Remedy has revealed the internal goals it had set itself for creating Alan Wake 2, which unlike the original game is going to be a full-blown survival horror title.
Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Sam Lake was quick to acknowledge some of the shortcomings of the first Alan Wake, notably that its combat loop lacked variety. For Alan Wake 2, the studio not only wanted to inject more variety and in-depth combat into the mix, but also reduce combat on the whole.
Earlier concept stages of Alan Wake 2, when we were thinking about it through the years, they never were true horror games. That sudden realisation of… why haven’t we thought about [making a survival horror] before? If you look at survival horror, there are so many aspects that would allow us to tie-in the storytelling closer to the gameplay. Which is very much part of the ambition.
Basically, it’s slower. With Alan Wake, you’re jogging through the woods and there are tens and tens of enemies coming at you. It is an action game from that perspective. We got criticism for it… The game tends to stay the same. You’re in a dark forest and you’re facing the same enemies over and over.
That was one of our internal goals, in that there needs to be more variety, there needs to be more depth in combat, and we want less combat. We want there to be a bigger build-up to it. It should be a bigger event. There needs to be more choices and more resource management, and we want other gameplay elements that support the storytelling, and all of this we felt that we are getting with survival horror as a genre.
Alan Wake 2 is scheduled for release on PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S on October 17, 2023.
[Source – GamesIndustry.biz]