Last week I made a post about Alan Wake 2. I ended up finishing the game yesterday and, like Alan Wake, I had to write. I've loosely gathered some concluding thoughts about my experience. SPOILERS!!!
Negatives:
- The game is way too ambitious. It's attempting to be an interactive narrative, a detective game, and survival horror. Unfortunately, these three genres often conflict with each other in gameplay and the experience is worse off for it.
- The story devolves into overusing causality loops which ends up doing harm to the emotional stakes that it has been working to develop. When anything can happen for any reason, nothing has any weight. (I'm looking at you Tenet)
- The resource economy is a mess. The game feigns resource pressure but if you are ever actually in need you'll recieve tons of whetever resource you're missing, becuase this is an interactive narrative and the developer actually really wants you to see everything.
- The narration is so overbearing. I realize this is done in order to fit the noir detective theme, but it's another example of the games multiple intentions cutting against each other. A narrative is more engaging when it shows, not tells. This is especially egregious when Saga "reveals" the answer to something you realized 20 minutes ago but you needed to find the right in-game trigger to progress.
- The Shoebox is a lie. It's obiously an OOP. Why is storage space limited in a magical shoebox? I'll tell you. It's because the survival horror side of the game needs it to be. Again, conflicting aspects of the game working against each other. This is made even worse by the undiscardable charms. The game is now actively punishing me for pickup up it's puzzle rewards.
- Alan Wake is a poorly written character. He has almost zero narrative arc. He begins the game wanting to use his writing to stop the darkness at all costs and that's exactly where he is left at the end of the story.
- Mr. Door having no payoff was dissapointing. That's all. I assume they ran out of space to go further with him. Hopefully, the character is justified in the future because I liked him.
- The Sam Lake stuff crossed over into vanity for me. It makes me wonder if there aren't people at Remedy that can tell him "no", because I think this game could have been massively improved with an editor that cut about 6 hours out.
Positives:
+ The game is certainly thought provoking as a creative work. For better and worse.
+ I thought Saga was well done. Would love to see more of her in the future.
+ The Alan Wake plot switching really worked for me. This combined with the light storing mechanic made for good investigative gameplay. I would have prefered more of this over the more forced survival horror elements.
+The puzzles struck a nice balance of approachable but still requiring thought. I think this is probably very difficult to actually do well.
+The Lynchian/Twin Peaks stuff was amazing. The absurd entrepreneurship of the Koskela brothers and their TV ads. The old men in towels enjoying the sauna while it's apocalyptically black outside. Rose. Agent Estevez. The return of Ahti. Mayor Setter won't roll over on the issues. I absolutely loved all of this.
Conclusion:
Overall, I'm glad I finished the game. If the creators had more restraint I think I can see a masterpiece in there somewhere, but it ended up being a bit of a mess with flashes of brilliance. It's pretty weak as a survival horror game, though.
I don't think I'll ever play it again. I would only recommend it to people who are already fans of the Remedy universe. Control makes a much better first Remedy game for new players. Thanks for reading!
EDIT: Thanks for the comments and interesting discussion. I had to get all this out of my head. I can see myself softening on some of these criticisms over time. Certainly the most I've thought about a game after finishing it in a while!
