I am a big Max Payne fan but for different reasons never got interested in Alan Wake and didn't even think about playing it until this summer sale. I've been a fool to miss out on this game because I enjoyed every moment of it on my first playthrough. A fun and engaging story combined with great combat (this is where every other horror game fails completely in different ways) makes for an expertly paced experience.

One of the greatest moments for me however was me misunderstanding one of the late game reveals. I am in no way undermining the actual writing of the game, I love the story, but my misunderstanding led me to a very enjoyable "Oh damn, we need to go one dream deeper here!" moment. Here's what...

In the Well-Lit Room as Alan is reading the page left in the shoe-box by Thomas Zane, I thought the game was revealing a big twist where Alan was simply a character in Thomas' manuscript willed into existence from imagination alone! The reason I immediately jumped on this theory was because of some things earlier in the game that I had percieved as foreshadowing:

- In the flashback from three years back, Alice doubted the origin story of the clicker, playfully doubting he didn't just make it up right then and there. The scene really lingers on this idea because she says several times that she do not believe him and I figured it was going to be a significant foreshadowing, which lead me to misunderstand things when Alan said the clicker had been written into existence by Thomas Zane. He probably only meant to say that Thomas Zane, the character in Alan's story rather than the real Thomas Zane, had written in the clicker into the shoe-box,

- One of the manuscript pages talked about how Sheriff Breaker percieved Alan. She thought he reminded her of her late father. This, and her behaviour and reactions to things going weird around her, made me think she was Thomas Zane's daughter. This was disproven later when she talks about her actual father being a cop.

- Two of the 'Night Springs' episodes alluded to the world and the characters in it being created by a single person. One of those stories was about a dreamer who didn't know he was just an imaginary character in another man's dream, while the other was a weird tale about a man who created a basement with two old ladies in it and an orb of unreality. I thought this was foreshadowing for a big reveal where Alan learns he was just a fictional character in Zane's story.

- One manuscript had Alan refering to himself being an insane time-traveller, or something to that effect. I later understood this to mean that the whole story is a sort of time-travelling paradox where Alan is a fictional character who writes a story about himself writing a story in which he creates Thomas Zane who in turn creates Alan. It would be a chicken and the egg thing.

- In general, the story was about Alan writing the story about writing the story about writing the story, and then experiencing it. I figured the best way for the story to go now was to travel a further unknown step UP in the layers to learn that the game story layer was much deeper than expected.

- The manuscript page in the shoe box said Alan did not know his father. I thought this was some kind of literary concept of the author being the father or mother of all the characters in their stories. In this case, Thomas Zane who was supposedly the author of the manuscript page which fleshed out Alan's character's backstory.

In the end, after the scene in the Well-Lit Room I immediately started thinking I was wrong and that the story was much less convoluted so I picked my jaw up from the table and continued towards Bird Leg Cabin, but I couldn't let go of how the story, or rather my misunderstanding the story, had blown my mind to pieces and made me all giddy and entranced all at the same time for a few moments.

I really don't think my theory was correct because the game played things very straight from that point on. I was just reading too much into certain details. I'm not sure my theory would make for a very satisfying ending because it would make everything seem a little pointless, like a "it was just a dream ending" in a different format. The actual story ending was great and very entertaining. It stuck to it's guns and made the randomness meaningful: All along this was Alan's mad plan to trick the Dark Presence long enough to save Alice from the deaths of Cauldron Lake and I thought to myself "Well played, Remedy, well played" as the credits started to roll.

Sam Lake and contributors, you are insane geniuses and in a class of your own in writing stories for games. Alan Wake was amazing from start to finish!

I don't think you are entirely off base with some of this, specifically the clicker. It just so happened to be the perfect weapon against the Darkness. Thomas Zane, having spent so much time floating in it`s vast ocean, would have known he needed this weapon but would be unable to make the Darkness create it for Zane to use. But what if he could trick it into creating the clicker somewhere else in the world? Sort of a desperate "note in a bottle" cast out of the Darkness in hopes that something may come of it. So he creates the story of how a young boy is given the clicker by his mother in some far off place and uses the power of the Darkness to make it real. The Darkness either doesn't notice or doesn't care about the various random things that Zane keeps creating. Because young Alan already possesses the vivid imagination of a writer, the power of the Darkness can focus around him to create Zanes clicker. At least that was what I thought of that scene.


Have you played the DLC episodes?

I only learned about the DLC after writing my bewildered first impressions. I hope to find time to continue with chapter 7 and 8 soon!

Well, beats my take on the story. You can read it in this topic, if you're curious.
http://www.gog.com/forum/alan_wake/should_i_buy_this
Spoiler Alert: I see Alan as a complete monster and a jerk with a heart of jerk, with his only redeeming quality being his love for Alice.

I only played the first DLC-Episode on my X360 (as the game came with a free DLC-Code), but it only added fuel to my take on Alan. Esspecially how he views his friends. Barry was always a nuisance, but at least he was funny and showed some competence. The first DLC?
Purchased the PC-Version when it was discounted here, including AN. havn't played either.
Buit you know, I'd like to complain about games I actual played. ;)

But honestly, I was dissappointed by the game. I found the story to be predictable and badly written. Hello, scary lady in mournign dress, I'm pretty sure you're not evil, it's not like this dark, spooky hallway is creepy.
Alan, you're a writer, shhouldn't you be a little bit genry savvy? Rose straight told you, that the guy holding the keys to your vacation home is on the toilet and you believe what that old hag tells you? Granted, I like to watch horror movies, but wasn't that move a bit... obvious? With Weaver warning Alan from the darkness to boot!
Bonus points for the manuscripts that did spoil the story.
I really liked the scene where the doctor told Alan, that Alice died, since I always thought that she drowned. Of course, it was all a lie by Hartmann, because it's Hartmann and Alan dislike his face.
Granted, Hartman has this smug face, but I'm positive Hartman only became "evil" because Alan didn't like it and wrote so.
And don't get me started on Rose. But again, everything regarding to my take on the story is linked above.

I should espand it a little more, since it reads mostly like a rant. It probably is. But as a german saying goes: You can't fight about personal taste.

Well I think you're approaching the story in a less favourable way than perhaps you should. Alan is supposed to be a celebrity jerk with a shitty attitude, not an action hero or white knight in shining armour. He is a person who is pushed into an uncomfortable and eventually impossibly unreal situation. He is a drama queen and a cynical asshole, but he is not a monster. He doesn't have many friends but he will fight for the few he have.

Just because he is a writer doesn't mean he should be expecting a horror story to come true. At the beginning of the game the game world is for all intents and purposes "the real world", so just because a creepy old lady approaches him it shouldn't lead him to believe she is some kind of supernatural evil, or even a person who seeks him harm. He wasn't very interested in the trip anyhow, and completely jaded from the two year long writers block, so I could relate to him not giving a damn so long as he got some keys and directions. Again, would you think there was something wrong if this happened to you in real life? If you did, then maybe you're a paranoid schizophrenic or something. I really think you're exaggerating the plot contrivances in the opening part of the game.

I don't see why you think his attitude towards his friends is particularly noteworthy. He is a cynical douche, but I actually felt like Barry was the only person in the world besides Alice who actually tried to be Alan's friend and he did appreciate him for that. Early in the game he made sure Barry was safe in the cabin, eventually fighting the birds swarming it. Later he goes out of his way braving the dangers of the forest at night to find and help Barry and Sarah after the chopper crashes which he prioritises higher than reaching the Well-Lit Room alive. Yeah, he is too quick to talk about the faults in other people. It's called projecting, as in, he is aware of his many character flaws and compensates by shining a light at the problems with other people. It made him human and utterly relatable to me, rather than have him be a brick of a character who only ever does and says the right thing to progress the plot in a favourable direction. Many of the twists and turns that keep the story interesting and action packed is the weaknesses and mistakes made by Alan himself!

I can think of many reasons Alan immediately didn't like Dr.Hartman. First, remember that Alan is a troubled artist. He hasn't been able to write for two years. You think a man who is used to much success would willingly accept the idea that psychiatric help is what he needs? The mere suggestion that he should go see Dr.Hartman is a reminder of what he doesn't want to accept: That Alan in his high and mighty position needs to accept the help of a man who makes a living of people in similar positions as Alan's is not an easy pill to swallow, and the doctor becomes the face of that evil. To even admit Dr.Hartman's practices are legit is to admit that you have a certifiable real world problem, something which is hard to do ffor most people.

Alan used Dr.Hartman to write a balanced story. He needed a secondary villain to create an interesting subplot that gave the story a nice pace, an obstacle for Alan the protagonist to overcome in the 2nd act of the story. You could chalk it up as sociopath dick move, but don't forget the whole game is a desperate fight for survival against a powerful supernatural force. The story has to have twists and turns or it will crash and burn. I actually didn't think about this implication until you brought it up and it makes the game even more interesting to me now. Alan is sacrificing Dr.Hartman and his aides in order to progress his manuscript in a narratively coherent and engaging way.

Also, the scattered manuscript pages were explained in the story. It is not the best explanation, but it is plot crucial that Alan and other characters are aware of the script and it's contents. It would be silly of the game to inform the characters but not the player, since the characters themselves know how the manuscript goes. I personally found it very enjoyable to read a manuscript page and happen upon a very similar situation later in the game. The one about the chainsaw even made me filled with dread expecting to be jumped at any moment, which added a lot to my enjoyment of the game. In theory the manuscript pages were spoilers, but there is no reason to assume this is a bad thing. It's not like they made playing the game pointless. Far from it, for me it motivated me to keep playing so that I could experience those developments and confirm that they will in fact happen. Some of them even served to inform the player of things the player could not possibly know from live gameplay alone, like why Barry leaves the police station and is suddenly seen running down the street. I found it very clever.


About the two DLC chapters. I finished them both in one intense gaming session yesterday. I didn't like The Signal much as it didn't really go anywhere. There was very little plot (Alan remembers he is in the dark place, fight fight fight, Thomas Zane moment, the end) and the chapter only served to set up things for The Writer.

The Writer was great. It added more to the story and did actually go places unlike The Signal. I particularly liked the short dialogue with Thomas Zane, especially the cryptic part about Mr.Scratch. The memories of Alice was especially important additions because we needed some human moments between Alan and his wife. The original six chapters flesh out her character and their shared history very little, we kind of just had to accept that Alan loves her very much because she is supposedly a good and likable woman. The memories in The Writer were totally believable to me and it made both Alan and Alice seem like a real world couple.

Both DLC chapters seem to be a bridge between Alan Wake 1 and a potential sequel, which means they don't make for a very good ending to the original story (the game finished perfectly on a bittersweet horror story ending with chapter 6), but I appreciate them offering some substantial gameplay and story developments surrounding Alan being stuck in the Dark Place. As I said, that's not where the story should end if you consider all of it as a full experience, but I'm on board with them if seen as a mid-way point between the first game and would be sequel.

Perhaps they were a bit heavy on very brutal gauntlets of strong enemies swarming Alan, a very distinct change of pace from the original game, but I made it through all battered, bruised and mentally exhausted.

Yup, he's a jerk. But that exactly the main premise of the story. American Nightmare tackle Alan Wake characteristic in more detailed manner.

It's been a year or so since I played the game but I thought the story actually DID go like this with both writers creating each other, making both as real as fictional. Guess I really have to give the game another try and pay a little more attention this time (and grab more of them manuscript pages). <.<

My impression was that Thomas Zane is actually Alan Wake's father and is trapped in a struggle with the darkness, in a sort of stasis. Maybe I'm off though.

On a side note, I thought it was funny that Thomas Zane was voiced by the same guy who did Max Payne.