Alan Wake Remastered - Trailer
0Trailer Index
00:00 - Channel Intro
00:11 - Announcement Trailer
01:40 - Comparison Trailer
03:00 - Launch Trailer
04:44 - Nintendo Switch Launch Trailer
Alan Wake is an action-adventure game developed by Remedy Entertainment. The story follows best-selling thriller novelist Alan Wake as he tries to uncover the mystery behind his wife's disappearance during a vacation in the small fictional town of Bright Falls, Washington, all while experiencing events from the plot in his latest novel, which he cannot remember writing, coming to life.
In its pacing and structure, Alan Wake is similar to a thriller television series, with episodes that contain plot twists and cliffhangers. The game itself consists of six episodes, and the storyline is continued by two special episodes, titled "The Signal" and "The Writer", that were made available as downloadable content (DLC) within the same year of the game's release. Together, they make the first season of a possibly longer story. Additionally, a six-episode live-action web series called Bright Falls acts as a prequel to the game, and a number of related books also expand upon the Alan Wake story. Alan Wake Remastered, featuring the full game and both DLC episodes and published by Epic Games Publishing, was released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in October 2021. A Nintendo Switch port would be released on 20 October 2022.
Chiefly written by Sam Lake, Alan Wake took over five years to create. The game was originally developed as an open-world survival game as an anti-thesis to Remedy's prior linear Max Payne games, but struggled over three years in merging the gameplay with the action-thriller story they wanted to tell. After an intense two-month period, the team reworked the game to be a more traditional linear game broken into an episodic approach but which better supported the planned narrative structure and capable of reusing much of the open world assets already built. Microsoft Game Studios published the game for the Xbox 360 in May 2010, followed by a Windows port released by Remedy Entertainment in February 2012.
The game received positive reviews from critics, has garnered a cult following, and is often praised for its visuals, sound, narrative, pacing, and atmosphere. Alan Wake was awarded the first spot in Time magazine's list of the top 10 video games of 2010. Alan Wake's American Nightmare, a stand-alone spin-off/follow-up, was released in February 2012 on the Xbox Live Arcade service. One cancelled sequel became the foundation and inspiration of Remedy's next title, Quantum Break. Later, Remedy released Control in 2019, which takes place in a shared universe with Alan Wake. A proper sequel, Alan Wake II, was announced at The Game Awards 2021 in December and is planned for release in 2023.
Remedy felt a remaster was the better route than a remake, maintaining the core gameplay and narrative elements of the game but improving the visuals for newer game systems with support for 4K resolutions so that the title would appeal to both those that played the original and new players. Remedy recognized that changing any part of the gameplay would have cascading effects across the game and would lead to major redesign issues, and did not opt to go that route.
Several visual assets were remade for high-definition visuals, including reworking some of the non-3D elements such as water movement into 3D motion. Cutscenes were also remade incorporating original and new assets including new motion capture, though due to this combination, limited their presentation to 30 frames per second. They opted to keep the game in the original engine rather than upgrade it to their Northlight Engine as that would have taken resources away from the remastering aspect, and decided against support for ray tracing and high-dynamic-range rendering given the range of systems they needed to support.
The remastered version removed the product placement that had been in the original game, but retained all of the same licensed music. In addition to these improvements, the remastered edition includes both pieces of DLC and a new commentary track by Sam Lake. The remastered version was found to contain at least one new Easter egg to Control, via way of a letter from Bright Falls' sheriff to the FBC about paranormal events happening in town which, through in-game dates, correlate with the FBC's investigation of the Bright Falls AWE as revealed in Control's DLC.
Remedy said they had no plans on remastering Alan Wake's American Nightmare, believing that Alan Wake and the two DLC episodes formed a "sensible" package.