E3 - Games I'm looking forward to seeing

#3

Overview.

Alan Wake, is a psychological action-adventure thriller featuring, you guessed it, Alan Wake: a popular novelist who is currently having a huge amount of writers block. This he puts down, in part, to the loss of his wife as well as an uncomfortable dose of insomnia. Following this, Alan retreats to the East Coast town of Bright Falls; where his darkest nightmares seem to be living and breathing in reality. Taking control of Alan, players will explore Bright Falls, and the mysterious herein, attempting to unravel who or what it is that is lurking behind the shadows.

Structured in a similar style as a TV series, Alan Wake is divided into segments, each segment representing a TV episode; with similar plot twists, character arcing and so on and so forth. However, this is far from a linear story - Bright Falls will be open for exploration where one gamers actions could be diversely different to another’s. Although during Remedy Entertainments previous series Max Payne, this time the players most effective weapon may actually be his flashlight. It's believed that there will be both day-time and night-time elements. With the day-time focusing on gather clues and conversing with individuals, and the night-time focusing on exploring the shadows and following up on leads.

What's so great?

There's something about the structure that's very interesting about the structure; the day and night time segments, the promised TV series-style and the freedom to explore and change the progression of the story depending on, for instance, which lead you follow up on first, or whether or not, while driving to your destination, you decide to check out that vacant light that just switched on as you drove past.

The atmosphere is spot on, during the demonstration trailer we were shown how Bright Falls can be changed from a beautiful countryside-esc town into a creepier-than-creep, dark, spooky, almost ghost-like town. And the great thing is, it's the same place. It's not two different maps, one with more visuals and another with sharper looking shapes and shadows. Just like reality, what can initially seem like a beautiful landscape during the day, can become a terrifying twist on perspective. Like other games such as Silent Hill, many of the scares will most likely come from within oneself; constantly on the edge of your seat you will be expecting something or someone to jump out at you, only for it to happen when you least expect.Coupled with this Remedy Entertainment have also focused on environmental factors. Although details are sketchy, from the demonstration you could see a full cycle from day to night to day again. This almost seems like there will be full day cycles, as well as various weather effects; including rainstorms and even tornados which rip up buildings, cars and other scattered debris.

Opening mission walkthrough.
I stumbled across this during my research, it's a descriptive of the opening mission and objective of Alan Wake:

On with the playable mission, and as Alan drives to the cabin, he reveals through voice-over that his new book is about a writer, who, after a tragic loss, goes to live in a secluded cabin where he creates a horror story about creatures of darkness disguised as men. However, when the writer leaves the cabin he discovers the world has turned into the nightmare he's written. Alan's story begins with the writer picking up a hitch-hiker on the way to the cabin - and right on cue, the spooky piano music strikes up again and a real hitchhiker is spotted on the road ahead. "That's creepy..." says Alan.

Of course, Wake picks up the shabby hitcher and begins telling him about the fact he's a writer, and that his story has a hitch-hiker in it. "The hitch-hiker's a killer of course," says the creepy guy in a gruff drawl. "No," replies Alan. "The hitch-hiker gets killed. Then he comes back, or something, a creature of darkness that haunts the writer." Alan drives on, but then is stopped in his tracks - ahead, on the road, a car has overturned, the result of an accident.

Alan pulls up, and gets out of his vehicle to examine the wreckage - there are bloodstains on the road, but no-one around. Suddenly, a lorry hurtles round the corner and smashes into his car with the hitcher still inside, as Alan has to frantically dive to safety, losing consciousness. He starts to hear voices, then wakes up - it's now dark and he has a gun and torch in his hands, and the hitch-hiker is nowhere to be seen. Alan still has to reach the cabin, now on foot, which is up on a nearby hill and across a rickety wooden bridge, which he bravely skips across.

The camera cuts to a first-person shimmering view of the bridge, as we hear a horrific whispered voice: "Waaaaaake!" The enemy zooms Evil Dead-style towards the other side of the bridge, causing a streetlight to shatter. Alan starts to run on the path up towards the cabin, pursued by the unseen enemy, as each street lamp that he passes explodes and plunges the area into more darkness. Wake turns around and shines the torch at the creature, allowing him to shoot at
a shadowy human form that recoils in agony.

Back to the heart-stopping demo, and as the chaotic music rises to a crescendo, Wake runs the rest of the way, more lights smashing as he moves past them on the path to the cabin. Finally, he reaches the hideaway, but we can see from outside that all the bulbs in the rooms are exploding, creating more darkness. Trapped, Alan turns around, and as the screen fades to black we hear a voice say: "Wake, we have a common destination..."

- The full article can be found here

What's not so great?
There's a lot of information yet to come on this title; the amount and diversity of combat, investigation methods, npc interaction, freedom and so on have far from been explained.
Day and night cycles will be interesting to experience; how will they be done? Apparently, as the story progresses, day shorterns and night icnreases in length. That's an interesting concept, but again, without detailed information on how exactly this will work we're left with concepts without substance. Will the day and night segments be split up? Or will their be a natural progression from morning to noon and then finally to night? I'm not even sure which method would work best, the former being very unnatural and will most likely remove the gamer from his or her experience. And the later being rather constrictive; with the promise of freedom, if the game is split up into day and night segments, will there be certain interactions and places to explore that is exclusive to one or the other?
Also, a release date originally rumoured to be end of this year, seems to be more likely to be penned in for 2008.

Alan Wake - Trailer

What to expect at E3.
I'd like to think we'd get a 2007 released date confirmed at this years E3 and I'm afraid that if we don't get that then the rumoured 2008 release may actually have some substance. Alan Wake should be at E3 this year, although whether Remedy will be their or if Microsoft will just be showing off some new footage is all guess work.
Cross your fingers and hope for a release date. I'm pretty sure we'll get some new game play, maybe even some hands-on, as well as some information on the structure and character interaction.