1 - This game has NEVER been pitched as anything besides a Psychological Action Thriller. Emphasis on Action in this case. Remedy stated extremely early on that it would have the same sort of intense cinematic action as Max Payne, only with a modification of utilizing light heavily within the combat. Any expectations of it as a Survival Horror game are based on ignorant assumptions of ill-informed gamers. Any expectations of it as a Heavy Rain-esque game were also based off of ignorant assumptions. Sorry, if you for some reason believed that it was going to be one of those two types of games, but it is your own fault since there was more than enough info bumping around the internet for you to learn about it on your own.
2 - The E3 demo was designed to showcase the ACTION portion of the game. In terms of game structure the game works as follows.
The Night sequences are to be Action/Thriller sequences, with heavy mission-based action with you fighting the Dark Force.Now, a common misconception that has developed on the boards is that the enemy is those hooded men. NO. The enemy is NOT those men. That is simply a manifestation of the enemy. The REAL enemy is anything and everything in the environment. A box, a car, a tree, a tractor, a house, a hose. Anything can be your enemy. The hooded men simply form a portion of the games large arsenal of enemies. In fact, Remedy has been quoted as saying that the night missions can feature a great variety of enemies ranging from missions where you face a single massive threat that is extremely difficult to kill, to other levels like the E3 demo were you face hundreds of easy to kill enemies as you move through the environment. The reason they decided to use the level they did for the E3 demo was because it was among the more action heavy, traditional sequences in the game. It was something that could be easily shown and recognized in the short 4 minute Stage Demo during the press conference. For those asking for proof of my statement of larger, more difficult to kill enemies look no further than theIGN Alan Wake Previewwhich went a bit further than were the E3 Stage Demo ended and had Alan Wake facing off against a bulldozer(although this was still a rather weak manifestation of the Dark Force). Everything about the night time is about the Action/Thriller element of the game. Sure, there will be psychological moments, but it is much more focused on the action.
Meanwhile, the Day sequences play much more like an adventure game. You explore the town, find out what you can, unravel the mystery of what is happening at night, prepare for night by preparing traps around town, and stock up to survive the night. There are also puzzle elements to the daytime gameplay that will allow you to put together the pieces of the mystery. Day will also be a time for them to delve much deeper into the psychological elements of the storyline. Sam Lake has stated that the storyline will deal heavily with the concept of struggling with the dilemma of what is real and what is merely a nightmarish figment of Alan Wake's imagination.
Driving sequences are also extremely important because they give a good opportunity to have chase setpieces where the Dark Force is chasing Alan Wake as he runs away in a car(IGN preview touches on a good example of this)
3 - The game is not a horror game.It is not meant to scare.It is instead meant to mess with your mind and your perception of reality.They may pull a few scare moments, but my guess is they will go much more for the creepy sense of uneasiness that can be had in a good thriller.
4 - The narration is meant to be done in a way similar to a book manuscript.As if you are playing through his novel. My guess is that given the opportunity, they will use this to point out flaws in his perception of reality to give the players an insight into his insanity. They have an opportunity to use it throughout the game to demonstrate his fall into complete psychosis and paranoia(which is most certainly where Sam Lake has been hinting that the game will go with the storyline). Similar to how Max Payne used voice-over to do things with the atmosphere of the game, this game will also use voice-over to further develop its atmosphere.
Also, please no posts about "Wall of Text. Not going to read."
I probably wouldn't have made this if the moderators had been on the ball and rescinded my suspension when they were supposed to(30 hours ago). Mods, I understand that you are busy, but REALLY??? It took an entire day to get around to doing it?
As for the comments about it being another Alone in the Dark, I would like to point out to everyone that Alone in the Dark had some extremely good ideas with absolutely terrible execution. A better developer who has more time to tune the gameplay and implement some of the ideas that Alone in the Dark had could make for a fantastic game. Alone in the Dark's problems mostly deal with the controls and pacing. The controls made the combat impossible to deal with and general a complete frustration(thus ruining the game). The pacing was done wrong because it was so overly scripted during the setpieces that it was nothing more than trial and error to get through, but then other times it didn't have any direction and gave you too much room to get lost or waste time. Take the absolutely stunning destruction of New York driving sequence in Alone in the Dark. Not only did the driving completely suck, but it was such an overly scripted sequence that it was basically a massive series of quick time events to get through. Had it been more open and less frustrating, that would have been among the most memorable sequences of the game and potentially of the entire year. So please stop acting like some similarities with Alone in the Dark are a bad thing. Because they most certainly are not. I would love to see another developer do Alone in the Dark the right way, because it had so much potential to be awesome if it had been done right...
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