a DEI-focused writers-for-hire operation called Sweet Baby was involved in the writing process for AW2, namely 'character arc, voice and sensitivity reading', according to their site. So Saga looking different from before, and being a wooden plank of a character is definitely on them.
@@HelloKollayep absolutely. There's no denying that company has an agenda on their hands and in their mind, and they really ruined what could have been a great character and had potential. But, that's these agenda-filled, sensitivity training & narrative consulting companies do, ruin what's already good & what can be great. A shame Remedy outsourced their writing to them, why on earth they did that I'm not sure, but a really unnecessary and foolish thing to do.
@@_chemicalbeat_ yep, I'm liberal af too but shoehorning in characters just for the sake of their race and writing them poorly too is just cringe. Companies like Sweet Baby need to go the hell away, keep that crap out of my art! Imagine if a company like that had gotten a hold of the script to Django Unchained prior to release? Would've been sterilized to hell and we wouldn't have gotten the hard hitting masterpiece we did. I've honestly lost respect for remedy allowing them to be involved at all and kinda worried about control 2
It's worth noting it's published by Epic, so likely not just a timed exclusive unfortunately; also, you reeeeally should play Control. The musical portion's actually a callback to a sequence from that game, while the later concert in 2 is a callback to the stage sequence from Alan Wake 1.
Yep the remastered version of the first game was released 2 years ago and still isn't available on Steam. Think it's safe to say any game published by Epic isn't ever coming to steam
With the implication that Mr. Door is Saga's father who battled with Tor and Odin in 1986, it's extra messed up for him to use a version of them as his house band
I do have to say that i enjoyed all combat encounters. There might have been a bit more tho. But overall it was fun. Plus the guns felt super satisfying to use
I gotta say I absolutely adore this game already, I even enjoyed playing as a detective in the beginning that being said the only flaw in this game is when you first pick up a gun and realize how fun the gunplay is making it hard going back to detective work, and I see a lot of people really hated saga for some reason, I thought her story was really good and thought she was a nice addition
Overhype horseshit from critics and reviewers, 10 out of 10??? Yes maybe the graphics…. The evil within shits Diarrhea on this game ! … alan wake gameplay story fckin hella boring , saga story gameplay was decent play …. My honest review 6 out of 10 at best and im being nice!
Playing the game on hard improved the combat, especially early on when supplies are scarce, by the end of the game my Saga and Alan were both confidently well stocked action heroes. I look forward to regaining the tension in nightmare mode!
If they added optional clues to be found and actual investigation work, and gave you actual different endings depending on if you did the correct deduction.
This isn't that type of game, the case board is just there as an immersive and thematic way to keep track of what you've done and what you need to do, it's just an interactive objective menu
One of my favorite things I learned about this game is that, contrary to what some may think, the live-action segments were done mostly because it was easier and somewhat cheaper on the production team, instead of trying to render every scene in a photorealistic engine. Just goes to show that sometimes complications in production can lead to interesting and innovative results in the final product.
@@_chemicalbeat_ Sweetbaby Inc. is a writing consultant firm based out of Montreal, who have consulted for a bunch of high-profile games lately like Alan Wake II and the new Spider-Man game. They've recently come under the spotlight when parts the internet found out, because their mission-statement is to change video-games and the industry by introducing critical race theory talking points and race sensitivity consulting among other left-leaning cultural ideas. They seem to be mostly responsible for the character arc and narrative of Saga Andersson and her story-part, including the race-swap and race baiting parts ('white assholes' and 'more racist than Alabama', for example), and because it seems like her character is quite poorly done compared to Alan Wake's, Sweetbaby Inc has been routinely mocked and criticized for their work and politics by certain parts of the internet. Boulder Punch is making fun that Sam Lake (the director and lead writer) handed off the narrative and character of Saga to these people for some reason.
ironically enough, I totally had suspension of disbelief in a supernatural setting with Saga being the niece of a nordic god pantheon, which obviously makes no sense, I could have even understood the game wanting to have the issue of a black person in the FBI somewhat in the story, but exactly these two lines also felt cheapest for me, they just felt out of place. Saga herself did not really for me. I have no problem with certain ideologies being presented in video games if it is done in a good way and maybe also a little bit more open about these things. However I think the issue of many people seems to be that it comes from such a company, not necessarily the story itself. again, even if that is the case, we have so far no insight how and in what way their consultation shaped the story. I guess for that we would have to ask sam lake and said company. It is not that in other games third parties outside of that did have no say either... say the military in certain movies or games for example. Again, I do not necessarily have a problem with that if it is made transparent who does what when and where.
When Saga was first announced, I instinctively went “where’s Sarah?” Don’t get me wrong, Saga is cool, but it’s so strange that neither Sarah nor Barry had anything to do here.
I'm pretty sure both will end up in Control 2. 1. Sarah's now working for 'the Feds' , and when you know, what kind of Feds were her father's employers and that she'd clashed with the supernatural, it's settled 2. Barry'd written an email to Alice in, like, 2020-21 when he admitted he'd joined some 'blessed' organization. Very shady dudes from Control
@@jesusrodriguezcolon8315 I know they're mentioned, but it's strange that they aren't directly tied to the events of the game considering how integral they were in the first.
I thought it was pretty good until I came across certain narrative decisions that sucked me out of the story. Looking into to it took me down a rabbit hole that led to ESG guidelines. These are BlackRock policies that are taking over media in general. More directly companies like Sweet Baby Inc. tell game devs how to make their game to fall within these guidelines. These people helped with the latest God of War, Spider-Man, and now Alan Wake and the parallels are obvious. Remedy said Epic didn't interfere with any creative decisions, well they didn't have to. They outsource that stuff now to maintain an ESG score that's no different to China's social credit score. This is a problem across the industry, prioritizing these guidelines before fun gameplay.
You didn't play the game and it shows. What you're talking about is a real concern, but it does not poke its head into AW2. In fact, the game takes a bit of a stance against it in the beginning of the finale.
@@bbbbbbb51 they did and it did affect the game obviously from Saga race swap to completely removing Alan as the central protag it had an obvious effect on the game and its design
@@marcusclark1339 Saga wasn't race-swapped. The short scene in Quantum Break was obviously just a place-holder for a future idea that Remedy hadn't fleshed out yet. Saga is Mr Door's daughter so of course she's going to be black (and Mr Door was always intended to be played by Lance Reddick, who unfortunately passed away before the game started production, so they had to re-cast him at the last minute). Assuming that Sweet Baby changed Saga's race just shows you didn't pay enough attention to the game.
While I found her accent slips more charming than distracting, i do agree that they should have leaned more into Saga’s eccentricities. Although, that being said, her being so unflappable/steadfast in not letting the “story” influence her is nice. She doesn’t let anyone steamroll her into doing dumb things. She’s a rock that the player can depend on not making stupid horror trope mistakes. If I had to depend of either Saga or Alan actually successfully saving me for the dark place, I’d take Saga any day.
That's the thing about Saga that I'm certain was intentional. She's a well-adjusted, mature person while Alan is petty, moody, and self-destructive. Saga was written like she was to contrast against Alan.
Hey man, I'm not sure if you're aware but there's a sound issue in this video from 26:20 - 26:24, it just blew up my speakers and was painful to listen to. Just an FYI
Im surprised to hear about the complaints of walking. I would rather the game takes its time immersing me in the environment with all the writing and detail so it can set up the horror properly. Its one of the only games I've ever experienced in the genre that establishes the world fully before breaking the characters brains with the horror/supernatural element. Still a great review! Just a note that some find it incredibly engrossing
Not sure how they are supposed to do suspense horror if Im running through murdering everything every 2 seconds. When are they supposed to build tension? My least favorite thing about Control was how often they'd throw enemies at us just to fill the void as if we are stupid.
@@magvad6472 what are you talking about? There's really not much combat in Alan Wake 2 relative to the rest of the game. Especially not at the beginning when it spends hours setting everything up with no combat. Control was never survival horror. It's an action shooter in the vein of their past work like Max Payne. Why are you getting mad at a game for selling itself as an action shooter and delivering on it? And did you even play Alan Wake 2? Did you mean to respond to my comment? Your reply seems completely irrelevant and it doesn't seem like we're on the same planet here
True Detective is definitely a big influence in this game but another huge influence that I don’t see anyone discussing is the show Hannibal. Saga’s mind place and profiling are lifted pretty directly from its character Will Graham, an FBI agent with an uncanny ability to empathize and profile serial killers, though at the risk of his own health. The concept of the mind palace is a common theme in that show as well and is used as a therapeutic method by Hannibal when treating people. The way that the deer motif is used is also lifted from the show, as the deer is a prominent symbol in the show for many different reasons.
Long-time Remedy and, in recent years, survival horror fan, and I am quite frankly disappointed and, in more ways than one, disgusted by this "sequel". Remedy used to understand how to respect the time of its core audience, being gamers. Even a game like Quantum Break, which was criticized (rightfully so) for its pacing that often dragged out gameplay segments too far apart from each other even when you skip the live-action shows, still managed to get to the point of the gameplay at around the 30-40-minute mark of playtime. Alan Wake II can take 2 to upwards of 4 or even more hours before the actual survival horror elements kick into gear, and that's all dependent on how the player engages with its mechanics and walking-simulator-oriented exploration. I thought Control was Remedy finally figuring out more and more how much gameplay should matter more over a narrative presence. It's why their most timeless achievements, in my book, were their Max Payne games, both of which managed to strike a nigh-perfect balance between story and gameplay, always keeping the player engaged without taking the player away from the core mechanics. To me, this isn't a true Alan Wake "sequel", nor is it a true survival horror or even action horror title with just how few and far between the encounters are. As an Alan Wake fan, seeing Saga, a flat character, get the best weapons and have the most sections wherein the player gets to fight enemies of varying types, it's just so blatantly disrespectful! I'm no longer excited with what Remedy plans to do with the Max Payne games. If they keep investing in a narrative-consultant company like Sweet Baby Inc., then I won't be surprised if Max ends up taking a backseat in his own game, and if the combat encounters are lessened for the sake of "realism". They might even have to turn his vigilante war on crime on its head and make it a "bad thing" in the same vein that current MARVEL did with Frank Castle in the comics, disgraced and forgotten. I know many will defend Alan Wake II, and, if you like it, then you're the target audience. I'm just sad to say that I don't think I'll manage to call myself a fan of Remedy anymore from here on out. We'll see how those remakes go.
I think the real insult to gamer intelligence is assuming we need to be placated by pointless action sequences. Worst part about Alan Wake was the volume of combat undermined the tone. Less so in Control only because a "horde" was the enemy but even in that they just would throw action in to make us "gameplay" when the tone was enough. The point of gaming as a storytelling medium isn''t "gameplay", it's the ability to be IN a world and have to face it with our own agency.
Loved the game! However, Saga must be the most annoying protagonist of any Remedy game to date... It feels like she has two remaining neurons in her brain and kinda makes me feel dumb in return. The ending chapters are really bad in this regard, and I really dislike the last interaction where they're trying to figure out the ending to Return. It feels really cheesy and out of place, a stark contrast to the more mature writing in the Wake's chapters. Also, what a selfish hero Saga is... her family MUST come back (non-negotiable,) but what about everyone else? She comes off as egotistical end self-centered, which I find quite unlikable to be honest. This is an Altered World Event... it's not just a personal attack on Saga, it's not just about her family and herself, but the entirety of Bright Falls, and potentially the whole universe. Ayayayayay
I feel way more Alan is the selfish one... but he may not even realize what he has done, writing her into his story, cause the dark place makes him forget... that what I liked about this game TBH, all the charachters have flaws, but are also not entirely responsible for certain situations. it is all very grey-ish... how Alan just used Saga and Casey for his own goals, but also how Casey focuses too much on the job (like Saga) and thus has a shitty family life, how the cult of the tree does horrible things to keep people safe (if those people were not taken, they would be crazy cult murderers, I dont know if the whole plot line is also sort of a meta commentary on people enjoying violence and mystery and how that may affect other people), how Alan also was a dick to his wife, later scaring her almost literally to death, but not realizing that, wanting to rescue her became her downfall (and ironically also his rescue probably with the whole fake death thing to progress his story). Which, then again, is also a grade A asshole move from her. Understandibly, but imagine faking your own death and then one day just returning to your partner like nothing happened. I think there are even real life stories where that happened, one is on youtube lol.
wholeheartedly agree with you like yea I get that Saga deeply cares about her family, and she willing to do anything for them; however I did find that subplot that everyone assume that her daughter did truly died, and everyone figured that Saga was living in denial was far more interesting of a story and wish it was leaned in more, it was make Saga far more relatable to everyone else in the who lost a loved one. She is fitting the stereotypical "my life & my world is perfect" too well. Granted I did see that Sweet Baby consulting firm was brought in to trained Remedy to be more sensitive and affirming for the black audience; which is stupid since I'm part black and I don't know anyone who is living the sweet life like Saga Anderson...nor do I know any black sisters who's named Saga.
cause ESG meddling ruined this series Alan a footnote in his own plot while the main story now revolves around her, her family, Mr Door connecting more to her than Alan and has magical bs powers making her IMMUNE to the Dark Place powers, she's just a sue self insert character
Interesting how similar writing red flags show up in other games where a certain "Sweet Baby" is involved *Edit: I never said anything about the characters' race or gender, yet corposlop consoomers still immediately jump on my throat thinking that's the red flag I'm talking about, really gets the noggin joggin
Interesting how you clearly didn't play the game. The game is rather explicitly anti-woke in a few different sections towards the end. It mocks people who care about a "strong female black protagonist" & mocks people who think them being black is holding back their career. I'm not saying SBI is good, but if they had any real input in this game, it was extremely minimal and possibly even purposely counteracted
It's not a time to exclusive on the epic store it's simply exclusive to the epic store. Epic published the game they're not releasing it anywhere else on PC.
@@todaysdesperadohatesavocad7109 that's like saying you can't afford expensive clothes so you start stealing them. Have some shame and at least keep your theft to yourself instead of trying justify it.
@@Dr.Yakub22that's a bit too harsh of a take. The significant advantage to digital is that there is no scarcity, all "shops" can distribute as many copies as they want to (paying) customers. When such a shop tries to create scarcity artificially, they should be punished for it. From the customer side, there is absolutely no benefit to exclusives, and I will gladly sail the seas if the company needs to see a downside to this mechanic.
You can't make everyone hapoy, and in the Tictock attention span era most people wont put in the time it takes for the game to really get good, and will judge it based on 2 hours of gameplay. With so many games being over saturated with non stop action and generic design inside the safe zone of game design a title like this is refreshing. No, it's not a game for everyone, but it's not a walking simulator either. People say they want something different , then when they get it, they hate it because it's different, and go back to playing fortnite AW2 is more of an immersion into an interactive multi media experience than a traditional game. I loved it
OMG exactly. The tiktok attention span. Everyone wants fast meaningless content. Remedy made a game with a rich story and slow burn people go bananas. Chill go play some fortnite if u want combat
The highs are very high and the lows are very low. The atmosphere and setting mixed with the storytelling create something completely original. Even as a sequel. But 6 hours I asked myself. "Did I only fight like ten enemies?" 😂 I like to explore and found myself bored. Theres tension then its gone because youre just walking after a while.
I agree about Saga's character - overall she was fine and has some flashes of personality, but she's not as interesting or as flawed as Alan. Missed opportunity to have her become more frustrated or disheveled as the game went on.
I think that was intentional to contrast her with the incredibly flawed human being Alan is. Saga is a normal, well-adjusted person so the Dark Presence wasn't able to prey on her like it did with Alan (whom it eventually corrupted and possessed)
Given Alan Wake was as interesting as a wet noodle in Alan Wake 1 I don't see how this isn't just an issue of lack of time with the character. A character doesn't need to be quipping nonstop to be "interesting" In general her level headedness about the reality of the supernatural world was refreshing and I really enjoyed her in contrast to Alan.
I wonder if that's because Alan's actor has been rocking the long hair and beard look for a while, so they just leaned into it instead of telling him to shave 😂
The pacing of this game was kinda perfect in my eyes. Much like the first game, it just kept me on the edge of my seat. I also think it is the most Remedy ass game Remedy has ever made.
He is hardly in his own game, and the gameplay is only slighty better than the original. This isnt the alan wake game we deserve after the time we waited.
Idk mixed feelings on this game. I was thoroughly engrossed, but it didn’t always feel like a sequel to Alan Wake. My favorite content was almost everything after the point of no return. Along with most of the Alan stuff. I really liked the saga content actually, just didn’t feel like it belonged in an Alan wake sequel. Idk I feel like this will go the route of the last of us part 2. Which I personally loved and have only grown to appreciate more.
cause it wasn't, its a trojan horse using a established name to sell the actual main lead - Saga Anderson cause Sweet Baby Inc worked on the game and it derailed cause "strong black female protagonist" is more "diverse" than white male in their eyes really sums up why Alan is a footnote in his own game and barely important and why most good gameplay is around Saga (including better weapons) than Alan's parts
It really feels to me like this has very little to do with the original Alan Wake. Yeah, sure, it features the titular Alan Wake. But... he looks completely different. The game's presented completely different, with these live action cutscenes. I imagine the differnt character look was done to match the real life actor they got, which is really obnoxious imo since once of the biggest advantages of non-live action media is that the actor doesn't have to look like who they're voicing. And now they're just tossing that away. No Barry, minimal combat, NYC instead of rural New England. I'm not saying a game can't go in a new direction, have a new feel. But I am saying I don't like it. I think this would have been a lot better as a spinoff game with entirely new characters, with a few references instead of trying to get me believe that Mr. Needs A Shave is actually Alan.
In the remaster, the in-game models were redone to better match the real-life actors. So this isn't out of nowhere. Plus, basing game models off of real-life references is pretty much standard industry practice now. It's actually helped game characters (in games that were going for photorealism) look less generic than they used to. The game is certainly different from the first game. But it has been 13 years and two console generations. Take any other franchise and put in that time gap and you'll see a similar change (like comparing MGS1 to MGS5) Plus, it is pretty clear the game is going for a post-modernist take while the first game was a fairly straight video game.
The actor is the face model of Alan. Always has been. But they previously failed to capture his likeness in the original. His name is Ilka Vili. Also he is not the voice actor of Alan. I personally think this is an improvement over the original which presented itself as horror, but failed to deliver gameplay wise. This is a more cohesive package and closer to what I think Remedy wanted the franchise to be. You want a more action packed game? They made Control for that demographic.
@@jiopa What I want is a game that feels like a sequel to the original, rather than something in an entirely different genre. I don't care whether it's more action-oriented or not, the tonal genre is very different. And whether the face actor is the same or not is immaterial: the _character_ looks nothing like his previous appearance, and 13 years doesn't change facial structure like that. Like I said, this does not feel like a sequel to Alan Wake, neither in tone nor "feel" if you will, nor character. The similarities, like the big lightshow fight, seem superficial to me. The original Alan Wake felt like it was _inspired by_ David Lynch. Alan Wake 2: Wake Harder feels like it _is_ one of Lynch's works. And if you like that, fine. But I liked what Alan Wake was for what it was, and I don't think it needed to change to be good.
@@Shenaldrac like i said, they failed to capture his likeness in the original. But they were going for his likeness. That's why the remaster had his face changed as well. As for liking what it was, then more power to you. But this feels like they're finally able to step into what they wanted originally. But you're right. Tonally it's way more serious than the first. 1 actually is closer tonally to Control than 2.
@@jiopa Again, I do not care if they failed to capture his likeness or not. They still established, by making that game, "this is how this character looks." Changing that will of course look weird. As is going for real live action cutscenes instead of in-engine with character models. I know there was Quantum Break, but once again, this is a sequel to a game with an established style to it and did not have live action cutscenes. If they just called this a spiritual successor to Alan Wake, with different characters and stuff, I'd have no complaints, and wouldn't mind all the changes, and turning things into The Remedy Cinematic Universe with cameos from characters from their other properties. But they didn't do that, they made it a direct sequel, and so comparisons to the first game will, must, be made. What the company "wanted to do" or "was trying to do" doesn't matter. What matters is what they *did.* And if they then want to do something _different,_ they ought to make it a different thing, rather than attach it to the original when it does not tonally fit. I wouldn't want a hypothetical sequel to WALL-E to be super grim Noir, regardless of whether that was the studios original intent that they failed to deliver.
The mind place is just a thematic way to track your progress and help you know what to do next, the fact that anyone expected it to be anything else baffles me. They turned what is normally a boring menu into an interactive one and people are complaining about it.
it's still a terrible implementation. Two examples: 1. At some points you can't progress unless you first make the deductions in the mindplace, even if you have already figured everything out yourself. Like in Coffee World where you can't pick up key items even if you're standing in front of them because you need to walk Saga through it in the mindplace first. It slows down some game sections to a crawl. 2. When doing the profiling: Instead of just having Saga give one Monologue about the Character, you need to choose various subthemes, each with their own slow intro. And then you get to choose another one, and another one. It doesn't add anything. An exposition dump doesn't get more interesting if it's interrupted every minute or so by an unnecessary button press. Overall a good, and very interesting game, but man, that mindplace.....
Wrongo bud. The game literally forces you to put clues on the board in order to progress and sometimes it doesn't. No indication of either, no auto sort, it sucks and kills the pacing. It's a bad system for a painfully mid game.
@@PatrickSampagree with all except the last part. Game kinda sucked especially after 13 years and hundreds of other games to take inspiration from. Never a good sign when a studios last release (control) is about 10x better than their most recent
@@Funko777 you are blatantly wrong, there's a symbol that appears in the bottom of the screen telling you when you need to make connections on the board
Yep if he had the GPU to play with it on he absolutely would have talked about it more. I reckon i added a few more hours to my playthrough just from taking my time walking around because the game was so beautiful. One of the best looking games i've ever played.
I'm still bummed out that this didn't get a physical release. I loved the firet game and have passed it multiple times on different consoles and the remaster and even American Nightmare. I was hyped for this game when they first showed the trailer, it looks amazing but unfortunately i can't pay $60-70 for a digital game. I will have to wait until it's $10, i have plenty of games to keep me busy until then, but it's a shame bc this would've been a dsy 1 pick up for me.
Thanks for the comment because this is my first time hearing that. Can't believe there isn't a physical release and it really saddens me that we're heading for an all digital future. Makes me feel a lot more justified in my decision to pirate it, with their anti-consumer practices like this and Epic exclusivity.
@@theblackswordsman9951 Yep it's not looking good for physical media collectors in the future. If gaming does go all digital I'll probably stop buying games and just stick with my collection
Had same feeling in a first 20 minutes of a game. But she is solid character. There hints in dialogs and story that Mr.Door is her father. Her appearence in old short film is protototype. I guess so.
Saga being black has nothing to do with Sweet Baby. A certain plot point/twist has to do with the identity of her father and it wouldn't make sense if she wasn't black. 😅
This game is great.. absolutely been loving the crazy wacky story & survival horror style gameplay. I love Alan & Saga was fine although her voice acting could be better.. another fantastic game this year & one i hope will be remembered & played for a ling time. Wonder how the dlcs will go.
Thanks for the honest review. I kinda figured it was going to be like a slow Sony game when i saw all the absurd critic reviews at like 90%. As someone who couldn't even finish The Last of Us because of how insanely bored I was + that stupid sony camera angle that's shoved up the ass of the player character (without the level design to back up that camera angle. Ex of good camera+design: Dead Space, RE4) I liked the first one and didn't even realize the 2nd was being made, but my god I hate the slow ass $60 interactive movie games that have recently been plaguing the industry. FromSoftware has kinda ruined me, but regardless I (the player) want to do the stuff! I'm the player, I want to do things. I don't want to watch someone talk for 15 min. This whole genre of games has really proven a lot of studios forget that you can have amazing narrative and amazing gameplay at the same time. Valve literally wrote the book on this and games like Bioshock stayed true to it. These games fail to utilize this crazy medium we have for story telling by basically making it a movie/long ass cut scene. I'd go to a movie theater if that's what I wanted. Give me gameplay that reinforces the narrative on every level, like Bloodborne not yet another RE4 clone showing off good graphics.
See, here I massively disagree, because the story Alan Wake 2 tells can only be told in the videogame medium. The gameplay might be at a slow pace, but I heavily disagree on the movie game aspect. (Even if it has multible life action elements integrated into the presentation :p) Stuff like the plotboard simply would not be translatable in a movie or show.
The technology to actually make a good narrative story and have the player really figure it out on their own.. is not there yet. As it stands, this is probably as good as it currently gets.
I agree because you're objectively correct. Fromsoftware has set such a high standard for anyone who actually understands gaming. Sony interactive point and click "games" are quickly becoming unbearable
@@luumitdoppelu8092Are you referring to the Alan one or what Saga has? If it's Saga's then I heavily disagree because that board is the dumbest aspect that wastes time and could be entirely removed.
@@luumitdoppelu8092 okay, so I actually played it to completion a few days ago after completing Control and loving it...i was totally right in what I said and I'm happy I got AW2 on sale for $20 on epics. They need more control game design less Sony walking sim. It's waaaay too long of a game for the core gameplay loop. They tried to be sort of like resident evil but my god did they miss the mark. It became an absolute slog
wait woke baby? i mean sweet wokie, i mean sweet baby worked on this game? ok removing from wishlist. ill buy yakuza infinite wealth instead even tho yongteas voice sux
thank you! I was a mssive fan of Control, having not played Alan Wake before, so I did that before going into AW II. and I also did not understand all the praises a lot of youtubers and magazines to a degree. It is no bad game, in some aspects even setting new standards (technically, the graphics and especially path tracing set new standards even tho I am not a ray tracing fan adn am rocking a amd radeon card, not even be able to experience that at all lol. I applaud the devs anyway, there are countless videos on youtube singing its praise and after watching them, I understood why), in others, not the revolution everyone makes it out to be. story and presentation are probably the most well rounded experience so far in a remedy game, tying all the different universes together. the gameplay is less actiony and more survival horror, kinda like a resi 2 is different from a resi 4 from gameplay and also feel. I do not necessarily have a issue with that per se, but some weapons, i.e. bow or hunting rifle that have pros and cons can never play to their strengths in the small, arena-y gameplay levels with waves of enemies coming at you for example are just bad and more of a chore than fun (I am thinking about a certain level close to the end here). in general, lack of enemy variety. there are some, but do not play much different, even the bosses could have been cool and the first encoutner with nightingale had me on my seat, especially cause i was missing ammo on hard, so panic set in, as it should in survival horror titles. with later bosses, I never got that feeling cause either I got my stash full and had nothing to fear, the objective was clear enough or the attack pattern was so predictable, random enemy encounters out of nothing shocked me more and lead to my death more often than the boss encounters. the circling wolves were good, although not perfect cause their pattern repeats, but at least they were often harder to spot and thus attacks often would come out of nowhere for me and I would have to deal with them although the games gives subtle clues in audiovisual form, just I was a dummy and often did not pay attention. why not more of this instead of generic bullet sponges? so the gameplay was serviceable, but not much more to me, certainly not a good or exceptional game gameplay wise. the slow start of the game and investigating aspect was something a lot of people criticized and wanted to spring directly into the action, but honestly, if you look for a generic third person shooter, there are way better options out there, but that was never what alan wakeis all about anyway. I on the other hand liked that slow, deliberate start very much, it had me hooked: Discovering clues, deducting and putting it together really felt at home with a character like Saga, it was like playing FBI for real. the problem with that approach comes in the second half of the game, cause the mindplace board is what the developers said it was: a playable, interactive menu. and as that, it becomes more of a chore than fun at later points, especially if you as the player have figured out what saga still has to get into place on the board and spend a lot of time doing stuff that you know about anyway. another problem for the "side jobs" which are just basic fetch quests was the heavy backtracking. I was impressed by most puzzles cause most of them (not all unfortunately) go beyond solve this number quiz or find the code laying around somewhere but also include the environment to a better degree, references, you have to think a little out of the box. Not for all of them, but some at least. I applaud that. But then to get to a certain thing, you have to walk through the whole freaking level again to get item x to place b! Why not have simple quality of life features like being able to spawn in the safe houses or fast travel between them? Especially when dying on the way and having to do all of that again is a possibility. I swear, a huge amount of time I spend in this game was just getting from a to b and then doing that again cause i died and forgot to save before or had to go the other way cause I missed something or whatever. that is an oversight at best and bad design at worst. second, from a story perspective> too much meta references. I know people love the whacky characters, the musical numbers, the mix of idiosyncracies with which the medium plays, I do too, or rather did. You know, all the Barrys, Ahtis and so on, breaking the fourth wall, comments on writing being difficult, disappointing audiences, all that jazz, building on art or reality for other art, the mixing of genres, it is literature, film, gameplay and references to them or the other entries in the remedy universe that make it what it is. problem is, already alan wake 1 and also control did the same thing to an extent, but in a way subtler, IMO better way. here, everything is thrown in your face, in the form of literal musicals and references from the game to the player, so it does not feel as fun as when discovering easter eggs or references in the other games, almost EVERYTHING here is a reference, even the story gets more or less spoiled to an extent by some comments early on by some characters all willy nilly, making it not special anymore not setting up that impact, especially cause the story just rolls with it and lends itself to it. Which is smart, since it holds options open for the narrative team for future games, but is also incredibly cheap as a cop out for basically whatever direction you want to go in the future story wise, cause it could be just another story in a story and so on. that does not make any story beats feel as gripping as the game wants you to feel about characters or certain situations. I called a lot of things that happend or revealed hours before in my mind and was only suprised by a few things and also not necessarily in a positive way from the regards of pacing, setting up impact in a story and so on. inside the story, it works, but I am not sure if they all were good choices. also the highly praised changing environments are not exactly new nor as good as how they could have been. alan wake II gives the illusion of an open world and choice, but is still a highly linear game, just cleverly disguised. And I wish there WERE differences, i.e. imagine using the lamp on a particular path that locks you out of another, i.e. in the underground or in the hotel, getting you to different story beats, optional content or different endings. but nope, you have to do it in a certain way to progress. that ties in neatly with the story all about being loops and slight changes, but is still not the revolutionary gameplay everyone is raving about, it still is highly linear and restricted, basically COD or your Resident Evil or what have you. which makes sense for story reasons, but again, stays beyond the possibilities that are at hand with such a mechanic. It is definitley an experience, it is very unique and certainly not for everyone and I would still recommend it, it is a good game, excellent at some fronts, but from a gameplay perspective to me, not the revolution most people think it is. It is like Remedy learned from AW I, Quantum Break and Control in some aspects and improved its presentation to AAA levels this time, but then simultaneously forgot what made for example Control great: the gameplay, the powerfantasy of being a rock-slinging, infinite ammo having, floating badass battling supernatural forces, having an intriguing world with lore you can learn more about if you want to, but do not necessarily have to if you are just there for fun in the game. Now I am aware that this does not work in a survival horror setting, but there are other ways to make survival horror fun, exciting and new. AWII is basically a stripped down Resident Evil 2 gameplay wise, with the known zany characters and antics we have grown to love and a lot of dazzling set pieces and interesting story choices, but all these things were also there before in previous entries, just not as much in your face. and I am not sure yet if I like all the choices, from a presentation side and also from the story side itself. sometimes, less is more on these fronts. still a good game, I hope the coming DLC will maybe shake things up also from a gameplay perspective, but I wont hold my breath. however, still a little of a disappointment on a high note. But I would wish Remedy success with AW II, they did not have much with AW I, quantum break was okay-ish I guess, Control too in the end, if not initially if I remember correctly...
I personally really like Alan wake 2 other than the ending which I think broke all the rules just so Saga could get a happy ending and I also hate that racist woke line that Saga says but otherwise I loved this game. I do think if you're a fan of the original alan wake you'll like it but if not than probably not. Remedy is best with their stories while the gameplay is always mediocre. I think the original alan wake is their best game and one of my favorite, but even that games gameplay isn't great. Still love Alan wake 2 even with my issues with the game though
That's not true. They made her multiracial because of the story. They added in Mr. Door (Mr. Hatch) and it's kind of important she be multiracial to have the familial connections she needs to have to be the hero of the story.
Considering the newly found out fact that miles morales will be replacing Peter Parker as Spiderman, Saga having more run time than allan wake is on very on brand with "modern times"
@@henrik1743 I disagree. The dialogue is painfully dull and redundant. For the most part, what Saga says is exactly what the character is doing. For example she'll pick up a screw driver and say "I picked up a screw driver". Or she'll need to get through a fence, and when you try to open it you find it locked and she will say "Huh, this fence is locked, I need to find a way around". The writing comes across as very insecure, I'm surprised it's the same writer as Max Payne and the first Alan Wake to be honest. Those characters mostly spoke for atmosphere reasons rather than narrating their own actions as they are doing them. To be fair, I find this to be a running theme through modern games now, it's not just AW2. I think most games need a 'silence protag' button.
we both know that's bs for a start if you consider the majority of Saga's dialogue to be in gameplay when you interact with fences or a screwdriver lmfao did we play the same game 'cause it's not sounding like we did AW1 also had some of the dialogue you're saying you dislike. AW2 is also more "personal" in it's presentation so having some filler dialogue here and there for Saga's in game actions isn't exactly a sin. It's just whatever. If we're gonna call dialogue dull and redundant it generally entails all dialogue, not just miscelleanous interactable dialogue the majority of games can have to differing extents@@BarneyGoogl
I had a very different take on Saga, she has an uncanny unnatural delivery that makes her feel “unreal”, which ties into the reality her character is in. It’s very reminiscent of how Lynch portrays some of his characters, it’s why Alan is very expressive but Saga and a lot of the characters in Bright Falls are cheery and dissonant. It’s to make you feel off, like you aren’t getting the whole picture, like you’re combing through an old memory of yours where important parts are missing.
@@schemar17atleast its more interactive, even if the story and characters are god awful, the city is nothing but pretty set dressing and the combat is something weve played a 100 times.. cyberpunk is still more interactive, definitely the most important aspect of a video game to me, the more your interacting and engaging your brain, the better.
Alan Wake 2 is a project created purely out of love Excellent storytelling Unsolved mysteries like in good(really good!) detective stories Gameplay is engaging and definitely beats first game now some people may criticize it and in some cases they are right But i want YOU to try it by yourself Just give it a chance and you will experience something you ve never seen before Remedy is a jewel. Just like Larian studio all they do is to tell you a good story in games Hell if you dont wanna pay you can just pirate it . because developers released it without Denuvo But i ask you, if you like the game. PLEASE buy it remedy is a struggling company of independent Developers There is no Bobby Kotick telling them to implement microtransactions there is no Ubisoft managers telling them to cheapen development by reusing same assets there is no other greedy corporat suit in their company If we dont support them now. in the future we may lose a talented group of people to another moneysucking corporat suit
This is exactly why I bought the deluxe edition pre-order for Alan Wake 2 and I bought the remastered Alan Wake despite the fact I got a free 360 version when I originally bought Quantum Break I've paid for control twice now once when I originally bought the hard copy the year it came out and the second time when I bought the ultimate edition digitally for my upgraded system and gave my physical copy (along with my old system) to my best friend. I will just throw money at remedy if they ask because every remedy game I have played I can see the passion and love in every moment.
I can't play these Remedy games. I would rather watch an overview of the game on UA-cam because the gameplay is so repetitive and the pacing is so poor and slow burn with little payoff.
I actually love slow burns. Slow burns and mysteries go hand in hand & the combo absolutely landed for me. It's not a groundbreaking title, but it's a solid 7/10 imo.
Remedy games always seem like they are about to start getting good and then they end. I still like that these games exist though, and that Remedy keeps doing their thing. The exception is Max Payne 1, that game is just straight up great.
I love your channel, but this weird obsession with finding flaws in both Alan Wake I and II is weird. Alan Wake has always put story above mechanics. The mind palace is too easy? Thays the point, Saga has this supernatural ability to make connections most people cant....thats why Lake yells her shes a better detective. She doesnt understand why she can make these logic leaps, so why should we? Comparing everything to Twin Peaks? Odin missing an eye isnt because Nadine from Twin Peaks is missong an eye, Odin is missing an eye becasue _the god Odin is missing an eye._ Hell even the pretentious writing isn't an accident, it's becasue Alan is a bad writier....the magic isn't his amazing writing, it's the super natural forces. We arent supposed to be in awe of his writing.... we're supposed to cringe at it lol. Alan wake isn't perfect, of course, but if you care more about story than game...its pretty dang close.
When you are asking for a glorified plot summary "do you understand what is going on" mechanic as something that needs a win state...maybe you are playing the wrong game. It's a helpful tool to keep the player up and make sure they aren't missing something incase they get lost.
I will rate Saga's gameplay and plot with a 8/10. It's definitely a step forward from first AW and AWAN both gameplay and story perspective. The screamers are really out of place tho I agree with you. The mindplace is really underused. I stopped using it after FBC entered the plot. But the best part is really the Alan's gameplay. It is perfect in both gameplay and story: you can shift reality, the enemies are much harder and it's really dark and depressing as the story in this part of game. They nailed it
I like the balance tbh, when i'd finished a chapter with Saga i would go back to Wake, then back to Saga and so on, the change of setting stopped it from becoming boring.
@@theblackswordsman9951I did the opposite. I swapped for a single chapter and then did all of Saga then all of Wake. I think going back and forth is the "intended" experience. Otherwise it plays it's hand ahead of time a bit on certain story elements. It's cool seeing the breadcrumbs leading you there and the impact one story has on the other, but it pulls the curtain back a bit too much so to speak if you played it as I did.
haven't played yet, but I think I'm bummed with all I've heard. outside of the mindless "10/10" reviews that have zero genuine information, I've seen and heard many criticisms that don't land for me. I'm glad they're following their heart and making the product they want to, and I'm glad that they veered toward survival horror. But the oversteer of 'too much combat' to 'too little' is not great. The thing that carried the oddness and verbosity of Hideo Kojima was always the depth of gameplay systems that existed alongside his hour long cutscenes and weird narratives. This is seemingly all the weirdness and none of the bedrock gameplay that feels great to get back to. It's just the director doing his best impression of Lynch while we pray for the chance to use 4 bullets.
@@SteelSpurs I don't want to play it. I've heard all the good and bad and I'm not into it unless there is a DEEP sale, because so many people have said it's a walking sim with meh combat.
@@phant0mdummy See you're letting the complainers dictate your opinion instead of experiencing it for yourself. People call everything a walking sim nowadays, so thats already a null complaint.
@@phant0mdummy"walking sim" is the most nothingburger critique that people shit out of their mouths. Outer Wilds is a "walking simulator" and it's one of the most ingenuity filled games of the past decade. The vast majority of people who use that term as a complaint are just haters without better critiques.
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I'm just weirded out that they have the balls to end the game on a cliffhanger. On one hand, cool more upcoming Alan Wake contents, but on the other hand I'd rather not wait another 10 years for another mainline entry in the series.
Good news. NG+ comes soon with alternate ending. And then DLC spring 2024.
but it's not a cliffhanger, i think. Saga's and Alan's journeys had a conclusion. Saga found her family and Alan showed Alice he sacrificed for her. there's room for more, but i liked it
@@victor1625also it's not a loop it's a spiral basically means that Alan found a way out. And the game is a huge success unlike the first one so we won't be waiting another 13 years for alan wake 3
@@victor1625 Saga's journey had a conclusion if the datamined DLC/NG+ contents are any indicator. Meanwhile Alan is still stuck on his spiral by the end of the game.
@Dr.Yakub22 Is it a success? It's getting good reviews but no mention of sales has been talked about. These companies always like boasting about sales but nothing has been said at all.
You can disable the epic game achievements by using shift F3 to bring up the overlay and check do not disturb. You can only do it on the in game overlay and not on the actual launcher before hand
Thanks for this!
Exactly, unfortunately you also have to remember to do this every time as it does not save the setting.
@@katanalevygames aaaa ok, so removing the overlay files is still the better option
Top tier software design.
Amazing thank you
Don’t forget we also have Tor & Odin in the dark place by the end as well. They went in to find Saga
Personally I liked how slow the game was it raised tension like crazy and it really made you feel like a detective looking for clues
Complaining that a detective noir horror game is "slow" feels like genre ignorance...that's about it.
Thing is it didn't made you feel like a detective looking for clues since all the clues are extremely guided and automatic the game manage to make you feel like a baby watching a detective finding things himself and telling you are the one who did it
@@magvad6472did you even play max Payne 1 and 2 ? Lmao
Ah yes mindlessly putting notes on a board makes me feel so much like a detective..
@@nathanyoung4182 me detective too! 🤡
Amazing to see finnish media being rarely appreciated, Alan Wake is held as a national treasure to us all finnish gamers just like Max Payne, or The Witcher to the polish people, I just love seeing it get the attention it deserves.
Well for what it's worth it was one of my favorite games of all time. Remedy is one of my favorite developers, every game they make is an insta buy. Plus, Ahti is my favorite game side-character since Mirmir.
Zane and Scratch binging on booze and mushrooms was such a good scene. Psycho song was a nice subtle nod to who was really collaborating with Zane.
It was dark twisted and cruel
Fear and loathing vibes
dang, i just realized, though i recognized the song, i didnt put 2 and 2 togheter
I missed Barry so much in this game, we need that comic releaf, the game on some point turned so dark and exhausting that you need some Barry material to rest a little.
I enjoyed the game and piecing together the story, lore and tidbits of information connecting the other games (Quantum Break and Control) I've been on a binge of Alan Wake lore for some time and for this game's release. Can't wait for the new game plus and Control 2.
For the ammo count and item management, I suggest playing on the hardest availabile difficulty. It really makes you take consideration into fighting or sneaking around to save ammo or healing items.
Yeah, after running out of ammo in the Nightingale fight, having to run around grabbing some before killing him with just a few bullets left, i ended up playing really conservatively then running out of storage space with Saga late on. (on the hardest difficulty btw)
crossbow + coffee shop charm really changes the game. you'll never run out of ammo.
Control 2 is gonna be so damn fun, I cant wait despite only playing that from the devs.
Saga and Casey slowly sipping their coffee simultaneously to smooth jazz is just *chefs kiss*
I knew from the very first sip in the car that it'd be a part of their character. I love how subtly absurd some elements of Remedy's stories are... I especially love the extremely absurd elements.
It's a stylish walking simulator. The first AW was better.
The map can be infuriating to access on a controller because you have to hold a button, otherwise it will put you into the mind palace. The controls between map access and mind palace for controllers should be reversed in my opinion
I really enjoyed Alan Wake 2, but I don't think it'll hit with the general audience. The game is quite far from your standard gaming fare, much more so than the first game. Most gamers just don't jibe with post-modernism very well.
I think it is a wonderful example of survival horror with very cerebral storytelling. It even has a mechanic similar to Silent Hill's otherworld. It's not perfectly polished. There are flaws and blemishes here and there. But it does provide a great experience if you are into what it is.
I can't really make a definitive judgement just yet since I'm betting New Game Plus will give you the true ending (in a similar way as something like Nier Automata)
Speak for yourself dude
Alan Wake 2 or Saga Anderson 1?
Saga might come off as a little dull, but I think that was intentional.
Saga seems like a very well adjusted person. She doesn't have any really apparent flaws. Though she's a workaholic, she seems to have a happy family life. She gets along with her co-workers. She supported Casey when he was at his worst. Even at the end of the game when it goes into her doubts and fears, they are pretty standard.
The thing that stands out so much about Alan is how flawed he is and those flaws manifest in destructive ways. He is a jerk to people around him, his wife, reporters, his fans. And that attitude has had a negative effect on his life. I think that's why the Dark Presence preyed on Alan, apart from his creative talents. It grasped onto Alan's inner darkness and created Scratch out of Alan's worst traits.
I think Saga was written like she was to contrast her with Alan. She doesn't have a great deal of darkness inside her so the Dark Presence didn't have much to get its hooks into. A personal tragedy had to be contrived (probably by Scratch) to try to break her will.
Unfortunately, we don't see Alan and Saga interact much to really see that contrast in play.
Though I would have personally like to play as Casey, I think he was too similar to Alan (with all his self-destructive traits) to be particularly interesting. One thing you don't want to do in a sequel with a new co-lead is making that new character the same as the previous lead. Imagine in MGS2 if Raiden was very similar to Snake. It wouldn't have been interesting because their personalities don't contrast.
There is a difference between well adjusted and not having any self doubts or issues until the end of the game. Saga is a character with great potential, but by the middle of her story I was still saying "I wish I KNEW Saga."
You can add her doubts, character flaws, and worries along the game so it builds to a breaking point and hero moment at the end. All she ever did was argue the story wasn't real. Melanie did great, but, she's not presented as a dynamic character like Alan, Jesse, or hell Alice.
@@libertyrae1351 Do you really need the game to spoon feed you scenes of her doubting herself or do you think maybe they were subtectual in the way she responed to events?
Because I don't need my adult media being dumbed down to YA novel tier writing tropes.
@@magvad6472Damn you really hit up every single comment on this video of anyone critical of the race baiting SBI character ready for defense huh. Hope this amount of dedication came with a paycheck
@@Channel-gz9hm sorry I just have this weird impulse to call out sociopaths
If anything, it seems like a product made with a lot of love. And I can imagine the daunting task of making a sequel to this of all things, and getting it right!
Not just love but to take risks. Almost all AAA games are so risk averse these days it's good to see a studio do such out there stuff like the musical section.
That's a perfect descriptor for Remedy. They are a AAA studio that makes games like they were an indie studio.
AW2 is definitely not a game that would come out from pretty much any other AAA studio. It's too weird, too niche, too cerebral for what publishers think the mainstream audience wants.
too bad they hire Sweet Baby Inc took a sh*t on it
@@kamenriderfryou didn't play the game and it shows.
Although i enjoyed the game, i felt Saga’s stuff was drawn out and Alan’s was too short. In an Alan Wake game, I want to play as Alan the most. I am worried that Saga is going to replace Jesse in Control 2 now that they established she has powers.
Bro wtf… spoiler alert?
What part is a spoiler?@@henrik1743
the saga campaign was AMAZING. the nursing home, the amusement park, wtf are you on about? she and alan had both amazing campaigns
@@victor1625agreed, I enjoyed both their campaigns, each chapter just felt so unique.
Id be pissed if she replaces jesse i actually quite like jesse as opposed to my dislike of saga
Your channel is the first ever channel. The first channel for my bell notifications! I love this style of reviews is amazing, I love the lengths of videos as well as I love UA-cam reviews of stuff I'm interested to be great for watching fully awake or trying sleep well. Love your videos genuinely ! :)
The funny music and dance shenanigans happens too on Control with Dr. Darling videos.
You really should play Control. It's also a flawned but unique experience from Remedy. Still my favorite.
But be prepared, if you hated characters talking too much, Jesse's inner dialog can be really, really, REALLY annoying. And that's comming from a huge fan of that game.
Control is more of an action game, so the controls are much more dynamic and fast.
Jessie talking to herself does have plot reasons since there is another entity who lives in her head.
I didn't expect you to mention Diabetus Fetus' involvement in writing AW2, and damn has my respect gone up for you lol. Such a shame that Saga was neutered as a character by those hacks, you know for a fact that she would've just as eccentric and cool as Casey and Wake if AW2 was only written by Sam and co.
Wtf are you on about?
@@3ndlessL00p a DEI-focused writers-for-hire operation called Sweet Baby was involved in the writing process for AW2, namely 'character arc, voice and sensitivity reading', according to their site. So Saga looking different from before, and being a wooden plank of a character is definitely on them.
@@HelloKollayep absolutely. There's no denying that company has an agenda on their hands and in their mind, and they really ruined what could have been a great character and had potential. But, that's these agenda-filled, sensitivity training & narrative consulting companies do, ruin what's already good & what can be great. A shame Remedy outsourced their writing to them, why on earth they did that I'm not sure, but a really unnecessary and foolish thing to do.
Lay off the meth bro@@_chemicalbeat_
@@_chemicalbeat_ yep, I'm liberal af too but shoehorning in characters just for the sake of their race and writing them poorly too is just cringe. Companies like Sweet Baby need to go the hell away, keep that crap out of my art! Imagine if a company like that had gotten a hold of the script to Django Unchained prior to release? Would've been sterilized to hell and we wouldn't have gotten the hard hitting masterpiece we did. I've honestly lost respect for remedy allowing them to be involved at all and kinda worried about control 2
It's worth noting it's published by Epic, so likely not just a timed exclusive unfortunately; also, you reeeeally should play Control. The musical portion's actually a callback to a sequence from that game, while the later concert in 2 is a callback to the stage sequence from Alan Wake 1.
Yep the remastered version of the first game was released 2 years ago and still isn't available on Steam. Think it's safe to say any game published by Epic isn't ever coming to steam
Remedy just loves putting music in their games. In Control, there's this great rock song that just plays in a random room.
Will you ever play and make a video about Control?
saga looks different since quantum break? did she get younger?
gone for ESG reasons by Sweet Baby
character just their for a quota and takes up majority of the plotting
Glad I'm not the only one annoyed at the achievement notifications you can't turn off lol.
You can delete the epic overlay files on PC. That's the way to "turn it off" I'm not kidding
With the implication that Mr. Door is Saga's father who battled with Tor and Odin in 1986, it's extra messed up for him to use a version of them as his house band
I do have to say that i enjoyed all combat encounters. There might have been a bit more tho. But overall it was fun. Plus the guns felt super satisfying to use
I gotta say I absolutely adore this game already, I even enjoyed playing as a detective in the beginning that being said the only flaw in this game is when you first pick up a gun and realize how fun the gunplay is making it hard going back to detective work, and I see a lot of people really hated saga for some reason, I thought her story was really good and thought she was a nice addition
I appreciate your channel, very well thought out and articulated, with great editing to boot, i hope you get a lot more recognition soon!
Armies of people helping Alan = The players?
This game was more of a sequel to Control than Alan Wake
How? The focus of the whole plot is Alan coming to terms with his destructive nature. I dont see Jesse getting an arc in this game.
If you liked the concert. The ashtray maze of control is a beauty
Overhype horseshit from critics and reviewers, 10 out of 10??? Yes maybe the graphics…. The evil within shits Diarrhea on this game ! … alan wake gameplay story fckin hella boring , saga story gameplay was decent play …. My honest review 6 out of 10 at best and im being nice!
Playing the game on hard improved the combat, especially early on when supplies are scarce, by the end of the game my Saga and Alan were both confidently well stocked action heroes. I look forward to regaining the tension in nightmare mode!
If they added optional clues to be found and actual investigation work, and gave you actual different endings depending on if you did the correct deduction.
This isn't that type of game, the case board is just there as an immersive and thematic way to keep track of what you've done and what you need to do, it's just an interactive objective menu
One of my favorite things I learned about this game is that, contrary to what some may think, the live-action segments were done mostly because it was easier and somewhat cheaper on the production team, instead of trying to render every scene in a photorealistic engine. Just goes to show that sometimes complications in production can lead to interesting and innovative results in the final product.
47:40 bullcrap...they nailed that scare perfect. I grabbed my seat.😂
"Sweet Baby, Mr. Lake"
I think im the only one noticing the jab youre throwing here lol
What's the jab? Lol I'm struggling to understand.
@@_chemicalbeat_ Sweetbaby Inc. is a writing consultant firm based out of Montreal, who have consulted for a bunch of high-profile games lately like Alan Wake II and the new Spider-Man game. They've recently come under the spotlight when parts the internet found out, because their mission-statement is to change video-games and the industry by introducing critical race theory talking points and race sensitivity consulting among other left-leaning cultural ideas. They seem to be mostly responsible for the character arc and narrative of Saga Andersson and her story-part, including the race-swap and race baiting parts ('white assholes' and 'more racist than Alabama', for example), and because it seems like her character is quite poorly done compared to Alan Wake's, Sweetbaby Inc has been routinely mocked and criticized for their work and politics by certain parts of the internet.
Boulder Punch is making fun that Sam Lake (the director and lead writer) handed off the narrative and character of Saga to these people for some reason.
time stamp?
ironically enough, I totally had suspension of disbelief in a supernatural setting with Saga being the niece of a nordic god pantheon, which obviously makes no sense, I could have even understood the game wanting to have the issue of a black person in the FBI somewhat in the story, but exactly these two lines also felt cheapest for me, they just felt out of place. Saga herself did not really for me. I have no problem with certain ideologies being presented in video games if it is done in a good way and maybe also a little bit more open about these things. However I think the issue of many people seems to be that it comes from such a company, not necessarily the story itself. again, even if that is the case, we have so far no insight how and in what way their consultation shaped the story. I guess for that we would have to ask sam lake and said company. It is not that in other games third parties outside of that did have no say either... say the military in certain movies or games for example. Again, I do not necessarily have a problem with that if it is made transparent who does what when and where.
@@Luemm3l uh...did you miss the plot-point that Saga is Mr Door's daughter? 😮
When Saga was first announced, I instinctively went “where’s Sarah?” Don’t get me wrong, Saga is cool, but it’s so strange that neither Sarah nor Barry had anything to do here.
I'm pretty sure both will end up in Control 2.
1. Sarah's now working for 'the Feds' , and when you know, what kind of Feds were her father's employers and that she'd clashed with the supernatural, it's settled
2. Barry'd written an email to Alice in, like, 2020-21 when he admitted he'd joined some 'blessed' organization. Very shady dudes from Control
They do get mentioned a couple of times
Missable if you don't read
@@jesusrodriguezcolon8315 I know they're mentioned, but it's strange that they aren't directly tied to the events of the game considering how integral they were in the first.
@@SteelSpurs they aren't really needed
@@jesusrodriguezcolon8315
Neither was Saga.
You should clarify that when Alan reads them out it’s only a portion of the actual page. Also in the menu every manuscript is narrated
Yeah you have to actually click on the page for it to be read out. Can't believe he got through the whole game without realising that tbh.
Where is Alan Wake : American Nightmare? Did not see it get mentioned once.
I thought it was pretty good until I came across certain narrative decisions that sucked me out of the story.
Looking into to it took me down a rabbit hole that led to ESG guidelines.
These are BlackRock policies that are taking over media in general.
More directly companies like Sweet Baby Inc. tell game devs how to make their game to fall within these guidelines.
These people helped with the latest God of War, Spider-Man, and now Alan Wake and the parallels are obvious.
Remedy said Epic didn't interfere with any creative decisions, well they didn't have to. They outsource that stuff now to maintain an ESG score that's no different to China's social credit score.
This is a problem across the industry, prioritizing these guidelines before fun gameplay.
You didn't play the game and it shows. What you're talking about is a real concern, but it does not poke its head into AW2. In fact, the game takes a bit of a stance against it in the beginning of the finale.
@@bbbbbbb51 they did and it did affect the game obviously
from Saga race swap to completely removing Alan as the central protag it had an obvious effect on the game and its design
@@marcusclark1339 Saga wasn't race-swapped. The short scene in Quantum Break was obviously just a place-holder for a future idea that Remedy hadn't fleshed out yet.
Saga is Mr Door's daughter so of course she's going to be black (and Mr Door was always intended to be played by Lance Reddick, who unfortunately passed away before the game started production, so they had to re-cast him at the last minute).
Assuming that Sweet Baby changed Saga's race just shows you didn't pay enough attention to the game.
While I found her accent slips more charming than distracting, i do agree that they should have leaned more into Saga’s eccentricities. Although, that being said, her being so unflappable/steadfast in not letting the “story” influence her is nice. She doesn’t let anyone steamroll her into doing dumb things. She’s a rock that the player can depend on not making stupid horror trope mistakes. If I had to depend of either Saga or Alan actually successfully saving me for the dark place, I’d take Saga any day.
That's the thing about Saga that I'm certain was intentional. She's a well-adjusted, mature person while Alan is petty, moody, and self-destructive. Saga was written like she was to contrast against Alan.
Hey man, I'm not sure if you're aware but there's a sound issue in this video from 26:20 - 26:24, it just blew up my speakers and was painful to listen to. Just an FYI
Im surprised to hear about the complaints of walking. I would rather the game takes its time immersing me in the environment with all the writing and detail so it can set up the horror properly. Its one of the only games I've ever experienced in the genre that establishes the world fully before breaking the characters brains with the horror/supernatural element. Still a great review! Just a note that some find it incredibly engrossing
Not sure how they are supposed to do suspense horror if Im running through murdering everything every 2 seconds. When are they supposed to build tension? My least favorite thing about Control was how often they'd throw enemies at us just to fill the void as if we are stupid.
@@magvad6472 what are you talking about? There's really not much combat in Alan Wake 2 relative to the rest of the game. Especially not at the beginning when it spends hours setting everything up with no combat. Control was never survival horror. It's an action shooter in the vein of their past work like Max Payne. Why are you getting mad at a game for selling itself as an action shooter and delivering on it? And did you even play Alan Wake 2? Did you mean to respond to my comment? Your reply seems completely irrelevant and it doesn't seem like we're on the same planet here
It lacks the creativity of the original, dlcs and American Nightmare. I miss OG Mr Scratch.
True Detective is definitely a big influence in this game but another huge influence that I don’t see anyone discussing is the show Hannibal. Saga’s mind place and profiling are lifted pretty directly from its character Will Graham, an FBI agent with an uncanny ability to empathize and profile serial killers, though at the risk of his own health. The concept of the mind palace is a common theme in that show as well and is used as a therapeutic method by Hannibal when treating people. The way that the deer motif is used is also lifted from the show, as the deer is a prominent symbol in the show for many different reasons.
Twin Peaks The Return is another strong influence. Although that's probably not news to anyone lol
Would you consider a video for Dino Crisis, Parasite Eve, Nightmare Creatures, F.E A.R, or JERICHO? Those were old awesome horror series
Has he not done Parasite Eve and FEAR titles yet? Huh, give him some time I guess.
Long-time Remedy and, in recent years, survival horror fan, and I am quite frankly disappointed and, in more ways than one, disgusted by this "sequel". Remedy used to understand how to respect the time of its core audience, being gamers. Even a game like Quantum Break, which was criticized (rightfully so) for its pacing that often dragged out gameplay segments too far apart from each other even when you skip the live-action shows, still managed to get to the point of the gameplay at around the 30-40-minute mark of playtime. Alan Wake II can take 2 to upwards of 4 or even more hours before the actual survival horror elements kick into gear, and that's all dependent on how the player engages with its mechanics and walking-simulator-oriented exploration. I thought Control was Remedy finally figuring out more and more how much gameplay should matter more over a narrative presence. It's why their most timeless achievements, in my book, were their Max Payne games, both of which managed to strike a nigh-perfect balance between story and gameplay, always keeping the player engaged without taking the player away from the core mechanics. To me, this isn't a true Alan Wake "sequel", nor is it a true survival horror or even action horror title with just how few and far between the encounters are. As an Alan Wake fan, seeing Saga, a flat character, get the best weapons and have the most sections wherein the player gets to fight enemies of varying types, it's just so blatantly disrespectful! I'm no longer excited with what Remedy plans to do with the Max Payne games. If they keep investing in a narrative-consultant company like Sweet Baby Inc., then I won't be surprised if Max ends up taking a backseat in his own game, and if the combat encounters are lessened for the sake of "realism". They might even have to turn his vigilante war on crime on its head and make it a "bad thing" in the same vein that current MARVEL did with Frank Castle in the comics, disgraced and forgotten. I know many will defend Alan Wake II, and, if you like it, then you're the target audience. I'm just sad to say that I don't think I'll manage to call myself a fan of Remedy anymore from here on out. We'll see how those remakes go.
What can you expect when a narcissistic game director want to do what he want but not what game should be for real gamers?
It's weird to think I estimate I played 60-70% of Alan Wake II as Saga. And most of Alan's parts just felt like walking.
I think the real insult to gamer intelligence is assuming we need to be placated by pointless action sequences. Worst part about Alan Wake was the volume of combat undermined the tone. Less so in Control only because a "horde" was the enemy but even in that they just would throw action in to make us "gameplay" when the tone was enough.
The point of gaming as a storytelling medium isn''t "gameplay", it's the ability to be IN a world and have to face it with our own agency.
8:28 wtf did u predict this?
You had me until saying you wish the crows made a return.
Loved the game! However, Saga must be the most annoying protagonist of any Remedy game to date... It feels like she has two remaining neurons in her brain and kinda makes me feel dumb in return. The ending chapters are really bad in this regard, and I really dislike the last interaction where they're trying to figure out the ending to Return. It feels really cheesy and out of place, a stark contrast to the more mature writing in the Wake's chapters.
Also, what a selfish hero Saga is... her family MUST come back (non-negotiable,) but what about everyone else? She comes off as egotistical end self-centered, which I find quite unlikable to be honest. This is an Altered World Event... it's not just a personal attack on Saga, it's not just about her family and herself, but the entirety of Bright Falls, and potentially the whole universe. Ayayayayay
I mean, her family and entire life is changing around her to fit someone else’s story. How else would she react? 😂
I feel way more Alan is the selfish one... but he may not even realize what he has done, writing her into his story, cause the dark place makes him forget... that what I liked about this game TBH, all the charachters have flaws, but are also not entirely responsible for certain situations. it is all very grey-ish... how Alan just used Saga and Casey for his own goals, but also how Casey focuses too much on the job (like Saga) and thus has a shitty family life, how the cult of the tree does horrible things to keep people safe (if those people were not taken, they would be crazy cult murderers, I dont know if the whole plot line is also sort of a meta commentary on people enjoying violence and mystery and how that may affect other people), how Alan also was a dick to his wife, later scaring her almost literally to death, but not realizing that, wanting to rescue her became her downfall (and ironically also his rescue probably with the whole fake death thing to progress his story). Which, then again, is also a grade A asshole move from her. Understandibly, but imagine faking your own death and then one day just returning to your partner like nothing happened. I think there are even real life stories where that happened, one is on youtube lol.
wholeheartedly agree with you like yea I get that Saga deeply cares about her family, and she willing to do anything for them; however I did find that subplot that everyone assume that her daughter did truly died, and everyone figured that Saga was living in denial was far more interesting of a story and wish it was leaned in more, it was make Saga far more relatable to everyone else in the who lost a loved one. She is fitting the stereotypical "my life & my world is perfect" too well. Granted I did see that Sweet Baby consulting firm was brought in to trained Remedy to be more sensitive and affirming for the black audience; which is stupid since I'm part black and I don't know anyone who is living the sweet life like Saga Anderson...nor do I know any black sisters who's named Saga.
Strange because she's constantly ahead of the plot and bringing in alternate perspectives to what are intuitive to the situation.
cause ESG meddling ruined this series
Alan a footnote in his own plot while the main story now revolves around her, her family, Mr Door connecting more to her than Alan and has magical bs powers making her IMMUNE to the Dark Place powers, she's just a sue self insert character
Interesting how similar writing red flags show up in other games where a certain "Sweet Baby" is involved
*Edit: I never said anything about the characters' race or gender, yet corposlop consoomers still immediately jump on my throat thinking that's the red flag I'm talking about, really gets the noggin joggin
There was nothing wrong with the writing in this game. You’re just an adult baby
@@PointlesslyNecessaryConvos or you're just an I d I o t who defends garbage writing?
Interesting how you clearly didn't play the game. The game is rather explicitly anti-woke in a few different sections towards the end. It mocks people who care about a "strong female black protagonist" & mocks people who think them being black is holding back their career. I'm not saying SBI is good, but if they had any real input in this game, it was extremely minimal and possibly even purposely counteracted
You should play Control, it's a lot of fun.
26:22 outch. That hurt my ears. :(
It's not a time to exclusive on the epic store it's simply exclusive to the epic store. Epic published the game they're not releasing it anywhere else on PC.
And that's why we wait for/use cracks, folks. I can't imagine purchasing AAA games these days.
@@todaysdesperadohatesavocad7109 that's like saying you can't afford expensive clothes so you start stealing them. Have some shame and at least keep your theft to yourself instead of trying justify it.
@@Dr.Yakub22that's a bit too harsh of a take.
The significant advantage to digital is that there is no scarcity, all "shops" can distribute as many copies as they want to (paying) customers.
When such a shop tries to create scarcity artificially, they should be punished for it.
From the customer side, there is absolutely no benefit to exclusives, and I will gladly sail the seas if the company needs to see a downside to this mechanic.
You can't make everyone hapoy, and in the Tictock attention span era most people wont put in the time it takes for the game to really get good, and will judge it based on 2 hours of gameplay.
With so many games being over saturated with non stop action and generic design inside the safe zone of game design a title like this is refreshing. No, it's not a game for everyone, but it's not a walking simulator either.
People say they want something different , then when they get it, they hate it because it's different, and go back to playing fortnite
AW2 is more of an immersion into an interactive multi media experience than a traditional game.
I loved it
OMG exactly. The tiktok attention span. Everyone wants fast meaningless content. Remedy made a game with a rich story and slow burn people go bananas. Chill go play some fortnite if u want combat
The highs are very high and the lows are very low. The atmosphere and setting mixed with the storytelling create something completely original. Even as a sequel. But 6 hours I asked myself. "Did I only fight like ten enemies?" 😂 I like to explore and found myself bored. Theres tension then its gone because youre just walking after a while.
I agree about Saga's character - overall she was fine and has some flashes of personality, but she's not as interesting or as flawed as Alan. Missed opportunity to have her become more frustrated or disheveled as the game went on.
I think that was intentional to contrast her with the incredibly flawed human being Alan is. Saga is a normal, well-adjusted person so the Dark Presence wasn't able to prey on her like it did with Alan (whom it eventually corrupted and possessed)
Given Alan Wake was as interesting as a wet noodle in Alan Wake 1 I don't see how this isn't just an issue of lack of time with the character. A character doesn't need to be quipping nonstop to be "interesting"
In general her level headedness about the reality of the supernatural world was refreshing and I really enjoyed her in contrast to Alan.
Rose is beautiful in this game
I beat the hotel level and was so bored I haven’t played it again. It’s not scary and the combat is sluggish and repetitive. I’ll give it like a 4/10.
"beat"...obviously you had no business playing this game if that's how you frame it.
I hate how they made Allen look like John Wick, he looked perfectly fine in the first game.
I wonder if that's because Alan's actor has been rocking the long hair and beard look for a while, so they just leaned into it instead of telling him to shave 😂
Gotta love that Sweet Baby reference
The game would have been perfect if Sweet Baby Inc didn't take a dump on it
Ehhh, perfect? Slightly better than mediocre I'd say.
By "dump on it" you mean have a black protagonist? Because that's all their input really did. The game is pretty explicitly anti-woke at the end.
yup
very clear how it butchers the entire game
@@bbbbbbb51 Saga being black wasn't a Sweet Baby decision.
It's literally a major plotpoint that she's Mr Door's daughter.
Oh my fucking god! I didn't get the reveal about Saga's father yet 😭😭😭 I have foolishly spoiled myself
The pacing of this game was kinda perfect in my eyes. Much like the first game, it just kept me on the edge of my seat. I also think it is the most Remedy ass game Remedy has ever made.
Yeah, it's a suspense horror shooter...heaven forbid enemies are harder to kill and few and far between so there is...suspense.
He is hardly in his own game, and the gameplay is only slighty better than the original.
This isnt the alan wake game we deserve after the time we waited.
I was gonna say when you mentioned James mccaffery he passed away recently! Rest in peace sir thanks for voicing Max Payne!
Idk mixed feelings on this game. I was thoroughly engrossed, but it didn’t always feel like a sequel to Alan Wake. My favorite content was almost everything after the point of no return. Along with most of the Alan stuff. I really liked the saga content actually, just didn’t feel like it belonged in an Alan wake sequel. Idk I feel like this will go the route of the last of us part 2. Which I personally loved and have only grown to appreciate more.
cause it wasn't, its a trojan horse using a established name to sell the actual main lead - Saga Anderson cause Sweet Baby Inc worked on the game and it derailed cause "strong black female protagonist" is more "diverse" than white male in their eyes
really sums up why Alan is a footnote in his own game and barely important and why most good gameplay is around Saga (including better weapons) than Alan's parts
It really feels to me like this has very little to do with the original Alan Wake. Yeah, sure, it features the titular Alan Wake. But... he looks completely different. The game's presented completely different, with these live action cutscenes. I imagine the differnt character look was done to match the real life actor they got, which is really obnoxious imo since once of the biggest advantages of non-live action media is that the actor doesn't have to look like who they're voicing. And now they're just tossing that away. No Barry, minimal combat, NYC instead of rural New England.
I'm not saying a game can't go in a new direction, have a new feel. But I am saying I don't like it. I think this would have been a lot better as a spinoff game with entirely new characters, with a few references instead of trying to get me believe that Mr. Needs A Shave is actually Alan.
In the remaster, the in-game models were redone to better match the real-life actors. So this isn't out of nowhere. Plus, basing game models off of real-life references is pretty much standard industry practice now. It's actually helped game characters (in games that were going for photorealism) look less generic than they used to.
The game is certainly different from the first game. But it has been 13 years and two console generations. Take any other franchise and put in that time gap and you'll see a similar change (like comparing MGS1 to MGS5) Plus, it is pretty clear the game is going for a post-modernist take while the first game was a fairly straight video game.
The actor is the face model of Alan. Always has been. But they previously failed to capture his likeness in the original. His name is Ilka Vili. Also he is not the voice actor of Alan. I personally think this is an improvement over the original which presented itself as horror, but failed to deliver gameplay wise. This is a more cohesive package and closer to what I think Remedy wanted the franchise to be. You want a more action packed game? They made Control for that demographic.
@@jiopa What I want is a game that feels like a sequel to the original, rather than something in an entirely different genre. I don't care whether it's more action-oriented or not, the tonal genre is very different.
And whether the face actor is the same or not is immaterial: the _character_ looks nothing like his previous appearance, and 13 years doesn't change facial structure like that.
Like I said, this does not feel like a sequel to Alan Wake, neither in tone nor "feel" if you will, nor character. The similarities, like the big lightshow fight, seem superficial to me.
The original Alan Wake felt like it was _inspired by_ David Lynch. Alan Wake 2: Wake Harder feels like it _is_ one of Lynch's works. And if you like that, fine. But I liked what Alan Wake was for what it was, and I don't think it needed to change to be good.
@@Shenaldrac like i said, they failed to capture his likeness in the original. But they were going for his likeness. That's why the remaster had his face changed as well. As for liking what it was, then more power to you. But this feels like they're finally able to step into what they wanted originally. But you're right. Tonally it's way more serious than the first. 1 actually is closer tonally to Control than 2.
@@jiopa Again, I do not care if they failed to capture his likeness or not. They still established, by making that game, "this is how this character looks." Changing that will of course look weird. As is going for real live action cutscenes instead of in-engine with character models. I know there was Quantum Break, but once again, this is a sequel to a game with an established style to it and did not have live action cutscenes.
If they just called this a spiritual successor to Alan Wake, with different characters and stuff, I'd have no complaints, and wouldn't mind all the changes, and turning things into The Remedy Cinematic Universe with cameos from characters from their other properties. But they didn't do that, they made it a direct sequel, and so comparisons to the first game will, must, be made.
What the company "wanted to do" or "was trying to do" doesn't matter. What matters is what they *did.* And if they then want to do something _different,_ they ought to make it a different thing, rather than attach it to the original when it does not tonally fit. I wouldn't want a hypothetical sequel to WALL-E to be super grim Noir, regardless of whether that was the studios original intent that they failed to deliver.
The mind place is just a thematic way to track your progress and help you know what to do next, the fact that anyone expected it to be anything else baffles me. They turned what is normally a boring menu into an interactive one and people are complaining about it.
it's still a terrible implementation. Two examples:
1. At some points you can't progress unless you first make the deductions in the mindplace, even if you have already figured everything out yourself. Like in Coffee World where you can't pick up key items even if you're standing in front of them because you need to walk Saga through it in the mindplace first. It slows down some game sections to a crawl.
2. When doing the profiling: Instead of just having Saga give one Monologue about the Character, you need to choose various subthemes, each with their own slow intro. And then you get to choose another one, and another one. It doesn't add anything. An exposition dump doesn't get more interesting if it's interrupted every minute or so by an unnecessary button press.
Overall a good, and very interesting game, but man, that mindplace.....
Wrongo bud. The game literally forces you to put clues on the board in order to progress and sometimes it doesn't. No indication of either, no auto sort, it sucks and kills the pacing. It's a bad system for a painfully mid game.
@@PatrickSampagree with all except the last part. Game kinda sucked especially after 13 years and hundreds of other games to take inspiration from. Never a good sign when a studios last release (control) is about 10x better than their most recent
@@Funko777 you are blatantly wrong, there's a symbol that appears in the bottom of the screen telling you when you need to make connections on the board
Currently playing on a high end pc with full RT & PT, what a thing to behold... and the 13 year wait was worth every second.
Yep if he had the GPU to play with it on he absolutely would have talked about it more. I reckon i added a few more hours to my playthrough just from taking my time walking around because the game was so beautiful. One of the best looking games i've ever played.
@@theblackswordsman9951 dude my screenshot button keeps asking for mercy
So sad that dei consultants most likely squandered the chance for an amazing story and consistantly written characters.
What are the audio problems in some points of the video, especially when showing Twin Peaks, hurt my ears😂
You haven't played control ? You should play control and it's dlcs
I'm still bummed out that this didn't get a physical release. I loved the firet game and have passed it multiple times on different consoles and the remaster and even American Nightmare. I was hyped for this game when they first showed the trailer, it looks amazing but unfortunately i can't pay $60-70 for a digital game. I will have to wait until it's $10, i have plenty of games to keep me busy until then, but it's a shame bc this would've been a dsy 1 pick up for me.
Thanks for the comment because this is my first time hearing that. Can't believe there isn't a physical release and it really saddens me that we're heading for an all digital future. Makes me feel a lot more justified in my decision to pirate it, with their anti-consumer practices like this and Epic exclusivity.
@@theblackswordsman9951 Yep it's not looking good for physical media collectors in the future. If gaming does go all digital I'll probably stop buying games and just stick with my collection
Alan Wake 2 is the story of a strong, diverse, female protagonist with magical powers who saves an inept white man from his mess #ofcourseitis
Modern western game dev thought process. Embarrassing to say the least
I feel so bad this is the way you view the world. It's just pitiful.
How pathetic.
i mean, alan wake is literally stuck on a magical reality. it takes a goddess to help him escape
Had same feeling in a first 20 minutes of a game. But she is solid character. There hints in dialogs and story that Mr.Door is her father. Her appearence in old short film is protototype. I guess so.
Another sweetbaby slopp with an unnecessary black female protagonist drifting away from the premise of the first game
Saga being black has nothing to do with Sweet Baby. A certain plot point/twist has to do with the identity of her father and it wouldn't make sense if she wasn't black. 😅
I loved every second of this game.
the diner girl is kinda low quality though , review in low settings.
This game is great.. absolutely been loving the crazy wacky story & survival horror style gameplay. I love Alan & Saga was fine although her voice acting could be better.. another fantastic game this year & one i hope will be remembered & played for a ling time. Wonder how the dlcs will go.
A lot of people be making story walkthroughs instead of true reviews
Memories of murder: the game - with horror characteristics
i figured saga had a bit of a cajun accent and imagined her father had come from there or something. never pegged her actress to be british.
I think for Saga her race changed, not just her sweater 😅 unless the lighting off and my eyes got worse
considering how much talk of magic mushrooms there is in the game. i wouldnt be surprised if that was what created the musical haha
Thanks for the honest review. I kinda figured it was going to be like a slow Sony game when i saw all the absurd critic reviews at like 90%. As someone who couldn't even finish The Last of Us because of how insanely bored I was + that stupid sony camera angle that's shoved up the ass of the player character (without the level design to back up that camera angle. Ex of good camera+design: Dead Space, RE4)
I liked the first one and didn't even realize the 2nd was being made, but my god I hate the slow ass $60 interactive movie games that have recently been plaguing the industry.
FromSoftware has kinda ruined me, but regardless I (the player) want to do the stuff! I'm the player, I want to do things. I don't want to watch someone talk for 15 min. This whole genre of games has really proven a lot of studios forget that you can have amazing narrative and amazing gameplay at the same time. Valve literally wrote the book on this and games like Bioshock stayed true to it.
These games fail to utilize this crazy medium we have for story telling by basically making it a movie/long ass cut scene. I'd go to a movie theater if that's what I wanted. Give me gameplay that reinforces the narrative on every level, like Bloodborne not yet another RE4 clone showing off good graphics.
See, here I massively disagree, because the story Alan Wake 2 tells can only be told in the videogame medium.
The gameplay might be at a slow pace, but I heavily disagree on the movie game aspect. (Even if it has multible life action elements integrated into the presentation :p)
Stuff like the plotboard simply would not be translatable in a movie or show.
The technology to actually make a good narrative story and have the player really figure it out on their own.. is not there yet. As it stands, this is probably as good as it currently gets.
I agree because you're objectively correct. Fromsoftware has set such a high standard for anyone who actually understands gaming. Sony interactive point and click "games" are quickly becoming unbearable
@@luumitdoppelu8092Are you referring to the Alan one or what Saga has?
If it's Saga's then I heavily disagree because that board is the dumbest aspect that wastes time and could be entirely removed.
@@luumitdoppelu8092 okay, so I actually played it to completion a few days ago after completing Control and loving it...i was totally right in what I said and I'm happy I got AW2 on sale for $20 on epics. They need more control game design less Sony walking sim. It's waaaay too long of a game for the core gameplay loop. They tried to be sort of like resident evil but my god did they miss the mark. It became an absolute slog
wait woke baby? i mean sweet wokie, i mean sweet baby worked on this game? ok removing from wishlist. ill buy yakuza infinite wealth instead even tho yongteas voice sux
Get a mixture of Resident Evil and The Last of Us with the zombies
thank you! I was a mssive fan of Control, having not played Alan Wake before, so I did that before going into AW II.
and I also did not understand all the praises a lot of youtubers and magazines to a degree. It is no bad game, in some aspects even setting new standards (technically, the graphics and especially path tracing set new standards even tho I am not a ray tracing fan adn am rocking a amd radeon card, not even be able to experience that at all lol. I applaud the devs anyway, there are countless videos on youtube singing its praise and after watching them, I understood why), in others, not the revolution everyone makes it out to be. story and presentation are probably the most well rounded experience so far in a remedy game, tying all the different universes together. the gameplay is less actiony and more survival horror, kinda like a resi 2 is different from a resi 4 from gameplay and also feel. I do not necessarily have a issue with that per se, but some weapons, i.e. bow or hunting rifle that have pros and cons can never play to their strengths in the small, arena-y gameplay levels with waves of enemies coming at you for example are just bad and more of a chore than fun (I am thinking about a certain level close to the end here). in general, lack of enemy variety. there are some, but do not play much different, even the bosses could have been cool and the first encoutner with nightingale had me on my seat, especially cause i was missing ammo on hard, so panic set in, as it should in survival horror titles. with later bosses, I never got that feeling cause either I got my stash full and had nothing to fear, the objective was clear enough or the attack pattern was so predictable, random enemy encounters out of nothing shocked me more and lead to my death more often than the boss encounters. the circling wolves were good, although not perfect cause their pattern repeats, but at least they were often harder to spot and thus attacks often would come out of nowhere for me and I would have to deal with them although the games gives subtle clues in audiovisual form, just I was a dummy and often did not pay attention. why not more of this instead of generic bullet sponges?
so the gameplay was serviceable, but not much more to me, certainly not a good or exceptional game gameplay wise. the slow start of the game and investigating aspect was something a lot of people criticized and wanted to spring directly into the action, but honestly, if you look for a generic third person shooter, there are way better options out there, but that was never what alan wakeis all about anyway.
I on the other hand liked that slow, deliberate start very much, it had me hooked: Discovering clues, deducting and putting it together really felt at home with a character like Saga, it was like playing FBI for real. the problem with that approach comes in the second half of the game, cause the mindplace board is what the developers said it was: a playable, interactive menu. and as that, it becomes more of a chore than fun at later points, especially if you as the player have figured out what saga still has to get into place on the board and spend a lot of time doing stuff that you know about anyway.
another problem for the "side jobs" which are just basic fetch quests was the heavy backtracking. I was impressed by most puzzles cause most of them (not all unfortunately) go beyond solve this number quiz or find the code laying around somewhere but also include the environment to a better degree, references, you have to think a little out of the box. Not for all of them, but some at least. I applaud that. But then to get to a certain thing, you have to walk through the whole freaking level again to get item x to place b! Why not have simple quality of life features like being able to spawn in the safe houses or fast travel between them? Especially when dying on the way and having to do all of that again is a possibility. I swear, a huge amount of time I spend in this game was just getting from a to b and then doing that again cause i died and forgot to save before or had to go the other way cause I missed something or whatever. that is an oversight at best and bad design at worst.
second, from a story perspective> too much meta references. I know people love the whacky characters, the musical numbers, the mix of idiosyncracies with which the medium plays, I do too, or rather did. You know, all the Barrys, Ahtis and so on, breaking the fourth wall, comments on writing being difficult, disappointing audiences, all that jazz, building on art or reality for other art, the mixing of genres, it is literature, film, gameplay and references to them or the other entries in the remedy universe that make it what it is. problem is, already alan wake 1 and also control did the same thing to an extent, but in a way subtler, IMO better way. here, everything is thrown in your face, in the form of literal musicals and references from the game to the player, so it does not feel as fun as when discovering easter eggs or references in the other games, almost EVERYTHING here is a reference, even the story gets more or less spoiled to an extent by some comments early on by some characters all willy nilly, making it not special anymore not setting up that impact, especially cause the story just rolls with it and lends itself to it. Which is smart, since it holds options open for the narrative team for future games, but is also incredibly cheap as a cop out for basically whatever direction you want to go in the future story wise, cause it could be just another story in a story and so on. that does not make any story beats feel as gripping as the game wants you to feel about characters or certain situations. I called a lot of things that happend or revealed hours before in my mind and was only suprised by a few things and also not necessarily in a positive way from the regards of pacing, setting up impact in a story and so on. inside the story, it works, but I am not sure if they all were good choices.
also the highly praised changing environments are not exactly new nor as good as how they could have been. alan wake II gives the illusion of an open world and choice, but is still a highly linear game, just cleverly disguised. And I wish there WERE differences, i.e. imagine using the lamp on a particular path that locks you out of another, i.e. in the underground or in the hotel, getting you to different story beats, optional content or different endings. but nope, you have to do it in a certain way to progress. that ties in neatly with the story all about being loops and slight changes, but is still not the revolutionary gameplay everyone is raving about, it still is highly linear and restricted, basically COD or your Resident Evil or what have you. which makes sense for story reasons, but again, stays beyond the possibilities that are at hand with such a mechanic.
It is definitley an experience, it is very unique and certainly not for everyone and I would still recommend it, it is a good game, excellent at some fronts, but from a gameplay perspective to me, not the revolution most people think it is. It is like Remedy learned from AW I, Quantum Break and Control in some aspects and improved its presentation to AAA levels this time, but then simultaneously forgot what made for example Control great: the gameplay, the powerfantasy of being a rock-slinging, infinite ammo having, floating badass battling supernatural forces, having an intriguing world with lore you can learn more about if you want to, but do not necessarily have to if you are just there for fun in the game. Now I am aware that this does not work in a survival horror setting, but there are other ways to make survival horror fun, exciting and new. AWII is basically a stripped down Resident Evil 2 gameplay wise, with the known zany characters and antics we have grown to love and a lot of dazzling set pieces and interesting story choices, but all these things were also there before in previous entries, just not as much in your face. and I am not sure yet if I like all the choices, from a presentation side and also from the story side itself. sometimes, less is more on these fronts.
still a good game, I hope the coming DLC will maybe shake things up also from a gameplay perspective, but I wont hold my breath. however, still a little of a disappointment on a high note.
But I would wish Remedy success with AW II, they did not have much with AW I, quantum break was okay-ish I guess, Control too in the end, if not initially if I remember correctly...
I personally really like Alan wake 2 other than the ending which I think broke all the rules just so Saga could get a happy ending and I also hate that racist woke line that Saga says but otherwise I loved this game. I do think if you're a fan of the original alan wake you'll like it but if not than probably not. Remedy is best with their stories while the gameplay is always mediocre. I think the original alan wake is their best game and one of my favorite, but even that games gameplay isn't great. Still love Alan wake 2 even with my issues with the game though
Afaik they blackwashed Saga for PC brownie points. That doesn't sit well with me.
That's not true. They made her multiracial because of the story. They added in Mr. Door (Mr. Hatch) and it's kind of important she be multiracial to have the familial connections she needs to have to be the hero of the story.
Maybe they even let black writer write her to be more inclusive and that's why she is so dull
cmon man thats a reach. i hate pushed nonsense in modern times but how the hell was an original character black washed?
You are braindead
Considering the newly found out fact that miles morales will be replacing Peter Parker as Spiderman, Saga having more run time than allan wake is on very on brand with "modern times"
I feel like they waited too long for the sequel. All the gen z kids don’t get it.
Sagas line delivery was as dull as Jessie's in control. I just didn't care about her.
Whoever write the dialogues is not smart enough
@@hadiferlan3760its the delivery, not content
@@henrik1743 I disagree. The dialogue is painfully dull and redundant.
For the most part, what Saga says is exactly what the character is doing. For example she'll pick up a screw driver and say "I picked up a screw driver". Or she'll need to get through a fence, and when you try to open it you find it locked and she will say "Huh, this fence is locked, I need to find a way around". The writing comes across as very insecure, I'm surprised it's the same writer as Max Payne and the first Alan Wake to be honest. Those characters mostly spoke for atmosphere reasons rather than narrating their own actions as they are doing them.
To be fair, I find this to be a running theme through modern games now, it's not just AW2. I think most games need a 'silence protag' button.
we both know that's bs for a start if you consider the majority of Saga's dialogue to be in gameplay when you interact with fences or a screwdriver lmfao
did we play the same game 'cause it's not sounding like we did
AW1 also had some of the dialogue you're saying you dislike. AW2 is also more "personal" in it's presentation so having some filler dialogue here and there for Saga's in game actions isn't exactly a sin. It's just whatever. If we're gonna call dialogue dull and redundant it generally entails all dialogue, not just miscelleanous interactable dialogue the majority of games can have to differing extents@@BarneyGoogl
I had a very different take on Saga, she has an uncanny unnatural delivery that makes her feel “unreal”, which ties into the reality her character is in. It’s very reminiscent of how Lynch portrays some of his characters, it’s why Alan is very expressive but Saga and a lot of the characters in Bright Falls are cheery and dissonant. It’s to make you feel off, like you aren’t getting the whole picture, like you’re combing through an old memory of yours where important parts are missing.
This was the most boring game I have ever played in my life.
You havent played cyberpunk
@@schemar17
Big movie game?
@@schemar17atleast its more interactive, even if the story and characters are god awful, the city is nothing but pretty set dressing and the combat is something weve played a 100 times.. cyberpunk is still more interactive, definitely the most important aspect of a video game to me, the more your interacting and engaging your brain, the better.
@@schemar17 you clearly haven't either
All you bums replying go to bed
Alan Wake 2 is a project created purely out of love
Excellent storytelling
Unsolved mysteries like in good(really good!) detective stories
Gameplay is engaging and definitely beats first game
now some people may criticize it and in some cases they are right
But i want YOU to try it by yourself
Just give it a chance and you will experience something you ve never seen before
Remedy is a jewel. Just like Larian studio
all they do is to tell you a good story in games
Hell if you dont wanna pay you can just pirate it . because developers released it without Denuvo
But i ask you, if you like the game. PLEASE buy it
remedy is a struggling company of independent Developers
There is no Bobby Kotick telling them to implement microtransactions
there is no Ubisoft managers telling them to cheapen development by reusing same assets
there is no other greedy corporat suit in their company
If we dont support them now. in the future we may lose a talented group of people to another moneysucking corporat suit
This is exactly why I bought the deluxe edition pre-order for Alan Wake 2 and I bought the remastered Alan Wake despite the fact I got a free 360 version when I originally bought Quantum Break I've paid for control twice now once when I originally bought the hard copy the year it came out and the second time when I bought the ultimate edition digitally for my upgraded system and gave my physical copy (along with my old system) to my best friend. I will just throw money at remedy if they ask because every remedy game I have played I can see the passion and love in every moment.
Valhalla nursing home was the best part of the game. I said what i said
I can't play these Remedy games. I would rather watch an overview of the game on UA-cam because the gameplay is so repetitive and the pacing is so poor and slow burn with little payoff.
I actually love slow burns. Slow burns and mysteries go hand in hand & the combo absolutely landed for me. It's not a groundbreaking title, but it's a solid 7/10 imo.
Remedy games always seem like they are about to start getting good and then they end. I still like that these games exist though, and that Remedy keeps doing their thing. The exception is Max Payne 1, that game is just straight up great.
Same reasona why i hated alan wake 1 tedious and boring gameplay
This game is fucking fantastic. Absolutely loved it.
I love your channel, but this weird obsession with finding flaws in both Alan Wake I and II is weird. Alan Wake has always put story above mechanics. The mind palace is too easy? Thays the point, Saga has this supernatural ability to make connections most people cant....thats why Lake yells her shes a better detective. She doesnt understand why she can make these logic leaps, so why should we?
Comparing everything to Twin Peaks? Odin missing an eye isnt because Nadine from Twin Peaks is missong an eye, Odin is missing an eye becasue _the god Odin is missing an eye._ Hell even the pretentious writing isn't an accident, it's becasue Alan is a bad writier....the magic isn't his amazing writing, it's the super natural forces. We arent supposed to be in awe of his writing.... we're supposed to cringe at it lol.
Alan wake isn't perfect, of course, but if you care more about story than game...its pretty dang close.
When you are asking for a glorified plot summary "do you understand what is going on" mechanic as something that needs a win state...maybe you are playing the wrong game. It's a helpful tool to keep the player up and make sure they aren't missing something incase they get lost.
I will rate Saga's gameplay and plot with a 8/10. It's definitely a step forward from first AW and AWAN both gameplay and story perspective. The screamers are really out of place tho I agree with you.
The mindplace is really underused. I stopped using it after FBC entered the plot.
But the best part is really the Alan's gameplay. It is perfect in both gameplay and story: you can shift reality, the enemies are much harder and it's really dark and depressing as the story in this part of game. They nailed it
I like the balance tbh, when i'd finished a chapter with Saga i would go back to Wake, then back to Saga and so on, the change of setting stopped it from becoming boring.
@@theblackswordsman9951I did the opposite. I swapped for a single chapter and then did all of Saga then all of Wake. I think going back and forth is the "intended" experience. Otherwise it plays it's hand ahead of time a bit on certain story elements. It's cool seeing the breadcrumbs leading you there and the impact one story has on the other, but it pulls the curtain back a bit too much so to speak if you played it as I did.
haven't played yet, but I think I'm bummed with all I've heard.
outside of the mindless "10/10" reviews that have zero genuine information, I've seen and heard many criticisms that don't land for me.
I'm glad they're following their heart and making the product they want to, and I'm glad that they veered toward survival horror.
But the oversteer of 'too much combat' to 'too little' is not great. The thing that carried the oddness and verbosity of Hideo Kojima was always the depth of gameplay systems that existed alongside his hour long cutscenes and weird narratives.
This is seemingly all the weirdness and none of the bedrock gameplay that feels great to get back to. It's just the director doing his best impression of Lynch while we pray for the chance to use 4 bullets.
Play it for yourself. Don’t let reviewers overhype or overcritcize it for you.
@@SteelSpurs I don't want to play it. I've heard all the good and bad and I'm not into it unless there is a DEEP sale, because so many people have said it's a walking sim with meh combat.
@@phant0mdummy See you're letting the complainers dictate your opinion instead of experiencing it for yourself. People call everything a walking sim nowadays, so thats already a null complaint.
@@phant0mdummy"walking sim" is the most nothingburger critique that people shit out of their mouths. Outer Wilds is a "walking simulator" and it's one of the most ingenuity filled games of the past decade. The vast majority of people who use that term as a complaint are just haters without better critiques.