Wait, where were the survival horror elements in Alan Wake 2?
I kept my distance from Alan Wake 2 the moment it was revealed as a survival horror game by Remedy in a reveal post about the game in May 2023. “Alan Wake 2 is our first survival horror game,” they said explicitly. I was instantly out. Survival horror games are just not for me.
I am an absolute coward when it comes to scary games. My problem is that I can't separate myself from the character. The creatures attacking the protagonist feel like they're attacking me. It's not just the playable character walking through a decrepit, spooky building, it's me walking through the decrepit, spooky building. With my limited time to play games, why would spend that time playing something that is going to SCARE ME?
What may surprise you, though, is that I LOVE watching other people play scary games on YouTube. Five Nights at Freddie's, the Amnesia series, P.T., I can't get enough of watching people play scary games. So despite me having not played basically any survival horror game, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on what they are, why people like them, and what makes some good and others bad.
Unfortunately, after people got around to playing Alan Wake 2, they couldn't shut up about how amazing it was. I played through and loved Control, and I was itching to see what direction Remedy would take their new connected universe in. More than anything, I wanted to experience what everyone else was experiencing.
So I swallowed my fears and played through Alan Wake 2.
And you know what? It was a FANTASTIC video game! I genuinely loved it. The narrative, the world, the mechanics, the gunplay, on and on and on. Remedy created a superb video game and I am so, so happy I got to experience it.
But…it was in no way, shape, or form a survival horror game. Was it a horror game? Absolutely. But there weren't any mechanics that I attribute to being a survival horror game.
In fact, I have a conspiracy theory that the game originally had more survival horror elements, but they were cut at some point in development.
First, let me discuss some elements that make a game fit into the survival horror genre that Alan Wake 2 didn't have.
There needs to be, well, survival. There should be something chasing the player. The player may need to hide or evade the chaser. The player needs to feel overwhelmed, like they are on the verge of dying.
In comparison to other video games that generally give the player a sense of power over the environment and enemies, survival horror games excel at making the player feel like they are being hunted, like they have no power to stop what wants to hurt them.
Not once in Alan Wake 2 did I feel hunted. Not once did I feel like I was struggling to survive. Was I scared while playing? Absolutely! I screamed multiple times. I had to give myself a pep talk to walk into scary areas. But those were because of horror elements, not survival horror elements.
At first, I thought that maybe it was because I was playing on the easiest difficulty. I wasn't playing Alan Wake 2 for the challenge, I was playing for the narrative. And thankfully, the easiest difficulty removed almost all challenge from the game.
For most enemies in the game, I would shine my flashlight at them to weaken them, then pop them with a headshot or a couple of body shots and they'd go down. There were sturdier enemies that required more ammo to take down and I almost completely exhausted my ammo against a couple of bosses, but I almost never felt like I was struggling to survive. I was overflowing with ammo and batteries.
Not once did I ever have to hide from an enemy. There were two instances in the game where you are required to run from an enemy, more a force of nature than a singular enemy, but it's more of a bombastic scene where your attention is drawn to the destruction in front of you instead of the force chasing you from behind.
So after I beat the game, I went and found an Alan Wake 2 playlist from one of my favorite YouTubers. He played the game on a difficulty that certainly wasn't the easiest. I wanted to see if he faced more survival horror elements.
Unsurprisingly, the enemies took almost three times as much ammo to take down. But again, I wouldn't describe anything in his gameplay as survival horror. He was never hiding and never running from something. There were times where he would go behind cover to heal or reload, but he was always the one in power over the enemies.
Which leads me to my conspiracy theory: I theorize that Alan Wake 2 had more survival horror elements, but they were removed.
There are multiple area layouts that would be conducive to running and hiding, but there just…isn't any running or hiding in the game.
The best example of this is in a basement under a retirement home where you are sent in order to restart a generator. It is a super spooky location!
It's flooded almost up to your waist, and there's constant sounds and groans that could be something, anything, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. The first thing you see after walking down the stairs is a corpse with an axe in it!
As I slowly explored the basement, looking for the fastest way to get to the generator and get the heck out of there, I memorized the layout so I could run away from whatever would chase me. There was a crawl space between rooms that I was confident something would chase me through or I would need to use to escape a fiend of some kind. The generator was, of course, in the back of the basement. After starting it, and creating a bunch of noise, I had to make my way all the way back to the beginning.
The sounds and groans were getting louder and more extreme. My fear was escalating. As if she could sense my distress, Saga says “keep it together, Saga” to herself. And then…I made it to the stairs and exited. I was fairly confident I had somehow accidentally dodged whatever was going to chase me, so I did a quick Google search to see what was in the basement.
Nothing. There are zero enemies in that basement. Zero threats. Nothing can hurt you in that basement. Again, yes, the horror was absolutely there and prevalent. But survival horror? No sir-e.
Much later on, Alan is stuck in a looping room of decent size. The rooms have doors that are sometimes locked and sometimes unlocked. A large cabinet of films sits near the middle of the room, perfectly placed to have a runaround with an enemy. My mind raced with the idea of trying to find the unlocked door while being chased by something. Alan even says “I'm not alone in here” when he first hears a sound.
Once again, there is no danger in this room. No threats. Just the foreboding feeling of an imminent attack.
There were so many of these instances in the game! The layouts of these locations seem like they could have been custom built with the purpose of running from and/or dodging enemies chasing you. There are multiple instances of dialogue or manuscript pages proclaiming that the Dark Presence is hunting Alan.
But this never happens! It's bizarre.
Personally, I think the game is better for NOT being a survival horror game, but it's weird that Remedy was so insistent that it was going to be their first survival horror game. I would not be shocked to learn that between that announcement in May and the release in October, survival horror elements were stripped from the game.
Fortunately, if that's truly the case, it was the right move to make. Alan Wake 2 is an achievement in video game narrative that everyone should experience. If you were pushed away from Alan Wake 2 due to it being described as survival horror, I ask you to push through your fears! If I can do it, you can too! It's well worth your time.
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