You can read our full preview of Alan Wake's American Nightmare in our print edition.
Our January issue, which is on sale now, features an extensive hands-on preview with Remedy's new game, of which this interview forms part, and includes a design showcase of concept artwork.
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With the release of Death Rally for iOS back in March and the announcement of XBLA game Alan Wake's American Nightmare at the Spike VGA awards earlier this month, it's been an uncharacteristically busy year for Remedy, the Finnish studio infamous for its protracted development cycles. We sat down with Remedy creative director and writer Sam Lake, and head of franchise development Oskari Häkkinen to discuss Alan Wake's distinctive new direction and the appeal of shorter, digitally distributed projects.
Two Remedy games in one year, what’s going on?
Sam Lake: [Laughs] On that we are definitely expanding what we do. There is a big attraction with smaller digital projects like Death Rally on iOS, and Live Arcade as well. Obviously, big triple-A games are our main focus, but [digital] feels very good, and feels like the right way of being able to do something on the side as well. Death Rally, and now American Nightmare, are good examples of that, and in the future we’re looking for different opportunities as well, expanding and doing other things. Alan Wake is our own IP and we absolutely love it, and we feel like we can do many things with it; custom versions for different mediums.
Oskari Häkkinen: It’s a learning curve as well, understanding the business. As gamers, we want to know about, and understand, all the possibilities in gaming. Our passion is bigger projects, but these smaller projects gave us an opportunity to let our hair down a bit and have fun.
SL: It’s a nice place to experiment and then feed what we learn back into bigger games. I’m sure fans of Remedy Entertainment will see many elements in American Nightmare that they have come to expect from one of our games. It’s a tighter package, but still a cinematic, story-driven action game.
OH: American Nightmare is made for [XBLA]. We can go wilder with the weapons and include the kind of enemies that you would never expect in the Alan Wake universe. The Night Springs setting has enabled us to try out things we wouldn’t have been able to try out in the first game.
Alan Wake’s world, up until now, has been very focused. Were you at all worried about diluting the core fiction?
SL: Early on with American Nightmare we certainly talked about that a little bit. It's something that needs to be taken into account, and we felt that we needed a different stylisation. We wanted to create a spin-off experience that doesn’t feel like the original Alan Wake. When you play the story, you can see there are certain elements that address this issue as well, and put it in the right place in the overall fiction. Obviously Alan Wake as a whole, as an IP, is very near and dear to us, and we want to take good care of it and make sure that we have a set course and direction for where we’re going. And we certainly wouldn’t take it in an unexpected direction without thinking ahead and making sure that everything is working as we wanted it to.
OH: If there was ever a Twillight Zone episode with Alan Wake’s story themes, this would be it.
Did Alan Wake DLC pave the way for this game?
SL: In a way it did. I feel that we could have done something like this even without the DLC. But maybe the focus and stylisation would have been slightly different. I feel that for the fans, the storyline - which is in many ways optional content – will be the meat of it. It continues the Alan Wake story from where we left off with the last DLC.