If y'all remember, when you play as Nightingale, he speaks so softly and is begging for help! But, the Bookers said he was "yelling all kind of crazy stuff" I wonder if Nightingale, as a Taken, is mostly just frightened and helpless in his mind while the Dark Presence controls his body
Makes sense, reminds me how the hiss controls people and while keeping their souls trapped or something like that i think. Like the non violent floaty ppl repeating those words
I don't think that's the case, because Nightingale after emerging from the lake was alive, but corrupted. The Taken are all dead, and particular Taken, like Nightingale, are dead as part of Return So they die in the real world at a specific point that happens in the Dark Place
I'm surprised nobody caught on to this, but I think Night Springs will be about Tim Breaker and Mr. Door. Breaker was humming the Night Springs theme song throughout the game. There was also the commercial with Door. The Lakehouse is obviously FBC centric.
I like to think that why nightingale sees the cultist wierd way is because he is turning in to a taken and when he becomes fully taken they dont see in bright lights.
37:26 I agree with @Gaming_University that Nightingale as a Taken is perceiving the Cultists as monsters. But, the cult has been influenced from the beginning by Alan. They exist and call themselves a cult because Alan needed a cult in the story. The Dark Presence tries to Take Ilmo and Jakko but they're to strong and it has to use Thornton and Mulligan instead.
About Saga's powers: I don't think they come from Door. I am very sure he's her father, but the Anderson Brothers say those powers are in _their_ family. On Zane and Wake: The clicker is actually the light switch of _Zane's_ lamp! Another idea: What if Alan is actually Zane. Imagine Zane as the original writer who went into the lake trying to write himself out of the dark place. He reinstalls himself as Alan Wake, starting fresh. Having two versions of himself running around, both artists, both altering reality. I can't put the pieces together right now, but even Ahti referring to Alan as Tom is a very clear indicator that that's his actual identity. Ahti is Ahti. My thoughts about the Dark Presence: I don't think it's an autonomic being. I think it's a collective entity made from the art brought into the Dark Place, by those trapped there. Like, maybe the Dark Place is not a dark place at all naturally, but throw a few writers and poets in there who's art is centered on dark stuff, and the the place reacts to art with reality altering qualities, you ultimately get a Dark Place and a Dark Presence. Now... Maybe a lighter artist can use the place for something else. Maybe someone like Alice? ...
If I remember right Odin said that her powers come from the Anderson side cause her mom had the ability, but told saga that her mind place didn't exist.
Warlin Door does say at some point : We Doors, and something about knowing their way around, implying that Saga may have inherited powers from the Andersons (resisting the reality editing influence, moving in and out of the dark place like Thor and Odin did) and from her father as well, which I speculate have to be more extra-dimensional, not just linked to the dark place like T&O are. Dude is named with a synonym for Threshold, after all. I think if there was a Zane, he’s long gone, the one we meet who has Alan’s voice and face is Alan’s idea of Zane, of another artist, of a predecessor, another version of the archetypal writer (albeit the mad artist one). Imho the Zane/Wake blur is on purpose, because their stories intertwined so much they became almost one, feeding on top of each other, as soon as Alan dived into the lake he took inspiration (like any artist does) on the work of his predecessor, in order to beat the dark presence like the original Zane may have done. its a commentary on originality, on artistic influence.
Some of her powers definitely do come from Door. She can apparently freely choose to go where she wants in the Dark Place just by willing it, like Mr. Door. She wills to reach Alan (which requires bringing out Parliament Tower), and just does so with little effort, unlike Alan. But yes, most of her powers (like reaching into people's minds for information) definitely come from the Anderson side of the family.
I feel like Scratch/dark presence just takes over Alan when he loses all hope, which happens on a loop, he goes through a story, realises Alice is dead, loses all hope, the dark presence basically eats the contents of his mind, he wakes up empty - with amnesia, slowly remembers his past as it goes on and then basically the same events happen again with slight spiral variations. So there isn't much worth thinking about beyond that when it comes to scratch, he is all the worst parts of Alan - like everyone when they're taken.
I saw someone mention (was it this video? LOL) that may Rose wrote herself into the story through her self-insert fan fiction. If THAT'S the case, it would be a masterful commentary on art and art ownership in the modern age.
I thought it was scratch that was manipulating rose? Because she says that Alan told her to take Cynthia’s lamp and throw it into the pond. Rose basically killed poor Cynthia. Alice wouldn’t do that…
@@eden20111But if the lamp wasn't put in the shoebox, Alan couldn't escape the dark place. Whoever told rose to take the lamp they were probably unaware of Cynthia dependence on it. And Rose was too fanatic to go against what she was being told to do. I think everyone has plausible deniability enough that no one was intending for Cynthia to die. Also, because of the stories time loops, a lot of the plot becomes a bootstrap paradox. The message to rose comes from the future, and the person writing from the future has already observed the past occurring.
Yeah that was my thought after listening back this video; I believe that signals can get in and out of the dark place sometimes. The first AW DLC was called the Signal and Zane was able to call Alan, even if it was just a metaphorical phone.
If Zane could get out of the Dark Place for a while to meet Linda Wake and become Alan's father, that could explain the "Errand Boy" short story Alan wrote?
Thank you! I would love to speak with Sam, but whenever he's asked about lore stuff he tends to dodge the questions a bit. I'm not sure what the best angle for a conversation/interview would be.
@@HiddenMachineGamingI believe it's for the best. Part of the magic the RCU have is the speculation and the guessing of all the stuff going on, if you'll get confirmation about your questions, it will make everything much more obvious and lose the mystery. He also said that sometimes he takes other people's guesses on the story and thinks that it may be better that way, when there's so many possibilities, so possible, other not but all make sense.
What I got from Thomas Zane in this game is that he was never really a poet, he was a filmmaker all along and the hotel room seems to be his dark place. Also in that scene he looked like quite the egotistical artist, he calls himself a 'celebrated auteur', so isn't it quite ironic that Alan is similar to him? Maybe he created Alan in his image. Tom first wrote Departure. So Tom brought Alan to the story in the first game just like Alan brought Saga this time... this is why it's a spiral. In trying to leave and rewrite the story they could be bringing in more people to the dark place. Alice found out that instead of going "deeper" or what she calls the path of destruction (could it be the destruction of the story? as in making it more convoluted) they have to "ascend", maybe as in ascending the spiral... could that mean they have to somehow go backwards and undo everything? Another thing that occured to me is that Alice is the only character who has left the "place" where the AWE happened after coming in contact with it. This could be significant because the FBC mentions the AWE only affects a specific area. Tom, Alan and Saga were all trapped inside at least until this point. Alan left the dark place at some point in this game, but he never left the area affected by the AWE. About Odin and Tor, after the rock'n'roll scene with Saga they enter the dark place saying they're going to their next show. I think it's heavily implied they went to the musical scene with Alan, to help him get to where he needed go. Time doesn't mean anything in the dark place. It's the only explanation I have for them to be a part of that scene to be honest... I certainly don't think their appearance was random.
Now that it’s pseudo confirmed that Mr. Door is Saga’s father, which sort of explains her powers. I wouldn’t be surprised if Thomas Zane is Alan’s father given his clairvoyant powers, which seem to work before he even had contact with the Dark Place in 2010 Edit: they just brought it up I am enjoying how nutty this universe is haha. Usually stuff like this annoys me, but Remedy being so self aware about it makes it so much more fun
How does that explain her powers when Tor made clear that its common in his family line? And Saga realises that her mother was very aware of what Saga was actually experiencing and just didn't want her to connect to the stuff from Tor's family
Here’s my take at things: In regards to Nightingale seeing the Cult as distorted, I believe this all ties into the different resonances as per Control. The Hiss give off a certain distortion due to their resonance being in conflict with Hedron’s resonance. I think we’re seeing the same thing here. The Taken see those with some sort of “light resonance” as distorted beings like we see the Taken with distortion to their form. This can also tie into why the Dark Presence is in multiple places. If it’s spread itself across the Dark Place like the Hiss did in Control, then it would make sense that with the weird time being a loop thing going on, that they would be able to enter the mind of multiple Alan’s at different points of the story. I still think there are points within Alan’s story that we play as a different Alan in a different loop, and I think the memories for Alan finally stick once Door becomes involved. Alan has been in the Dark Place for 13 years but doesn’t remember or know anyone? That’s fishy. But if at the beginning of the game, that’s where the tonal shift is, then we can get the Alan we play (Ascension) and the Alan that decided to accept his fate, never finish ‘Return’ and just stay in the Dark Place, i.e. Mr. Scratch (Decent). I think that’s why Alan gets a call from not future Alan, but Alan from the post credit scene “It’s not a loop, it’s a spiral,” setting forward the events for the final draft. I’d love to hear more thoughts about all of this!
@@HiddenMachineGaming Sat down with some buddies while listening to this, this video easily sparked a 2 hour plus convo about the game. Some of the most fun we’ve had. We cannot wait for a new one to drop!
I honestly think, in a more metaphorical sense, buy possibly literally as well, Alan and Tom are the same person. If we take in control lore, and almost think of it in terms of Gods, Jesse was chosen by Polaris, The Board chooses multiple people as they see fit, these beings want "champions" to uphold their wills. The theory that Tom is Alan's father can work, but I think its more like Scratch/The dark presence wanted to create it's next champion. Buuuttt as was reiterated many times, they can't create, they can only modify a story. So what if Scratch took Tom's old work, changed some names, dates? Just a thought.
I had a thought that maybe Alan is a creation of Tom. And maybe an actual person can create things, but if you're a creation maybe you can't create hence Alan only able to manipulate what's there for him.
I finally found the supposed walkie-talkie that nightfall is heard through. It’s actually a tape recorder and it’s at the End of the Line scene in caldera station when you select missing FBI agent 😬
I like this idea that Zane and Alan Wake may be echoes of the same pandimensional entity interacting through the multiverse in the same way but Hatch and Door and Jack and Tim are echoes. It would help explain why people keep calling Alan "Tom" and why Alan's experience with the Dark Presence is mirrored so strongly by Tom's experience. I don't think the age difference between the two characters is a problem with this theory, because there's no reason why two alternative versions of person from different times can't meet at notionally the same time through the Dark Place, which could be a kind of nexus. And even if it isn't, the memory of Zane is in the Dark Place which can bring stories to life. It could just the Dark Place having Zane on file.
If Nightingale was brought back to the lake as “driftwood”, since he was touched by the Dark presence in the first game, how come a character like Rose (who was also touched by the Dark Presence), not also taken back into the lake?.. I lean more toward Nightingale continued to pursue Wake after the first game and literally went into the lake himself
the scene where Alan shots Zane, is part of the Alex Casey movie, is Casey in one echo that says that he will pay a visit to Zane and make him talk, Alan before entering 665 he only says that "Zane will not be happy to see me this time" there is no correlation between the intentions of Alan and the scene
about the multiple darkpresence/mr scratch, mrscratch ingame has Kalevala Knights jacket, the same one of the gang characters uses in Nightless Night, the one who says he stabbed his own brother
22:23 Alan Wake is experiencing the events as written in his manuscript because time worked in reverse in the dark place. He wrote the story in the dark place > got out of the dark place > the story came true > went back in the dark place to write the story . The points where Alan and Saga met was basically Alan going in reverse. By the end of Saga's story, Alan was at the start of his. At the start of Saga's story, Alan completed his. At least I believe so.
One thing I found odd with this, is that the 2nd and 3rd overlaps were reversed in Alan’s story as compared to Saga’s. That was clearly on purpose, what purpose? I have no idea. Just something I found odd.
When it comes to multiple dark presences I currently subscribe to the theory that the dark place is the collective unconscious of our shadow selves/id, so each person has their own involvement in the greater whole, a cup of water from the ocean
Another factor to consider with Nightingale's scenario during the intro is what the Bookers tell Saga later, when she questions them on what they witnessed. They state he was "Shouting wierd shit" or something to that effect, but during the opening segment from the player's perspective, he seems to be mumbling and confused. My theory is we're experiencing what its like to become a Taken. The host is possessed but they're still somewhat concious and trapped in their own body. Something like this would certainly suit the horror themed narrative of the sequel
My take on Dark Presence is that It is not a entity, with his own agenda. It is a collective of bad/dark/shame traits of the Humankind. So, imho, Scratch is Not a emboidment of DarkPresence, as a entity, He is just Alan. A Alan that is corrupeted by its own bad/dark/shame/ego traits. And, the same way we have multiple Alan, through the spiral, we have multiple Scratch, based on the strong dark traits at time. Thefore, every Taken it is the darkiest version of that human, but playing along with the current Story. We can just see a exemple of the ending of the Scratch at the Deerfestival. All that reallity it is the dark version/side of that people, but playing along with Scratch Story. That is a high praise/worship for Alan/Scratch, based on his egoistic trait.
About the musical. When everybody sings "I'll show you the herald of darkness", they make a move like they are suiting up a diving helmet. And now I cannot get rid of the idea, that Zane is the real herald of darkness. I am not able to create a real theory from that (I mean the motive, evidences besides the musical etc.), but I think that it's an interesting note
I have been to think that. I mean what do we know of the real Thomas Zane? Was he really a nice guy or was he twisted in some manner? I think we have to question all we know about Thomas Zane and think about what really happened to Barbara Jaeger. Because his actions don’t paint a portrait of a nice guy.
@@mirandagoldstine8548This House of Dreams and others seem to paint the real Zane as being a normal person (not bad/evil, not a saint), so judging by the Zanes we've met, we can't really say anything about the real Zane. I've been now pondering about what happened to Zanes body after the end of the Writer DLC. I'll need to look things up to see if there are any hints to what happened to Diver Tom anywhere.
Fun Fact: The name for Alex Casey isn't a coincidence. In Max Payne 1 there's a fictional beer company called "Casey" on a poster that says "Real Men drink Casey" Ironically in the Hotel Building level, which might be the Overview.
Also not many people know this, but Max Payne was known as Alex Casey in 1996. See former Remedy dev Peter Hajba (aka Skaven)'s tweet for proof, along with early concept art.
@@Snowpiercer2 Wait, for real? I know they we're toying around with Max Heat and Dick Justice, first time hearing Alex Casey going back that much to 1996.
Other than the Mr. Door being Saga's father theory I also thought that maybe their "important person" was Tim instead. Seeing how Tim's seen him since childhood I was wondering if it was like a mentor/mentee situation where they're wanting Tim to join or take over their current position of whatever they're doing. That would also play into why Tim was transported into the dark place by Mr. Door as to try and keep him out of the story and "safe" as he never seemed to be in much danger and was used to this type of situation? Could be both as well but just thought I'd throw that out there as that was my initial take before looking into the Saga's father thought path.
I definitely see where you're coming from, but I wasn't sure if Alan brought Tim into the story or not. I'm not sure if Breaker is mentioned in the manuscript pages at all.
From the quick ctrl + F I did through the pages the only mention of Tim is "Sheriff Breaker had deputies patrolling the streets at night." from the Bright Falls page. It's as if he is the only character that you could consider a main character that isn't influenced or "used" by the story. They did say the Door is the one who pulled him when trying to hand over a page and this occurred right before Nightingale rampaged. I saw that as Door pulling Tim out of the story and/or the danger he was about to be a part of. Also, when he talks with Alan if I'm remembering correctly Alan doesn't seem to know about him or that he was the new Sheriff in Bright Falls the way he did about everything else going on. Especially with how much help Alan was given by Sarah in the first game you would think he'd try to use the new sheriff as another ally as much as possible. In the end it's definitely weird that Tim seems to be excluded from the story of the manuscript almost entirely.@@HiddenMachineGaming
I wonder if Rose is the first person the story changes because she both is obsessed with Alan and has been touched by the Dark Presence before? I feel like she's been affected by the story for a long time
I saw mentioned somewhere (maybe here or this vid? LOL) that Rose might have written herself into the boundaries of the story through her own self-insert fan fiction. If that's the case, it would be a great commentary on art and art ownership in the modern age.
@@UberNoodletbh, itd make sense, i wonder how Sam views fanfic, as an avid writer who has fanfic writing friends ive been an avid supporter for a long time. Maybe her writing herself into the story is showing how beneficial the art could be?
Being the one who brought up the idea of Wake and Zane being one and the same on stream, it is really exciting to see others were thinking on the same wavelength as well, and it could actually lead to something.
My interpretation of the echoes and Casey in general is that it’s Alan’s writing of Initiation, which is what we’re playing through in his sections, all of that is Initiation’s manuscript. He wrote those stories and then they actually happened in the real world, or Casey at least thinks they did. Just like everything else, the real world events are consequences of Alan’s stories. Alan himself says towards the end that detective Alex Casey was a real person who already existed who Alan (intentionally or unintentionally) rewrote into the story.
I wonder whether the dark presence, as an independent antagonist/entity, really exists. During the reveal that Alan accidentally killed himself in a different loop while trying to kill Scratch and also seeing how Saga also got her own Other Saga version I began to think that what actually happens is this: Cauldron Lake is essentially (a portal to) infinity. Beings that enter it become trapped and both become infinitely corrupted (becoming the dark presence after an infinite amount of time) but also infinitely enlightend (becoming the bright presence after an infinite amount of time) and can also interact with their own versions from different loops. So maybe the dark/bright presence is in truth an amalgamation of all those infinitely ascending/descending beings themselves and not something like an "Outer God" like the Board or the Former.
the way Casey reacted about the murder cult I think is because the story was beginning to affect him, and he begins remembering the case in the New York that Alan Wake was in in AW2. So that NY murder cult thing didn't actually happen, he just remembers it because Alan was writing it at that time.
If time isn't linear in the Dark Place, then can we really be sure that the film Alice made was made in the real world and not inside the Dark Place? She's acting as the Bright Presence in AW2, so it's entirely possible she's been giving him help along the way from the very beginning. Not only does he use the film to destroy at least one possible version of Mr. Scratch, but it would also work to remind Alan of their happier times and how much they love each other and give him something to keep pushing himself forward.
I think the films are real since it’s the work of art from the exhibit and her photos that allow Saga to get the clicker and bullet of light. In my interpretation there is an Overlap in Alice’s place since she was tied to the dark place and that’s how “Scratch” Alan visits her at night. The Parliament Tower sections of the game were mostly just Alan remembering what he did
Is Tom a poet or a film maker? I think that he was a film maker who took up poetry after meeting Barbara Jager. Yoton Yo was the movie that the Dark Presence wanted Tom Zane to write, but instead he wrote the master poem and pulled Barbara's soul into the baby reality. The reason that Jesse remembers Tom as a poet is that she read the poems from the shoebox in Ordinary.
So I’m kinda pooling together a few ideas I’ve seen so here goes: Seine means fishing net or entangler (thanks gaming university chat with Max Derrat). Loki is the Norse god who invented the fishing net and is an “entangler.” We also know thanks to that “times I’ve lost my eye” document from Odin that the Old Gods reincarnate. So, a reincarnating “god of stories and lies,” who has the same face over and over, maybe as far back as True Tom Rhymer and further beyond? MAYBE?!?! The problem big with this is that there’s no way the old gods would call you Tom instead of Loki, especially since there was apparently a Loki who was part of the band. They’re immune to all of Zane and Alan’s bullshit, so there’s no way the wool would get pulled over their eyes about who Zane really was.
About who leaves the manuscripts for Saga to find, in my opinion, was Scratch. If we notice in one of the hints in loading screen, it says that we can follow the dark shadows to find a manuscript, and all manuscripts in the game have a sort of a darness around them. I think Mr Scratch used Alan to write his version of Return, and the Dark Presence used the Takens that emerged from the lake to send the manuscripsts to the real world. Aside of that, they use the Cult of the Three for this, because they kill and remove the hearts of the takens, and we see that Nightingale has a manuscript inside of his body. So, i think the Dark Presence uses the "ritual" of the Cult on purpose to spread the manuscripts across Bright Falls. And when people started reading, reality started to change.
So, the thread that keeps coming up in this game are loops and spirals. Could this somehow describe the connection between Wake and Zane? Not to say they are the same person (maybe they are in a sense) but that they are somehow part of one loop/spiral. Zane being at the inception at this spiral that began in 1970 and Wake is the continuation of the failed attempts of Zane. The diver and filmmaker could be different "loops" of his spiral, similar to Alan's novel in the 1st game and the script of the Night Springs in American Nightmare. And the cutscene in the hotel with two of them could be some sort of communication between the loops of the spiral. Sorry for a bit of a ramble, but that's what I think.
My theory is that Thomas Zane/Alan Wake and prior versions like Tom the Poet/Tom Rhymery are the same; similar to how verses of a poem are similar. Different verses connected by pattern, sound, and symbolism in consecutive order yet in repetition. He can't create people but he can re-imagine them, re-imagine himself maybe. He's able to temporarily escape the Dark Place in a new life as long as he eventually returns. But like a spiraling staircase overlapping the floors below and above, he overlaps and repeats with his prior verses. A weird-doomed phoenix.
Ooo wait, just thinking the brothers and saga are seers they can see the true events....sooo they call alan tom couse they see the true story and wake is Zane . Iv had this theory, but to me, that adds credit to it.
The idea of loops is such a major part of Alan Wake 2, but I have always thought that maybe the first story is also a loop. That prologue has never sat right with me. The idea that it was a dream Alan was having on the drive to Bright Falls (although the dream is set outside the town of Night Springs) seems to work, but that dream contains things that Alan has yet to encounter: taken, Zane, and the Dark Presence. It's strange then when Alan ostensibly encounters those things for the first time but technically, he wouldn't have, as these are the things from his dream. Sure, you could interpret it that Zane is contacting him in a dream as he approaches Bright Falls, but it kind of confuses the whole idea of Alan writing Zane into the story later on. The Dark Presence being present in the dream also confuses things when it later reveals itself to him But perhaps you could interpret the prologue as ACTUALLY being part of Alan's manuscript which he wrote in the Dark Place. Basically, when WE enter the story with Alan, he is ALREADY in the Dark Place writing his manuscript. He has already written Zane into the story, and he's already plotting his escape. So we don't enter the story where we think we do. We enter the story at the second loop; or it's at least loop 1.5. because I don't think Alan finished the first loop. He changed his strategy halfway through. In the first loop (which we never experience) Alan must have come to Bright Falls, been tricked into the Dark Place, become trapped there and began to write. At some point he abandoned that story and decided to write a new one in which HE was the protagonist. For this story, he wrote about what he experienced: coming to Bright Falls, falling prey to the Dark Presence, writing the manuscript, writing in Zane, escaping the cabin and forgetting his story. How accurate all that is to what really happened, we don't know. But you can assume that Alan DID NOT have the Prologue dream in the first loop. He never dreamt about the hitchhiker. Zane never spoke to him about how to use a flashlight and a gun (lol). He never saw the Dark Presence tornado. This Prologue dream is something Alan wrote into his manuscript retelling in order to create intrigue, foreshadowing and narrative symmetry. So anyway, to cut a long story short: if you view the original story in this way, there's not a single moment presented to us in that is in objective reality OUTSIDE of the manuscript. It's ALL within the manuscript, including the ending. That means it's not the original go-around. It is, if not the second loop, at least loop 1.5.
The Diver was the og Zane's persona but I think Alan changed everyone's perception of him from the dark place as a part of some plan to get out of the dark place. What part in the plan it was I have no idea. But yeah when Alan changed him he also became what he maybe always was, the chicken to alan's egg. The big question is which came first? Did Alan create Tom so Tom could create Alan or the other way around? Jesus that does kind of describe a spiral...
Hi, guys! Thanks for your analysis of questions! English isn't my native language, so sorry if I made mistakes anywhere in the text. I don't know if you have mentioned the following interesting details in any of your videos: - Blue and red lighting in room 665. Moreover, the lighting on the side with TVs and the lighting on the side with the bed are seem to be mirrored. The first thought that comes to mind is the 'Matrix', of course. By the way, Mr. Door mentioned it earlier. You know, the red pill is an escape from a dream, the blue pill is a continuation of a dream. Interesting thing is that the hanger with Zane's jacket is near the blue lighting, but a strange mannequin is near the red lighting (I'll tell you about the mannequin a little later). - The spiral in Zane's painting twists counterclockwise, but the spiral on Alan's door twists clockwise (you can see it in Control and AW2). In AW Alan's eye often catches the book "The Withinside". The book contains a spiral on its cover. The spiral twists counterclockwise. - The lamps in the house on the Diver's Isle (in AW) have spiral-shaped brackets (maybe it doesn't matter, but it's interesting). - You can see the owl statuette under the painted spiral in room 665 (in any case, it looks very much like an owl). It's known, the stuffed owl often appears in short videos with Alan's short stories (for example, we can see one of these, when Saga upgrades her weapons). It's also known that Remedy was inspired by 'Twin Peaks' to create 'Alan Wake'. Do you remember the popular phrase from the creation of Lynch? "The owls are not what they seem." Besides, Zane declaims one of his poems and uses a lamp as a microphone just like one of the characters in 'Blue Velvet' of Lynch - Ben, who is the sidekick of the main villain in the film. - There is a mannequin in Zane's room. It clearly has female outlines. It's very similar to the mannequin that Jessie was looking for in one of the sidequests of Control. In the party scene there is a frame depicting a wad of money in the hand of the mannequin. I don't want to state anything, but is this frame perhaps a metaphor? The power (money) is in the hands of a double/ an impostor (the mannequin in Control has the ability to create copies of itself). Well, the mannequin may mean "original" rather than "impostor". - In American Nightmare Mr. Scratch tells Alan that he has a wedding ring too. Zane has bracelets and rings, but he also wears some kind of ring on a cord around his neck - could it be a wedding ring? - The cultist mask on Zane's face. Okey, this detail is the most noticeable. However, if I'm not mistaken, Alan sees the cultist mask for the first time in room 665 (I don't remember well when the graffiti of the Tree cultists appears - before the first visit to room 665 or after).
Something I've been kicking around, while thinking about the clicker, is that American Nightmare did happen but (given the AW2 definition of what the clicker actually does) he couldn't substantiate it and Alan would - over time - largely forget it. Many aspects of American Nightmare seem to be echo'd or inverted in AW2. Alice, for instance, does end up making a public work reminding the world of Alan - however, instead of Alan's best self - it is Alan's shadow and The Dark Place. "Sunrise" seemingly eclipsed by "Yoton Yor." So, in short, I think American Nightmare did happen but it's not canon; it's faded away and painted over by Initiation and the latest draft of Return.
Sam Lake says it is canon, but it is arguable how relevant some of the events of the game really are in the long run. Initiation and Return do seem to have superseded it.
My theory, Scratch is the Dark Presence having fed off of Alan, his memories, his soul, his writing, for 13 years. At the beginning they talk about how the Dark Presence is "stealing from Alan". Stealing his identity, but not literally becoming Alan, literally stealing his memories, his personality, his soul, etc. 13 years of essentially using Alan's desperation to escape to escape themself. He manipulated Alan, fed off of him, became more and more powerful, and ultimately manipulated Alan into setting himself and Scratch free.
Idea on Nightingale being Taken - I believe there is a manuscript page that details what the taken say in the Dark Place - Nightingale repeats these when you are in control of him
And another thought. As it was mentioned, there can be different "scratches", and each of them is just an opposite of a certain feature of a person. What if Zane-film-maker, we see in AW2, is just the second "scratch"? The first one (let's call him Scratch) appeared because of Alan had gave up to return and Scratch wanted to leave the Dark Place. And Zane-Scratch appeared because of Alan had stopped writing and Zane-Scratch wanted to continue creating art (as he basically said when we met him the last time). And both Scratch and Zane-Scratch look like Alan, because they are his doppelganger. Moreover, they are parts of him, so, Ahti and OGoA do not distinguish them, as the parts of a single person.
I think the version of Scratch we see in AW1 and AN is a Tulpa. His form is a living piece of fiction, created by the dark presence. But since the rule of conservation still applies, the dark presence couldn’t invent an entirely fictional version of Alan to manifest as. Instead, it used the worst version of him in that existed in the general unconscious. When Alan played Alice’s short film to defeat scratch at the end of a AN, these vicious rumors were dispelled, and the dark presence could no longer use that form. Instead, it decided to hitch a ride with him out of the dark place.
Also do you think the reality Alan comes back to in Alan Wake 2 isn’t his original reality?? There’s a quote in one of the games, I think from Dylan in Control that says something along the lines of “in one world there was a writer who wrote about a cop, in another the cop was real”
I'm not sure it there isn't a Bright Presence. Given how the Hiss and Dark Presence interact in AWE DLC, and Polaris is opposite of Hiss. One would think there's another for the Dark Presence.
Alice is the bright presence is my guess. Alan said he wasn’t sending rose any messages either, so someone else was doing all of this and we find out that Alice went back to the Dark Place. I think she’s been the one guiding both Alan and Saga
Nobody seems to talk about how Warlin Door has a book in his dressing room of Dr Casper Darling titled My Interpretation of Many Worlds. It seems that Door has taken a great interest in Dr Darling. This begs the question of Darlings fate in the Hedron Chamber. Did Darling enter a higher level of existence where he’s pretty much anywhere everywhere all at once? If he’s in this plane of existence, has he come across Door?
RE: scratch theory My understading of the whole situation was that there was never a doppleganger, mr scratch is the result of the dark presence taking over alans body. Which is what we saw when alan gave up, after he shot himself at the desk, he stopped running, and the dark presence finally took over, just as he was rescued by saga and co. So retrospectively, at the end of Alan Wake 1, when Zane says "your friends will meet him when your gone", can either serve as a premonition type thing, or a warning to Alan to not give up, stay strong and keep going and perserveering. Furthermore, "your friends will meet him when your gone" doesnt mean when Alan is physically gone from the real world, like we, and Alan were all led to believe, but when Alan is gone mentally and has given up on hope, that the result would be the dark presense has taken over. It also recontextualises American Nightmare, if you interpret it as an escape attempt, because Alan wrote the story as to have Mr Scratch as his evil doppleganger, be be the main antagonist, and at the end when he is defeated, it doesnt work. It doesnt work, because the story is built on a false premice, that scratch is the evil doppleganger, which isnt true, and as we know, the story needs to ring true and follow the rules. But because it wasnt based on the actual reality of the situation, it left Alan still left in the dark place
What I think is going on with Zane: we know that, despite how AWEs usually don't affect things outside of their general area, Cauldron Lake has the power to influence stuff a bit further out, at least on a person by person basis (see all the stuff going on with Saga's daughter.). I think Zane DID write himself out of existence, but the whole Thomas Zane the Poet really was just a role that he wrote and played. Cauldron Lake took hold of that idea and made it real, so some people remember Tom as a poet and there's poetry written by the character hiding around in the world. That's the best I can come up with as a justification for why his history is inconsistent.
Just started the video and THIS is the discussion I've been waiting for since I finished the game. As to the answer to question 1 about the Bright Presence and who's been putting pages in Saga's path. I think Alan wrote the pages to be there once noticing Saga as iirc one of the pages references her reading a page and not wanting to believe it/ listen to it. As for the Bright Presence I believe that we learn who took up that mantle at the end of the game before we get the final quote," It's not a Loop. It's a Spiral." which I think I understand, but am appreciatively waiting to hear the rest of the thoughts in the video first. Ok. Finished the video. Great discussion, but we're definitely gonna need a follow-up to this. You didn't even start to touch on Control and the FBC connection. That Manuscript Page that says that The Oldest House is STILL dark all these years later definitely needs to be touched on. I know the Hiss invasion is horrific, but I thought it was contained after Polaris' sacrifice maybe aside from Dylan in his comatose state. I would've thought they'd be back in business by now. By extension that means that currently the only way to access The Oldest House is either being called there(Like Jesse was) or through the Oceanview sites. Door called Breaker his unwilling Disciple, like a student, so if Tim is in Control 2 I'd bet that he gets there through Oceanview. In all of this I think the only characters that fully understand everything that's going on, although from different perspectives, are Ahti, Door, Tor, and Odin. Tor and Odin fully understand the Dark Place, how it works, and how to manipulate it. I doubt that they're trapped despite going in after the summoning ritual. I actually think they've been in there before while Balder was still alive, which is why he's in the Dark Place. Cancer could just be a cover story for him getting trapped. He wasn't a Seer like Tor and Odin as far as we know. Tor says in the newspaper clipping that Balder was in Valhalla, that he died fighting cancer. We know that Vikings had burials at sea. I haven't played Quantum Break or watched the show, so all I actually know for sure about Door is that he has the ability to walk and possibly see through dimensions, both stacked(Like in the Oldest House) and alternate(What Tim Breaker dreams), but other than that, his anger at his daughter, Saga, being brought into it, and his comment about Tim being his unwilling Disciple I have no other clues. He doesn't seem bound by the rules of the Dark Place, but above them as though they can't touch him. I don't know if he's human or a Paranatural Entity which brings us to.... Ahti. Ahti is the shit, but he's being a bit fucked with for the first time by Alan's manuscript and he doesn't seem to like it, but he also doesn't mind helping when he can. Ahti is an all around Paranatural entity that may have once been human as he claims to be from Finland originally, but not anymore. He's not bound by the rules of seemingly any dimension connected to The Oldest House and can freely travel them all. He can hear thoughts as seen when he responds to Jesse's inner monologues in Control, he refers to the Director as his Assistant and knows that Trench is dead before anybody else which is why he refers to Jesse as an applicant before she takes up the Service Weapon. I don't think that he can jump timelines like Door can though. I think he's too tied to The Oldest House for that. If we get right down to it it's possible that Ahti is the physical manifestation of The Board or even just Humanities desire to get on like normal. Either way Ahti's main job is to keep all of the realities in order and not breaching into one another as much as possible. A job that he left to Jesse so that he could take a Vacation that seems to have been turned into a years long endeavor either because he knew he had to be there, Alan's writing forced him to stay there, OR, since he has access to the Oceanview sites whenever he wants AND seemingly has keys to all the doors(we saw him use one of them to let Alan back into the Dark Place and there were others on it too) can get back to The Oldest House whenever he wants, like the few times that he disappears at Valhalla Nursing Home and just casually shows up in The Dark Place to help, "Tom".
- "A story of a lawman whose heart was cut out of his chest. Two corrupt men killed by their own twisted ambition. A haunted old woman drowned in a bathtub. Twisted reflections on the other side of the mirror. Arcs stabbing through realities. Amplifying the influence of the Dark Place." The overlaps are tied to the murder site in the Initiation story are directly related to the deaths of people key to the Return story. As for the locations of the overlaps, The Location of the Ritual murder in Initiation doesn't matter because its a rough draft. The locations are tied to the proximity of where the actual people become Taken. That's their "Initiation" Initiation is Alan Wake's story, being played out as he writes it. Return is Saga's story as written by Scratch. As Alan Wake was writing Initiation which was always meant to be a rough draft for Return, Scratch wrote Return. Every time Alan got close to writing too far beyond the Dark Presence wanted, he kills Alan and forces him to restart with no memory of what he's already written, so that he can unknowingly continue a partly finished draft so that Scratch can complete Return. When Alan finally realized this once Return is complete, and tries to make the edits, Scratch himself "kills Alan" and makes him forget all over again and when he comes too the only thing he's able to change is the ending and in knowing this i really wonder how "The Final Draft" is supposed to alter things.
@54:43 I always assumed that Thomas Zane kept changing because Alan kept changing him. Is it possible that Zane doesn't really exist, at least not anymore, and not in the way that Alan exists in the dark place. Whatever happened to Zane and Barbara deconstructed and abstracted them into their constituent ideas, traits and archetypes. And I think the same thing happens to the taken, at least in the first game. They are abstractions of the victims taken by the Dark Place. They now exist only as collections and intersections of ideas. And that's how you can explain the lack of enemy variety (hah!) and all the crazy but banal formulaic phrases they blurt out. The Dark Presence is constructing them out of these constituent abstractions, but it doesn't know how to be creative, and it doesn't understand living things. All it can create are these hideous approximations. But maybe Zane is similar. He exists now only because Alan took reconstituted those abstracted ideas, traits and archetypes of Zane and brought him back to life. But it's not the real him. It's Alan's interpretation of him, and this interpretation is in flux, constantly changing as Alan reinvents the character. But that character is always "Thomas Zane". That's how I've always interpreted the ever-changing persona and appearance of the character. Zane is just an abstraction that can be whatever Alan needs him to be, or whatever the Bright Presence needs him to be, even, ... when it needs him.
My theory about why Zane looks like Alan, after being in a scuba suit, is because Alan may not know what Zane looked like, but knew of his work, so he made him in his own image so he could place him in the story. I also think Zane may be writing as well because he's also a parautilitarian, and is how he was able to create Scratch. Zane wrote in Alan killing Scratch and writing the loop of Scratch first killing Alan, making him think it's a loop, but it's not, it's a spiral like Alice said. Zane, Alan, and Scratch or the manifested dark presence are all writing, trying to get themselves out. Or Alan and Scratch are and Zane is keeping the loop going for the "art" of it. I hope I articulated what I'm trying to say.
29:59 The point that the story 'begins' and reality starts to change is finding the first page at the Witch's Ladle. We meet Ilmo Koskela at the FBC station just after we find the first page describing Saga and Casey finding the page. He doesn't know Saga then. By the time we get back to Bright Falls to meet Sheriff Breaker and interview the Bookers at the dinner, it's starting. Rose is the first as she's already been touched by the Dark Presence once. When we go back to Cauldron Lake, the alarm is now going off at the FBC station because the story has begun, and the AWE is happening. 32:54 the Witch's Ladle, The WW2 Bunker beneath Valhalla, and the Houtari Well are all weak points in reality created by bad events happening there and collective folklore and legend compounding to make them psychically charged locations. Alan just needs to create something on his end in the Dark Place that mirrors the elements in the real world to push the Dark Place to overlap reality tangibly. 39:23 the Dark Presence is inside Nightingale when he comes out of the lake; similar to how it was inside Alan. Passing through the Threshold weakens it. The Cult uses the ritual murder and the Clicker to banish the Dark Presence from the Taken's body. That's why Nightingale raises as a Taken when the ritual is interrupted. This is also why the bodies of the Taken destroyed by the cult using the Clicker remain. The Dark Presence has been physically forced out and can't pull the body back into the Threshold. 42:43 without a story/active AWE, the Dark Presence is weak and can only seem to manifest one Taken vessel at a time: Barbara Jagger previously. It attempts to use those it captured in 2010 as vessels, but the cult has been destroying them and sending the Dark Presence back into the lake before it can gain any strength.
Cool talk. - Alice becoming the new vessel for the Bright Presence would be cool. - I agree with the Dean and say we've never met the real Tom. Both the Diver and the Director are facets of Tom like Irrational Alan from the Writers DLC. - the true Tom rhymer stuff is fascinating. Having Tom Zane pop up in Death Rally would be hilarious. - Tom being Alan's father is plausible. I guess Alan's mom is a paraulitarian that Tom tried to recruit in order to free him? - Tim for Control 2. ;)
@41:16 I always interpreted the ending cutscene of the first game as indicating that Nightingale had become some kind of ghoul or spectre. He's seen in the darkness looking out at the light. He's in shadow, and he looks almost incorporeal, like a spectre from the dark place. So I just assumed that he has been a puppet of the Dark Presence for all this time, and at the beginning of Alan Wake 2, the Dark Place coughed him up. Why? Not sure. Maybe he was coughed up in the same way that pages and other artefacts do from the lake. Overflow. Or maybe a part of him wanted to return because Alan was returning. A part of him was drawn to reemerge due to a deep memory of his enmity for Alan.
@28:30 I think it's fair to say that perhaps the rituals performed by the Cult of the Tree to banish taken might also have something to do with altering reality. If you remember at that point early in the game, Rose does believe Saga's daughter drowned, but she has also already been laying out the Alex Casey lunch boxes expecting a hero she doesn't know (apparently told to her by Alan, which likely wasn't Alan). And all of these obviously must require some kind of ritual to happen within the vicinity of the lake, if indeed rituals are required to make the story changes leak out of the Dark Place and into reality. The only ritual we currently know of being performed before Saga and Alex come to Bright Falls is the Cult of the Tree's ritual to destroy Taken. @42:00 Yeah, the other walkie talkie is in the little wooden room in the back of the "End of the Line" area in Caldera Station. You hear Nightingale repeating some things (which I presume Alan took for inspiration and eventually wrote for him to say as a Taken once he left Cauldron Lake). My assumption is that to Nightingale it hasn't necessarily felt like/been 13 years. He probably was pulled into Cauldron Lake when it receded (as was written in some document in Alan Wake 2 I believe) after the first game. And he spent some time hunting Alan Wake in the Dark Place, probably going through loops, before being propelled from the lake by one of Alan's story revisions into the time period of the start of Alan Wake 2. And at this point, he's officially killed, and because he dies, the Taken can fully consume him faster than usual. He then returns to Cauldron Lake and re-enters, going to Caldera Station as he says he would in one of the lines he repeats, and as such he takes his heart with him. Then Alan finds his body where for some reason Nightingale becomes comatose again in the Dark Place. And his heart is there. But before Alan can touch it, the heart is either willed back out of the lake by Saga desperately trying to find it with her powers, or by Alan's story, as he's reaching for it. One other note... and purely speculation. I think the Dark Presence tries to escape using more than just Alan's body. I say that because it appears (especially since Nightingale is far stronger than most Taken) that Nightingale is the Dark Presence, but maybe weaker because we're too early into the story? And so that might be why Nightingale re-enters the lake. He's seeking Wake, but so is the Dark Presence (for revenge and/or a better vessel?). It might also explain why the Nightingale isn't awake at all in that cave beyond Caldera Station and why the Dark Presence appears to come from where Nightingale is laying to attack Alan. Not fully formed on this, but I think some of these events are related.
I can't say I've seen every exhaustive review but am I mistaken in thinking the room where Alan meets Tom in the Control DLC is room 665? The same spiral painting is there and some of the other details seem to match.
I think that, on the importance of Tom and why Ahti and the Old Gods call Alan Tom, is that the whole story of Alan Wake is a movie or poem written by Tom Zane and Alan is the protagonist written to represent Tom. If everything that Alan writes comes true, then why would that not also be the case for Tom? Tom was plunged into Cauldron Lake long before Alan, so he’s had more time to craft his dark work of art. I feel like Alan being born 7 years after the disappearance of Tom and its allusion to the history of the 13th century poet Thomas the Rhymer can also support this, like Tom is returning from the faerie lands as the protagonist of his own art, Wake being a sort of avatar for Tom’s giant work of art. What do y’all think?
I would assume that Tom Zane has written Alan Wake, so he can escape from dark place, but Alan wrote Saga to his story and now Mr. Door isn't that happy, because his relationship to Saga. Also Control 2 most likely gives more info about Jesse Faden. I think Jesse's reality is somehow leaking to Alan's and Saga's reality trough Oceanview Hotel or something. Also how big of a role Alice has in next Alan Wake game.
On Zane: They made a point in Final Draft to point this out sort of I think. I think Alan is Zane's creation (not his son, his creation), I think Darling is ALSO Zane's creation. That's why Zane, Alan, and Darling all look alike. Darling even says when interacting with Zane (you sound like me....look like me too). I think Alan and Darling are both just versions of Thomas Zane in his endless attempts to escape. I think Darling is Zane's most successful attempt at getting help from the outside. Both end up being in the Dark Place, and Zane ends up trying to use both of them to escape. However Alan is too powerful and can overpower Zane's efforts to manipulate him, so Zane ends up using Darling ultimately to try and escape. Trying to shift his escape method from art to science-made-art (that's kinda how i view Darling. scientist, but an artist in that field)
I think you missed the meaning of the first scene with Nightingale. The point was to show how a Taken really perceives the world around him and how they are being tormented. The key to this is the reaction and comments of the Bookers who have seen him behave like a madman shouting nonsense (like common taken would), while we see just a scared man. It seems like the Dark Presence made the cultists look like taken too. This leads to the thought that probably all other taken we kill during the game also see our character and the others as monsters.
I am more confused with all this theorizing than I got any answers tbh lol. Some of my thoughts and a question: 1) Scratch is Dark Place taking over given human. Easy as that. Doesn't matter if it's Alan, Casey or whoever. It can lay dormant or activate and when it activates it does its thing and you don't have memories of it. While having possessed one person it can possibly also get out and posses someone else - through story, timeline(s) or maybe sheer will. It can have more human behavior, imitating the host in manerism and talk, or can be a true, evil form showing what he (it) is about. Think about Palpatine in Star Wars lol. We see this in Barbara Jagger talking very calmly and logically to Alan and Scratch here being like an animal with sole purpose to get the Clicker and end the world. Also Tom told Alan that he got contact with a Scratch and that he was writing and that his writing was pure art. In that form I doubt Scratch was manifesting as pure-sole-purpose evil we were fighting in the game as Scratch boss. 2) Many things are because of pure Alan's and Dark Place story effects. I think people are making too much meaning into something that are just stories in god knows how much iterations and can get really confusing when comparing to real events. I have most questions about Tom, but Tom was maybe just written here by Alan to guide him while Dark Presence was putting its spin into it, adding weird, horror stuff. 3) Nightingale is Taken I think from the beginning. He experiences world almost the same as world experiences him - dark and dangerous. That's why Taken fight for their lives, killing "monsters", having destorted reality by dark presence influence while experiencing themselves as normal and world around them going crazy trying to kill them. While they are talking gibberish, they are maybe talking very normal in their heads, just like Nightingale did. To support this theory you have Bakers who said that Nightingale was shouting something strange to them, while he was saying something calmly and relaxed, yet frightened English. 4) Spiral I think is about slowly moving to predetermined end with constant contact with the past (repetitions with some changed moving to the present and future) and the future - having contacts from the future and... echoes? I don't know about echoes tbh, Alan said that he thought they were inspirations, then said he realized they are more than that... But what exactly? :) I think these are just premonitions of already written stories, again, not being real, just already written. And now the question: I'm confused about Door saying about Night Springs being a nice distraction? Distraction from what?
could it be possible that Herald of Darkness didnt just recap Alan's life so far, but since it's a piece of art performed in the dark place, shaping Alan's life retroactively?
Based on what the games have established, I think any music made by the Old Gods of Asgard is the Truth of the world, as the Anderson family are able to look past the narrative to see the true/meta narrative. And if you're wondering if they're actually the Old Gods...remember that they went into the lake "for their next gig" 😀
@@magickoopa24Alan says in a manuscript page in American Nightmare that taking on the names of Odin and Tor and starting to act like them gradually made them start seeming more godlike. Its like their identification with archetype, their playing along with the abstract, actualizes them as that person, which feels very much in keeping with the Jungian collective unconsciousness ideas Remedys using
@@MidnightMedium This is true! I wonder if Odin's notes about his time with Mimir and the eye are a hint towards that a bit. But to clarify, when I said "if they're actually the Old Gods", I meant if the band that plays at Door's show are the same individuals that exist outside of The Dark Place.
This Zane is just another version of Alan, maybe a more recent loop try where he was really confused and had trouble remembering anything. Or it's an extension of Scratch in that moment with the chair and the shifting of the two. Because all the shadows walking around in the Dark Place are definitely past versions of Alan. Sometimes they just seemingly evaporate from the flashlight being shined on them, no boost. When that happens, you can hear them whispering 'I'm drowning...' They're walking around, constantly saying WAKE. Sometimes they say 'I just want to sleep...'. The ones that manifest and physically attack are screaming at him about the story and how its their story, not his, and in those moments, if you're close enough, you can catch a somewhat clear but distorted view of their face and it is definitely Alan's face. Just think about it. 13 years in the Dark Place. It doesn't seem like there's a need for sustenance or sleep there. So just 13 straight years of endless loops. Just because you don"t physically need to sleep or eat doesn't mean that your mind isn't going to want to turn off and recharge. So all these shadows in the Dark Place, possibly this version of Zane, even this version of Scratch, are all pieces of Alan's psyche that break off every time he loops back around, wandering aimlessly in their own madness. The mind cannibalizing itself, essentialy. All of this possible because of the influence of the Dark Place and the Dark Presence, trying to break down Alan's mind. This version of Zane may even be the Dark Presence taking a form in the Dark Place so it can lead Alan in a certain direction toward what it really wants, encouraging the subconscious desire of Alan's to break free until it manifests into a deadly version of Scratch. Using all types of trickery to have Alan play right into what it wants. A whole different approach from the first game because in the first game, it recognized toward the end that Alan had grown too strong and needed to be disposed of before he got to Barbara and destroyed its vessel. Since Alan achieved that, he was being molded into the next vessel.
Great discussion. I truly enjoy being able to dive deeper after completing the story yet having more questions. My only beef is related to Nightingale: if we're assuming that Nightingale is under the process of become a Taken while we play as him, you lot mention rightly that the Cult confirms that they exist to stop that from happening as much as possible. I agree. Where I have unanswered questions is how gradually is this process occuring because remember that Nightingale was reported missing for seemingly years before emerging from the lake. Feels like we're (or I'm) missing something. Did Nightingale somehow ascend/descend the Dark Place, but succumb to after effects? Love the content.👏🏽
Firstly, love the knife videos. Secondly, it does seem that Nightingale went into the Dark Place for a long time and was eventually summoned out by Scratch. It seems like he didn't really start the "Taken" process until emerging from the Lake, but it's also unclear as to when he first entered the lake.
There is a question of mine that hasn't left my mind since seeing the Tom the Poet poster in Wake's dreams in the first game, and seeing it again in Watery screams to me that some of the answers are there. If we take the poster as true, we see some interesting named coming up. Thomas Zane as The Diver, Barbara Jagger as The Dark Presence, Cynthia Weaver as The Lady of Light and Emil Hartman as The Assistant (let's skip the next name for now). We can also take in consideration that Thomas Zane was a real person in the 1970's, through that newspaper picture and the origin story of the Oceanview Hotel in Bright Falls. Now, considering it all as true, I though of somethings that are at least interesting. In this theory, Thomas Zane was a movie maker in the 1970's that was going to produce Tom the Poet on to the screens. For this, he found actors to play the parts of the story, those mentioned in the poster. Considering that Zane is like Stephen King, he likes to create and perform stories that are parallel to his own life, so ge got Jagger, his wife, to play the part of his character's wife as well, for example. The catch is, the story of Tom the Poet included a place that made his stories come true, and he decides to shoot the movie in Cauldron Lake. Suddenly, his work of art comes true. And different from other forms of art, a movie in the lake turns the actors into their characters, or, alternatively, create real people in other realities that resemble the appearances of the actors. This would tell that the Dark Presence was created by Zane from the story of Tom the Poet. For me it makes sense, because it's not directly the Dark Place that makes stories come true, but the lake. And the Dark Presence is bound to the lake. Now, this would explain half the story. The real problem begins with the last name in the poster. Adapted from a novel by none other than Alan Wake. Now ask me this: how does a movie produced in the 1970's would include the name of a writer that was yet to be born? There are two answers to this. Either Alan wrote the story in the Dark Place, and the story went back in time following the strange rules of the loop/spiral, or Alan Wake was a pseudonym of Thomas Zane himself. A character of one of his movies, Yotön Yö. Following the logic of the previous movie, Alan Wake, a character portrayed by Thomas Zane, would exist resembling Thomas Zane. And the movie creates Alex Casey as a character created by Alan Wake. The problem, however, deepens. The movie poster for Yotön Yö also includes Barbara Jagger as an actress and Alan Wake as a writer. The only explanation that fits the previous stabilished ideas is that yes, the characters become real in other realities, and both movies were written by Alan in the dark place. The difference being that Yotön Yö was written by scratch-Alan. Or, alternatively, and much less probable, Zane loves a pseudonym. The idea that actors become the characters they portray would explain why Weaver believes Thomas Zane was a poet. There are holes in this theory, yes, but it's a path to explain some things, more specifically how movie maker Thomas Zane influenced the story through his movies, considering the posters as true. If the names in the posters are only easter eggs, then this whole theory goes down, I'm afraid. Just as a side note that is not related to this theory but it is something worth sharing: considering that the ritual to get someone out of the Dark Place doesn't necessarily make itself true the same instant it's being performed, Return could end up with Alan Wake exiting the lake in the 1970's, as Thomas Zane. (This was just an idea of mine that I refuse to elaborate because there are MANY flaws, from why would Alan become a movie producer to why would he change his love from Alice to Barbara. Unless they were the same person too, if you take that dialogue between Tom and Jagger using Alan and Alice voice actors as intended... Idk. The cool thing about this theory is that it lools back at the beginning in a very cool way). (sorry about the wall of text)
About Door being Saga's father, I meant that makes sense a lot based on the Door's dialog, but, what if he meant Tim Breaker. If you remember the Quantom Break ending it was clearly shown that Jack is important to Hatch for whatever reason. With NG+, I have something also that kinda shows Door is not Saga's father.
I think I remember in Control, Trench says Ahti is a senile old god. Senile meaning, maybe he is suffering from dementia or some decreased memory or mental faculties?? Which would explain why he’s so confused in that nursing home scene. But just a theory. I like the theory that Alan wrote him to be there too.
My theory as to why Ahti refers to Alan as Tom is because of the Nightless Night short film. In the film Ahti plays himself and it says Alan is played by Thomas Zane. Ahti is seein Zane the actor/ creator and not the character he played in the film. It's also very possible that Ahti is only in Alans version of the dark place because the short film is considered the companion piece of the novel Scratch/Alan is writing. I could be completely wrong but that was my interpretation.
55:54 Im really late for this, but my understanding is that Zane the filmmaker is Alan's variant from another universe, much like Tim/Joyce. Dylan (the one person who seems to have been exposed to Door's point of view) says: "the writer writes about a cop. In another universe, the cop is real". I think the same goes for the filmmaker and the poet. The first clearly says the poet was a character for a film. So maybe he manifested in Alan's universe as the poet who dated Jagger in the 60s
The nursing home and Oceanview were originally Zane’s idea. He didn’t have it as a nursing home, but he built the house originally according to lore in AW2, right?
I think the bit a lot of folks missed is that Oceanview Motel & Spa that Pat mentions in his radio show you can listen to him recording, which you see graffiti of in the Overlap - it's not the Oceanview Hotel or the Oceanview Motel & Casino from Control. But the Oceanview overlapping with Oceanview...
Hear me out...."problems at HQ", even though it takes place years after the Hiss invasion. I think Control 2 will be about Blessed somehow freeing Northmoor, and Northmoor being released will be the "problems at HQ" being referenced in AW2, why Jesse couldn't come smack some sense into Scratch. I think they'll free Northmoor, and then somehow Northmoor (who is significantly more powerful than Jesse at this point) will pull a scratch and throw Jesse into the Dark Place or another one of the doors. And I think rescuing Darling from the Dark Place will play some part in Control 2. And I think Mr Door will play a HUUUUGE part in those series' of events.
I think Tom, Alan, and Darling look the same because it’s 3 perfectly different versions of one person, the SAME person. The Writer, the Filmmaker/Actor, the incredibly eccentric, almost artistic Scientist
Im not totally convinced door being Sagas father. Dylan Faden speaks of Door in his dreams in control, and the sherif sees him but differently to Alan, so his identity is highly unknown. Its a possibility though.
32:05 I thought I caught that! Brought it up in the last stream. Would be interesting to compare the scenes when they speak to each other and see if Initiation 5 Alan is speaking to Return 5 Saga, and Initiation 8 to Return 3.
Didnt Tom write Alan into his story in the first game? Hence why Ahti and the Anderson brothers call him Tom due to them being immune to the reality altering effects of the story?
I just noticed you're wearing a Rare cap. Another developer whose logo is an R. So: Rare, Rockstar and Remedy. Are they all alternate reality versions or Dark Place echoes of one another? ;)
If y'all remember, when you play as Nightingale, he speaks so softly and is begging for help! But, the Bookers said he was "yelling all kind of crazy stuff"
I wonder if Nightingale, as a Taken, is mostly just frightened and helpless in his mind while the Dark Presence controls his body
Great points
Yes, and the cult's voices in turn are distorted. Him being taken renders him a passenger.
Makes sense, reminds me how the hiss controls people and while keeping their souls trapped or something like that i think. Like the non violent floaty ppl repeating those words
I don't think that's the case, because Nightingale after emerging from the lake was alive, but corrupted. The Taken are all dead, and particular Taken, like Nightingale, are dead as part of Return So they die in the real world at a specific point that happens in the Dark Place
So explain when Saga is profiling him, he is talking like he is evil?
I'm surprised nobody caught on to this, but I think Night Springs will be about Tim Breaker and Mr. Door. Breaker was humming the Night Springs theme song throughout the game. There was also the commercial with Door.
The Lakehouse is obviously FBC centric.
I chose not to speak on the DLCs due to having witnessed some leaks, but I am so excited for everyone to see what is in store
@@HiddenMachineGaming👀👀👀👀👀 excuse me? Witnessed how?
@@sptz87game files were mined a week or two ago, you can find it if you search for it.
hey, here from when i finished both dlcs and dude ur on point.
I like to think that why nightingale sees the cultist wierd way is because he is turning in to a taken and when he becomes fully taken they dont see in bright lights.
I like that too
37:26 I agree with @Gaming_University that Nightingale as a Taken is perceiving the Cultists as monsters.
But, the cult has been influenced from the beginning by Alan. They exist and call themselves a cult because Alan needed a cult in the story. The Dark Presence tries to Take Ilmo and Jakko but they're to strong and it has to use Thornton and Mulligan instead.
@@melissaharris3389Yea the Dark Presence seems to mostly target people who are problematic and uses their fears against them
About Saga's powers: I don't think they come from Door. I am very sure he's her father, but the Anderson Brothers say those powers are in _their_ family.
On Zane and Wake: The clicker is actually the light switch of _Zane's_ lamp!
Another idea: What if Alan is actually Zane. Imagine Zane as the original writer who went into the lake trying to write himself out of the dark place. He reinstalls himself as Alan Wake, starting fresh. Having two versions of himself running around, both artists, both altering reality. I can't put the pieces together right now, but even Ahti referring to Alan as Tom is a very clear indicator that that's his actual identity. Ahti is Ahti.
My thoughts about the Dark Presence: I don't think it's an autonomic being. I think it's a collective entity made from the art brought into the Dark Place, by those trapped there. Like, maybe the Dark Place is not a dark place at all naturally, but throw a few writers and poets in there who's art is centered on dark stuff, and the the place reacts to art with reality altering qualities, you ultimately get a Dark Place and a Dark Presence. Now... Maybe a lighter artist can use the place for something else. Maybe someone like Alice? ...
If I remember right Odin said that her powers come from the Anderson side cause her mom had the ability, but told saga that her mind place didn't exist.
Good points, but I do wonder if she inherited anything from Door as well. His powers are so mysterious still.
Would be interesting if we see an expansion on door and his story. He's such a mysterious character
Warlin Door does say at some point : We Doors, and something about knowing their way around, implying that Saga may have inherited powers from the Andersons (resisting the reality editing influence, moving in and out of the dark place like Thor and Odin did) and from her father as well, which I speculate have to be more extra-dimensional, not just linked to the dark place like T&O are. Dude is named with a synonym for Threshold, after all.
I think if there was a Zane, he’s long gone, the one we meet who has Alan’s voice and face is Alan’s idea of Zane, of another artist, of a predecessor, another version of the archetypal writer (albeit the mad artist one). Imho the Zane/Wake blur is on purpose, because their stories intertwined so much they became almost one, feeding on top of each other, as soon as Alan dived into the lake he took inspiration (like any artist does) on the work of his predecessor, in order to beat the dark presence like the original Zane may have done. its a commentary on originality, on artistic influence.
Some of her powers definitely do come from Door. She can apparently freely choose to go where she wants in the Dark Place just by willing it, like Mr. Door. She wills to reach Alan (which requires bringing out Parliament Tower), and just does so with little effort, unlike Alan. But yes, most of her powers (like reaching into people's minds for information) definitely come from the Anderson side of the family.
Tim Breaker's not the only person who dreams of Courtney Hope. That's for sure!
Right!
I feel like Scratch/dark presence just takes over Alan when he loses all hope, which happens on a loop, he goes through a story, realises Alice is dead, loses all hope, the dark presence basically eats the contents of his mind, he wakes up empty - with amnesia, slowly remembers his past as it goes on and then basically the same events happen again with slight spiral variations. So there isn't much worth thinking about beyond that when it comes to scratch, he is all the worst parts of Alan - like everyone when they're taken.
Fair points!
I think Alice is leaving the manuscripts, or possibly the one sending them to Rose disguising her notes to her as if she's Alan.
I think so too
I saw someone mention (was it this video? LOL) that may Rose wrote herself into the story through her self-insert fan fiction. If THAT'S the case, it would be a masterful commentary on art and art ownership in the modern age.
I thought it was scratch that was manipulating rose? Because she says that Alan told her to take Cynthia’s lamp and throw it into the pond. Rose basically killed poor Cynthia. Alice wouldn’t do that…
@@eden20111But if the lamp wasn't put in the shoebox, Alan couldn't escape the dark place. Whoever told rose to take the lamp they were probably unaware of Cynthia dependence on it. And Rose was too fanatic to go against what she was being told to do. I think everyone has plausible deniability enough that no one was intending for Cynthia to die.
Also, because of the stories time loops, a lot of the plot becomes a bootstrap paradox. The message to rose comes from the future, and the person writing from the future has already observed the past occurring.
58:15 About Saga calling Logan. Phone did ring. There was no "Not in service" or "No signal".
Yeah that was my thought after listening back this video; I believe that signals can get in and out of the dark place sometimes.
The first AW DLC was called the Signal and Zane was able to call Alan, even if it was just a metaphorical phone.
If Zane could get out of the Dark Place for a while to meet Linda Wake and become Alan's father, that could explain the "Errand Boy" short story Alan wrote?
The 1976 AWE, when Tor and Odin fought The Scratching Hag (Barbara Jagger), aligns with an opportunity for Zane to emerg temporarily.
It's possible. Maybe Linda was a paraulitarian Tom tried to team up with in order to escape?
@@melissaharris3389Perfectly, as Alan was born in 1977.
SO thankful for you guys!! I’m glad there are people out there that are this invested in the intricacies of Alan Wake and Remedy.
Thank you!
Man, this was fun to listen to. It would be amazing if you could get Sam Lake on.
Thank you! I would love to speak with Sam, but whenever he's asked about lore stuff he tends to dodge the questions a bit. I'm not sure what the best angle for a conversation/interview would be.
@@HiddenMachineGamingI believe it's for the best.
Part of the magic the RCU have is the speculation and the guessing of all the stuff going on, if you'll get confirmation about your questions, it will make everything much more obvious and lose the mystery.
He also said that sometimes he takes other people's guesses on the story and thinks that it may be better that way, when there's so many possibilities, so possible, other not but all make sense.
Nothing has confused me more than Tom - the idea he is to Alan as Door is to Hatch is great.
What I got from Thomas Zane in this game is that he was never really a poet, he was a filmmaker all along and the hotel room seems to be his dark place. Also in that scene he looked like quite the egotistical artist, he calls himself a 'celebrated auteur', so isn't it quite ironic that Alan is similar to him? Maybe he created Alan in his image. Tom first wrote Departure. So Tom brought Alan to the story in the first game just like Alan brought Saga this time... this is why it's a spiral. In trying to leave and rewrite the story they could be bringing in more people to the dark place.
Alice found out that instead of going "deeper" or what she calls the path of destruction (could it be the destruction of the story? as in making it more convoluted) they have to "ascend", maybe as in ascending the spiral... could that mean they have to somehow go backwards and undo everything?
Another thing that occured to me is that Alice is the only character who has left the "place" where the AWE happened after coming in contact with it. This could be significant because the FBC mentions the AWE only affects a specific area. Tom, Alan and Saga were all trapped inside at least until this point. Alan left the dark place at some point in this game, but he never left the area affected by the AWE.
About Odin and Tor, after the rock'n'roll scene with Saga they enter the dark place saying they're going to their next show. I think it's heavily implied they went to the musical scene with Alan, to help him get to where he needed go. Time doesn't mean anything in the dark place. It's the only explanation I have for them to be a part of that scene to be honest... I certainly don't think their appearance was random.
Some great points here, I also think the Old Gods were headed to the musical.
Now that it’s pseudo confirmed that Mr. Door is Saga’s father, which sort of explains her powers. I wouldn’t be surprised if Thomas Zane is Alan’s father given his clairvoyant powers, which seem to work before he even had contact with the Dark Place in 2010
Edit: they just brought it up
I am enjoying how nutty this universe is haha. Usually stuff like this annoys me, but Remedy being so self aware about it makes it so much more fun
Agreed, I don’t quite know how, but Remedy really nails this stuff.
How does that explain her powers when Tor made clear that its common in his family line? And Saga realises that her mother was very aware of what Saga was actually experiencing and just didn't want her to connect to the stuff from Tor's family
Zane could be Alan's father. The clicker is said to have belonged to Alan's father, Cynthia said it was cut from Zane's angel lamp
Then it is some crazy family issues going on into the dark place. Saga, Door, For, Odin / Alan, Zane, Alice
Here’s my take at things:
In regards to Nightingale seeing the Cult as distorted, I believe this all ties into the different resonances as per Control. The Hiss give off a certain distortion due to their resonance being in conflict with Hedron’s resonance. I think we’re seeing the same thing here. The Taken see those with some sort of “light resonance” as distorted beings like we see the Taken with distortion to their form.
This can also tie into why the Dark Presence is in multiple places. If it’s spread itself across the Dark Place like the Hiss did in Control, then it would make sense that with the weird time being a loop thing going on, that they would be able to enter the mind of multiple Alan’s at different points of the story.
I still think there are points within Alan’s story that we play as a different Alan in a different loop, and I think the memories for Alan finally stick once Door becomes involved. Alan has been in the Dark Place for 13 years but doesn’t remember or know anyone? That’s fishy. But if at the beginning of the game, that’s where the tonal shift is, then we can get the Alan we play (Ascension) and the Alan that decided to accept his fate, never finish ‘Return’ and just stay in the Dark Place, i.e. Mr. Scratch (Decent). I think that’s why Alan gets a call from not future Alan, but Alan from the post credit scene “It’s not a loop, it’s a spiral,” setting forward the events for the final draft.
I’d love to hear more thoughts about all of this!
Great points about the resonances causing distortion! As for the loops and all, it is just making me more stoked for new game plus
PLEASE MAKE MORE OF THESE VIDEOS. I’m so extremely fascinated by the remedy universe.
New one being shot on Monday with some new guests!
@@HiddenMachineGaming Sat down with some buddies while listening to this, this video easily sparked a 2 hour plus convo about the game. Some of the most fun we’ve had. We cannot wait for a new one to drop!
I honestly think, in a more metaphorical sense, buy possibly literally as well, Alan and Tom are the same person. If we take in control lore, and almost think of it in terms of Gods, Jesse was chosen by Polaris, The Board chooses multiple people as they see fit, these beings want "champions" to uphold their wills. The theory that Tom is Alan's father can work, but I think its more like Scratch/The dark presence wanted to create it's next champion. Buuuttt as was reiterated many times, they can't create, they can only modify a story. So what if Scratch took Tom's old work, changed some names, dates? Just a thought.
Seems very likely!
I had a thought that maybe Alan is a creation of Tom. And maybe an actual person can create things, but if you're a creation maybe you can't create hence Alan only able to manipulate what's there for him.
It’s possible!
I finally found the supposed walkie-talkie that nightfall is heard through. It’s actually a tape recorder and it’s at the End of the Line scene in caldera station when you select missing FBI agent 😬
Ah!
I like this idea that Zane and Alan Wake may be echoes of the same pandimensional entity interacting through the multiverse in the same way but Hatch and Door and Jack and Tim are echoes. It would help explain why people keep calling Alan "Tom" and why Alan's experience with the Dark Presence is mirrored so strongly by Tom's experience. I don't think the age difference between the two characters is a problem with this theory, because there's no reason why two alternative versions of person from different times can't meet at notionally the same time through the Dark Place, which could be a kind of nexus. And even if it isn't, the memory of Zane is in the Dark Place which can bring stories to life. It could just the Dark Place having Zane on file.
I like to think the light affected Nightingale, and that’s what distorted them to him.
If Nightingale was brought back to the lake as “driftwood”, since he was touched by the Dark presence in the first game, how come a character like Rose (who was also touched by the Dark Presence), not also taken back into the lake?.. I lean more toward Nightingale continued to pursue Wake after the first game and literally went into the lake himself
Very good question
the scene where Alan shots Zane, is part of the Alex Casey movie, is Casey in one echo that says that he will pay a visit to Zane and make him talk, Alan before entering 665 he only says that "Zane will not be happy to see me this time" there is no correlation between the intentions of Alan and the scene
about the multiple darkpresence/mr scratch, mrscratch ingame has Kalevala Knights jacket, the same one of the gang characters uses in Nightless Night, the one who says he stabbed his own brother
22:23 Alan Wake is experiencing the events as written in his manuscript because time worked in reverse in the dark place. He wrote the story in the dark place > got out of the dark place > the story came true > went back in the dark place to write the story . The points where Alan and Saga met was basically Alan going in reverse. By the end of Saga's story, Alan was at the start of his. At the start of Saga's story, Alan completed his. At least I believe so.
One thing I found odd with this, is that the 2nd and 3rd overlaps were reversed in Alan’s story as compared to Saga’s. That was clearly on purpose, what purpose? I have no idea. Just something I found odd.
i don't understand that, maybe i'm missing something @@klokinstein
When it comes to multiple dark presences I currently subscribe to the theory that the dark place is the collective unconscious of our shadow selves/id, so each person has their own involvement in the greater whole, a cup of water from the ocean
Makes sense to me!
Another factor to consider with Nightingale's scenario during the intro is what the Bookers tell Saga later, when she questions them on what they witnessed. They state he was "Shouting wierd shit" or something to that effect, but during the opening segment from the player's perspective, he seems to be mumbling and confused.
My theory is we're experiencing what its like to become a Taken. The host is possessed but they're still somewhat concious and trapped in their own body. Something like this would certainly suit the horror themed narrative of the sequel
Yes, I think you’re right on here!
My take on Dark Presence is that It is not a entity, with his own agenda. It is a collective of bad/dark/shame traits of the Humankind.
So, imho, Scratch is Not a emboidment of DarkPresence, as a entity, He is just Alan. A Alan that is corrupeted by its own bad/dark/shame/ego traits. And, the same way we have multiple Alan, through the spiral, we have multiple Scratch, based on the strong dark traits at time.
Thefore, every Taken it is the darkiest version of that human, but playing along with the current Story. We can just see a exemple of the ending of the Scratch at the Deerfestival. All that reallity it is the dark version/side of that people, but playing along with Scratch Story. That is a high praise/worship for Alan/Scratch, based on his egoistic trait.
I dig this interpretation
I JUST realized sheriff breakers name. Tim Breaker=TIME BREAKER lol.
Hahaha yes
About the musical. When everybody sings "I'll show you the herald of darkness", they make a move like they are suiting up a diving helmet. And now I cannot get rid of the idea, that Zane is the real herald of darkness. I am not able to create a real theory from that (I mean the motive, evidences besides the musical etc.), but I think that it's an interesting note
I have been to think that. I mean what do we know of the real Thomas Zane? Was he really a nice guy or was he twisted in some manner? I think we have to question all we know about Thomas Zane and think about what really happened to Barbara Jaeger. Because his actions don’t paint a portrait of a nice guy.
@@mirandagoldstine8548This House of Dreams and others seem to paint the real Zane as being a normal person (not bad/evil, not a saint), so judging by the Zanes we've met, we can't really say anything about the real Zane. I've been now pondering about what happened to Zanes body after the end of the Writer DLC. I'll need to look things up to see if there are any hints to what happened to Diver Tom anywhere.
How in the world did you catch that? Thats fantastic. Im seeing it too 100 percent
Fun Fact: The name for Alex Casey isn't a coincidence. In Max Payne 1 there's a fictional beer company called "Casey" on a poster that says "Real Men drink Casey"
Ironically in the Hotel Building level, which might be the Overview.
Also not many people know this, but Max Payne was known as Alex Casey in 1996. See former Remedy dev Peter Hajba (aka Skaven)'s tweet for proof, along with early concept art.
@@Snowpiercer2 Wait, for real? I know they we're toying around with Max Heat and Dick Justice, first time hearing Alex Casey going back that much to 1996.
@@lexradu Yeah check out the tweet, search "peter hajba alex casey"
It’s true, Peter Hajba posted a great sketch of the character
Other than the Mr. Door being Saga's father theory I also thought that maybe their "important person" was Tim instead. Seeing how Tim's seen him since childhood I was wondering if it was like a mentor/mentee situation where they're wanting Tim to join or take over their current position of whatever they're doing. That would also play into why Tim was transported into the dark place by Mr. Door as to try and keep him out of the story and "safe" as he never seemed to be in much danger and was used to this type of situation? Could be both as well but just thought I'd throw that out there as that was my initial take before looking into the Saga's father thought path.
I definitely see where you're coming from, but I wasn't sure if Alan brought Tim into the story or not. I'm not sure if Breaker is mentioned in the manuscript pages at all.
From the quick ctrl + F I did through the pages the only mention of Tim is "Sheriff Breaker had deputies patrolling the streets at night." from the Bright Falls page. It's as if he is the only character that you could consider a main character that isn't influenced or "used" by the story. They did say the Door is the one who pulled him when trying to hand over a page and this occurred right before Nightingale rampaged. I saw that as Door pulling Tim out of the story and/or the danger he was about to be a part of. Also, when he talks with Alan if I'm remembering correctly Alan doesn't seem to know about him or that he was the new Sheriff in Bright Falls the way he did about everything else going on. Especially with how much help Alan was given by Sarah in the first game you would think he'd try to use the new sheriff as another ally as much as possible. In the end it's definitely weird that Tim seems to be excluded from the story of the manuscript almost entirely.@@HiddenMachineGaming
I wonder if Rose is the first person the story changes because she both is obsessed with Alan and has been touched by the Dark Presence before? I feel like she's been affected by the story for a long time
I saw mentioned somewhere (maybe here or this vid? LOL) that Rose might have written herself into the boundaries of the story through her own self-insert fan fiction. If that's the case, it would be a great commentary on art and art ownership in the modern age.
@@UberNoodletbh, itd make sense, i wonder how Sam views fanfic, as an avid writer who has fanfic writing friends ive been an avid supporter for a long time.
Maybe her writing herself into the story is showing how beneficial the art could be?
Being the one who brought up the idea of Wake and Zane being one and the same on stream, it is really exciting to see others were thinking on the same wavelength as well, and it could actually lead to something.
My interpretation of the echoes and Casey in general is that it’s Alan’s writing of Initiation, which is what we’re playing through in his sections, all of that is Initiation’s manuscript.
He wrote those stories and then they actually happened in the real world, or Casey at least thinks they did.
Just like everything else, the real world events are consequences of Alan’s stories. Alan himself says towards the end that detective Alex Casey was a real person who already existed who Alan (intentionally or unintentionally) rewrote into the story.
I like this theory!
I wonder whether the dark presence, as an independent antagonist/entity, really exists. During the reveal that Alan accidentally killed himself in a different loop while trying to kill Scratch and also seeing how Saga also got her own Other Saga version I began to think that what actually happens is this: Cauldron Lake is essentially (a portal to) infinity. Beings that enter it become trapped and both become infinitely corrupted (becoming the dark presence after an infinite amount of time) but also infinitely enlightend (becoming the bright presence after an infinite amount of time) and can also interact with their own versions from different loops.
So maybe the dark/bright presence is in truth an amalgamation of all those infinitely ascending/descending beings themselves and not something like an "Outer God" like the Board or the Former.
Very interesting theories here!
I got a question. How happy should we be, exactly, that Sweet Baby Inc. let Remedy be involved in their little movie here?
Who fucking cares
If you pay attention to the fairy tales. Alan or scratch didn't write as much of Saga's part as the FBC did. The fairy tales are all about her family.
That’s a very interesting point
the way Casey reacted about the murder cult I think is because the story was beginning to affect him, and he begins remembering the case in the New York that Alan Wake was in in AW2. So that NY murder cult thing didn't actually happen, he just remembers it because Alan was writing it at that time.
If time isn't linear in the Dark Place, then can we really be sure that the film Alice made was made in the real world and not inside the Dark Place? She's acting as the Bright Presence in AW2, so it's entirely possible she's been giving him help along the way from the very beginning. Not only does he use the film to destroy at least one possible version of Mr. Scratch, but it would also work to remind Alan of their happier times and how much they love each other and give him something to keep pushing himself forward.
I think the films are real since it’s the work of art from the exhibit and her photos that allow Saga to get the clicker and bullet of light. In my interpretation there is an Overlap in Alice’s place since she was tied to the dark place and that’s how “Scratch” Alan visits her at night. The Parliament Tower sections of the game were mostly just Alan remembering what he did
Fair questions! I’m not sure what I think just yet.
Is Tom a poet or a film maker?
I think that he was a film maker who took up poetry after meeting Barbara Jager. Yoton Yo was the movie that the Dark Presence wanted Tom Zane to write, but instead he wrote the master poem and pulled Barbara's soul into the baby reality. The reason that Jesse remembers Tom as a poet is that she read the poems from the shoebox in Ordinary.
Anything feels possible right now?
So I’m kinda pooling together a few ideas I’ve seen so here goes: Seine means fishing net or entangler (thanks gaming university chat with Max Derrat). Loki is the Norse god who invented the fishing net and is an “entangler.” We also know thanks to that “times I’ve lost my eye” document from Odin that the Old Gods reincarnate. So, a reincarnating “god of stories and lies,” who has the same face over and over, maybe as far back as True Tom Rhymer and further beyond? MAYBE?!?!
The problem big with this is that there’s no way the old gods would call you Tom instead of Loki, especially since there was apparently a Loki who was part of the band. They’re immune to all of Zane and Alan’s bullshit, so there’s no way the wool would get pulled over their eyes about who Zane really was.
I totally get where you’re coming from and have had similar thoughts, but it’s a shaky theory atm. Still, feels like there’s something there!
About who leaves the manuscripts for Saga to find, in my opinion, was Scratch. If we notice in one of the hints in loading screen, it says that we can follow the dark shadows to find a manuscript, and all manuscripts in the game have a sort of a darness around them.
I think Mr Scratch used Alan to write his version of Return, and the Dark Presence used the Takens that emerged from the lake to send the manuscripsts to the real world. Aside of that, they use the Cult of the Three for this, because they kill and remove the hearts of the takens, and we see that Nightingale has a manuscript inside of his body. So, i think the Dark Presence uses the "ritual" of the Cult on purpose to spread the manuscripts across Bright Falls. And when people started reading, reality started to change.
So, the thread that keeps coming up in this game are loops and spirals. Could this somehow describe the connection between Wake and Zane? Not to say they are the same person (maybe they are in a sense) but that they are somehow part of one loop/spiral. Zane being at the inception at this spiral that began in 1970 and Wake is the continuation of the failed attempts of Zane. The diver and filmmaker could be different "loops" of his spiral, similar to Alan's novel in the 1st game and the script of the Night Springs in American Nightmare. And the cutscene in the hotel with two of them could be some sort of communication between the loops of the spiral. Sorry for a bit of a ramble, but that's what I think.
My theory is that Thomas Zane/Alan Wake and prior versions like Tom the Poet/Tom Rhymery are the same; similar to how verses of a poem are similar. Different verses connected by pattern, sound, and symbolism in consecutive order yet in repetition. He can't create people but he can re-imagine them, re-imagine himself maybe. He's able to temporarily escape the Dark Place in a new life as long as he eventually returns. But like a spiraling staircase overlapping the floors below and above, he overlaps and repeats with his prior verses. A weird-doomed phoenix.
Ooo wait, just thinking the brothers and saga are seers they can see the true events....sooo they call alan tom couse they see the true story and wake is Zane . Iv had this theory, but to me, that adds credit to it.
It was when Ahti called Alan Tom that I came around to believing Zane and Alan are them same.
Thanks for the video. Very informative, you guys are the best!
Thank you so much!
Thank you for the video!
The idea of loops is such a major part of Alan Wake 2, but I have always thought that maybe the first story is also a loop. That prologue has never sat right with me. The idea that it was a dream Alan was having on the drive to Bright Falls (although the dream is set outside the town of Night Springs) seems to work, but that dream contains things that Alan has yet to encounter: taken, Zane, and the Dark Presence. It's strange then when Alan ostensibly encounters those things for the first time but technically, he wouldn't have, as these are the things from his dream.
Sure, you could interpret it that Zane is contacting him in a dream as he approaches Bright Falls, but it kind of confuses the whole idea of Alan writing Zane into the story later on. The Dark Presence being present in the dream also confuses things when it later reveals itself to him
But perhaps you could interpret the prologue as ACTUALLY being part of Alan's manuscript which he wrote in the Dark Place. Basically, when WE enter the story with Alan, he is ALREADY in the Dark Place writing his manuscript. He has already written Zane into the story, and he's already plotting his escape.
So we don't enter the story where we think we do. We enter the story at the second loop; or it's at least loop 1.5. because I don't think Alan finished the first loop. He changed his strategy halfway through.
In the first loop (which we never experience) Alan must have come to Bright Falls, been tricked into the Dark Place, become trapped there and began to write. At some point he abandoned that story and decided to write a new one in which HE was the protagonist.
For this story, he wrote about what he experienced: coming to Bright Falls, falling prey to the Dark Presence, writing the manuscript, writing in Zane, escaping the cabin and forgetting his story.
How accurate all that is to what really happened, we don't know. But you can assume that Alan DID NOT have the Prologue dream in the first loop. He never dreamt about the hitchhiker. Zane never spoke to him about how to use a flashlight and a gun (lol). He never saw the Dark Presence tornado.
This Prologue dream is something Alan wrote into his manuscript retelling in order to create intrigue, foreshadowing and narrative symmetry.
So anyway, to cut a long story short: if you view the original story in this way, there's not a single moment presented to us in that is in objective reality OUTSIDE of the manuscript. It's ALL within the manuscript, including the ending. That means it's not the original go-around. It is, if not the second loop, at least loop 1.5.
Well said, I’ve long believed that the entirety of the first game is the manuscript.
The Diver was the og Zane's persona but I think Alan changed everyone's perception of him from the dark place as a part of some plan to get out of the dark place. What part in the plan it was I have no idea. But yeah when Alan changed him he also became what he maybe always was, the chicken to alan's egg. The big question is which came first? Did Alan create Tom so Tom could create Alan or the other way around? Jesus that does kind of describe a spiral...
Hi, guys! Thanks for your analysis of questions! English isn't my native language, so sorry if I made mistakes anywhere in the text.
I don't know if you have mentioned the following interesting details in any of your videos:
- Blue and red lighting in room 665. Moreover, the lighting on the side with TVs and the lighting on the side with the bed are seem to be mirrored. The first thought that comes to mind is the 'Matrix', of course. By the way, Mr. Door mentioned it earlier. You know, the red pill is an escape from a dream, the blue pill is a continuation of a dream. Interesting thing is that the hanger with Zane's jacket is near the blue lighting, but a strange mannequin is near the red lighting (I'll tell you about the mannequin a little later).
- The spiral in Zane's painting twists counterclockwise, but the spiral on Alan's door twists clockwise (you can see it in Control and AW2). In AW Alan's eye often catches the book "The Withinside". The book contains a spiral on its cover. The spiral twists counterclockwise.
- The lamps in the house on the Diver's Isle (in AW) have spiral-shaped brackets (maybe it doesn't matter, but it's interesting).
- You can see the owl statuette under the painted spiral in room 665 (in any case, it looks very much like an owl). It's known, the stuffed owl often appears in short videos with Alan's short stories (for example, we can see one of these, when Saga upgrades her weapons). It's also known that Remedy was inspired by 'Twin Peaks' to create 'Alan Wake'. Do you remember the popular phrase from the creation of Lynch? "The owls are not what they seem." Besides, Zane declaims one of his poems and uses a lamp as a microphone just like one of the characters in 'Blue Velvet' of Lynch - Ben, who is the sidekick of the main villain in the film.
- There is a mannequin in Zane's room. It clearly has female outlines. It's very similar to the mannequin that Jessie was looking for in one of the sidequests of Control. In the party scene there is a frame depicting a wad of money in the hand of the mannequin. I don't want to state anything, but is this frame perhaps a metaphor? The power (money) is in the hands of a double/ an impostor (the mannequin in Control has the ability to create copies of itself). Well, the mannequin may mean "original" rather than "impostor".
- In American Nightmare Mr. Scratch tells Alan that he has a wedding ring too. Zane has bracelets and rings, but he also wears some kind of ring on a cord around his neck - could it be a wedding ring?
- The cultist mask on Zane's face. Okey, this detail is the most noticeable. However, if I'm not mistaken, Alan sees the cultist mask for the first time in room 665 (I don't remember well when the graffiti of the Tree cultists appears - before the first visit to room 665 or after).
Something I've been kicking around, while thinking about the clicker, is that American Nightmare did happen but (given the AW2 definition of what the clicker actually does) he couldn't substantiate it and Alan would - over time - largely forget it.
Many aspects of American Nightmare seem to be echo'd or inverted in AW2. Alice, for instance, does end up making a public work reminding the world of Alan - however, instead of Alan's best self - it is Alan's shadow and The Dark Place. "Sunrise" seemingly eclipsed by "Yoton Yor."
So, in short, I think American Nightmare did happen but it's not canon; it's faded away and painted over by Initiation and the latest draft of Return.
Sam Lake says it is canon, but it is arguable how relevant some of the events of the game really are in the long run. Initiation and Return do seem to have superseded it.
Saga calling her daugther and we not seeing the conclusion reminded Cell's Stephen King ending.
My theory, Scratch is the Dark Presence having fed off of Alan, his memories, his soul, his writing, for 13 years. At the beginning they talk about how the Dark Presence is "stealing from Alan". Stealing his identity, but not literally becoming Alan, literally stealing his memories, his personality, his soul, etc. 13 years of essentially using Alan's desperation to escape to escape themself. He manipulated Alan, fed off of him, became more and more powerful, and ultimately manipulated Alan into setting himself and Scratch free.
Idea on Nightingale being Taken -
I believe there is a manuscript page that details what the taken say in the Dark Place -
Nightingale repeats these when you are in control of him
And another thought. As it was mentioned, there can be different "scratches", and each of them is just an opposite of a certain feature of a person. What if Zane-film-maker, we see in AW2, is just the second "scratch"? The first one (let's call him Scratch) appeared because of Alan had gave up to return and Scratch wanted to leave the Dark Place. And Zane-Scratch appeared because of Alan had stopped writing and Zane-Scratch wanted to continue creating art (as he basically said when we met him the last time). And both Scratch and Zane-Scratch look like Alan, because they are his doppelganger. Moreover, they are parts of him, so, Ahti and OGoA do not distinguish them, as the parts of a single person.
Interesting theory!
Oh yeah! Read the "Kalevala" - Finland's national epic. Kalevala Knights ya'll!
There's also a poetry companion book, the Kanteletar.
I think the version of Scratch we see in AW1 and AN is a Tulpa. His form is a living piece of fiction, created by the dark presence. But since the rule of conservation still applies, the dark presence couldn’t invent an entirely fictional version of Alan to manifest as. Instead, it used the worst version of him in that existed in the general unconscious. When Alan played Alice’s short film to defeat scratch at the end of a AN, these vicious rumors were dispelled, and the dark presence could no longer use that form. Instead, it decided to hitch a ride with him out of the dark place.
Yes, I like this!
Also do you think the reality Alan comes back to in Alan Wake 2 isn’t his original reality?? There’s a quote in one of the games, I think from Dylan in Control that says something along the lines of “in one world there was a writer who wrote about a cop, in another the cop was real”
It’s so hard to say right now, but I do think it’s the same reality he left
I'm not sure it there isn't a Bright Presence. Given how the Hiss and Dark Presence interact in AWE DLC, and Polaris is opposite of Hiss. One would think there's another for the Dark Presence.
There is a Bright Presence in the first game, but it hasn’t been apparent in Alan Wake 2.
Alice is the bright presence is my guess. Alan said he wasn’t sending rose any messages either, so someone else was doing all of this and we find out that Alice went back to the Dark Place. I think she’s been the one guiding both Alan and Saga
And Rose, right?
Nobody seems to talk about how Warlin Door has a book in his dressing room of Dr Casper Darling titled My Interpretation of Many Worlds. It seems that Door has taken a great interest in Dr Darling. This begs the question of Darlings fate in the Hedron Chamber. Did Darling enter a higher level of existence where he’s pretty much anywhere everywhere all at once? If he’s in this plane of existence, has he come across Door?
Still trying to figure this one out!
RE: scratch theory
My understading of the whole situation was that there was never a doppleganger, mr scratch is the result of the dark presence taking over alans body. Which is what we saw when alan gave up, after he shot himself at the desk, he stopped running, and the dark presence finally took over, just as he was rescued by saga and co.
So retrospectively, at the end of Alan Wake 1, when Zane says "your friends will meet him when your gone", can either serve as a premonition type thing, or a warning to Alan to not give up, stay strong and keep going and perserveering. Furthermore, "your friends will meet him when your gone" doesnt mean when Alan is physically gone from the real world, like we, and Alan were all led to believe, but when Alan is gone mentally and has given up on hope, that the result would be the dark presense has taken over.
It also recontextualises American Nightmare, if you interpret it as an escape attempt, because Alan wrote the story as to have Mr Scratch as his evil doppleganger, be be the main antagonist, and at the end when he is defeated, it doesnt work. It doesnt work, because the story is built on a false premice, that scratch is the evil doppleganger, which isnt true, and as we know, the story needs to ring true and follow the rules. But because it wasnt based on the actual reality of the situation, it left Alan still left in the dark place
14:43 agree 100% I think Hotel's Zane is a one Scratched.
Interesting discussion... good choice of questions
Thank you all for this video
Our pleasure!
What I think is going on with Zane: we know that, despite how AWEs usually don't affect things outside of their general area, Cauldron Lake has the power to influence stuff a bit further out, at least on a person by person basis (see all the stuff going on with Saga's daughter.). I think Zane DID write himself out of existence, but the whole Thomas Zane the Poet really was just a role that he wrote and played. Cauldron Lake took hold of that idea and made it real, so some people remember Tom as a poet and there's poetry written by the character hiding around in the world. That's the best I can come up with as a justification for why his history is inconsistent.
Just started the video and THIS is the discussion I've been waiting for since I finished the game. As to the answer to question 1 about the Bright Presence and who's been putting pages in Saga's path. I think Alan wrote the pages to be there once noticing Saga as iirc one of the pages references her reading a page and not wanting to believe it/ listen to it. As for the Bright Presence I believe that we learn who took up that mantle at the end of the game before we get the final quote," It's not a Loop. It's a Spiral." which I think I understand, but am appreciatively waiting to hear the rest of the thoughts in the video first.
Ok. Finished the video. Great discussion, but we're definitely gonna need a follow-up to this. You didn't even start to touch on Control and the FBC connection. That Manuscript Page that says that The Oldest House is STILL dark all these years later definitely needs to be touched on. I know the Hiss invasion is horrific, but I thought it was contained after Polaris' sacrifice maybe aside from Dylan in his comatose state. I would've thought they'd be back in business by now. By extension that means that currently the only way to access The Oldest House is either being called there(Like Jesse was) or through the Oceanview sites. Door called Breaker his unwilling Disciple, like a student, so if Tim is in Control 2 I'd bet that he gets there through Oceanview.
In all of this I think the only characters that fully understand everything that's going on, although from different perspectives, are Ahti, Door, Tor, and Odin. Tor and Odin fully understand the Dark Place, how it works, and how to manipulate it. I doubt that they're trapped despite going in after the summoning ritual. I actually think they've been in there before while Balder was still alive, which is why he's in the Dark Place. Cancer could just be a cover story for him getting trapped. He wasn't a Seer like Tor and Odin as far as we know. Tor says in the newspaper clipping that Balder was in Valhalla, that he died fighting cancer. We know that Vikings had burials at sea.
I haven't played Quantum Break or watched the show, so all I actually know for sure about Door is that he has the ability to walk and possibly see through dimensions, both stacked(Like in the Oldest House) and alternate(What Tim Breaker dreams), but other than that, his anger at his daughter, Saga, being brought into it, and his comment about Tim being his unwilling Disciple I have no other clues. He doesn't seem bound by the rules of the Dark Place, but above them as though they can't touch him. I don't know if he's human or a Paranatural Entity which brings us to.... Ahti.
Ahti is the shit, but he's being a bit fucked with for the first time by Alan's manuscript and he doesn't seem to like it, but he also doesn't mind helping when he can. Ahti is an all around Paranatural entity that may have once been human as he claims to be from Finland originally, but not anymore. He's not bound by the rules of seemingly any dimension connected to The Oldest House and can freely travel them all. He can hear thoughts as seen when he responds to Jesse's inner monologues in Control, he refers to the Director as his Assistant and knows that Trench is dead before anybody else which is why he refers to Jesse as an applicant before she takes up the Service Weapon. I don't think that he can jump timelines like Door can though. I think he's too tied to The Oldest House for that. If we get right down to it it's possible that Ahti is the physical manifestation of The Board or even just Humanities desire to get on like normal. Either way Ahti's main job is to keep all of the realities in order and not breaching into one another as much as possible. A job that he left to Jesse so that he could take a Vacation that seems to have been turned into a years long endeavor either because he knew he had to be there, Alan's writing forced him to stay there, OR, since he has access to the Oceanview sites whenever he wants AND seemingly has keys to all the doors(we saw him use one of them to let Alan back into the Dark Place and there were others on it too) can get back to The Oldest House whenever he wants, like the few times that he disappears at Valhalla Nursing Home and just casually shows up in The Dark Place to help, "Tom".
Well said! Thanks for watching. There is definitely all this and more to touch on! I really can’t wait for the new game plus update.
- "A story of a lawman whose heart was cut out of his chest. Two corrupt men killed by their own twisted ambition. A haunted old woman drowned in a bathtub. Twisted reflections on the other side of the mirror. Arcs stabbing through realities. Amplifying the influence of the Dark Place."
The overlaps are tied to the murder site in the Initiation story are directly related to the deaths of people key to the Return story. As for the locations of the overlaps, The Location of the Ritual murder in Initiation doesn't matter because its a rough draft. The locations are tied to the proximity of where the actual people become Taken. That's their "Initiation"
Initiation is Alan Wake's story, being played out as he writes it. Return is Saga's story as written by Scratch. As Alan Wake was writing Initiation which was always meant to be a rough draft for Return, Scratch wrote Return. Every time Alan got close to writing too far beyond the Dark Presence wanted, he kills Alan and forces him to restart with no memory of what he's already written, so that he can unknowingly continue a partly finished draft so that Scratch can complete Return. When Alan finally realized this once Return is complete, and tries to make the edits, Scratch himself "kills Alan" and makes him forget all over again and when he comes too the only thing he's able to change is the ending and in knowing this i really wonder how "The Final Draft" is supposed to alter things.
Well said, I see where you’re coming from.
@54:43 I always assumed that Thomas Zane kept changing because Alan kept changing him. Is it possible that Zane doesn't really exist, at least not anymore, and not in the way that Alan exists in the dark place. Whatever happened to Zane and Barbara deconstructed and abstracted them into their constituent ideas, traits and archetypes.
And I think the same thing happens to the taken, at least in the first game. They are abstractions of the victims taken by the Dark Place. They now exist only as collections and intersections of ideas. And that's how you can explain the lack of enemy variety (hah!) and all the crazy but banal formulaic phrases they blurt out. The Dark Presence is constructing them out of these constituent abstractions, but it doesn't know how to be creative, and it doesn't understand living things. All it can create are these hideous approximations.
But maybe Zane is similar. He exists now only because Alan took reconstituted those abstracted ideas, traits and archetypes of Zane and brought him back to life. But it's not the real him. It's Alan's interpretation of him, and this interpretation is in flux, constantly changing as Alan reinvents the character. But that character is always "Thomas Zane".
That's how I've always interpreted the ever-changing persona and appearance of the character. Zane is just an abstraction that can be whatever Alan needs him to be, or whatever the Bright Presence needs him to be, even, ... when it needs him.
Again, agreed here. I feel like Alan is possibly unknowingly dictating Zane’s appearance
This video is awesome! Really great to see an open idea sesh with other AW & Remedy enthusiast. Really really cool. Thank you 👍🏼
Thank you for watching!
My theory about why Zane looks like Alan, after being in a scuba suit, is because Alan may not know what Zane looked like, but knew of his work, so he made him in his own image so he could place him in the story. I also think Zane may be writing as well because he's also a parautilitarian, and is how he was able to create Scratch. Zane wrote in Alan killing Scratch and writing the loop of Scratch first killing Alan, making him think it's a loop, but it's not, it's a spiral like Alice said. Zane, Alan, and Scratch or the manifested dark presence are all writing, trying to get themselves out. Or Alan and Scratch are and Zane is keeping the loop going for the "art" of it. I hope I articulated what I'm trying to say.
This makes a lot of sense to me
29:59 The point that the story 'begins' and reality starts to change is finding the first page at the Witch's Ladle. We meet Ilmo Koskela at the FBC station just after we find the first page describing Saga and Casey finding the page. He doesn't know Saga then. By the time we get back to Bright Falls to meet Sheriff Breaker and interview the Bookers at the dinner, it's starting. Rose is the first as she's already been touched by the Dark Presence once. When we go back to Cauldron Lake, the alarm is now going off at the FBC station because the story has begun, and the AWE is happening.
32:54 the Witch's Ladle, The WW2 Bunker beneath Valhalla, and the Houtari Well are all weak points in reality created by bad events happening there and collective folklore and legend compounding to make them psychically charged locations. Alan just needs to create something on his end in the Dark Place that mirrors the elements in the real world to push the Dark Place to overlap reality tangibly.
39:23 the Dark Presence is inside Nightingale when he comes out of the lake; similar to how it was inside Alan. Passing through the Threshold weakens it. The Cult uses the ritual murder and the Clicker to banish the Dark Presence from the Taken's body. That's why Nightingale raises as a Taken when the ritual is interrupted. This is also why the bodies of the Taken destroyed by the cult using the Clicker remain. The Dark Presence has been physically forced out and can't pull the body back into the Threshold.
42:43 without a story/active AWE, the Dark Presence is weak and can only seem to manifest one Taken vessel at a time: Barbara Jagger previously. It attempts to use those it captured in 2010 as vessels, but the cult has been destroying them and sending the Dark Presence back into the lake before it can gain any strength.
I also need to play the game again with the default clothing for Saga to see at what point does the FBI text disappear from her clothes.
@CorporalCookie It's after Alan appears, and she goes to Watery: Local Girl.
@@melissaharris3389 Thank you!
Thank you, great insights!
Cool talk.
- Alice becoming the new vessel for the Bright Presence would be cool.
- I agree with the Dean and say we've never met the real Tom. Both the Diver and the Director are facets of Tom like Irrational Alan from the Writers DLC.
- the true Tom rhymer stuff is fascinating. Having Tom Zane pop up in Death Rally would be hilarious.
- Tom being Alan's father is plausible. I guess Alan's mom is a paraulitarian that Tom tried to recruit in order to free him?
- Tim for Control 2. ;)
@41:16 I always interpreted the ending cutscene of the first game as indicating that Nightingale had become some kind of ghoul or spectre. He's seen in the darkness looking out at the light. He's in shadow, and he looks almost incorporeal, like a spectre from the dark place.
So I just assumed that he has been a puppet of the Dark Presence for all this time, and at the beginning of Alan Wake 2, the Dark Place coughed him up. Why? Not sure. Maybe he was coughed up in the same way that pages and other artefacts do from the lake. Overflow.
Or maybe a part of him wanted to return because Alan was returning. A part of him was drawn to reemerge due to a deep memory of his enmity for Alan.
@28:30
I think it's fair to say that perhaps the rituals performed by the Cult of the Tree to banish taken might also have something to do with altering reality. If you remember at that point early in the game, Rose does believe Saga's daughter drowned, but she has also already been laying out the Alex Casey lunch boxes expecting a hero she doesn't know (apparently told to her by Alan, which likely wasn't Alan). And all of these obviously must require some kind of ritual to happen within the vicinity of the lake, if indeed rituals are required to make the story changes leak out of the Dark Place and into reality. The only ritual we currently know of being performed before Saga and Alex come to Bright Falls is the Cult of the Tree's ritual to destroy Taken.
@42:00
Yeah, the other walkie talkie is in the little wooden room in the back of the "End of the Line" area in Caldera Station. You hear Nightingale repeating some things (which I presume Alan took for inspiration and eventually wrote for him to say as a Taken once he left Cauldron Lake). My assumption is that to Nightingale it hasn't necessarily felt like/been 13 years. He probably was pulled into Cauldron Lake when it receded (as was written in some document in Alan Wake 2 I believe) after the first game. And he spent some time hunting Alan Wake in the Dark Place, probably going through loops, before being propelled from the lake by one of Alan's story revisions into the time period of the start of Alan Wake 2. And at this point, he's officially killed, and because he dies, the Taken can fully consume him faster than usual. He then returns to Cauldron Lake and re-enters, going to Caldera Station as he says he would in one of the lines he repeats, and as such he takes his heart with him. Then Alan finds his body where for some reason Nightingale becomes comatose again in the Dark Place. And his heart is there. But before Alan can touch it, the heart is either willed back out of the lake by Saga desperately trying to find it with her powers, or by Alan's story, as he's reaching for it.
One other note... and purely speculation. I think the Dark Presence tries to escape using more than just Alan's body. I say that because it appears (especially since Nightingale is far stronger than most Taken) that Nightingale is the Dark Presence, but maybe weaker because we're too early into the story? And so that might be why Nightingale re-enters the lake. He's seeking Wake, but so is the Dark Presence (for revenge and/or a better vessel?). It might also explain why the Nightingale isn't awake at all in that cave beyond Caldera Station and why the Dark Presence appears to come from where Nightingale is laying to attack Alan. Not fully formed on this, but I think some of these events are related.
Appreciate the insights here!
I can't say I've seen every exhaustive review but am I mistaken in thinking the room where Alan meets Tom in the Control DLC is room 665? The same spiral painting is there and some of the other details seem to match.
I think you’re right!
I think that, on the importance of Tom and why Ahti and the Old Gods call Alan Tom, is that the whole story of Alan Wake is a movie or poem written by Tom Zane and Alan is the protagonist written to represent Tom. If everything that Alan writes comes true, then why would that not also be the case for Tom? Tom was plunged into Cauldron Lake long before Alan, so he’s had more time to craft his dark work of art. I feel like Alan being born 7 years after the disappearance of Tom and its allusion to the history of the 13th century poet Thomas the Rhymer can also support this, like Tom is returning from the faerie lands as the protagonist of his own art, Wake being a sort of avatar for Tom’s giant work of art. What do y’all think?
I would assume that Tom Zane has written Alan Wake, so he can escape from dark place, but Alan wrote Saga to his story and now Mr. Door isn't that happy, because his relationship to Saga. Also Control 2 most likely gives more info about Jesse Faden. I think Jesse's reality is somehow leaking to Alan's and Saga's reality trough Oceanview Hotel or something. Also how big of a role Alice has in next Alan Wake game.
On Zane: They made a point in Final Draft to point this out sort of I think. I think Alan is Zane's creation (not his son, his creation), I think Darling is ALSO Zane's creation. That's why Zane, Alan, and Darling all look alike. Darling even says when interacting with Zane (you sound like me....look like me too). I think Alan and Darling are both just versions of Thomas Zane in his endless attempts to escape. I think Darling is Zane's most successful attempt at getting help from the outside. Both end up being in the Dark Place, and Zane ends up trying to use both of them to escape. However Alan is too powerful and can overpower Zane's efforts to manipulate him, so Zane ends up using Darling ultimately to try and escape. Trying to shift his escape method from art to science-made-art (that's kinda how i view Darling. scientist, but an artist in that field)
I think you missed the meaning of the first scene with Nightingale. The point was to show how a Taken really perceives the world around him and how they are being tormented. The key to this is the reaction and comments of the Bookers who have seen him behave like a madman shouting nonsense (like common taken would), while we see just a scared man. It seems like the Dark Presence made the cultists look like taken too. This leads to the thought that probably all other taken we kill during the game also see our character and the others as monsters.
I think you’re totally right
I am more confused with all this theorizing than I got any answers tbh lol. Some of my thoughts and a question:
1) Scratch is Dark Place taking over given human. Easy as that. Doesn't matter if it's Alan, Casey or whoever. It can lay dormant or activate and when it activates it does its thing and you don't have memories of it. While having possessed one person it can possibly also get out and posses someone else - through story, timeline(s) or maybe sheer will. It can have more human behavior, imitating the host in manerism and talk, or can be a true, evil form showing what he (it) is about. Think about Palpatine in Star Wars lol. We see this in Barbara Jagger talking very calmly and logically to Alan and Scratch here being like an animal with sole purpose to get the Clicker and end the world. Also Tom told Alan that he got contact with a Scratch and that he was writing and that his writing was pure art. In that form I doubt Scratch was manifesting as pure-sole-purpose evil we were fighting in the game as Scratch boss.
2) Many things are because of pure Alan's and Dark Place story effects. I think people are making too much meaning into something that are just stories in god knows how much iterations and can get really confusing when comparing to real events. I have most questions about Tom, but Tom was maybe just written here by Alan to guide him while Dark Presence was putting its spin into it, adding weird, horror stuff.
3) Nightingale is Taken I think from the beginning. He experiences world almost the same as world experiences him - dark and dangerous. That's why Taken fight for their lives, killing "monsters", having destorted reality by dark presence influence while experiencing themselves as normal and world around them going crazy trying to kill them. While they are talking gibberish, they are maybe talking very normal in their heads, just like Nightingale did. To support this theory you have Bakers who said that Nightingale was shouting something strange to them, while he was saying something calmly and relaxed, yet frightened English.
4) Spiral I think is about slowly moving to predetermined end with constant contact with the past (repetitions with some changed moving to the present and future) and the future - having contacts from the future and... echoes? I don't know about echoes tbh, Alan said that he thought they were inspirations, then said he realized they are more than that... But what exactly? :) I think these are just premonitions of already written stories, again, not being real, just already written.
And now the question: I'm confused about Door saying about Night Springs being a nice distraction? Distraction from what?
could it be possible that Herald of Darkness didnt just recap Alan's life so far, but since it's a piece of art performed in the dark place, shaping Alan's life retroactively?
It is possible!
Based on what the games have established, I think any music made by the Old Gods of Asgard is the Truth of the world, as the Anderson family are able to look past the narrative to see the true/meta narrative. And if you're wondering if they're actually the Old Gods...remember that they went into the lake "for their next gig" 😀
@@magickoopa24Alan says in a manuscript page in American Nightmare that taking on the names of Odin and Tor and starting to act like them gradually made them start seeming more godlike. Its like their identification with archetype, their playing along with the abstract, actualizes them as that person, which feels very much in keeping with the Jungian collective unconsciousness ideas Remedys using
@@MidnightMedium This is true! I wonder if Odin's notes about his time with Mimir and the eye are a hint towards that a bit. But to clarify, when I said "if they're actually the Old Gods", I meant if the band that plays at Door's show are the same individuals that exist outside of The Dark Place.
This Zane is just another version of Alan, maybe a more recent loop try where he was really confused and had trouble remembering anything. Or it's an extension of Scratch in that moment with the chair and the shifting of the two.
Because all the shadows walking around in the Dark Place are definitely past versions of Alan. Sometimes they just seemingly evaporate from the flashlight being shined on them, no boost. When that happens, you can hear them whispering 'I'm drowning...'
They're walking around, constantly saying WAKE. Sometimes they say 'I just want to sleep...'. The ones that manifest and physically attack are screaming at him about the story and how its their story, not his, and in those moments, if you're close enough, you can catch a somewhat clear but distorted view of their face and it is definitely Alan's face.
Just think about it. 13 years in the Dark Place. It doesn't seem like there's a need for sustenance or sleep there. So just 13 straight years of endless loops. Just because you don"t physically need to sleep or eat doesn't mean that your mind isn't going to want to turn off and recharge. So all these shadows in the Dark Place, possibly this version of Zane, even this version of Scratch, are all pieces of Alan's psyche that break off every time he loops back around, wandering aimlessly in their own madness. The mind cannibalizing itself, essentialy. All of this possible because of the influence of the Dark Place and the Dark Presence, trying to break down Alan's mind.
This version of Zane may even be the Dark Presence taking a form in the Dark Place so it can lead Alan in a certain direction toward what it really wants, encouraging the subconscious desire of Alan's to break free until it manifests into a deadly version of Scratch. Using all types of trickery to have Alan play right into what it wants. A whole different approach from the first game because in the first game, it recognized toward the end that Alan had grown too strong and needed to be disposed of before he got to Barbara and destroyed its vessel. Since Alan achieved that, he was being molded into the next vessel.
Great discussion. I truly enjoy being able to dive deeper after completing the story yet having more questions. My only beef is related to Nightingale: if we're assuming that Nightingale is under the process of become a Taken while we play as him, you lot mention rightly that the Cult confirms that they exist to stop that from happening as much as possible. I agree. Where I have unanswered questions is how gradually is this process occuring because remember that Nightingale was reported missing for seemingly years before emerging from the lake.
Feels like we're (or I'm) missing something. Did Nightingale somehow ascend/descend the Dark Place, but succumb to after effects?
Love the content.👏🏽
Firstly, love the knife videos. Secondly, it does seem that Nightingale went into the Dark Place for a long time and was eventually summoned out by Scratch. It seems like he didn't really start the "Taken" process until emerging from the Lake, but it's also unclear as to when he first entered the lake.
There is a question of mine that hasn't left my mind since seeing the Tom the Poet poster in Wake's dreams in the first game, and seeing it again in Watery screams to me that some of the answers are there. If we take the poster as true, we see some interesting named coming up. Thomas Zane as The Diver, Barbara Jagger as The Dark Presence, Cynthia Weaver as The Lady of Light and Emil Hartman as The Assistant (let's skip the next name for now). We can also take in consideration that Thomas Zane was a real person in the 1970's, through that newspaper picture and the origin story of the Oceanview Hotel in Bright Falls.
Now, considering it all as true, I though of somethings that are at least interesting.
In this theory, Thomas Zane was a movie maker in the 1970's that was going to produce Tom the Poet on to the screens. For this, he found actors to play the parts of the story, those mentioned in the poster. Considering that Zane is like Stephen King, he likes to create and perform stories that are parallel to his own life, so ge got Jagger, his wife, to play the part of his character's wife as well, for example. The catch is, the story of Tom the Poet included a place that made his stories come true, and he decides to shoot the movie in Cauldron Lake. Suddenly, his work of art comes true. And different from other forms of art, a movie in the lake turns the actors into their characters, or, alternatively, create real people in other realities that resemble the appearances of the actors.
This would tell that the Dark Presence was created by Zane from the story of Tom the Poet. For me it makes sense, because it's not directly the Dark Place that makes stories come true, but the lake. And the Dark Presence is bound to the lake.
Now, this would explain half the story. The real problem begins with the last name in the poster. Adapted from a novel by none other than Alan Wake.
Now ask me this: how does a movie produced in the 1970's would include the name of a writer that was yet to be born? There are two answers to this. Either Alan wrote the story in the Dark Place, and the story went back in time following the strange rules of the loop/spiral, or Alan Wake was a pseudonym of Thomas Zane himself. A character of one of his movies, Yotön Yö.
Following the logic of the previous movie, Alan Wake, a character portrayed by Thomas Zane, would exist resembling Thomas Zane. And the movie creates Alex Casey as a character created by Alan Wake. The problem, however, deepens. The movie poster for Yotön Yö also includes Barbara Jagger as an actress and Alan Wake as a writer. The only explanation that fits the previous stabilished ideas is that yes, the characters become real in other realities, and both movies were written by Alan in the dark place. The difference being that Yotön Yö was written by scratch-Alan. Or, alternatively, and much less probable, Zane loves a pseudonym.
The idea that actors become the characters they portray would explain why Weaver believes Thomas Zane was a poet.
There are holes in this theory, yes, but it's a path to explain some things, more specifically how movie maker Thomas Zane influenced the story through his movies, considering the posters as true. If the names in the posters are only easter eggs, then this whole theory goes down, I'm afraid.
Just as a side note that is not related to this theory but it is something worth sharing: considering that the ritual to get someone out of the Dark Place doesn't necessarily make itself true the same instant it's being performed, Return could end up with Alan Wake exiting the lake in the 1970's, as Thomas Zane. (This was just an idea of mine that I refuse to elaborate because there are MANY flaws, from why would Alan become a movie producer to why would he change his love from Alice to Barbara. Unless they were the same person too, if you take that dialogue between Tom and Jagger using Alan and Alice voice actors as intended... Idk. The cool thing about this theory is that it lools back at the beginning in a very cool way).
(sorry about the wall of text)
It’s clear to me that Alan is a character written by Tom (kind of his own self as a hero), and that’s why his memory is continuously changing.
Or is Alan a character written by Alan? Anything feels possible at the moment.
About Door being Saga's father, I meant that makes sense a lot based on the Door's dialog, but, what if he meant Tim Breaker. If you remember the Quantom Break ending it was clearly shown that Jack is important to Hatch for whatever reason. With NG+, I have something also that kinda shows Door is not Saga's father.
I know, I’ve gone back and forth on this!
What part of NG+ suggests that he is not her father?
I think I remember in Control, Trench says Ahti is a senile old god. Senile meaning, maybe he is suffering from dementia or some decreased memory or mental faculties?? Which would explain why he’s so confused in that nursing home scene. But just a theory. I like the theory that Alan wrote him to be there too.
Good catch!
So I think Zane is able to swap places with Alan at that point because those events are happening inside of his movie.
Good point!
My theory as to why Ahti refers to Alan as Tom is because of the Nightless Night short film. In the film Ahti plays himself and it says Alan is played by Thomas Zane. Ahti is seein Zane the actor/ creator and not the character he played in the film. It's also very possible that Ahti is only in Alans version of the dark place because the short film is considered the companion piece of the novel Scratch/Alan is writing. I could be completely wrong but that was my interpretation.
I see where you’re coming from!
I think the spiral metaphor is key to everything
For sure
55:54 Im really late for this, but my understanding is that Zane the filmmaker is Alan's variant from another universe, much like Tim/Joyce. Dylan (the one person who seems to have been exposed to Door's point of view) says: "the writer writes about a cop. In another universe, the cop is real". I think the same goes for the filmmaker and the poet. The first clearly says the poet was a character for a film. So maybe he manifested in Alan's universe as the poet who dated Jagger in the 60s
Never considered that until recently but it makes a lot of sense
The nursing home and Oceanview were originally Zane’s idea. He didn’t have it as a nursing home, but he built the house originally according to lore in AW2, right?
Yes, Barry Wheeler had the house converted around 2014.
I think the bit a lot of folks missed is that Oceanview Motel & Spa that Pat mentions in his radio show you can listen to him recording, which you see graffiti of in the Overlap - it's not the Oceanview Hotel or the Oceanview Motel & Casino from Control.
But the Oceanview overlapping with Oceanview...
Hear me out...."problems at HQ", even though it takes place years after the Hiss invasion. I think Control 2 will be about Blessed somehow freeing Northmoor, and Northmoor being released will be the "problems at HQ" being referenced in AW2, why Jesse couldn't come smack some sense into Scratch. I think they'll free Northmoor, and then somehow Northmoor (who is significantly more powerful than Jesse at this point) will pull a scratch and throw Jesse into the Dark Place or another one of the doors. And I think rescuing Darling from the Dark Place will play some part in Control 2. And I think Mr Door will play a HUUUUGE part in those series' of events.
R.i.p Mr hatch aka Mr door it's going to be hard to bring him back into the remedy universe moving forward
I think Tom, Alan, and Darling look the same because it’s 3 perfectly different versions of one person, the SAME person. The Writer, the Filmmaker/Actor, the incredibly eccentric, almost artistic Scientist
Well, Darling shares a voice with Alan, but they don’t look similar.
Im not totally convinced door being Sagas father. Dylan Faden speaks of Door in his dreams in control, and the sherif sees him but differently to Alan, so his identity is highly unknown. Its a possibility though.
I think it’s definitely possible, but I also feel like I’m not entirely sold on it just yet. Too many variables with Door at the moment.
@HiddenMachineGaming Its such a fascinating world Sam Lake, and Remedy have come up with, enabling us to have these discussions.
58:24 damn dude I’m gonna be disappointed now if this doesn’t happen 😂 that theory got me hype as hell for the remakes.
32:05 I thought I caught that! Brought it up in the last stream. Would be interesting to compare the scenes when they speak to each other and see if Initiation 5 Alan is speaking to Return 5 Saga, and Initiation 8 to Return 3.
Didnt Tom write Alan into his story in the first game? Hence why Ahti and the Anderson brothers call him Tom due to them being immune to the reality altering effects of the story?
That's one way to look at it, but it's not confirmed that it went down that way
My theory on the different Zane is him playing a different role. Like how door mentioned Alan needs to play his role next time
I just noticed you're wearing a Rare cap. Another developer whose logo is an R. So: Rare, Rockstar and Remedy. Are they all alternate reality versions or Dark Place echoes of one another? ;)
An argument could be made!