Most Requested Origin On The House Games October 10, 2016

For quite a while now, EA has offered a PC game from their enormous back catalog for free to drum up support for their Origin online game distribution service. The specific game offered for free will change but anyone who purchases the game while it is offered for free can keep it for as long as they continue to use their Origin account.  This promotion is called Origin On The House and it is something I regularly look forward to.

Right now, EA is offering the original Dungeon Keeper for free through this promotion (Editor’s Note: So if you want it, sign into the Origin client and get it now) but what will they offer next time?  The online community seems to overwhelmingly want Dungeon Keeper II but perhaps it is a bit too early to ask for that since they just offered the original Dungeon Keeper for free.  So I thought I would help EA out and offer them a list of some of the games I think they should offer through On The House if the promotion continues.

Here are the rules for this list. Out of respect to sales numbers for more recent titles, I’m going to limit this list to older games from EA’s back catalog with a heavy focus on titles that are now out of print. I’m not going to include any games that have already been offered, but sequels and prequels to games that have already been offered on the house are okay and could make the list.

Before we get started I would like to give an honorable mention to Hellgate London, but I don’t think I can include that on this list since I don’t think EA has the rights to publish it anymore.  With that out of the way, let’s start the list.

Mirror’s Edge (2008) – The original Mirror’s Edge game was overlooked when it first launched but was soon considered a cult classic. Since then, the game has already been offered for free on PSN and Xbox Live, why not on PC?  It could give the franchise a boost by offering the PC version (with its superior PhysX engine) on the house, and might get people interested in picking up the new game on their platform of choice.

Ultima 9 – A few years ago EA released Ultima 8, a rushed, buggy, PC RPG with broken gameplay and poor platforming. Then they released Ultima 9, a game that was really bad.  In fact, it was so bad this was the game that many gamers have credited for killing the Ultima franchise, but after seeing Spoony’s review of the game I really just want the chance to play it for myself.

Dead Space 2 – The first Dead Space game was the very first game EA offered on Origin through their On The House promotion so I felt it was important that it’s sequel be included on this list. This game is my favorite of the Dead Space franchise as I feel it strikes the perfect blend between action and horror. Plus, EA offered a lot of paid DLC for this game including a full single-player expansion, so there is a slightly better chance for them to release it if it gives them the opportunity to make more money from DLC.

Wing Commander 4 – I remember first seeing an incredible trailer for this game after receiving the DOS version of Privateer 2: The Darkening as a gift. I thought the game had production values on par with Hollywood blockbusters. Many consider this the best game of the entire franchise, and for a very good reason, it had solid gameplay, fantastic graphics, and an engaging story. Wing Commander 3 has already been offered so why not offer its sequel?

The Sims 3 – My friends would never forgive me if I didn’t include this game on the list.  That’s really all I have to say about that, the game really speaks for itself.  Plus, EA could make a fortune in selling the game’s expansions to a whole new group of consumers.

Dungeon Keeper II – Currently this is the most requested game I’ve seen the online community ask EA for so I felt it was important to include it here.  So yeah, ditto.

Mass Effect – One of the best games released for the Xbox 360 became one of the most unplayable games when it was first released on the PC…all because of DRM.  Now, EA is working on an all new title poised to revolutionize the whole franchise, so what better time to offer the original game on PC with a DRM system that actually works?  I mean, EA did briefly offer Dragon Age: Origins on the house for a brief time in anticipation for a new Dragon Age game, why not offer Mass Effect‘s original game?

Command & Conquer 3 – This was the game that got me back into PC RTS games for a brief time.  I freaking love this game.  It has a great storyline performed by incredible actors and competitive multiplayer.  If you aren’t currently a fan of Real-Time Strategy games, C&C 3 is the perfect way to get you interested in them.

So what do you think?  Are there any games I forgot about?  Post a comment below and give me your thoughts about what games you want to see EA offer through On The House.

Why Do Online Only Games Have Such Rocky Starts? September 12, 2016

Anyone who downloaded Pokémon Go when it first launched probably found themselves unable play it most of the time. The application was fundamentally tied into its online component, which was bogged down for weeks by the sheer number of simultaneous user requests. It would take a while for Niantic to iron out all the issues with the game on both the client and server end, but they made the adjustments needed and now the game is (barring the occasional odd crash) pretty playable.

So why did the game have such a bad launch period?  Well, Pokémon Go is hardly alone when it comes to issues with games requiring online services during their launch.  Heck they’re hardly tied to the smartphone platform, because triple-A PC titles like Sim City and Diablo III were downright unplayable at launch, rightfully angering fans who bought them at release.

So why is this happening?  It can’t be for lack of dependable testers, I know for a fact that millions of people all over the world were willing to test Pokémon Go before it launched, and those players could have been used to test the game before it was released. While I’m not totally certain of the exact number of testers the game had during development I can certainly confirm they didn’t accept everyone who applied because I applied and I know for sure I wasn’t picked!

After all these bad game launches, a lot of frustrated players have asked why weren’t these games properly tested before they launched? The truth is they had been tested, but after their poor launches it’s clear they weren’t tested adequately.  How could this be?

I spoke to a friend of mine who had a passing understanding of Google’s online testing methods who shared his thoughts with me. He doesn’t work for Google or Niantic, but he does work in the tech industry and he is familiar with a lot of their testing methods.  While I can’t confirm Niantic (or any other online game developer) uses this method to test their games, his information did make these day one problems gain some sense.

Games are tested in controlled environments before they’re released to the public. We call that QA Testing for Quality Assurance.  You don’t have to read further than The Trenches webcomic to see just how bad QA Testing can get, but what about games that require an online component to function?  Those are tested in what are called “proportional” circumstances. Just like the Mythbusters will test theories in smaller scale conditions before replicating a myth in full size, online game developers traditionally test their games in limited environments with fewer devices. The idea behind it is that if a server with limited bandwidth can remain stable under a proportionally limited test case of players, their servers can handle the expected amount of end users at full bandwidth when the game is finally released.  It’s believed that testing online games proportionally during development is the best possible testing method.

After he finished giving me this information I told him, “Wow after Pokémon Go‘s launch was such a disaster, they must be really rethinking that flawed test method, aren’t they?”

You would have thought I insulted the man’s mother if you could have seen the face he gave me after I made that statement.  After telling me in no short order that there was nothing wrong with that testing method (ignoring the fact it failed miserably when the final games were brought online in many different cases), he told me that I had no idea what I was talking about and I just looked at him like he was completely out of touch with reality.  If proportional testing was the indeed the method Niantic used to test Pokémon Go or EA used to test Sim City, and that testing method had worked, Pokémon Go would not have had the plague of crashes, login failures and random quits for three weeks after it launched, and Sim City would have been playable.

When I grew up testing games on the PC, developers would traditionally hold a “stress test” period where they would get as many simultaneous users as they could to see if their game would break or buckle under the strain of the number of users testing it. Sometimes they would start with fewer testers and add more as time went on, but by the end of the testing period they would usually offer everyone they could the game’s online beta test client as a free download. This testing method is still being used for games like Gears of War 4, Titanfall 2, and Halo Wars 2, whose developers have all offered open online stress testing this year.  From a practical standpoint, this seems like a far more fruitful method of testing a game toward the end of its development cycle.  By offering your game’s test client for free to everyone with even a passing interest in the game, developers can better predict player numbers as high as or higher than a game could expect to get at launch.  It can also help investors shape sales expectations and ensure a smoother launch period.

I sought advice from other peers of mine familiar with the tech industry as I was writing this article and they had plenty they felt needed to be added to this discussion. They argued that hosting an open beta test for a game like Pokémon Go would have been a bad idea, since the normal spectrum of bugs and glitches that players could experience during testing might have had the side effect of giving testers a poor initial impression of the game, and make them lose interest in playing it when the full version was released. While I understand some players could accept this arguement, I do not.  It is reasonably accepted amongst gamers that test clients could have their fair share of bugs and glitches. In fact, every EULA I’ve ever read for a beta game references this, so players are prepared for it. However, nothing turns potential players off a game more than a glitchy launch, and I would argue that it would make more sense to have bugs show up during the game’s test phase then to hold back testing and discover your game has problems only when the game is in the hands of paying customers.

I have not talked to anyone from Niantic and I’m no more familiar with insider information about recent Pokémon Go developments than anyone with access to the company’s Twitter feed. Pokémon Go earned millions of dollars of income in the first few weeks since it was released. There’s no telling how much more money Niantic could have made if they provided a stable platform on day one.  Perhaps if they had done a stress test they would have been better prepared for what they were in for but I guess we’ll never know for sure.

Gaming, Star Trek Style: Starfleet Academy September 8, 2016

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the broadcast of the very first episode of the groundbreaking Star Trek television series.  Not too many classic staples of science fiction get to say that they’re still going strong fifty years later, but today Star Trek gets to say that.

On this website we’ve talked about our past with the franchise, particularly when it comes to gaming. This is after all a gaming website.  Earlier this week, we discussed a Star Trek game that never came out, Secret of Vulcan Fury. Today, we want to talk about the game I played that made me aware of Secret of Vulcan Fury in the first place, the PC flight sim Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.

I first became aware of Starfleet Academy after completing Star Trek: Borg for the first time.  In 1997, I was becoming an enormous Star Trek fan. After being one of the first tourists to check out Star Trek: The Experience in Vegas, I found myself enjoying reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation and post-season 3 episodes of Star Trek Voyager.  However, even though I had a decent PC at the time, I didn’t have much money to spend for new games, due to the fact I was still in grade school. One day, after celebrating my birthday, I saw a copy of Starfleet Academy for sale at Circuit City and I happily put down some birthday money for a copy of the game and its official strategy guide.

I installed the game as soon as I got home and was greeted by this trailer once the installation concluded, and I couldn’t imagine a better way to fire myself up.  I watched the game’s live-action introduction cinematic and got through the first simulator mission.  With the first mission complete, I saved my game and selected what I thought would be the next simulation mission only to find myself watching another live-action cinematic. The game was putting a heavy focus on the personalities of the crew I would be directing through these simulations and it turned out I would be making major decisions for these trainees as the school year went on!

Starfleet Academy‘s live-action component was no small undertaking. Heck, these FMVs were so detailed they deserved to be their own game and to this day I’m shocked they haven’t been rereleased on DVD.  They included a great cast of original actors for the training bridge crew, and William Shatner, George Takei and Walter Koenig all returned to their iconic roles of Captain Kirk, Pavel Checkov, and Mr. Sulu.  These three served as the experienced mentors they needed to be, a perfect fit for a game focused on the next generation of Starfleet.

The game’s story was so fleshed out it was later adapted as a novel by Diane Carey.  I actually used the book as the basis for an oral presentation in my sophomore English class. If you want to know how well I did on the presentation, most of my peers put the class to sleep droning on about their books, but the class enjoyed my presentation, as I weaved them a complex story about a group of students dealing with a difficult year while tragedy strikes.  My peers liked it so much they wouldn’t let me step off my podium until I told them how the book ended.  I’m pretty certain I got an A.

However, unlike Star Trek: Borg, which was an interactive FMV game with a fairly linear narrative, decisions you made in Starfleet Academy could have an enormous effect later in the game. Heck, halfway into the game you could make the wrong decision in a cinematic and lose the whole game.  Cinematic decisions could also affect your simulator scores, which I later learned would have an effect on the game’s ending.  My strategy guide had no information about these cinematic sequences, only the simulations, so I had to trust I was making the right decisions as I went on.

I was never much of a flight-sim player growing up and this game’s simulation had a really steep learning curve. In fact it took me months to figure out how to complete the final mission in the Alshoff campaign. After what must have been the hundredth attempt, I was finally able to beat the mission.  Once I had that level beat, I was able to complete the rest of the game in less than two days.

If you want to know my favorite missions I fondly remember a mission based on the plot of The Wrath of Khan, a mission taking place in a nebula (where sensors were limited), the final mission and of course the mission where you actually got to play the Kobiashi Maru no-win scenario. I totally won that.

In fact I remember the night I beat the twentieth mission and saw the game’s credits roll. I was puzzled as hell that the game was over because the strategy guide listed strategies for one more mission. That’s when I realized that the final mission would only be playable depending on if you got the game’s best ending.

What can I say about getting this game’s last mission?  To this day I don’t think anyone has come up with a strategy on how to unlock it, which is a real shame because it puts the player in control of the real USS Enterprise NCC-1701-A.  The only advice I could offer is to make decisions in both the simulator and the cinematics that keep your team’s scores as high as possible, and devote as much time as you can to further studying the McClanty during that story arc in the last few missions.

In my case, I may have lucked into the best ending because of some kind of bug. After the game’s credits finished rolling, the game immediatly started rolling one of the earlier cinematics. Apparently I had been sent back to replay the last three or four missions. I figured further study of the McClanty was important to unlocking the last mission so I decided to choose to investigate the McClanty as much as possible. Of course this is not a guarantee to earn the ending because your crew still needs to have high simulator scores, and tons of different variables can affect them.

Regardless of if you can unlock the last mission or not, this game still has the best presentation of the Kobiashi Maru no-win scenario, hands down. If you want to hear more about my thoughts on it, you can read them here. I actually played this game before I watched most of the Star Trek feature films. Imagine my surprise when I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on VHS for the first time.  I felt like I was experiencing the fandom the game’s developers had for the franchise in reverse.

I know Interplay later released an expansion pack for Starfleet Academy called Checkov’s Lost Missions but by the time I finished the original game I could not find a single software store selling it, and to this day I’ve never played it.

I’m afraid I’ll have to end this article on a down note. After talking all this time writing about this triumph Interplay published I’m afraid to say that earlier today I’ve just read that Interplay is planning to sell off their assets. My question is what happens to Run Like Hell?  I think Bawls should get it.

The Star Trek Game That Never Was, Secret of Vulcan Fury September 4, 2016

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the incredible Star Trek Franchise.  Created by the late Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek started as a television series that took place in the 23rd Century where an international crew of explorers solved modern day problems during their trek through the stars.

While the initial series only lasted three seasons, it was a cult hit, especially among young people.  In the fifty years that followed, five television series (with a sixth on its way), thirteen feature films, numerous books and countless video games have been released under the Star Trek name.  I’ve already talked about my first experience playing a Star Trek video game, but I thought that in honor of Star Trek‘s 50th anniversary I would tell you all about a Star Trek game that never was, a game called Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury.

In the late 90s I was quickly becoming obsessed with the Star Trek brand after watching the film Star Trek: First Contact. This was a great time for Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation had ended its run but the entire series was being actively rerun in syndication. Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were airing some of their finest episodes, and companies like Interplay and Simon and Schuster were releasing  all new Star Trek games for the PC.  Heck, I even visited Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton twice. After enjoying the CD-ROM FMV game Star Trek: Borg I decided the next Star Trek game I would play would be the PC flight-sim Starfleet Academy.

I got a copy of Starfleet Academy for my birthday and quickly installed the game on my Windows 95 PC.  After the game finished installing, this trailer immediatly autoplayed.  Enjoy this first look at Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury.

What you just saw was a trailer for a fully CGI-rendered Star Trek game based on the original series. Not only did the game’s art style perfectly match the look and feel of the original Star Trek tv series, veteran Star Trek writer D.C. Fontana was penning the script and the cast of the original show was preparing to donate their likenesses and voice work to the game.  Interplay was essentially making an all-new interactive episode of Star Trek in time for Christmas 1998. Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?  In a way, it was.

As I’m sure you all know by now, the game was never released and that trailer was the only thing most gamers have seen of the game in twenty years. So what went wrong?  A few years ago someone asked about the cancelled project on Interplay’s official forums.  That’s when I discovered there had actually been a second trailer produced for the game, which premiered what would have been the game’s opening. I think this trailer was included with copies of Fallout 2, but I’m not totally sure about that.  Take a look.

That brief scene would have made a great opening for the game.  The CGI was top of the line at the time, James Doohan and William Shatner sounded great back in their iconic roles, and the trailer ended with some amazing teases including a promise to give players an interactive tour of the planet Vulcan.  How could this game fail?

Essentially Interplay had bit off more than they could chew with this game and you could see some of that when you look at all the features the trailers promised. Interplay was experimenting with fully pre-rendered CGI at a time when the technology for fully-CGI movies like Toy Story was only in its infancy. In fact the game was expected to feature even more CG footage than Toy Story, making it the most ambitious project to use prerendered CGI of its day.  While the technology was available to them, time was just not on their side.  Other development issues were mentioned including incomplete actor performances due to poor health.  This all spelled out bad news for not only the developers trying to complete the game but also for gamers who wanted to play it.

Christmas 1998 came and went without the game’s release.  Eventually information about the game was removed from Interplay’s website. Several reports have stated the game was only 5% complete when it was cancelled.  The publisher eventually lost the rights to the Star Trek license and would go on to weather financial turmoil during development of a new Fallout game.  Interplay bounced back and they currently license their properties for outside development while rereleasing their back catalog on modern distribution networks. 

With all that development turmoil happening I had no expectations anyone would ever see any more from Secret of Vulcan Fury. Then, YouTube user Ken Allen published this footage online.  It was originally shown behind closed doors at E3 1997 in Atlanta, but thankfully it is now available for the public to see!

I’m just going to say right now this footage is incredible.  It looks like it takes place right after the events depicted in the second trailer, and while the animation is still a little rough the art style matches the original sets perfectly.  He even posted up a closer look at the game’s interactive interface.

This looks like a pretty intuitive interface, and this is coming from someone who remembers the oversimplified scan and decision interface from Star Trek: Borg.

It’s a shame we never got to play this game back in the day but I want to thank Ken Allen for giving us this look at it.  Ken did mention on one of his YouTube videos he was considering releasing the game’s original design document online. Please do, Ken, we would be more than happy to report on it here.  It’s a shame this game never came out, but I would love the chance to read what is essentially a lost Star Trek episode.

As for my thoughts about how I liked the game Starfleet Academy, well that is a story for next time.

You Can’t Register Codes in Pokemon TCG Online for iPad June 10, 2016

We are really busy over here on the site and now that we had the chance to publish today’s video content, we wanted to devote some time this weekend before E3 to talk about what’s going on in the Pokémon community. What better way to start than by giving an introduction to the incredibly popular Pokémon Trading Card Game!

The Pokémon Trading Card Game has become a phenomenon since it first launched.  The game can even be played online without ever needing to open up a physical card deck.  That’s right, trainers who choose the TCG can sign up for the game at the official Pokémon website and use their skills, experience and wits to play online against other TCG trainers from all over the world.

Like with the physical TCG, players can purchase new card packs to improve their play decks. Online codes for digital cards can be obtained in physical game packs or through occasional promotional campaigns. This latter option is how many players preferred to get new cards online, and since the official application launched on the iPad (with Retina screen) last year, it was a popular option.

However, I was extremely disheartened to discover that Apple forced The Pokémon Company to disable the online code redemption for the iPad version of the game.  The Pokémon Company claims no credit at all for this policy change and say the decision was forced on them by Apple.

So what can you do if you are an iPad player with some card codes you would like to redeem?  I’m afraid you have no choice but to play the game on another platform. I personally would recomend the PC or Mac option. The computer interface is identical to the tablet version, barring the portability options offered by a tablet.  There’s no touchscreen support for the computer versions, but I still remember how to use a mouse, and that works fine.

I don’t blame The Pokémon Company at all for this decision as Apple has had a track list of dictating to developers what they will and will not allow on their digital marketplace, often to the detriment of the consumer. If you ask me Apple should reverse this decision immediately. Up to this point, there have not been widespread reports of issues with code redemption on the iPad, this new Apple policy is in my opinion an enormous mistake.  If you leave out an important feature of the game that your rival platforms will allow, players will switch gears and choose to use your rival’s platforms. It could inspire loyal players to trade in their iPad and switch to an Android tablet for their next upgrade.
The Pokémon Trading Card Game Online is out now and can be played on PC, Mac, Android Tablets and iPad.  You can download the game to your desktop or laptop for free right here or at your tablet’s digital marketplace.

New Pokemon Video Announcement Coming Tomorrow, What Could it Be? May 9, 2016

The Pokémon Company has confirmed that there will be an official announcement tomorrow on the Pokémon YouTube Channel.We currently know for a fact that at least two new Pokemon games are in development as I consider GEN 7 (Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon) one title, but we also know Pokémon Go is in development for smartphones. Chances are the video tomorrow could be about either of these titles, but which one, and what would the video be about?
So here are my theories about what The Pokémon Company could show us tomorrow:

1. It could be a trailer for Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon that shows actual gameplay.  The game’s official announcement trailer showed very little game content, and it would be nice to see actual gameplay and a look at the new game’s environment.

What are the Odds?: 75 percent. In all likely I would consider this the most likely option. GEN7 is just a few months away from release so actual game footage would be a good bet.

2. Pokémon Go Update. This could take multiple forms. The game is currently in a closed beta testing phase in limited regions. I know for a fact that people have been begging the developers to open the beta for worldwide testing, so we could see an announcement about that tomorrow. Or, if developer Niantic wanted to skip worldwide testing and go straight to releasing the game, we could get a release date announcement.

What are the Odds?: 50 percent chance Pokémon Go would simply get shown, 20 percent chance we could get an official release date, 15 percent chance it would be a Beta announcement. Pokémon Go‘s Beta testing announcements have been pretty hush hush (not counting the leaks) and I honestly wouldn’t expect Pokémon Go to greatly expand to a worldwide beta test unless they were very close to releasing the app. However, Pokémon Go is expected to launch this summer and it would make sense for The Pokémon Company to announce an official release date.

3. It could be an all new announcement for some new game we have no idea about.  This option just covers too broad a spectrum for me to fully investigate.  We see a new game in one of the Pokémon spin-off series, an English port of the Detective Pikachu downloadable game, or a Virtual Console announcement.

What are the Vegas Odds?: 10 percent. I would think the most likely candidate for a new announcement would be 3DS Virtual Console releases for GEN 2 (Gold/Silver/Crystal). GEN1 did VERY well in 3DS sales, and if Nintendo had any intelligence they would fast track re-releasing GEN2 as soon as they could.

So those are just my ideas, and I want to end this article by saying that I have no insider information about what is planed to be announced tomorrow, but I’m greatly looking forward to whatever may be coming next!

What do you think is coming tomorrow?  I want to hear your thoughts! Post a comment below.

Could Alan Wake 2 Be Remedy’s Next Project? April 15, 2016

Quantum Break is out now on Xbox One and Windows 10 systems and if you want my opinion you should pick it up as soon as possible.  The game was developed by Remedy, an independent game developer from Finland famous for creating the first two Max Payne games, Death Rally, and the cult classic Alan Wake.  Now that Quantum Break is out Remedy is free to produce whichever game they want, and after playing Quantum Break, I have a sneaking suspicion Remedy might be planning to make the game their fans want them to make most, Alan Wake 2, as their next game.

Now before we go any further I’d like to preface this article with a bit of a disclaimer. I have absolutely no insider knowledge inside Remedy or Microsoft (and that joke video I did a few years ago doesn’t count), I am simply a well-informed gamer who has kept his ear low to the ground whenever Remedy and Microsoft have publicly released information about their future plans.  Secondly, my ego is nowhere big enough to give me the desire to presume what I feel Remedy should do with their company, and if Remedy decides to take their company in a different direction than the one I predict here, I will have no problem with that.

So now, after getting all of that out of the way, let’s get started with some background information, shall we?  Alan Wake was developed by Remedy Games for the Xbox 360 during the later half of the last decade and they still own the rights to the game’s Intellectual Property (IP).  While Microsoft was involved with the games’s production, they merely published the title and did not fund it. Remedy actually self-funded Alan Wake’s development and that gave them a lot of flexibility to make the best title they could.  Alan Wake‘s sales met its expected projections, and while the game has a reputation of being merely a cult classic, it not only sold well, it was received very well by critics and gamers alike.  Other than publisher apathy, there’s nothing stopping Remedy from making another Alan Wake game, and I’d like to break down some of the recent hints Remedy has been dropping that a new Alan Wake game might be Remedy’s very next project.

First, I’d like to remind you that digital copies of Alan Wake were bundled with Quantum Break and Alan Wake’s American Nightmare was Quantum Break‘s preorder gift.  Not only did this add a great value to gamers’ wallets, it speaks volumes about Remedy and Microsoft’s faith in the Alan Wake games.  On top of that, both Alan Wake and Alan Wake’s American Nightmare are now fully playable on the Xbox One using Backwards Compatibility, an honor only a few other Xbox 360 titles have right now. This is an obvious attempt to grow Alan Wake‘s fanbase, since both opportunities offer new players the chance to play both of the original titles, and to remind long-time fans of how great the original games were.  New players might be interested to finally see the games people have been talking about for years, and any pre-existing fans who already had either game could just gift their download codes to other potential players interested in finally playing the games themselves.

I spoke to a long time Remedy superfan recently about this and I wanted to share their thoughts with you. They said, “..if more people are interested [in Alan Wake 2] from playing Quantum Break, [Microsoft] might change their mind [and publish it].

Then there was this next development.  A few months before wrapping up Quantum Break, Remedy released this video through the press organization Polygon:

If you’ve already seen this video or not, I think we need to discuss the context behind its creation and its release. This video was produced in 2010 to pitch Alan Wake 2 to various game publishers.  According to information published in Quantum Break: The Secret History of Time Travel, Remedy planned to develop a sequel to Alan Wake immediatly after the original Alan Wake was released, but Microsoft was more interested in the concept behind Quantum Break, and Remedy decided to make Quantum Break next. It would later become the first game ever announced for the Xbox One console.

This footage turned a lot of heads and made gamers from all around the world write to the major game publishers, especially Microsoft, just to ask why they wouldn’t green light this project.  I have to complement Remedy for releasing this footage to the public when they did, because they put it out at the perfect time. A well managed  development studio would want to have another project in line once their current project ended.  If they wanted their next project to be Alan Wake 2, Remedy could use the pressure from the franchise’s fans (rallied by the release of the original pitch footage) to convince publishers to back the project they want to make.

Finally, I’d like to put on a tinfoil hat and talk about one particular Alan Wake Easter Egg hidden in Quantum Break.  In the new game’s first act, players will come across a television inside a tent. If you turn it on, a live-action movie will begin to play on the screen starring some actors long time Remedy fans might be familiar with.  While a good source for the video doesn’t exist yet, here’s a different video confirming its inclusion in the game.

If you watched my Let’s Play of the first act of Quantum Break you would know we stumbled onto the Easter Egg early on during the first half of our playthrough. I’m sure anyone who watched the video could see how much that video affected me  just based on my reaction while I watched it.  This was not just some simple joke, Remedy went to the trouble to put the actor who played Alan Wake in it.  The narration hinted directly at the events of Alan Wake, and at possible ideas for the future of the franchise.  The video ended with the word RETURN, the title Alan chose for his next manuscript, the same manuscript meant to free him from the prediciment he found himself in at the end of the first game.  This was an incredible video, which could best be described by both myself and another superfan as just “awesome”.  Unfortunately, while Alan Wake’s Return has been recently trademarked by Remedy, Remedy later told the press that the trademark was filed specifically for that video and only that video.   Alan Wake Easter Eggs were not just limited to that specific video, the game had plenty of other connections to Alan Wake’s universe, giving some credence to the theory that the games take place in the same universe.  Quantum Break also broadcasts the television show Night Springs, a signed copy of one of Alan’s books can be found in the game, and the information left on a lecture hall’s chalkboard gave a great boost to the hearts of fans that a new Alan Wake game was coming!  Heck, I think I even caught William wearing an Old Gods of Asgard shirt for a split second.  Why include all of this along so many other nods to Alan Wake in Quantum Break if not to lay the groundwork for an eventual return?

That’s just my thoughts but I want to hear what you think. Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments section below. Of course, this is all speculation and while I am greatly looking forward to seeing an Alan Wake sequel, Remedy is free to make whatever game they want.  If you’d like to see Alan Wake 2, my advice would be to write to anyone at Microsoft or any other major game publisher and tell them you’re a fan of the franchise and you’d like to see them work with Remedy to release another one.  Now please excuse me so I can take this tin foil hat off.