Alan Wake 2 goes full Resident Evil 4 with survival horror

Alan Wake has recovered from his 13-year-long writer’s block.

The fictional horror author, the protagonist of Remedy Entertainment’s cult hit of the same name from 2010, will reprise his role in a long-awaited sequel this October. His return isn’t just notable because he’s a beloved franchise character — the reveal of Alan Wake 2 Remedy’s multiple failures to launch a new Alan Wake story and the subsequent breakout success of the game are an important landmark. Control.

You can also contact us by clicking here. Alan Wake 2While the gameplay and characters are similar to the previous game, there is a significant amount of room for change. The FBI Agent Saga Anderson will join Alan this time, as she investigates the grisly crimes in Pacific Northwest. As players advance the story, they’ll take control of both Alan and Saga as a supernatural horror unfolds.

As part of Summer Game Fest, Remedy Entertainment and publisher Epic Games Publishing showed Polygon a hands-off demo, with around 30 minutes of gameplay that showed an early mission played from Saga’s perspective. The demo we played was an early mission from Saga’s perspective, and it leans towards the survival horror genre. Resident Evil 4At points.

Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing

As the game begins, Saga and her friend Alex Casey are walking in dense coniferous woods. (Voiced by writer/creative director Sam Lake). As they talk, we learn that they’re investigating an area by Cauldron Lake, which just so happens to be the site of Alan’s disappearance in the first game, after a string of grisly murders.

Players will need to walk as Saga in order to progress the plot. They’ll be searching for clues at various crime scenes. The demo has her scouring abandoned shacks or cabins for evidence of cult rituals. As she searches, Saga collects bits of paper, objects, and information. After collecting these items or scraps of paper with additional information, players can then teleport to a cabin room within Saga’s psyche called the Mind Place, which is filled with her collected evidence. Using these gathered materials she can use a “Profiling” power to piece together information and advance the story.

Case Board: As Saga fills in the information, the wall will become filled up. Clues are arranged similar to string theory, and players can piece it together.

Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing

The game swings between uneasy quiet while collecting evidence, and tense combat where an abandoned room might suddenly be broken into by a cultist wearing a deer’s head. It’s the same as the original. Alan Wake, is a third-person shooter and it returns to that game’s key mechanics. They use their flashlights to weaken the enemies and shoot them in order to eliminate them. It is very similar to the original. Alan WakeSaga is able to duck and dodge any attacks.

Polygon asked whether dodging would work in the same way as the original game due to how similar it looked. “Hopefully it’ll feel a lot better, but yeah, it does work the same way,” Thomas Puha, communications and press relations director at Remedy Entertainment, said. “Though the good thing is that Alan isn’t out of breath constantly, so he’s in a bit better shape.”

Also, we asked whether players can expect to have additional abilities when they play as Alan Wake. Puha said, “On the Alan side, I can say that light does matter quite a lot. Light is another mechanic that you have to use with Wake in the Dark Place, but we’ll show that gameplay later.”

Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing

It is clear that this game has been heavily inspired by survival horror video games. Resident Evil 4. The image of Saga bursting through possessed cult members with a shotgun and donning her large jacket with “FBI” emblazoned on the back recalled images of Leon Kennedy fighting his way through the backwater woods in Resident Evil 4. A system like the Weapon Organization System from Resident Evil 4They are shown in the game.

What we asked our team Resident Evil 4’s influence, and Puha said, “I’ll add that while you saw half an hour of the game, it’s really important to know that we’re not one note at all. When you get to go to Bright Falls during the day, yeah it’ll feel slightly odd, but the vibes are going to be way different. […] We definitely made sure there’s a lot of variety in terms of the tone. Then we head to the Dark Place, which is like a nightmarish version of New York, and that’s way, way different from what you’re seeing here. So variety is really important.”

Alan Wake 2The game is coming Oct. 17 to PlayStation 5 via Epic Games Store and Xbox Series X.