Major Alan Wake News Announced, What Could it Be? May 10, 2011

UPDATE:  A member of the Alan Wake forums has reminded me that Remedy was in fact looking for a Kinect developer in their jobs page a few months ago following the release of Alan Wake.  I thought I remembered that when writing this article, which is why I devoted a whole section to the possiblity they might do a Kinect game, but I couldn’t find the exact posting when I took the article to print.  Now the possiblity of a Kinect game has a bit more credibility.

After a few days of speculation, Remedy has announced today that they are working on a new Alan Wake related project.  However, this project is NOT Alan Wake 2 and it is not DLC for Alan Wake.  What it is, is being saved for later.

My speculation.  First.  The time of reveal, “later” is not defined, however Remedy will be doing meetings at E3 this year, and it might coincide with that.  Given this extremely vague statement is that there are only so many things that this new project could be.  If it’s not Alan Wake 2 and it’s not DLC for the first game then what could it possibly be?

It could be a Alan Wake iPhone game.  Remedy had just completed the iPhone version of Death Rally, and Barry Wheeler from Alan Wake did make an appearance in the game as another car driver.  Remedy owns the Alan Wake rights, and can develop games for whichever platform they choose.  If they wanted to tell a side story as some are speculating might take place between Alan Wake and the projected Alan Wake 2, the iPhone may be the best platform to tell it.  Side stories of Mass Effect, Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space, and RAGE have all been released to the iPhone platform and been quite good, as well as been popular purchases.  Remedy has posted up requests for mobile developers on their jobs page, and while it could’ve been because they plan to release more games for mobile phones, having mobile developers working there could give them options on expanding more of their properties to mobile platforms.

It could be an Alan Wake Kinect game.  Other than the fact that Alan Wake was on the Xbox 360, the platform of the Kinect, Remedy was hiring producers for a Triple-A console title after the release of Alan Wake, and since Remedy has announced this is NOT Alan Wake 2, a Kinect side story might be something they might be interested.  It was also noted on a few gaming sites that Remedy was hiring Kinect developers after the release of Alan Wake and the possiblity could exist that it could be for this project.  The Kinect has a very impressive install base for such a new and expensive peripheral, but since its launch there has not been a large wave of regular Kinect game releases, making Kinect a prime market to tap into.

It could be the long requested PC version of Alan Wake with support for better graphics, controls retooled for the PC, and offering new features like the Xbox 360 DLC included.  This has some credibilty given the fact that the announcement included phrases like “This will be a good jumping point for new Alan Wake players.”  PC users have been demanding this game on the platform since it was announced it would release only on the Xbox 360, espessially given there were demos of the game on the PC done during it’s five years of development.  Alan Wake would have required a pretty high end pc to run at optimal performance (A Multi-Core CPU and Shader Model 3.0 GPU with Windows Vista/7 would practically be required), which might have made Remedy rethink releasing it on the PC platform at launch, but over the last year those features are now pretty much standard in most PCs, and it could be the time to launch it.  Plus, if you add in new levels or features to the PC version, it would give a good incentive to make a PC version the platform of choice.

The only other possiblity I can envision is that the next game could involve an open world Bright Falls, something along the lines of Alan Theft Auto or Grand Theft Barry.  The original design document for Alan Wake called for an open world Bright Falls with dynamic day, night and weather effects, and based upon the toolsets I saw in the behind the scenes documentaries in the LCE version of the game, and the pictures posted in the Alan Wake: Illuminated book, or in various official screenshots released over the year (such as the image of Alan standing in the bookstore in daylight).  Unfortunatly, we never really got to see day and night transitions happen in real time in the game, all transitions like that happened during cutscenes, and the player always had a set direction or showpiece during day scenes with very little opportunity for further exploration.  There were going to be things included in the game had they gone the open world route like explorable buildings including a museum, and even a dirt track for racing and time trials.  These would’ve been fun little diversions during the story.  Although, what the storyline that would be about for a game that provided an open world Bright Falls (which would not be Alan Wake 2) would be anyone’s guess.  I have seen open world expansion packs for games which just involved easter egg hunts (Like the Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force Expansion), but these were just small expansions released for a budget price and that was a long time ago.

I’ve also recieved speculation from a peer of mine that thought this new game might be a prequel and reminded me that Max Payne 2 was released just 18 months after the first Max Payne, which made sense.  The Max-FX tools were already built and they just needed to be upgraded for Max Payne 2.  Very comprehensive Alan Wake tools already are built and tons of unused Alan Wake assets did not make it into the final game, any of it could be used in this new Alan Wake game.

Regardless, this announcement is fantastic for Alan Wake fans who are hungry for more from this franchise.  I have sent a press inquiry to Remedy about their E3 plans.  If I hear any response I’ll be more than happy to inform all of you when the time is right.

The project, whatever it is, currently has a projected release date of Fall 2011.