User:989Nintendo898/Prerelease:Alan Wake

This page details prerelease information and/or media for Alan Wake (Windows).

To do: This page is a mess. Split the times into subpages (2003-2005,2005-2008,2008-2010) Upload the screenshots Turn the lists of changes into proper paragraphs Upload the screenshots, make comparisons Find a way to scan Alan Wake: Illuminated Reupload the trailers; the current videos are very low quality. The early manuscripts from Remedy Forums have interesting stuff

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.

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.

Subpages

2003-2005 Concepts before Alan Wake, before the reveal.

2005-2008 The experimental phase and radio silence.

2008-2010 Shaping up the final product.

Original Storyline

Based on early media previews, it appears that Alan Wake once had a rather different storyline, following similar ideas, but with rather different story beats, altering the mood.

Alan originally arrived in Bright Falls to cure his insomnia. By the time he arrived, he had already written a manuscript, and Alice had disappeared. Many prerelease trailers and demos, such as the X06 demo, are largely based around Alan's odd experiences prior to the game's beginning.

Pre-E3 2005

To do: Visual prototype, concept art, stuff galore

• The bird leg cabin originally had legs, which it used to roam around in the forest during night.
• Taken were called shades

2008 Cinematic Trailer

To do: describe the differences, add screenshots.

• Parts of "Midnight in Bird Leg Grove", a cut mission described in Alan Wake: Illuminated, can be seen here.

In November 2008, Remedy released a trailer consisting only of FMV cutscenes. It too shows many differences.

• "Welcome to Bright Falls" has a louder cello in the beginning, a more prominent piano, way shorter main riff and transitions to a completely different riff afterwards, one that was used in "The Night It All Began" in the final game.
• Pat Maine has Barry's voice.
• The railway bridge lacks the "Welcome to Bright Falls" text.
• Rose looks older, has a way thicker accent and wears a blue outfit.
• Doctor Hartman had a deeper voice.

This trailer shows the point in time, where Remedy had finally managed to exit the preproduction stages, and were shaping up the game and it's storyline.

Screenshots

2008 sreenshot	Final game
640px	640px

• Early bookstore at day, located in a different part of Bright Falls

• A screenshot depicting the cut episode involving a seaplane

New storyline era

In late 2008, Remedy started rewriting the story to what we see in the final game.

Manuscript pages

Some members from the Remedy community forum had fun posting early manuscript pages in February 2009.

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.

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.

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.'

(Source: Remedy community forums)

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
640px	640px

• 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. 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
640px	640px

• The HUD remains unchanged from the E3 2009 demo.

Alan Wake - Gameplay Teaser

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.