Movies News Talk
Rose rushes her way through legions of haters and werewolf motorcycles over Number One Fan to save her imagined beloved, Alan Wake. They embrace and the vision fades when they enter the Writer's Room at Zane/Wake's mansion. Then Warlin Door sternly intone that their happiness is just "in the eye of the beholder." All is obviously not as it first appears.
The second episode in the series, North Star, parodies that game in which the female protagonist expLores Coffee World for her brother, Dylan, featuring Jesse Faden from Control. Jesse battles off a living coffee-entity from planet X-13 instead of the Hiss, and she discovers Alan rather than her brother. Time Breaker's third episode finishes much the same. Tim Breaker stumbles across TV sets and deserts and even a text-based Yggdrasil only to find Alan at the twisted heart of the multiverse.
Tim wanders into a comic book-like realm close to the end of Time Breaker. He encounters Jesse Faden, who notes that throughout reality the several incarnations of herself are connected. Her speech bubble covers a panel featuring Alan Wake, Thomas Zane, and Bloody Mr. Scratch side-by-side. They are speculated to be counterparts from alternative worlds, much as Tim and his alternates.
On the same page is another panel with three variations of Alex Casey/Sam Lake. Among them could one be the original Max Payne? Given Remedy's recent fascination in extended worlds and with a remake of the first Payne under development, it seems quite plausible.
In the main game Warlin Door shows as an enigmatic trans-dimensional TV personality. According to numerous fan hypotheses, he vanished from Bright Falls in the 1980s and was allegedly the actual father of Saga Anderson. Night Springs starts with a man who unintentionally crossed another dimension and united with an alien creature allowing him to travel between worlds.
Tim Breaker was tracing Door to the location he first gained his powers from before Wake changed his narrative. This resulted in a reality he describes as a universe "where only concepts exist," yet takes the in-game shape of a text adventure. Tim shown to the player via the choice of several lines of text, is able to negotiate this cosmos by only wishing things into being. By focusing their spotlight on floating words at the end of the first Alan Wake, within the Dark Place the player can similarly will objects into being.
Alan Wake 2: Night Springs responds to a handful of the twelve or so lingering concerns left over from the conclusion of the main game, but its journey into dimension-hopping further complicates the mythos by extending into a shared Remedy multiverse. With three brand-new episodes—Number One Fan, North Star, and Time Breaker—the first of two Expansions for the amazing 2023 survival horror title, Night Springs brings Although a basic idea ties the episodes together, each one of the fictional TV show "Night Springs," hosted by Warlin Door, follows a unique story with a distinct protagonist.
[Warning: Major spoilers for Alan Wake 2 abound in this post.]The FBC's existence in the second game connects into Control and that game's Alan Wake-themed expansion, while Alex Casey is a clear stand-in for Max Payne and the Alan Wake series has always referenced other Remedy games. Remedy's fondness of meta-jokes and stories would have once dismissed some of these allusions as irrelevant, but Night Springs suggests that most if not all Remedy titles are part of the same common multiverse, therefore transforming things entirely. Now canonically connected are control, Alan Wake, and apparently even the experimental quantum break.
There's a lot to consider. For so little a running time, Night Springs is amazing. At about three hours, it might appear small compared to the thirty or so gamers will probably spend with Alan Wake 2's core narrative, but the Expansion's wild inventiveness and genre-bending turns more than make up for any length issues. One thing is definite: there will be a lot more questions whatever answers The Lake House cedes when it opens later this year.
While Quantum Break is strongly hinted to in the Time Breaker episode, Remedy cannot specifically mention the IP as Microsoft owns it. Should Remedy ever reclaim the rights, like it did with Control recently, the game might potentially be completely absorbed into the Wake universe.