I know nothing about Alan wake, other than a IRL rock band is involved (???) and also that first game is from 2010 (wow that game is… fifteen years old…) but take this ask as an opportunity to infodump about it if you’d like! /genuine
@malewifehenrycooldown I AM SO SORRY FRIEND ;A; I've been so busy with work (I just started back after being on break) but I will take this opportunity to infodump about one of my fav game franchises.
There IS an actual rock band involved! It's Poet's of the Fall's in-game band called Old Gods of Asgard (please listen to their tracks for AW 1&2 + Control highly recommend) and their members Tor and Odin are characters that you interact with in both installments!
But anyway anyway!!
So AW 1 came out in 2010 (yea can't believe it'll be 15 in May holy fuck), and you play as the titular writer himself Alan obviously. The first game has a very big Stephen King vibe, and it's honestly different than any other survival horror type game I've played.
I'm gonna put a read more here because this post might get a bit LONG.
But yea, pretty much what's the synopsis of the first game is Alan and his wife Alice go on a trip to Bright Falls Washington to help clear his head. They go to a cabin on Cauldron Lake that Alice had rented for this trip, and unbeknownst to Alan until they get there, set up a typewriter so he could write while they were out there. This makes Alan upset because all he wanted to do was go on vacation and spend some time with his wife so he storms out of the cabin. While he's outside, he hears Alice scream and come to find out she had fallen into Cauldron Lake. This prompts Alan to jump in after her and goes unconscious.
When Alan wakes (haha sry sry), he gets into a car crash and there are these shadowy type enemies, which we come to know as the Taken later on; attack Alan in the dark and he finds out that the cabin no longer exists. Alan does go on a kind of wild goose chase trying to find Alice after he believes she's gone missing. Enter Sarah Baker the town sheriff who wants to take Alan into custody (iirc) because of how skeptical she is. She later rescinds her skepticism after she gets attacked by Taken as well.
Throughout your time playing the game, you find manuscript pages of Alan's horror story that are seemingly coming to life.
Before Breaker does get attacked however, Barry Wheeler Alan's manager comes to help him and defend him against the authorities. Breaker does help albeit a bit cautiously, but an FBI agent known as Nightingale shows up and accused Alan of killing Alice (iirc). Alan avoids him, you run around killing Taken, and he then gets contacted by someone who claims to have kidnapped Alice. Come to find out the guy is just a lackey for a local therapist by the name of Dr. Emil Hartman. This location is the 2nd time you meet the seemingly insane Tor and Odin Anderson of The Old Gods of Asgard (you first meet them in the Oh Deer Diner where one of em asks you to play Lime in the Coconut on the jukebox. Gotta love them). But anyway, Hartman gets taken over by the Dark Presence and attacks Alan. He makes it out obviously, and goes to the Anderson's place with Barry where they said they would give em answers to what's been going on.
To make a long story somewhat shorter, Alan gets the answer that the Dark Presence uses art to make itself stronger and expand its domain known as "The Dark Place". They perform a rock concert where you have to fight off hoards of taken, and go find a person known as the "Lady of the Light" who ends up being a woman named Cynthia Weaver. She tells Alan that this isn't the first time this has happened in Bright Falls. In the 70s, a man by the name of Thomas Zane was manipulated by the Dark Presence as well and it took over his then lover Barbara (who you do see/hear throughout the game). Now there has been a guide helping you through the game that I forgot to mention. It takes form of a ghostly diver, and it's at this point in the story you find out it's Zane trying to help you not make the same mistake he did and rescue your wife. Weaver then takes Alan to what she calls The Well-Lit Room where you find The Clicker, a little portion of a broken light switch given to Alan by his mom as a child. This is the thing he needs to save Alice.
Pretty much the ending goes like this:
Alan fights through hell after coming to the conclusion horror stories requires sacrifice and balance.
He comes face to face with the Dark Presence who's taken the form of Barbara.
Alan writes a new ending to the story, "defeats" Barbara by using the Clicker.
Alice escapes the Dark Place and emerges from Cauldron Lake unscathed and Alan takes her place.
This is when Mr. Scratch, Alan's doppelganger who later turns "evil", takes his place and Alan begins writing Return.
It's a wild ride and the gameplay relies heavily on dodging & flashlight usage to weaken the Taken to then shoot and kill em. The first game is a little clunky, but my god is it so much fun to play :3
Sorry it's so long (there's a lot of stuff I might have left out), I just have a lot of love for this series (I have an insert & lore n shit) and I hope you might give it a shot!
Canonically, it has 2 sequels, 3-ish if you could the DLC for Control. The first is American Nightmare which is where Alan is in the Dark Place getting pretty much tortured by Mr. Scratch with a timeloop. And the second is the ACTUAL sequel Alan Wake II which is even more batshit than the first imho.
I'm gonna be streaming the entire Remedy Franchise (which is kinda all connected in a weird way because Sam Lake is batshit insane just like Kojima [affectionate]) if you're interested or again, pick up the game yourself! It's not that expensive on Steam OR there's always a way around that without spending if you catch my drift 👀
But yea!! Please tell me if you play the game, I would LOVE to talk about it with more people!!
Hello, Alan! I hope FOvember is treating you and yours well so far. I have a few questions, if you don't mind me asking!
❤️ is there anything you would like to do with s/i in the near future?
and/or
🌲 - do you have a favorite place to go with s/i? why Is it your favorite?
(-dragonsmooch)
Hello @dragonsmooch it's definitely been a whirlwind for Penni and I so far, but I don't mind answering on behalf of my sibling.
I would hope Penni would be up for traveling to our hometown and just spend a few days reminiscing over our childhood memories. Or if they don't want to do that, maybe go see a movie. Preferably not a horror flick though. I think I'm done with horror stories for a while.
Before Penni moved away from Alice and I, my sibling LOVED to go to Central Park. We would spend so much time there in the fall to people watch, to see the changing leaves, have a cup of coffee and just... Talk. Maybe we could do that again soon. Just for old times sake.
