After
having gotten Alan Wake, and its
follow-up, American Nightmare, for a
song during an XBLA sale a couple of weeks ago, I just finished the initial
game. I know, I know, it’s three years
old, what am I doing with my time, if not keeping up with video games,
right? Anyway, having finished it, I
have to say that I am deeply saddened that it did not achieve the same levels
of success and recognition as Ken Levine’s games. Why do I feel this way? I’m glad you asked!
First
things first, the game just plays well.
Ostensibly, the mechanics are similar to Remedy’s earlier Max Payne games (not a bad thing
whatsoever), albeit with a few key differences.
One major difference is the notion of light versus shadow, a concept
that the Silent Hill games have
emphasized to great atmospheric effect.
The majority of the game takes place at night, in a rural setting, so
darkness and lack of visibility are actually real concerns. As well, the flashlight beam as a targeting
reticule integrated into the fiction of the game is brilliant.
Secondly,
Alan Wake fulfills a promise hinted
at by Silent Hill 2: the protagonist
is just an average guy. Yes, he falls
into the category of brown-haired 30-something white guy protagonist (which is
a major trend for this console generation that GameTrailers’ countdown neglected to touch upon), but he’s not the amazingly
acrobatic/athletic archetype represented by Nathan Drake or Booker DeWitt. I had mentioned Silent Hill 2, and I should clarify why I made the comparison. James Sunderland, the protagonist of Konami’s
game, is supposed to be an average joe, and his lack of firearm skills alludes
to that fact; he is not a marksman by any stretch of the imagination. However, there is one aesthetic aspect in Silent Hill 2 which is not fully
realized in gameplay. As Sunderland
runs, he starts breathing heavily, suggesting that he is not highly athletic
and gets winded as easily as the average person. However, his speed never decreases despite
how heavy his breathing gets, meaning that he is, essentially, inexhaustible
and the breathing issue is simply an aesthetic touch.
Not
so in Alan Wake. Wake actually does get winded, and when that
happens, he slows down to the point where he needs to stop and catch his
breath. This increases the tension, as
well as the immersion, immensely. The
average person, while thinking they could probably outrun a nightmare creature
if necessary, would probably get winded rather quickly. When this happens in-game with a group of
Taken (the game’s monstrous other) on Wake’s heels, the fear and the
anticipation for the next safe haven are ratcheted up perfectly.
These
gameplay aspects act to immerse the player in the moment-to-moment tension and
atmosphere, but the game also uses its interactive nature to play a meta-game
with the ideas of narrative, player action, and Derrida’s concept of the death
of the author which, in my mind, is just as well-integrated as BioShock’s
surprise twist, if not moreso (yeah, I went there. Come at me, bro). The ambiguous nature of the story (which I’m
not going to spoil here; play the game for yourself) causes the player to
constantly question the nature of the gameplay situation and the player’s
actions, a situation which is, ultimately, not resolved and left to the
player’s interpretation. Moreover, the
fact that the Taken spout lines which could be taken from educational pamphlets
related to their activities when Wake learns about them leads to the question
of whether they are reciting looped facts stored in memory, or if they’re
poorly written constructs generated by Wake, himself, in his effort to avoid
doing proper research.
Moreover,
the notion of a story taking on a life of its own and affecting the experiences
of the author is a direct nod to Derrida’s death of the author. Let me offer some context: Derrida argued
that it is not the author’s intentions that matter in a
story, or any other artwork, for that matter (sorry for the Wikipedia use; if anyone can find me a better source, I
will be more than happy to replace it).
Instead, it is how the audience and individual viewer/reader/player, in
this case, perceives the artwork based on that individual’s/group’s lived
experiences. Essentially, the author is
dead, the story and the individual’s context are all that matter. The idea of the story shaping the author and
the world around him, while at the same time, the author is shaping the story
leads to a complex interplay of ideas which is even more interesting when
considered from the meta-perspective that all
of the characters within the game are just that: characters, created by the
writers at Remedy.
This
notion is one that the game doesn’t shy away from, as indicated by the subtle
references to Remedy’s Max Payne
games. Sam Lake,
the main writer for Alan Wake, was
also the writer and facial model for Max
Payne, a fact that the game alludes to in one of the TV segments (a
late-night talk show on which Lake was a guest, alongside his creation). Further, Wake’s previous books, featuring a
hard-boiled New York detective seeking bloody revenge for the murder of his
family, are a thinly veiled Payne
reference, right down to the narration of those particular manuscript pages
changing from Wake’s voice to James McCaffrey’s (Max Payne’s voice actor).
There
are certainly aspects of the game which bear criticism. Many of the characters dive into the deep end
of the uncanny valley; the product placement, while cleverly integrated
(brand-name batteries for Wake’s flashlight, Verizon ads on billboards as Wake
is talking on his cell phone, etc.), is still blatant and overt; certain
enemies are far too over-used. Overall,
however, the game transcends these limitations and deserves more recognition
that it has gotten. Anyone who is
interested in games-as-art should play it, especially since it’s more than
affordable now (Gamestop’s website has it listed at $10, new).
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