Creative Stasis and Alan Wake II

Alan Wake II is a marvel that took 13 years to arrive, do I have to wait that long to make something great?

Alan Wake II came out 13 years after its sequel. It was a long awaited sequel that at many points in time seemed as though it would not happen. The original Alan Wake ended on a big cliff hanger and fans had just been waiting all this time to see the next chapter in the story the team at Remedy had started back in 2010. It is a journey I jumped in on late. I didn’t really begin to appreciate Remedy’s role in the games industry until I played their 2019 action game, Control. Still, Control was enough to make me committed to seeing whatever Remedy was planning to do next. All of that is to say that Alan Wake II blew me away. On a technical level and on a narrative level I was dazzled from the opening title card all the way through to the end. But in the weeks since I finished the game, I have been overcome with dread. Well, more than usual. See, the game took 13 years to arrive, and it is the exact type of game it needed to be. Which is my needlessly complicated way of saying that years of tech upgrades, world building, and yes, time, made Alan Wake II into the game that it is today. It is not a game that even from a purely technical level, could have happened three, four, and definitely not five years ago. And on a narrative level, so much has happened that the fully formed game that arrived this year just simply wasn’t going to happen in the way it did happen had it arrived years earlier. What is it like to have an idea for a project and not be able to execute it for thirteen years? Doesn’t that scare you? It scares me.

I played through the first Alan Wake a week before the sequel was set to come out. I played the remastered version but in terms of gameplay it is virtually identical to the original game that came out back in 2010. Going right from that game to the sequel was jarring. Everything about the look and feel of Alan Wake II is improved. The game itself is darker, the storytelling more mature, slower paced, even the genre was slightly tweaked. The gameplay goes from that of a standard action game to a slower paced survival horror game. It is evident from the games cold open that this is not the game that they would have made had this game been slated for 2013 instead of 2023. In the time between Alan Wake and Alan Wake II, Remedy went on to make different games. Quantum Break and Control. In some ways both of those games needed to happen to get to Alan Wake II, both from a learning perspective, lessons learned that could then be applied to Alan Wake II, but also in their own series lore, and storytelling. Elements present in Control are central to developments in Alan Wake II, and there are plenty of winks and nods to folks who played Quantum Break present in Alan Wake II. Just to be clear, these all aren’t simple easter eggs, Remedy has already gone on to state that their games take place in a shared universe. And it’s cool as hell.

What stories are you working on now? Right now, I’m writing a novel, and I have a few complete and incomplete short stories that need another edit, or more work, or straight up rewrites. They’re sitting on my hard drive, some older than others. When I sit down to write a story, I am not under the impression that the work will be done in one night, but thirteen years? It is scary to think that the stories I’m working on won’t see the next piece of their puzzle for several years to come. And yes, I know, it’s silly to think of storytelling in those terms. The creation of a work shouldn’t hinge on how much better you’ll be in five or ten years. But then I think again about Alan Wake II, an experience so authored, so well crafted, so layered and detailed, and I just can’t help but think that if I did find a way to complete something now, how much better could it be if I waited? What if there’s some bit of world history I need to learn that would improve my novel? What if there’s some skill I’ll learn in 2024 that will make the short story I’m working on now be more sharper and insightful? We can’t wait forever though, but creatives find themselves in a loop (some say it loops forever) where we are constantly iterating and trying to improve. In my head every story, no matter what state it’s in, whether it has an ending or a few sentences, is considered incomplete to me. But it can’t remain that way forever.

The novel I’m working on began work in 2017. I was still a creative writing major at Cal State Long Beach. The story took a major evolution in my second novel writing class where I decided that I would merge it with a science fiction story I had bouncing around in my head. And that was simply the story until last year, 2022, when I realized that I was giving myself too much work. I had a good, much simpler story to tell, and I realized that maybe I needed to finish that before I attempted something more ambitious. The science fiction story could probably be its own thing, someday. So, I went back to that original roadmap and that’s where I currently find myself. It’s a normal part of the creative process, but there will always be that doubt in my head, that maybe there’s a piece missing, maybe the genre is wrong, maybe there’s some bit of information I haven’t learned yet that will make this all come together. Alan Wake II is running on some incredible tech that wasn’t possible until a few years ago. One of the playable characters, Saga, can go into a “mind place,” and review case files and clues. The thing about the mind place is that it is a wholly separate space in the game, always running in the background. No matter where you are in the game, all you need to do is press the back button on your gamepad, and bloop, Saga is in the mind place. It’s instant, you can walk around and interact with different elements in the space, hit the back button and bloop, you’re back in the creepy forest you were exploring. This sort of technical backing just would not have been possible even a few years ago. The speed of solid-state drives makes snappy loading like this possible. But the thing is, the team at Remedy always had Alan Wake II in their heads, far before the adoption of SSD’s over the older hard disk drives. They snuck in some fan service easter eggs into the game that followed the original Alan Wake, Quantum Break. It’s essentially a fake trailer for Alan Wake II, and many of those details are in Alan Wake II. They were always excited to continue Alan Wake but they couldn’t. Alan Wake II didn’t happen for 13 years because the tech wasn’t ready yet. And that is the reason some game sequels take so long to arrive, by the way. Alan Wake II took 13 years because they couldn’t get the funding to make it…among other things.

In some alternate reality where the team at Remedy received the green light to make Alan Wake II earlier, would they have crafted the survival horror game that we received in 2023? Who knows, maybe that team would have gotten started only to stop and wait for some big technical break through. Maybe the narrative threads set up in 2019’s, Control, would have taken precedence and they’d shelve Alan Wake II to work on something else. Maybe the wait would have been 7 years instead of 13 years. But those unknowns weigh on me as a creative. I don’t know what I don’t know. I want the story I put out into the world to be the best version of itself possible. But I won’t know if it is, how can I? I can’t see into alternate realities. Still, in the immediate moment, that unknown weighs heavy on me. I don’t want to look back on something finished and realize the attempt I took was not fully thought out, that it could have been improved with a little more time, and a little more skill.  

Those anxieties won’t ever go away, unfortunately. But it’s not all hopeless. While I still have plenty of anxieties about writing and the creative process, one thing is for sure, Alan Wake II is not the only game that Remedy made after the first Alan Wake. And that is the spark of hope that will (hopefully) keep me out of that creative stasis. Remedy’s creative output did continue, their studio still took risks, and despite (or maybe in spite of) the circumstances surrounding the trajectory of Alan Wake II, they matured and grew as a developer, and in the case of Control, made something truly special. That could be the answer sometimes, right? Maybe the work right in front of you isn’t ready but there are other stories waiting to be written and completed too. But you don’t know what you don’t know, right? So just do the damn thing, and if it doesn’t feel ready then trust that instinct. Maybe the other thing you’re working on will feed into the thing you think needs to happen first. Or, maybe, you shouldn’t think about it in those terms at all (I will, but I’m trying not to). When I am actually creating work and being a creative I do allow myself to go down different paths, and play around with my narrative and characters to see what works. It’s funny that when it comes to my approach to creating on a broader level I find myself paralyzed by choice and what is (or isn’t) possible. It mirrors the main character of Alan Wake actually. Alan Wake, the character, is tortured by his own creative ambitions. He is creatively stuck. The story of the first Alan Wake happens because he is trying to move on from his commercially successful series of books to start something new and wholly original. And through circumstances he is eventually forced to try and write something that will save his loved ones. In Alan Wake II that creative roadblock is taken further as it physically manifests around him in terrifying nightmares that mock him, the space around him mocks him. The environment is covered in reminders that reinforce his self doubt. You see, in universe, Alan Wake has been struggling to complete the work that could save him for thirteen years as well. It seems that the creative team at Remedy know this insecurity all too well, and they found a way to incorporate that into the fabulous narrative that Alan Wake II ended up telling. Which I guess is a good note to end on. You don’t know what you don’t know, and that process of discovery, the pain, the joy, the revelations, the scrapped ideas, the bad and the good are all working towards creating something truly special. You (I, me, we) just need to keep going, one way or another we will end up creating something.