Prerelease:Alan Wake (Windows)
This page details pre-release information and/or media for Alan Wake (Windows).
 | This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes. |
 | To do: Editor's notes: I am still working on the page semi-consistently. There's a ton of material backed up that needs to be organized and uploaded. This page used to have a singular subpage, but for now I haven't split the article due to my plans with organization having changed over time. So, hold on to your flashlight tightly while I get this mess sorted. With that out of the way, I present to you:
|
Alan Wake's development was started in 2003, while Remedy was recovering from the launch of Max Payne 2. The game was eventually released in 2010, and on PC in 2012.
Contents
Subpages
| Early Development Phantoms playing with your senses; Ideas never glimpsed by human beings. |
| Open World A lot of ambition, but not that much action. |
| Road to Release Shaping up the final product. |
Development timeline
2003-2004
- Remedy begins experimenting with an open world fantasy game idea
- Fantasy game idea starts to turn into a horror action thriller. A new setting, name and protagonist are created.
2005
- April 27: Earliest record of www.alanwake.com being used; the site was being domain parked at the time.
- May 4: Remedy announces their intention to show off their next game at E3 2005. A teaser trailer and first batch of screenshots released, according to timestamps on 3dgamers.com.
- May 7: Earliest archived version of www.alanwake.com.
- May 15: Second batch of screenshots is released.
- May 18-20: E3 2005. Alan Wake is announced, a demo is shown in the ATI Technologies theater.
- June 21: The full E3 2005 trailer is released, according to timestamps on 3dgamers.com.
2006
- May 9: Remedy announces their partnership with Microsoft.
- May 10-12: E3 2006. A trailer is released somewhere around this time, with no timestamp available.
- September 27: Intel Developer Forum 2006. An Alan Wake demo is shown off, with a focus on the asset streaming and physics performance.
- September 29-30: X06. A demo is again shown behind closed doors. A new batch of screenshots is released, and a trailer is planned to be released, but never is.
2007
- The collector's edition includes a trailer dated to this period. No public footage is released this year, however.
- Autumn-winter: Remedy begins retooling their game into a linear experience, after being dissatisfied with the open world design.
2008
- October 21: A new trailer is released under the name "Alan Is Awake", according to IGN. New screenshots are released.
2009
- June 2-4: E3 2009. A trailer and screenshots are released, and Alan Wake receives its very first public gameplay demo.
- September 24-27: TGS 2009. Another gameplay demo is shown off.
- December 20: Remedy uploads a short gameplay teaser to their YouTube channel.
2010
- February 11: Remedy uploads an "X10" trailer to their YouTube channel.
- April 1: Remedy uploads a fake trailer for "Alan Wake Wars."
- April 29: Remedy uploads the launch trailer for Alan Wake on their YouTube channel.
- May 14: After over 6 years in development, Alan Wake is finally released on the Xbox 360 in Europe.
- May 18: Alan Wake is released in North America.
- May 20: Alan Wake is released in Australia.
2012
- February 16: Alan Wake receives a self-funded PC port in North America and Australia.
- March 2: The PC port is released in Europe.
- March 30: The PC port is released in Japan.
Before the Nightmare
"There was this feeling that... after [the] Max Payne games we should move away from linear experience[s]. From that perspective, came the idea of a free-roaming open world."
- Sam Lake
Around late 2003, as the development team at Remedy was recovering from the rather intense crunch of delivering Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne to Rockstar, a small group of designers started concepting a new game.
There was a strong desire to do something entirely different, as the developers had spent the last 7 years or so in a gloomy New York. As such, the initial idea for a Max Payne followup was rather far removed from the previous games: a comedic fantasy game, inspired by the likes of Terry Pratchett novels. The Alan Wake Illuminated artbook refers to this idea as the Visual Prototype. The early idea was being worked on for a few months, but was eventually abandoned in favor of stronger contemporary themes, inspired by psychological thrillers.
While the fantasy theme was abandoned, the prototype nonetheless worked as a foundation to what was to come. The Visual Prototype featured a large open world with entirely dynamic lighting, a focus on lush outdoors environments and the conflict of light and darkness as themes, all of which eventually ended up forming the basis for Mr. Wake's wild week.
 |
 |
Early Ideas and Sleepless Nights
As the developers shifted their focus towards a new direction, from laughs to night terrors, a new storyline and setting for the game naturally followed. The game now starred a tortured writer, who had come to a quiet Pacific Northwest town to relax and forget his past.
Between Max Payne and Max Payne 2, writer Sam Lake had written a screenplay for a movie called Pohjavesi ("Undertow"). The basis of Alan Wake ended up coming from here, such as Baba Yaga, The Clicker and many others, as many of the story concepts were cut from the same cloth.
In these very early stages, Alan's character was more akin to Max from Remedy's earlier games. Alan's wife Alice had died several years before the game's start, and Alan had come to the small town of Bright Falls specifically to heal from his insomnia, caused by the loss of his loved one. While a basic backbone for the game's backstory did exist, most of the plot remained rather nebulous from 2004 all the way up to 2008.
The protagonist
Alan was initially conceived as much younger, potentially a student. The idea of a very young protagonist ended up being very short-lived, however, and Remedy hired Finnish TV actor Ilkka Villi to pose as Alan's reference material. Alan's initial design featured him wearing a brown field jacket and a red scarf. Some versions of the model also had glasses. This design ended up being showcased at E3 2005.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Enemies
The concept of "darkness" overtaking creatures of flesh and bone to use as puppets was the plan from the very start. However, how exactly this would appear in game wasn't clear from the start.
 |
 |
 |
Early ideas for enemies included wolves, bears and birds being overtaken by darkness. These ideas were discarded fairly quickly due to limitations with the engine, but the birds ended up making their comeback in the final game. Possessed wolves were reintroduced many, many years later in Alan Wake 2.
 |
 |
Another early idea was humanoid creatures made out of the murky waters of Cauldron Lake. These creatures would've been rather malleable and featured tentacles or other nonhuman appendages to attack Alan with. While these creatures were discarded, presumably due to how complex the technical execution would've been, they still bear a striking resemblance to the final game's Taken.
 |
 |
Eventually, the enemies were designed to resemble men wearing strange, patchy-looking cloaks. This version of the army of the darkness were called "shades". The shades ended up sticking around for a considerable amount of time, showing up in development screenshots as late as 2007.
2005: Shedding Light on Mr. Wake
April-May
Alan Wake was initially revealed slightly before E3 2005. A domain for www.alanwake.com was registered in April of 2005, with the first teaser trailer and batch of screenshots for the game launching on the site on May 7th, 2005 at the latest.
At this point, the game hardly resembles the final title, or really even a game. The team was still hard at work experimenting with the technology and building their vision. The game's engine was mostly done at this point, and Remedy's intention was very much to show off their flashy open world, dynamic lighting and physics-driven environment. No real progress on story missions or a script had been done yet, and the announcement was mostly done to gauge publisher interest. Years later, the developers went on to lament the announcement as happening way too early.
Alan's original model. While he is still based on Finnish actor Ilkka Villi, his facial features are notably younger.
A nice, peaceful sunset in Bright Falls.
Another shot of Alan's mug.
Another sunset in Bright Falls.
A showcase of the engine's dynamic lighting system.
An overview of Bright Falls from the railway bridge shows how the waterfront of the town has changed completely, both in architecture and land layout.
Alan standing outside Bright Falls. The sunlight shading looks notably more primitive compared to later showcases. The world outside the town of Bright Falls also seems mostly unmodeled.
A better look at the early Bright Falls. The church looked quite a bit more like a cathedral, while some of the generic buildings had a southern tinge to them.
E3 2005
| To do: A thread on the Remedy Community forums used to once link to a whole bunch of threads, including the E3 2005 demo photo repository and a description of the demo. Can this still be saved somehow? |
The game was demonstrated behind closed doors to a group of industry insiders, with the intention to gauge publisher interest. Remedy eventually ended up signing a contract with Microsoft, bringing the game to Windows and the then-upcoming Xbox 360. A video of the game was captured by a fan, and screencaps of it were uploaded to the AlanWAKE.net forums in 2005. Sadly, the video and nigh all screencaps of said video are lost to time, and unlikely to resurface.
As the story and mission structure were still hazy at best, the demo mostly focused on the engine technology. According to previews, the demo featured a short snippet of Alan running around Bright Falls with a flashlight and a revolver. Based on the previews, it appears no enemies would've spawned in yet, which is supported by the rather unfinished look of them in the later released trailer. The Remedy employees seem to have talked about light doing damage to the enemies, which would end up surviving as a gameplay mechanic all the way to the final game. The developers demonstrated weather effects affecting the clouds, the sea and foliage, and volumetric light rays being cast by the sun over the world.
The demo ended with a short in-game cinematic of Alan driving away in an SUV, ending up at a lighthouse, and finding it to be locked. He's faced with an army of robed figures, marking the end of the demo. Outsiders would have to wait until July to get a taste of the game's cinematics.
Alan standing next to his SUV, somewhere in Bright Falls.
Alan driving his SUV through the main street of Bright Falls, past the Bright's Diner.
An overview of Bright Falls. Sadly, only the thumbnail is preserved for now.
A very blurry photo of Bright Falls at night. Camera behaviour seems identical to the later IDF '06 demo.
July
In July of 2005, Remedy released an extended cut of the teaser trailer. The trailer includes several extended versions of shots from the teaser, as well as an ending sequence showing Alan attempting to escape to a lighthouse as the sun sets. The trailer ends with Alan being ambushed by several seemingly A-posing enemies.
At this point, the main enemy force of the game was called "shades," and they fill roughly the same purpose as the taken in the final game. The shades were supposed to attack Alan after sundown, and were similarly vulnerable to flashlights as the final game's taken are. The appearance of the shades, however, is distinctly more cult-like than the final's more supernatural tint.
The two tracks used in the trailer were never released, and were also never heard again. Oddly enough, almost 20 years later, a remade and slightly changed version of the first track appeared in Alan Wake 2, indicating that it was the work of Petri Alanko.
The trailer gives us a slightly clearer peek at the Bright Falls at the time.
2006
April
In April of 2006, Remedy publically announced their partnership with Microsoft on their press releases page. The game would be delivered to Windows and Xbox 360.
E3 2006
At around E3 2006, another trailer of the game would be released, now touting the Microsoft partnership. The trailer appears to be yet again a re-cut of footage captured around E3 2005, revealing a little more of the cinematic of Alan driving to the lighthouse. The trailer ends with Alan lighting an oil lantern in a dark forest. Lanterns did not end up making it to the final game.
Alan's design has been updated, now sporting his final look with a tweed jacket covering a hoodie. The trailer's music is again a unique composition that hasn't been heard since.
The game didn't make a proper appearance at E3 2006, skipping it in favour of making a bigger splash later the same year.
IDF 2006
The game made another appearance at the Intel Developers Forum 2006. This time, Remedy had a technology demo mostly focusing on the engine's use of multicore processing and hardware threading.
The demo starts out with a short cutscene showing off some locations in the game world. A very brief glimpse of Bright Falls in its 2005 design can be seen. Alan is standing near Bright Falls Light & Power, in the warehouses that ended up being used in the final Episode 5. The transformer yard is covered up with strange-looking warehouse buildings and there is an empty lot to the right of the big warehouse that the lighting demo is performed in.
For the second half, Alan is teleported to a farm. The location of this farm is difficult to pinpoint due to the low quality of the footage, and nothing like it remains in the final game. It is most likely not the Breaker Apple Farm (more on that below), since the farm is located on a rather flat open area, rather than the mountainous terrain near the dam.
Bright Falls, still in its 2005 iteration. This indicates that the build used for IDF may have been an older one, or the footage used for the cutscene was prerecorded.
Boom! goes the dynamite. The tornado blows up an unsuspecting fuel tank.
The area near the dam.
An overview of the mysterious farm. This photo showcases the vast amount of flat terrain around the location, a very unusual layout not seen anywhere in the final game.
X06 Barcelona
Now partnered with Microsoft, Remedy once again showed off their game at Microsoft's own X06 event. Alan Wake's participation was news long before the event, with Remedy making big promises about the showcase. The show came and went... with little tangible info to the general public. The Xbox 360 version of the Collector's Edition includes a trailer for the event, showing that more was intended to be released, but ultimately wasn't. Outsiders had to make do with a handful of new screenshots and roughly 5 seconds of video from a Microsoft sizzle reel. Thrilling.
The unreleased trailer for the first time includes voice acting, showing Alan's internal narration. Alan's final voice actor, Matthew Porretta, doesn't appear to have been cast yet, and it remains unknown who Mr. Wake was voiced by during this time of development. The direction for the voiceover is notably more lethargic compared to Porretta's final take on the character, a fact noted by many journalists of the time.
The trailer this time uses a version of "Welcome to Bright Falls," a composition that did survive to the final game. This version has a slightly different arrangement emphasizing the cello at the start more, and the composition shifts to a different direction featuring the main motif from "The Night it All Began" on the final soundtrack.
Behind closed closed doors, the story was quite different, however...
Demo
As with E3 2005, another demo was shown off behind closed doors. This time, the studio had a story demo.
According to previews, Remedy opened the demo with a shared presentation between the creative director and lead writer, who explained a little about the game's backstory.
Alan was a writer, who had once with the help of his wife, Alice, written a bestselling novel. The novel itself basically wrote itself, courtesy of a strange guiding voice in his head, that started manifesting after he'd met Alice. Once the novel was published, his wife disappeared under oddly similar circumstances as what his novel presented. Wracked by worry about his wife, as well as the loss of his muse, Alan began suffering from insomnia. He managed to find a clinic in the small town of Bright Falls, where he headed to alone to heal. Once arriving there, he starts seeing visions of Alice in his dreams, and starts writing a new book in his journal.
The game's demo started out with a short montage of dark images accompanied by strings, which presumably refers to the "X06 Demo Intro" video included with the Collector's Edition.
| Speaker | Line |
|---|---|
| Alan | My name is Alan Wake. I'm a writer. |
| Alan | You'll think I'm crazy, but it's vital that I deliver this story before it's too late. |
| Alan | Time is running out. |
After the intro sequence, the team once again showed off some of the technical capabilities of the engine, showing the large open world and weather simulation, as well as the tornado. Most likely not too dissimilar from the IDF demo a few days earlier.
The demo then moved on to a showcase of a story mission. The story mission appears to have been built for the event specifically. Alan drives up to Mott's gas station, to pick up a pair of keys for a cabin he's staying in. He ends up getting into a bit of a verbal scuffle, and Mott finishes up the conversation with the eerie words "Must be tough, knowing that your words can change things." Alan takes off in his SUV to drive to the cabin.
On the way to the cabin, Alan reflects on the words of Mr. Mott. He narrates his thoughts in a Max Payne -esque monologue, talking about how in his book he's working on a scene in which the main character meets a hitchhiker as he's driving. Shortly thereafter, Alan meets a hitchhiker, who he picks up. To make idle chatter, he starts talking to the hitchhiker about his new book.
| Speaker | Line |
|---|---|
| Hitchhiker | First taker I've had all night. I guess I look a little rough. |
| Alan | Funny thing... I'm a writer, and I was working on a story about a writer who, after a tragic loss, goes to live in a secluded cabin. |
| Alan | There he writes a horror story about creatures of darkness disguised as men. |
| Alan | When he leaves the cabin, he finds out that the world has turned into the nightmare he's written. |
| Alan | The story began with the writer picking up a hitchhiker on the way to the cabin... |
| Hitchhiker | Let me guess. The hitchhiker's the killer? |
| Alan | Actually, the hitchhiker's the one that gets killed. |
Snippets of the conversation made their way into the unreleased X06 trailer. The rest are paraphrased by various magazines and likely to be a little off.
Shortly, the two of them come across a car wreck on the road, with a body of a woman lying next to it. Alan exits his car to check on the woman, when suddenly, an 18-wheeler comes out of nowhere and crashes into Alan's car, presumably killing the hitchhiker in it. Alan looks at the body down by him, and it now looks just like Alan himself. He falls unconscious.
As Alan wakes up, it's already nighttime. He has a flashlight and a revolver in his hands, and both the body and the wrecks are gone. He decides to head to the cabin on foot. The cabin is on the other side of a ravine, connected by a rickety rope bridge. As Alan crosses the bridge, the camera switches to an angle showing the bridge bobbing up and down, as if some invisible creature is walking on it. Alan is then met with the hitchhiker who should be dead, along with some hooded figures, ending the demo in a cliffhanger.
Alongside the demo, Remedy explained that the story of the game was intended to be told in episodes, like a TV show, much like the final game. The mission was supposedly a story mission early in the game's runtime. Nothing resembling it can be found in the finished title.
Screenshots
Alan posing with a gun and a flashlight in front of Mott's gas station.
Alan posing in the middle of some dark, foggy woods, as one does.
The tornado ravaging the unknown structure, as seen previously at IDF 2006.
Alan encounters, a bright, otherworldly light.
The light proved too much for a feeble writer.
A showcase of the day-night system.
Ditto.
The Bright Falls coal mine. The area would end up getting entirely redesigned for the final game.
The same area at night, from the other side of the building.
The original Anderson farm. The area would similarly get redesigned, though the roads were left in the final game's map.
Ditto.
The Thomas Saw Mill. The location is never seen in the final game, though some leftovers remain.
Alan's cabin, the Bird Leg House.
The dam.
Bright Falls has received its final design.
October
The Finnish gaming magazine Pelit ran a cover story on Remedy and Alan Wake in October of 2006. The article mostly went into behind the scenes affairs, rather than focusing on the game itself. At the time, Remedy was working on the game with a team of just 30 people internally. Also, while many other magazines had a - presumably speculated - release date of 2007, Remedy in the article states that no release date was set internally.
November
The very final issue of Computer Gaming Weekly magazine (#268) ran a cover story on Alan Wake in November 2006. While a lot of the information provided is simply reiterations of X06 impressions from September of the same year, the magazine contained some nifty screenshots and developer interviews hinting at plans that Remedy had in mind at the time.
The magazine is notably the first place making mention of multiple playable character, though no details on the supporting cast was released. This is presumably because at the time, barely any work on the other playable characters had been done. This'll come back a little later...
| Early map | Final map |
|---|---|
|
|
An early map was included in the article. This map, alongside an early layout for Bright Falls, includes some interesting information on characters and locations that were never shown off. Various leftovers of these points of interest still remain in the game.
- The Elderwood National Park was located northwest of the town at this point. In the final game, the landmass north of Watery has nothing marked on it.
- The saw mill was in place. The area for the saw mill still exists in the final game, but has nothing place in it.
- A note indicating "Sarah"'s living place is next to the saw mill. The only Sarah in the final game is Sheriff Sarah Breaker. Since a building called "Breaker's Apple Farm" is located in the northeast side of the map, presumably Sarah Breaker at this point was an apple farmer living outside Bright Falls.
- A trailer park is located near the saw mill. The Sparkling River Estates Trailer Park, where Rose lives, is located closer to Cauldron Lake in the final game.
- There was an army base with a seismological research station located north of the town. While it was never shown, the corresponding chunk of the game map is still named nw_militarybase.
- There is a second small island to the west of Bright Falls. To accommodate the second island, the bay is much wider and the bridge leading to Watery much longer. The road leading from Bright Falls to the bridge also appears to be missing.
- Deerfest was already the focus of Bright Falls at this point. The layout of the town resembles the one from E3 2005, even though screenshots of a finalized Bright Falls were released around X06, hinting that this map may predate the X06 demo.
- There appears to have been a ghost town north to the area where the motel is located in the final game.
- The motel was initially located roundabout the same area as where the Sparkling Estates Trailer Park is located. This is the first time Barry has been mentioned in materials, and it seems that at this point Nightingale hadn't been named.
- There was a flat, rocky area to the east of Cauldron Lake with volcanic activity. In the final game, the area is another rugged hilly segment with absolutely nothing in it. There was also a lava cavern named "Indian Cave" near to it.
- The Bird Leg Cabin was located on the west edge of Cauldron Lake at this point, on a mountain. This is consistent with descriptions from X06. The area is still called sw_wakescabin in the game files.
- Diver's Isle didn't exist yet, as Alan's cabin was simply located on dry land.
- The map makes note of "Cape Campbell" with the lighthouse on it.
- The Anderson Farm was at this point located to the southwestern quarter of the game. In the final game, the location of the farm is never explicitly mentioned, but it's placed far northwest from Bright Falls, near where Elderwood National Park is in the early map. The area where the farm used to be still contains the road formations seen in the early map, and the files are still called sw_anderssonfarm [sic].
- The coal mine used to be located near to the Anderson Farm. In the final game, it's a few miles east of the early location. The roads leading to the coal mine still remain in the final map.
- There appears to be something in the southeastern corner of the map, but it's cut off.
2007
2007 was a quiet year. Remedy released no new information publically, which lead to some speculation about the game being cancelled.
GDC 2007
Remedy held a presentation in March 2007 at GDC. The main focus of the talk was the internal structure of the development team at Remedy, but the slides also contained some very low-res screenshots of WorldEditor, Remedy's in-house level editing utility. It's one of the only peeks we have into an open Bright Falls!
An overview of the entire world. The layout of the map lines up with the one from the CGW cover story some 4 months prior. The Andersson Farm seems to have some buildings set up behind the label.
The Bright Falls coal mine. Seems unchanged from the screenshots released at X06.
Bright Falls Light & Power! The main building seems to be missing, while it was present at IDF 2006. It may just be unloaded, however. A second building has appeared next to the warehouses seen at IDF 2006. This building isn't present in the final game.
Internally
| To do: Describe all the missions that were prototyped at this time
|
Internally, the game was in trouble. Throughout late 2006 and most of 2007, the team tirelessly prototyped many iterations of game missions, without much in the way of results.
"I just felt that we kind of started moving away from the idea of having this grounding idea of a normal world as a part of the setting. [...] [W]e were kind of drifting away from that and more and more gameplay we were looking at started to support the idea that, well, if you know that the nighttime will be full of danger and horrors, then it makes sense for you during daytime to prepare for nighttime. And it started more and more being this survival thing."
- Sam Lake
"As we implemented early story missions between Fall 2006 and Fall 2007, it became increasingly obvious that the concept of an entirely open game world that spanned a hundred square kilometers was not conductive for telling a thriller."
- Jörg Neumann, Tony Elias, Alan Wake Illuminated
"This period of time from 2005, with us trying different things... It just kept on going and going... and people were feeling tired and frustrated trying to bring these elements together."
- Sam Lake
The development cycle lead to many discarded concepts, and eventually the abandonment of the baseline guiding principle for the game. The plot was rewritten several times in a short timespan, and the game's structure was also reworked numerous times.
| Early map | Final map |
|---|---|
|
|
Another map was drafted up somewhere around this time, and can be briefly seen used as the minimap in Ars Technica's video on Alan Wake. It was included within the Collector's Edition DLC on Steam. Various location names appear to be slightly misplaced in this version.
- Elderwood National Park has now been moved to its final location in the southeast corner of the map. Lovers' Peak seems to be missing at this point.
- A harbour has appeared in the northeastern corner of the map. The final game's files make reference to a military harbour somewhere in the northwest.
- The particle accelerator has been added to the map.
- A laboratory is present near the particle accelerator. This is possibly the Moorcock Institute, mentioned alongside the particle accelerator in Alan Wake Illuminated.
- A cabin has been marked to the north of the dam. The significance of this is unknown, though the location resembles the cabin with the rope bridge seen at X06.
- There is some sort of industrial zone placed west of Bright Falls.
- The second island between Bright Falls and Watery has been removed at this point. As a result, the bay is now also much smaller, matching the final map.
- Bright Falls' layout has been finished.
- A graveyard is located to the east of Bright Falls. This area is still called ne_graveyard in the final game.
- A retirement home has been placed to the east of the graveyard. Bright Falls finally received a retirement home in Alan Wake 2, though located closer to the town, on the western side of it.
- Watery is now present on the map. The final map adds a road across and through the town, but strangely the layout of the area in the finished game's files still matches this early layout.
- A radio station is now located near the motel. The radio station in the final game has been moved slightly to the south, to the next mountain over. This may be a mistake in the map, however.
- Alan's cabin now appears to be separate from the Bird Leg Cabin. No reason for this is ever specified, and this may be another mistake, since behind the scenes info from this time still make reference to both cabins being the same.
- The Andersons' name is spelt as Andersson, just like all the game files related to it. Andersson (with two s's) is the original Swedish spelling of the name, also used in Finland, while Anderson (with one s) is the Americanized version.
- There is a ghost town located to the south of the coal mine now. In the final game, there are two ghost towns; one east of Mirror Peak seen in Episode 3, and a smaller one with an unknown location seen in Episode 6.
- There is a cut off area to the southeastern side of town again, which starts with "Ju". This is presumably the junkyard, which can still be found there in the final game.
Eventually, the development came to a head. In September 2007, Remedy set up an internal "emergency team" to figure out a new structure for the game. After two months of rigorous reinvention, the team finally came to a conclusion. This period of innovation resulted in concepts such as the Taken, the "fight with light" gameplay mechanics, the idea of the Dark Presence, discarding Alan's insomnia as a plot element and most notably, removing the dynamic open world and focusing on linearly crafted levels.
Missions
| To do: Organize this. Some rough dates were given in Alan Wake Illuminated. EXTREMELY TEMP!!! |
"Scenario 3"
Time developed: October 2006 to November 2006
After X06, the team started to experiment further with nighttime gameplay. Two demos in to a marketing cycle, and the game still not have a clear direction with what to do with the essentially main gameplay loop.
In this early mission, Alan has to defend the Anderson farm with a friend, who appears to be Ben Mott, at this time the gas station owner. Alan & co suspect that there's something outside the farm. They head outside, hear whispers in the dark, and are ambushed by several shades. The two escape the ambush and head back to the farm to start a generator, which causes the shades to disappear.
While this mission specifically was abandoned, the final game echoes the concept with Episode 2 and Alan's begrudging cooperation with Mott, this time as a kidnapper.
"Scenario 4"
Time developed: November 2006
While working on the more complex "Scenario 3," the team also experimented with various survival mechanics in the same vein. Scenario 4 features Alan driving around Bright Falls to gather supplies, lights and generators to a farm in order to survive the night.
Sam Lake later implied in an interview that this mission may not have been the only one with a survivalist focus. The act of gathering supplies made for a difficult conundrum storywise, since it's not a mission that moves the plot on at all. For most likely this reason, the survival aspects of the game began to be downplayed over time.
"Bird leg house"
Time developed: December 2006 to March 2007
"Bird Leg House": An early episode 1 for the game. Very surreal.
"Episode 2"
Time developed: April 2007 to May 2007
Episode 2: A second episode for the game. Features Agent Nightingale as a playable character, the only time anyone but Alan has ever been conclusively placed as a playable character in the game.
Unknown mission
Time developed: June 2007 to August 2007
Alan Wake Illuminated implies a third lost episode, or otherwise lengthy linear mission that has never been shown publically. Developed over the summer of 2007, the mission was roughly 20 minutes long, but abandoned due to a lack of control over the timing of the mission.
While nothing is known of the mission's contents, the issues with the naturally functioning open world hinted at in the book would later on cause a major redesign and an almost complete reboot of the game.
Runaway train
Time developed: Presumably mid-to-late 2007
In mid 2007, the mission focus shifted around to working in what the team called "memorable moments." These would've been more linear experiences set in the open world, most likely not unlike missions in later Grand Theft Auto games. The very first one developed was a mission about stopping a runaway train.
While not a lot of details about the mission are given in Alan Wake Illuminated, the path of the train can roughly be traced in the final game, leading from the early coal mine, over the railway bridge in Bright Falls (seen in the intro), to a broken bridge near the dam.
Plane crash
Time developed: Presumably mid-to-late 2007
Another "memorable moment," a mission involving a plane crash. Alan sees a plane on fire in the sky, and decides to chase it down to see if he can help the survivors. Once he reaches the crash site, the plane seems to be abandoned and the wreck old, like it's been there for years.
The idea eventually made it into Episode 1, as an early foreshadowing of the Dark Presence's powers of flinging physics objects.
Of note is that the layout of the roads in the overhead screenshot match Watery's, making this the only known screenshot of Watery before Alan Wake 2.
Unknown "memorable moment"
| To do: Get a screencap of the trailer |
Alan Wake Illuminated once again implies the existence of another unseen mission, in which Alan follows a strange light. This mission was potentially shown in an early trailer.
UFO Mission
Time developed: Presumably mid-to-late 2007
A rather out there mission even by Alan Wake's standard. Alan follows the lights of a UFO which attempts to abduct various items with its tractor beam. Cut from the final game with zero mentions, with a variation making it into an early pitch prototype of Alan Wake 2, which was also cut without any mentions in the final game. Fun stuff!
2008
Internally
| To do: "The Frying Pan", "Midnight In Bird Leg Grove", that seaplane episode |
October
After a dazzling two years since the last public update on Alan Wake, Remedy finally showed up with more information. A "Cinematic Trailer" was released, mostly showcasing various prerendered cutscenes from the time, and five screenshots were released.
At the time, a PC port of the game was still being planned, as revealed by forum posts by Remedy employees[3]
Around this time, the game's official site received a snazzy new Flash-based redesign, to reflect the renewed design direction of the game. While none of the articles or associated material on the site has been saved, the site featured a track that eventually went unused in the final game.
2009
February
In February of 2009, some notable community members posted early manuscript pages from the game. These apparently came from promotional materials given by Remedy themselves. What the rest of the material looked like is not known. None of the text is present in the final game in any form.
The amount of pages keeps growing each night. There are also new edits on the old pages. They keep getting more aggressive. The story is rewriting itself. The protagonist is now my namesake, and his wife is called Alice. The most worrying aspect: the genre seems to be shifting. It's turning into a horror story. I can no longer be certain whether the hero can succeed or even survive. Apart for jumbled fragments of bad dreams and an oppressive feeling, I can remember nothing of the process when I wake up. But this morning, a breakthrough! When I came to my senses, I could smell her perfume on my shirt. I am close. I know it. I must push on.
Reads nothing like the manuscript pages in the final game. The manuscripts in Alan Wake are pages from a fictional novel titled Departure that Alan wrote, written in a third-person perspective and following characters in Bright Falls. The tone and subject matter of this early paragraph resemble the tone of the "writer in the cabin" TV segments found across the episodes in the final game.
Rusty's screams were still ringing in my ears. The tree stump the grove got its name from looked like a severed leg of a monsterous bird. I prayed that the gun would make a difference. Every time I moved the flashlight, I was afraid of the horrors it might reveal. Suddenly a ragged arrow gloved in the light. I followed it.
This page resembles the kind of writing you'd find in the finished game, but it's still written from a first-person perspective, making it resemble one of Alan's internal monologues in the final game. The page also makes reference to the early version of Episode 2.
I became increasingly afraid to go to sleep. I was convinced that I would wake up changed, darkness having seeped in through the cracks in the floor, crawled up to my bed, and made its way inside, through a nostril or an ear. I barricaded the door of the cabin. I kept the lights on at all times. I taped a note on the door (I had forgotten so many things already): 'Don't go out.'
Once again the tone and subject matter resemble the TV sections more.
E3 2009
| To do: E3 trailer goes here too. Finish the differences. Screenshots. |
Remedy showed an extensive piece of gameplay at E3 2009. This would be the first time the public got to see unedited gameplay. The demo shows the second part of episode 2, which was still very different at this point. The demo starts with a small video clip summarizing the story elements up to the point shown in the demo. These seem to be mostly unchanged in the final.
The gameplay portion begins with Alan and Barry in a cabin. The cabin shown in the demo is down the road from the cabin in which the final version of the episode begins in. The demo cabin contains a TV and a hidden jumpscare script in the final game.
Alan has a revolver and a flaregun with him as he makes his way to the rental office. Alan only has a revolver in the final game.
...stuff goes here..
The demo ends when Alan reaches the lighthouse. He gets ambushed by the Dark Presence tornado.
The latter part of Episode 2: Taken was shown. It had many differences:
- The cabin where Alan and Barry stayed was a lot smaller.
- Barry had a slightly different voice.
- Reading the manuscript page has a different scene; the camera circles around Alan as the words fade in and out of the screen. This was later used in Alan Wake's American Nightmare.
- Alan had the revolver, shotgun and the flaregun when walking to Rusty's. In the final game, the revolver isn't acquired until from Rusty and Alan has no weapon in the beginning of the act.
- If the flaregun was shot when walking to Rusty's, a helicopter flew past the trees.
- Instead of fighting taken Rusty, the was a battle against inanimate objects.
- The inanimate objects would just drop to the ground when the darkness was burnt away, instead of vanishing. This was probably changed to avoid the player getting stuck behind inanimate objects.
- The Taken had completely different sounds.
- When an enemy was killed with a direct shot from a flaregun, the camera circled around instead of following the flare.
- The game displayed a similar cutscene when lighting a normal flare. This was likely removed, as it would've become rather annoying over time.
- The sound of burning away the darkness was totally different.
- The birds made completely different sounds.
- You would've ran through a house, which a bulldozer then would attack. The bulldozer would break the house in half, after which you get a chance to fight it.
- Rusty was dragged to Stucky's gas station, where he would've been killed.
- Rusty was never turned into a taken.
- The Dark Presence had different screams.
- A crosshair was visible on-screen while driving.
- You would eventually end up at the lighthouse, where the demo ended into an ambush by the tornado.
Screenshots
| E3 2009 demo | Final game |
|---|---|
 |
|
- The radar had a compass-look to it.
- Weapon slots where swapped like cards in the top left corner, rather than with an on-screen prompt.
- The flashlight charge bar and the health bar were wrapped around the radar.
TGS 2009
Alan Wake had "gone gold" in August 2009 and was undergoing final polishing. As a result, a lot of the differences are subtle visual changes. Oddly, while the published footage (below) is very close to the final, a version of the gameplay included in the Xbox 360 Collector's Edition (above) features a much earlier version of the mission, with placeholder music.
The mission "On the run" was shown.
- The HUD was the same as in the E3 2009 demo.
- The given objective was "Escape Police" rather than "Escape the police".
- There were a lot more men searching for Alan in the beginning.
- Alan could run significantly further, and took less time to recover when fatigued.
- Flares produced way more light.
- The sound of Dark Presence being close was different.
- The Dark Presence's growling was different.
- most of the audio in general was shaped up for the final release. Especially noticiable were the HUD sound effects, which were rather loud and distracting.
- The Dark Presence didn't distort the screen.
- The sound from the police radio could be heard further.
- Nightingale had a different voice actor.
- Alan had a piece of dialogue about sheriff Breaker and agent Nightingale. The same clip has Alan feature a different tone of voice.
- The demo ends in an ambush for weaponless Alan by Taken deputies, but this never occurs in the game.
| TGS 2009 demo | Final game |
|---|---|
|
|
- The HUD remains unchanged from the E3 2009 demo.
| To do: Describe the differences. |
The last Alan Wake -video showing a clearly unfinished version. At this point, the game had been finished and was undergoing final polishing.
| Gameplay preview | ! Final game |
|---|---|
|
|
