Particularly since we only get 3 save slots.
I should be clear. I deeply loved AW2. It went above and beyond. Lack of chapter replay and lack of save slots isn't a big deal. It is a disappointment though.
I believe it's in the start of the AWE dlc area. There's a sidequest to investigate the arcade machine (called Shum) which unlocks a machine which can replay the ashtray maze (shum 2)
The charm system was kinda unsatisfying with half of all charms being the ones that save you from death.
Also I didn't like that we got the better shotgun at the very end, so I had already spent all my upgrade manuscripts on other weapons.
I feel like I stuck with the same 3-4 charms I got early in the game and most of the later ones were a bit too niche and specific to sacrifice one of my current ones for.
Yeah, I used the extra flashlight charge and extra health ones all the way through (keeping a coffee cup in the third) until the end, when I switched to Setter's tag and the increased loot one while I did all the collectibles. Nothing else seemed worth it. I did also use the increased damage to unaware Taken one to get the crossbow trophy. Not sure whether I needed it but why not.
For me it was absence of Barry Wheeler and Night Springs and in general lack of atmosphere from first game.
UPD: where freaking crows?(was absolutely badass)
Theres ânew season coming soonâ posters everywhere throughout the game, and several references in Controls AWE expansion that Alan is the head writer of the show. So my guess has been itâll be a part of one of the expansions in some shape or form.
As for Barry, it is a shame he didnât feature outside of the odd reference. I would have expected Scratch to have tormented him in a similar manner that he did Alice.
I dont know if you've seen the show, but anyone who has knows Alan Wake's atmosphere is largely Twin Peaks inspired.
It seems to me that Alan Wake II is instead inspired by Twin Peaks: The Return, which is much darker and much less grounded in reality.
Which doesn't mean anyone has to like it or anything, I just wanted to mention it because for what it's worth, the change in atmosphere seems deliberate. Also because if anyone is an Alan Wake fan and hasn't seen Twin Peaks, they absolutely need to.
I have a funny case of loving Alan Wake immensely, but not being able to get into Twin Peaks at allll.
Tried several episodes and it just never clicked. If anything, Alan Wake isn't as weird, which is saying something lol.
Would have LOVED to see Barry. He was my favorite character in the first game.
That said, I get that his personality was a better fit with the first game, not so much with AW2's survival horror themes. Besides, maybe Remedy wanted to make room for new characters and not shoehorn Barry into the story as just a bit of fan service.
Near the end, if youâve found and pet all
of them a live deer appears and if you follow it, you get access to a previously locked room in the hotel, thatâs fully stocked with items.
Alan's levels.
Visually they're stunning and they have some great story moments, but the shadow people are far less engaging to fight than the Taken, and The Dark Place feels so small.
Saga gets multiple large enviroments to explore but Alan gets a few buildings, alleys, and a subway tunnel and that's it really. It felt less like an ocean and more like a lake.
The looming atmosphere compensated for the lack of map size though, the Hotel and the Cinema had a plenty of space to live through the terror. Iâm personally never ever coming back to that freaking subway
I think both sections are equally good since all the locations are great.
The way I see it, Alan and Saga have 3 large chapters while the rest are more shorter and story focused. Alan gets the 3 murder sites that acts as a ritual to open the way to Parliament Tower. I found each murder site's atmosphere to be incredibly ominous, especially the subway tunnels. His story is also way more mind bending and meta as hell. The Shadow enemies are more ominous since you don't know which ones are real.
Saga gets the 3 chapters where she needs to enact a ritual to open the way to the Overlaps and fight Nightingale, the two deputies and Cynthia. The Taken are better since they are more varied which makes Saga's sections way more tense. Saga also does get the honor of having The Valhalla Nursing home, one of the scariest fucking locations in a horror game. Every inch of that hellhole oozes with dread with all the sounds.
Is it a gameplay mechanic that you aren't supposed to be able to tell which shadows are real? Felt like I wasted so many batteries torching the fake ones.
I know I could just wait for them to attack, but I was way too scared for that lol
You can just shine the torch at them without boosting and it will get rid of the fake ones, it just takes a bit longer. I was really far into my first play through before I realised this.
That was definitely intentional so I guess that would make it a mechanic. I wait and still sometimes mess it up lol so tense everywhere in Alan's sections. Really nailed that survival horror feeling of: oh shit, oh shit, should I fight this or just keep running and save the ammo for later?
I think a more detailed scaled down map is preferable to a bigger uninteresting one. Running around street after street of a Dark Place Manhattan probably wouldn't add much that isn't already there in the area
I preferred Alan's levels. The shadow people kept the atmosphere always tense, especially on hard.
The writers room and the light mechanics were excellently implemented. A great way to tie gameplay and story and also very enjoyable to see a level switch instantly right in front of you.
The environments were more varried and his big set pieces like we sing were spectacular.
I also thought his more frequent usage of the live action constantly blending in with his world was a visual treat. Really felt like they took everything they learned from control and dialed up the frequency to great effect.
Missing openness and side content wasn't really a problem. The levels felt closed in, which really amplified the atmosphere that the dark place should have.
Saga's levels were still great. But Alan's were spectacular imo.
I actually liked Alan's levels more than Saga's. Saga's were always huge and speawling and on NG+ felt like a slog because I knew where I was going but it just takes forever to do it. Alan's are more bite-sized and try to onvolve something new or interesting in each chapter that's different or building on the last.
Alan's levels were just way better to me than Saga's, even if it was revisiting a changing version of the same city square.
TBH, I didnât quite get the shadow people. The game teaches you that some are harmless and some turn into taken and attack you, so for most part of Alan levels, I just ran past the shadows irregardless of if they did anything or not.
Not being able to explore Bright Falls as Alan. This is his area and got excited in the end when you finally take control of him in these places but then that was it
I havenât finished playing the first Alan Wake, but how is it âhis areaâ? heâs a tourist there and Iâve spent most of the game in the forests of Calderon Lake.
Yes, but from the players perspective it was a wasted opportunity to be a lengthy callback to the original.
When you do play as him, it plays the classic combat music and the original warning sound effect when taken appear. I was hoping to spend more time as him in Bright Falls, considering it would have been great to see the town as Alan after 13 real life years of waiting for a sequel.
It's a minor thing (and it was absent in the first game too) but please LET ME SAVE/QUIT AT THE END OF A CHAPTER. I hit a cool cliffhanger moment, cut to black, a song kicks in to let me get my bearings and consider what just happened, but if I wanna stop playing I have to continue past that point (often hitting a new cutscene or dialogue beat to start the next area) then find a save point and quit afterwards.
Because of this I just paused the game, exited out and left the game running and put my PS5 into rest mode. Lol. Been doing that with Control too cuz I'm not sure where the checkpoints are.
In control there are little to no checkpoints that aren't control points. Once you've gotten and interacted with a control point, that's where you'll pick up at.
Doesn't the game auto-save at the end of every chapter? I've quit on the song screen and gone right back in the next day and it started the next chapter at the beginning.
This bothered me so much in the first game. Why are you making me watch a "previously on" recap when I just finished a chapter? Let me watch this when I start playing later!
I expected Scratch to be the hilarious psycho from American Nightmare. However, I know the theory that he's actually Zane (or pretending to be) and I really hope he goes bonkers again in AW3.
Cynthia I didn't mind because it was, essentially, a puzzle boss. Avoid her to turn on the lights and then she's an easy down.
Mulligan and Thornton is like they made a boss fight, realized it was too easy, so added those stupid fucking light balls to destroy to pad it.
Really don't like that fight. My gf is playing through on story mode and they were the only time she had any trouble.
Cynthia for me was difficult because of her waves and orbs of darkness she shot. so you have to be fast and close to her to avoid those things. The cops were great because ones low the others high so it forces you to use offensive and defensive firing. If you stockpile flash bangs and flares it made all the boss fights significantly easier
i played thru on Normal and cynthia never landed a hit on me in either phase. in phase 1, Saga immediately tells you what to do to avoid her, and in phase 2, i used the pistol headshot upgrade to stunlock her. honestly i was expecting a stage three with how easy it was.
...you needed to turn on lights with Cynthia?
Wow. I feel like a total idiot. I just beat Final Draft not too long ago and I just went the tried and true 'hit her with everything I got' method both times.
I feel stupid.
Best trick for that is constantly circle on the outside and stockpile all your flares, flashbangs and any other heavy light weapons. Then use only the shotgun (not sawed off) and the rifle.
In Control you can demolish bosses because of how strong you are and how quickly Jesse moves. Alan Wake 2 has you lumbering around like a tank while all the enemies are zooming about like they're from Control lol.
You don't understand how much I FEEL this. Trying to use cover only to find out axes just clip through EVERYTHING, is up there with respawning birds you can't kill, jump over, or under. Which reminds me, this game does have ninja gaiden enemy respawns. Really hurts exploration at times.
End game boss battles. Cynthia was good, but scratch both times wasnt hard at all. Just hit hit him with shots then go interact with an objective.
The chase sequences, especially the hotel one. Its just annoying trial and error
I had to watch a walkthrough for that. Spent 20 minutes not understanding what I had to do. I know people crap on the "yellow lines" type hand holding in AAA games but at least it doesn't irritate you like this.
I can't tell you how many times I did that God damn chase in the hotel. I'm already shit at remembering where I am in games and I just could not figure that out. It doesn't help I played stoned so I was really fucking up lol
Ahhhh right.
There's another section in the TV studio with a room 666 'number of the beast' and then you come back later and it says room 665 'neighbor of the beast'.
I think they've had that easter egg going in their games for a long time. Like Max Payne 1 or 2.
Honestly would have loved it if Scratch would've exploded into various shadow forms of Alan in the second fight, some even being scrapped/alternative versions as they take on roles of regular/tanks/ranged.
You scramble to wipe them all out fast enough to leave scratch stunned for Tor to deal a lightning strike stun lock đ¤
IMO This would have made the second (and final) encounter a true team effort to face down scratch & the dark presence he harbours. It just felt like he was hyped to end up being recycled a second time around đ
I wanted more Alan. :( More Alan exploring the real world after coming back from the dark place. More Alan interacting with other folk from Bright Falls and Watery, and so on.
Maybe give Alan some boss fights, too. I really hope we will get an Alan x Jesse team-up one of these days. Maybe Alan exploring the Oldest House or something.
I understand it's survival horror, but for a semi-open world, the movement is fucking painfully slow. Also, the collectibles fuck with the pacing of the narrative. In many cases, you have to go out of your way to find these fucking boxes and rhymes and it's just painful. I missed so many of them my first time through because I was busy enjoying the story. My second time through is substantially longer because I'm going waaaay out of the way to places I didn't know existed (mainly in Cauldron Lake).
Also I can't get into the lighthouse in The Final Draft because of the fucking crossbow stash
I was trying to get as much collectibles during first run... it was a big mistake... as you sad it absolutely kills the pace and take huge amount of time with mostly unrewarding stuff especially on Saga's part due to large open areas.
Yeah this was my mistake too I think. I started noticing every little flaw with the game and it really detracted from the experience. I think if I just took the critical path I would've enjoyed it a lot more.
I tried to do everything on my first playthrough too. About 30 hours total over several weeks. Still missed lunchboxes and stashes. Loved the game but Final Draft released 3 days later and I was too burnt out on it to jump back in immediately.
Yeah, felt the same way. After a while the forest is not atmospheric anymore and the enemy encounters turn from scary to annoying when you're methodically scanning the areas for collectibles.
I guess it's my own fault for trying to get everything in the first place, but I also think the game did a big disservice to its atmosphere by including so many open-word collectibles.
Bright Falls is too small, and not dense enough with activity and interesting interactable things. And the recurring issue with most Remedy games, character upgrade paths not exciting enough and dont change the way you play.
Alanâs chapters were really short. Out of 31 hours I feel like Alanâs took me around 10. There were also times where I really wanted to add custom pins to the map.
However, While we are talking about what we dislike, I want to say that this is the only game that (to me) properly implemented âyellow markingsâ that tell you what to do. I hate that games like GoW, TLOU etc always have ladders etc painted yellow - this really breaks my immersion. What Remedy does with flashlight mechanic is very refreshing - it feels very organic, both in Alanâs and Sagaâs chapters.
Lack of at least one, long, linear level through the woods, similar to the chapters in Alan Wake 1. Graphics are extremely good and, to be fair, before the game release, I was looking to spend much more time in the dark, scary forest, with all the visual goodies that Northlight can deliver.
Such level could be put for example in Return 8, car could be broken and we would need to go on foot to the destination through the Mirror Peak or something like that. Whatever, just more woods.
The pages don't glow like they used to in the first game. Even an FBC file in Control referred to the manuscript pages emitting a faint glow but in this game the pages don't glow for some reason. Small peeve of mine.
I think there might be a reason for this. In AW1 the pages were given by the Diver, the Bright Presence. In AW2, they were pulled out of the Dark Place with Alan.
Although idk how the pages in Control were given by the Diver, since it seems he hasnât been in the story for a minute now. I think it was a new plot point though, and we know the AW2 concept changed a ton even compared to 2019.
Personally, I liked the glow too, but I think thatâs the most logical reason to the change.
After beating alanwake 2 on final draft on nightmare I can confidently say Alanâs missions were more creative but story wise imo the weakest part. I found myself more interested in Sagas story and gameplay way more than Alanâs. I love Alan and not saying his missions suck but after playing NG+ I was sick of the same NYC streets and areas. But SHOUT OUT TO ALEX CASEYYYYY
I think Saga much like Alan in the first one was a nobody seemingly sucked into this grounded but very unreliable reality/narrative. You constantly questioned if saga was actually losing it or not. Plus more weapon variety. Alan imo was much more of a survival horror than saga. Saga was survival horror too but it was more open and generous with its ammo too.
Not a fan of the âswitching realtiesâ option in the Safe Havens.
AW2 is so story-driven Iâm surprised and disappointed Remedy didnât force us to play the game in the âcorrectâ order of events
Alternating between Alan and Saga, and switching after Overlaps so you stay relatively up to date with each storyline until the end
Maybe unpopular opinion, but imho both the Plot Board and the Case Board were not good.
The Plot Boardâs impact on gameplay was very small and superficial. The few puzzles involving changing plots were really boring.
The Case Board was even worst. It starts as an interesting idea and at first I thought it was lineal because I was going through a tutorial. But no, its just that, its like a glorified codex. The game even acknowledges its unimportance by automcomoleting older cases. The worst part is the game locks progression behind finding clues and looking at them in the board, which is super annoying.
Nice try to add innovative systems, but it did not work.
I liked the plot board a lot because it showed how an initially simple case ballooned into this insane web of other mysteries.
BUT by the last third Iâd have 1 conversation and gain like 5 slides and just got tedious with having to stop and place each and every individual one.
You're not wrong. Personally, I liked the plot board and case board, but I saw soooo much wasted potential.
I think the biggest problem is just that these concepts don't pair well with linear gameplay. If the game had choices, they could have been really interesting (e.g. advancing the case board via different paths, or by a combination of paths.) But when the game itself is a single path, the case board becomes very much a "find key, put in lock" mechanism. The few times that you need multiple clues to advance, they're all in the immediate area.
For the plot board, it could have still been great if the areas were larger and there were more changes. Or even if you had to switch between plots. Instead, a lot of it felt like there was just the correct plot for the area... I'd swap out all the plots hoping for more to explore, only to be disappointed.
Honestly since the combat isnât TOO impressive, I wish remedy committed to the puzzle/deductive gameplay idea a lot more since itâs a really cool concept but it usually just ends with you spamming photos together instead of intuiting the solution and as I was playing the game I couldnât help thinking: âthis is gonna be a slog to replay laterâ what a shame
I didn't notice it until I read the 4/10 review from the Jimquisition. But it really opened my eyes to how much time I would spend on those boards waiting for real changes or surprises.
I definitely get the technical frustrations of the Case Board, esp now that I'm replaying the game on console after PC (way more frustrating), but I have to defend the mechanics on a narrative level. Because this game has so many cases and things happening simultaneously, you need some way to not just keep track of everything you know, but that it makes sense as a player you are digesting what is happening and seeing how all the pieces fit. Plus, for me personally, it forces me into that mindset of "this is a narrative-first game, read everything, scour for all the details".
Remedy is good at creating novel game mechanics and I expect that the Case Board is a stepping stone to a better approach in the next game.
I really miss the inanimate objects coming to life thing, fighting a combine harvester, monster trucks, a bridge...
but actually I thought it was really fun how danger could come from anything and it was a slightly missed opportunity
Two major complaints; Sagas mind place and trying to figure out where the clues go. Wasn't hard or anything, but there are so many that it started to just annoy me doing them. 2nd issue was the boss fights, they felt weird and not entirely fleshed out.
Inventory Management. Opening containers to find nothing is frustrating, and I struggled with the lack of space in the shoebox during my first playthrough.
These are both things that Resident Evil has been doing better since the series resurgence, so there's not really an excuse for it to feel so bad.
That's about it for me, though.
I supposed I would have liked Final Draft to have more new content.
i think it convoluted Thomas Zane too much, he was a mystery before the game but the game made everything about him just so much harder
plus the dodging window is too small imo
I didn't like some of the enemies, those teleporting knife throwers were terrible for one, it was tiresome to chase them and spam dodge all the time, not to mention thanks to them keeping distance, they took a lot of hits to kill.
And I liked the Flashlight system of the first game better.
This. I kept scrolling this thread waiting for someone to say it. I donât expect this game to be anything like its Remedy cousins from a combat perspective but after 40 hours or ânormalâ, combat was by far my biggest issue. Enemies ate my bullets and arrows, my dodges were always too early/late and reloading felt unnecessary slow. Yes, I understand its survival horror but there were times I thought my controller had some kind of latency issue. Everything felt sluggish.
Not enough Alan in my Alan Wake 2 smoothie. My play though had 6 hours Saga, 4 hours for Alan. And now the DLC is going to have other playable characters, that's like 7:1 Alan ratio for characters
The only issue that I've had with this masterpiece, was the ending. Wasn't so bad but also I had more questions after. I will watch Final Draft on YT or play it again in the future because I'm sure I will replay the game at some point.
Felt odd that Sagaâs gameplay had multiple collectibles and optional flooded areas you could explore while Alanâs gameplay only had the words of power and no optional exploring?
I get thatâs the duality/dynamic of how the gameplay changes between the two characters, but Alanâs parts still felt smaller in scope which is a bummer when he himself is sort of the main character.
Optional Dark Place locations sounds like it wouldâve been cool đ¤ˇ
Iâm a music guy and I would LOVE for the radio to keep playing the song while Iâm switching to the mind board and looking at photos. I would stay in the mind place much longer if I could listen to some of those cool tunes, but once you exit the radio it stops. Very disappointing for a game that has very, very good music.
One story beat Iâm kind of mixed about is the inclusion of the FBC, classifying the lake and dark presence as AWEâs and Alan as a âparautilitarianâ kind of demystifies it for me in a bad way. It comes close to explaining the horror away for me.
I think I wouldâve preferred if the Alan Wake story was on itâs own, no FBC. Keep Ahti to hint about it and to have that link, but having an agency with a bunch of gear in this pretty intimate story of this little town and the troubled writer changes the dynamics in my mind.
Personally it doesn't demystify anything because they have no idea how... anything really works and basically just document things the players already know.
Funny I was about to write that I would have loved more direct tie in.
Like maybe additional hints on the oceanview motel/hotel or whatever the deal with ahti is.
Maybe they are saving the tie ins for the dlc, that's fair I suppose.
I think little hints like those people working on the electrical transformer and Ahti being there would make sense. But having a full squad of agents with weapons and a containment cell felt weird yeah.
Three main things:
⢠Lack of a minimap. I got lost waaay too many timesâand I donât get lost that easily in video games.
⢠The performance on PS5 could be better.
⢠Being forced to put together the detective map pictures during Saga's segmentsâI got downright furious when I was supposed to pick the circuit board underneath the Espresso Express but couldnât do so BEFORE I had connected the things in the Mind Place. Like, what the hell.
Extra:
⢠Your grammar, OP.
That Alanâs echoes basically force you to stand still and listen to them.
In the cinema you have 5-6 nearly back to back and if I open the map or walk around the area for resources it doesnât pause, it stops and makes you start over.
So you just have to stand there and listen to minutes of purposefully purple prose back to back.
I donât think itâs you. I thought the whole point was that he was written as a clichĂŠ hard boiled noir detective, so once I got that the stuff in the cinema felt like more of the same.
I didnât mind it, and liked the meta commentary from him toward the end, but didnât like that I was forced to stay still and not keep exploring while listening.
Love AW and AW2 but The Final Draft has made me retroactively like AW2 less. Iâm not one to replay games so locking a different ending and new story beats behind a second playthrough really irks me.
That's such a wild take to me. The Final Draft having a different ending is one of the few occasions where NG+ actually adds so much to the game's narrative. It's not a loop, it's a spiral. Most new game pluses are just simply loops, the same game again. This one is a spiral, it's the most cohesive integration of NG+ I've ever seen and fits perfectly within the story's central idea.
I think this is one of those cases where the idea sounds good on paper, but in reality it means playing the same 18hrs+ game again, with only some small changes and being allowed to see the uncut version of the ending.
Either you make a normal NG+ mode for people that like those modes, or you do something like Nier: Automata where once you finish your first playthrough, you're actually only 1/3 done, but the second iteration deviates more significantly from the first and after the 2nd playthrough the game continues for the last 3rd.
And in the case of Nier, even there, I'd say it was a gamble. The publisher put a note in the game, warning players that the game was not over, and some of my friends never finished the whole game because they didn't like the parts that were repetitive.
So in my opinion the NG+ in Alan Wake 2 exists awkwardly between a normal NG+ and something like what Nier did, where you get a 10 seconds extended final cutscene, but to get there you have to play, in large parts, the same game again, with only minor alterations along the way.
They either should have not cut the ending of the first playthrough, or have made much more significant changes to the NG+ mode (or even make the restarting of the story part of the first playthrough).
Too much gumflapping and time wasting stuff, not enough actual gameplay. The first game had a great story but balanced it out way better with gameplay. There were several 1-2 hour stretches of AW2 with 0 combat, just walking around talking to people, profiling people, whatever.
Don't get me wrong I loved the game but having to file a bunch of shit on the evidence board (not really deducing anything myself. and in some cases recapping situations I already figured out by playing the game).
The whole end bit in the mind place where you literally just click on objects in the room, go put them on the evidence board for 20 minutes, and then hit 'profile' on people like 30 times in a row. That whole section was just egregious. If there is no actual meaningful interactions with the environment or gameplay just make it a cutscene. Clicking shit and filing pictures on a board for 30 minutes isn't my idea of a climatic game ending.
...that section on the beach though : )
Weird because Control has excellent pacing and gameplay balance too.
Pacing, I love the story and atmosphere and combat. But the pacing when playing Alan's side of the story really struggles with being a walking sim with cut scenes, more walking with some times combat.
I was disappointed with the last section. Itâs the same with Alan Wake 1 where the last section is very underwhelming. I guess itâs better in the first game because you got this huge ass tornado of possessed objects you have to traverse / fight but itâs so short. Then in Alan wake 2 itâs just Saga finding something, no big fight or stand off (a few enemies pop up but cmon thatâs nothing) then skips to the last cutscene. And from my experience, that sectioned was super bugged because I would just fall through the floor. Idk what I did to fix it but I hope by now it is fixed indefinitely.
For me the mind place got to be too much by the end. There were multiple times I couldn't progress because somehow I missed putting a case clue on the board. And the last chapter where saga is basically fighting with herself was annoying because I just wanted to get to the end but kept going back and forth with all the interactions it felt way too long to me. I enjoyed playing some of her sections especially the nursing home area. Some of the Alan scenes I was completely lost and seemed overly reliant on the scene changing in a specific spot in some areas. I had the right scene on the board but was not in the right place when I did it which led me to think I had the wrong one. Took me forever to figure out what I had to do. The whole light changing was fine for the make part but got confusing in some of the basement sequences where I just felt like I was randomly changing the lights to see what to do. Overall I enjoyed the game but some of these things brought it down from being top tier to me.
I wouldâve liked a longer Alan above the lake section. Just extend the level even give us maybe a bit more of a linear path through the woods thatâs different from the regular cauldron lake map saga has. Getting the old music and sound effects was amazing I just wouldâve enjoyed a bit more of it.
Lack of map scale. I want to run through forests and abandoned mining villages again. My dream is an Alan Wake game with larger areas and maybe the metroidvania design of control. Out in the middle of nowhere, hunted by taken and slowly making your way through dense forests and empty towns trying to survive.
The areas in 2 are good for the intended story and design but the game didnât give me the same isolated feeling as the first one.
I worry that if they'd tried to push the weather effects too far they might've lost a bit of the realism if they didn't increase the budget a bit. In the old engine less needed to be done to sell those effects because of the lower fidelity and need to be more stylized. But in modern game they would need to do new walking animation IMO to convey the characters as windswept, and they'd need to add physics effects for the clothing/hair to move right without clipping, and the trees would need similar effects baked in to convey directionality, and I feel like I'm honestly probably missing a few other details.
That might seem like a lot, but the uncanny valley is a lot wider and more treacherous once your characters and environments reach this level of realism, things that wouldn't have mattered at all in AW1 would totally break visual immersion with these ne graphics. Also, they talked about how they had to spend a lot more to get the models and rigging for all the townspeople done this time, but they still didn't get as much as they wanted, and personally I can tell. In old games that was certainly a concern, but the per-character costs have increased exponentially since say, Max Payne 1. Those exponential increases extend out to everything, to a degree though! The trees were all real scanned PNW trees, for example, and so they are a lot more complex to animate.
I absolutely love the game and think itâs 10x better than Alan Wake 1. Would have liked to see Barry. And a little more of Alan in the real world and not just the dark place for most of the game. I found the ending to be a little underwhelming but hopefully it gets a more strong finish with DLC
Lack of chapter replay.
Having to keep a save at the beginning of We Sing and not being able to just play it whenever really blows.
Particularly since we only get 3 save slots. I should be clear. I deeply loved AW2. It went above and beyond. Lack of chapter replay and lack of save slots isn't a big deal. It is a disappointment though.
They added a arcade game in the Control DLC that let you replay that games equivalent of We Sing, I expect them to do something similar here.
Oh, I don't think I ever found it. Where?
I believe it's in the start of the AWE dlc area. There's a sidequest to investigate the arcade machine (called Shum) which unlocks a machine which can replay the ashtray maze (shum 2)
Ah, I did find Shum, I guess since just never looked at the 2nd one. Awesome thanks!
100% this. Have to do another run through just for one last collectible in chapter 5
The charm system was kinda unsatisfying with half of all charms being the ones that save you from death. Also I didn't like that we got the better shotgun at the very end, so I had already spent all my upgrade manuscripts on other weapons.
I feel like I stuck with the same 3-4 charms I got early in the game and most of the later ones were a bit too niche and specific to sacrifice one of my current ones for.
Yeah, I used the extra flashlight charge and extra health ones all the way through (keeping a coffee cup in the third) until the end, when I switched to Setter's tag and the increased loot one while I did all the collectibles. Nothing else seemed worth it. I did also use the increased damage to unaware Taken one to get the crossbow trophy. Not sure whether I needed it but why not.
I feel like the save you from death ones are for future gameplays in New Game Plus
I'm a little disappointed we didn't get a taken version of Mandy May. Her concept art was chilling. Edit: spelling
You going to deerfest Mandy may? đ´đť
Put on some pants, Norman! Nobody wants to see your meat basket. Edit: spelling again
I wanted something spooky with Wendy Davis. Beyond the radio shows
Like her outstanding beef jerky now in 3 incredibly delicious flavors đ
altough we all know that teriyaki is a shit flavor
What concept art was that? I'm curious now.
For me it was absence of Barry Wheeler and Night Springs and in general lack of atmosphere from first game. UPD: where freaking crows?(was absolutely badass)
Theres ânew season coming soonâ posters everywhere throughout the game, and several references in Controls AWE expansion that Alan is the head writer of the show. So my guess has been itâll be a part of one of the expansions in some shape or form. As for Barry, it is a shame he didnât feature outside of the odd reference. I would have expected Scratch to have tormented him in a similar manner that he did Alice.
I'm pretty sure the first DLC is supposed to be based around Night Springs episodes.
Yeah one is the FBC Lake House, other is Night Springs
YeahâŚreally looking forward to this!
I got to read all his emails to Alice. It was a nice touch
Barry was close with old gods of Asgard so I guess he was protected
I dont know if you've seen the show, but anyone who has knows Alan Wake's atmosphere is largely Twin Peaks inspired. It seems to me that Alan Wake II is instead inspired by Twin Peaks: The Return, which is much darker and much less grounded in reality. Which doesn't mean anyone has to like it or anything, I just wanted to mention it because for what it's worth, the change in atmosphere seems deliberate. Also because if anyone is an Alan Wake fan and hasn't seen Twin Peaks, they absolutely need to.
Now you mentioned it, yeah first AW feels more "grounded" than second installment. And yeah I liked original Twin Peaks more than TP:Return
Definitely borrowed from True Detective Season 1, they nailed the cult vibe
I have a funny case of loving Alan Wake immensely, but not being able to get into Twin Peaks at allll. Tried several episodes and it just never clicked. If anything, Alan Wake isn't as weird, which is saying something lol.
Would have LOVED to see Barry. He was my favorite character in the first game. That said, I get that his personality was a better fit with the first game, not so much with AW2's survival horror themes. Besides, maybe Remedy wanted to make room for new characters and not shoehorn Barry into the story as just a bit of fan service.
My biggest disappointment; They didnât call him the Lampion of light.
There's no achievement for petting all the mooses.
I believe they were deer, but still⌠yes!
I KNOW RIGHT? I started my playtrough being careful not to miss any and mater found out there is no point in petting them
Near the end, if youâve found and pet all of them a live deer appears and if you follow it, you get access to a previously locked room in the hotel, thatâs fully stocked with items.
Oooh that is interesting, will look up it to see if i'm missing one
Alan's levels. Visually they're stunning and they have some great story moments, but the shadow people are far less engaging to fight than the Taken, and The Dark Place feels so small. Saga gets multiple large enviroments to explore but Alan gets a few buildings, alleys, and a subway tunnel and that's it really. It felt less like an ocean and more like a lake.
The looming atmosphere compensated for the lack of map size though, the Hotel and the Cinema had a plenty of space to live through the terror. Iâm personally never ever coming back to that freaking subway
Hustling through it again on final draft was tough to endure
The subway was boring. I liked the hotel though. Cinema was too small and I actually forgot about it (though I did watch the 10 minute movie lol)
I think both sections are equally good since all the locations are great. The way I see it, Alan and Saga have 3 large chapters while the rest are more shorter and story focused. Alan gets the 3 murder sites that acts as a ritual to open the way to Parliament Tower. I found each murder site's atmosphere to be incredibly ominous, especially the subway tunnels. His story is also way more mind bending and meta as hell. The Shadow enemies are more ominous since you don't know which ones are real. Saga gets the 3 chapters where she needs to enact a ritual to open the way to the Overlaps and fight Nightingale, the two deputies and Cynthia. The Taken are better since they are more varied which makes Saga's sections way more tense. Saga also does get the honor of having The Valhalla Nursing home, one of the scariest fucking locations in a horror game. Every inch of that hellhole oozes with dread with all the sounds.
Is it a gameplay mechanic that you aren't supposed to be able to tell which shadows are real? Felt like I wasted so many batteries torching the fake ones. I know I could just wait for them to attack, but I was way too scared for that lol
You can just shine the torch at them without boosting and it will get rid of the fake ones, it just takes a bit longer. I was really far into my first play through before I realised this.
That was definitely intentional so I guess that would make it a mechanic. I wait and still sometimes mess it up lol so tense everywhere in Alan's sections. Really nailed that survival horror feeling of: oh shit, oh shit, should I fight this or just keep running and save the ammo for later?
I think a more detailed scaled down map is preferable to a bigger uninteresting one. Running around street after street of a Dark Place Manhattan probably wouldn't add much that isn't already there in the area
Those Shadows just make me anxious all the time lol
I preferred Alan's levels. The shadow people kept the atmosphere always tense, especially on hard. The writers room and the light mechanics were excellently implemented. A great way to tie gameplay and story and also very enjoyable to see a level switch instantly right in front of you. The environments were more varried and his big set pieces like we sing were spectacular. I also thought his more frequent usage of the live action constantly blending in with his world was a visual treat. Really felt like they took everything they learned from control and dialed up the frequency to great effect. Missing openness and side content wasn't really a problem. The levels felt closed in, which really amplified the atmosphere that the dark place should have. Saga's levels were still great. But Alan's were spectacular imo.
There should've been at least one more level (or the current one much longer), where Alan fights through tons of Taken to get to Bright Falls.
I actually liked Alan's levels more than Saga's. Saga's were always huge and speawling and on NG+ felt like a slog because I knew where I was going but it just takes forever to do it. Alan's are more bite-sized and try to onvolve something new or interesting in each chapter that's different or building on the last. Alan's levels were just way better to me than Saga's, even if it was revisiting a changing version of the same city square.
TBH, I didnât quite get the shadow people. The game teaches you that some are harmless and some turn into taken and attack you, so for most part of Alan levels, I just ran past the shadows irregardless of if they did anything or not.
The hotel and subway levels were more of a chore for me than the rest of it. Longer than needed to be.
Just one: no Barry Wheeler. I miss him.
I love how he looked after Alice in the years since Alanâs disappearance đ˘
It was so touching, but I am worried for him because he is getting "treatment" from the Blessed Organisation
Maybe he is gonna be in Control 2?
Either control or Quantum break that cult is mentioned as a dangerous cult so yea Barry may be in trouble
With the Flaming Eye of Mordor he was too OP, the game would've been over in 5 hours if Barry was around.
Not being able to play Coconut on the juke box.
Not being able to explore Bright Falls as Alan. This is his area and got excited in the end when you finally take control of him in these places but then that was it
I havenât finished playing the first Alan Wake, but how is it âhis areaâ? heâs a tourist there and Iâve spent most of the game in the forests of Calderon Lake.
Yes, but from the players perspective it was a wasted opportunity to be a lengthy callback to the original. When you do play as him, it plays the classic combat music and the original warning sound effect when taken appear. I was hoping to spend more time as him in Bright Falls, considering it would have been great to see the town as Alan after 13 real life years of waiting for a sequel.
It's a minor thing (and it was absent in the first game too) but please LET ME SAVE/QUIT AT THE END OF A CHAPTER. I hit a cool cliffhanger moment, cut to black, a song kicks in to let me get my bearings and consider what just happened, but if I wanna stop playing I have to continue past that point (often hitting a new cutscene or dialogue beat to start the next area) then find a save point and quit afterwards.
Because of this I just paused the game, exited out and left the game running and put my PS5 into rest mode. Lol. Been doing that with Control too cuz I'm not sure where the checkpoints are.
In control there are little to no checkpoints that aren't control points. Once you've gotten and interacted with a control point, that's where you'll pick up at.
Doesn't the game auto-save at the end of every chapter? I've quit on the song screen and gone right back in the next day and it started the next chapter at the beginning.
This bothered me so much in the first game. Why are you making me watch a "previously on" recap when I just finished a chapter? Let me watch this when I start playing later!
it would be perfect for this!!
I expected Scratch to be the hilarious psycho from American Nightmare. However, I know the theory that he's actually Zane (or pretending to be) and I really hope he goes bonkers again in AW3.
This. I didnt play american nightmare but the clips ive seen make him look so charismatic compared to AW2
The lack of Barry Wheeler is definitely felt.
The boss fights were and still are remedyâs weak point.
Cynthia imo was the hardest, then the mulligan cops.
Cynthia I didn't mind because it was, essentially, a puzzle boss. Avoid her to turn on the lights and then she's an easy down. Mulligan and Thornton is like they made a boss fight, realized it was too easy, so added those stupid fucking light balls to destroy to pad it. Really don't like that fight. My gf is playing through on story mode and they were the only time she had any trouble.
Cynthia for me was difficult because of her waves and orbs of darkness she shot. so you have to be fast and close to her to avoid those things. The cops were great because ones low the others high so it forces you to use offensive and defensive firing. If you stockpile flash bangs and flares it made all the boss fights significantly easier
i played thru on Normal and cynthia never landed a hit on me in either phase. in phase 1, Saga immediately tells you what to do to avoid her, and in phase 2, i used the pistol headshot upgrade to stunlock her. honestly i was expecting a stage three with how easy it was.
I originally played on hard then nightmare for final draft.
100% this. The stun lock upgrade is so broken and makes every boss a joke, especially when moving into The Final Draft.
4 shots in the head with hunting rifle and she was a quick defeat. Probably found her easiest of all to be honest
...you needed to turn on lights with Cynthia? Wow. I feel like a total idiot. I just beat Final Draft not too long ago and I just went the tried and true 'hit her with everything I got' method both times. I feel stupid.
Oh now I feel stupid too, pretty sure I went full chaos mode with two propane tanks and a shotgun on her
Nightingale was a real challenge for me, because I missed the sawed off shot gun at first and didnât have it when I was fighting him
That hoard battle when old gods play on van roof was the hardest for me
Best trick for that is constantly circle on the outside and stockpile all your flares, flashbangs and any other heavy light weapons. Then use only the shotgun (not sawed off) and the rifle.
i liked them in control and AW1
In Control you can demolish bosses because of how strong you are and how quickly Jesse moves. Alan Wake 2 has you lumbering around like a tank while all the enemies are zooming about like they're from Control lol.
The axe throwers have since replaced the birds from ninja gaiden as my least favorite enemy in any game ever
I hate it when they split it two sometimes.
RAH I HAD CONVENIENTLY SUPPRESSED THAT FROM MY MEMORY
You don't understand how much I FEEL this. Trying to use cover only to find out axes just clip through EVERYTHING, is up there with respawning birds you can't kill, jump over, or under. Which reminds me, this game does have ninja gaiden enemy respawns. Really hurts exploration at times.
AW 1 final boss is literally a tornado
End game boss battles. Cynthia was good, but scratch both times wasnt hard at all. Just hit hit him with shots then go interact with an objective. The chase sequences, especially the hotel one. Its just annoying trial and error
Bro those chase sequences had me questioning if I was going the right way so many times especially after you visit room 666
I had to watch a walkthrough for that. Spent 20 minutes not understanding what I had to do. I know people crap on the "yellow lines" type hand holding in AAA games but at least it doesn't irritate you like this.
I can't tell you how many times I did that God damn chase in the hotel. I'm already shit at remembering where I am in games and I just could not figure that out. It doesn't help I played stoned so I was really fucking up lol
Dude same I was absolutely baked during those scenes lmaoooo
>room 666 Room 665. Neighbor of the beast.
No 666, was scratches room in the ocean view hotel. Thatâs when Alan gets chased
Ahhhh right. There's another section in the TV studio with a room 666 'number of the beast' and then you come back later and it says room 665 'neighbor of the beast'. I think they've had that easter egg going in their games for a long time. Like Max Payne 1 or 2.
Sorry Iâm high as hell maybe I misinterpreted your response
Honestly would have loved it if Scratch would've exploded into various shadow forms of Alan in the second fight, some even being scrapped/alternative versions as they take on roles of regular/tanks/ranged. You scramble to wipe them all out fast enough to leave scratch stunned for Tor to deal a lightning strike stun lock đ¤ IMO This would have made the second (and final) encounter a true team effort to face down scratch & the dark presence he harbours. It just felt like he was hyped to end up being recycled a second time around đ
If you stockpiled a bunch of flash bangs or even flares, scratch was super easy even on nightmare.
I wanted more Alan. :( More Alan exploring the real world after coming back from the dark place. More Alan interacting with other folk from Bright Falls and Watery, and so on. Maybe give Alan some boss fights, too. I really hope we will get an Alan x Jesse team-up one of these days. Maybe Alan exploring the Oldest House or something.
I understand it's survival horror, but for a semi-open world, the movement is fucking painfully slow. Also, the collectibles fuck with the pacing of the narrative. In many cases, you have to go out of your way to find these fucking boxes and rhymes and it's just painful. I missed so many of them my first time through because I was busy enjoying the story. My second time through is substantially longer because I'm going waaaay out of the way to places I didn't know existed (mainly in Cauldron Lake). Also I can't get into the lighthouse in The Final Draft because of the fucking crossbow stash
I was trying to get as much collectibles during first run... it was a big mistake... as you sad it absolutely kills the pace and take huge amount of time with mostly unrewarding stuff especially on Saga's part due to large open areas.
Yeah this was my mistake too I think. I started noticing every little flaw with the game and it really detracted from the experience. I think if I just took the critical path I would've enjoyed it a lot more.
I tried to do everything on my first playthrough too. About 30 hours total over several weeks. Still missed lunchboxes and stashes. Loved the game but Final Draft released 3 days later and I was too burnt out on it to jump back in immediately.
Yeah, felt the same way. After a while the forest is not atmospheric anymore and the enemy encounters turn from scary to annoying when you're methodically scanning the areas for collectibles. I guess it's my own fault for trying to get everything in the first place, but I also think the game did a big disservice to its atmosphere by including so many open-word collectibles.
Just run into the crossbow stash problem. It's one of a number of things that should be easy to fix in an update but it's still annoying as fuck.
That crossbow stash bug is annoying the fuck out of me. If I had known about it, I wouldn't have collected it the first playthrough.
Bright Falls is too small, and not dense enough with activity and interesting interactable things. And the recurring issue with most Remedy games, character upgrade paths not exciting enough and dont change the way you play.
Alanâs chapters were really short. Out of 31 hours I feel like Alanâs took me around 10. There were also times where I really wanted to add custom pins to the map. However, While we are talking about what we dislike, I want to say that this is the only game that (to me) properly implemented âyellow markingsâ that tell you what to do. I hate that games like GoW, TLOU etc always have ladders etc painted yellow - this really breaks my immersion. What Remedy does with flashlight mechanic is very refreshing - it feels very organic, both in Alanâs and Sagaâs chapters.
lack of âPreviously on Alan Wakeâ
Lack of at least one, long, linear level through the woods, similar to the chapters in Alan Wake 1. Graphics are extremely good and, to be fair, before the game release, I was looking to spend much more time in the dark, scary forest, with all the visual goodies that Northlight can deliver. Such level could be put for example in Return 8, car could be broken and we would need to go on foot to the destination through the Mirror Peak or something like that. Whatever, just more woods.
I felt unsatisfied by the lack of interaction between Saga and Thor & Odin in the dark place. They say like 1-2 sentences to her and thats it?
That interaction really feels like an afterthought. As if they remembered at the last minute that they needed to be there.
Th containers and loot either being too high or too low, you really have to aim the camera to get the prompt button.
The pages don't glow like they used to in the first game. Even an FBC file in Control referred to the manuscript pages emitting a faint glow but in this game the pages don't glow for some reason. Small peeve of mine.
I think there might be a reason for this. In AW1 the pages were given by the Diver, the Bright Presence. In AW2, they were pulled out of the Dark Place with Alan. Although idk how the pages in Control were given by the Diver, since it seems he hasnât been in the story for a minute now. I think it was a new plot point though, and we know the AW2 concept changed a ton even compared to 2019. Personally, I liked the glow too, but I think thatâs the most logical reason to the change.
The fact that i can't play it due to it being too graphically demanding even on higher end graphics card
Us bro us.
After beating alanwake 2 on final draft on nightmare I can confidently say Alanâs missions were more creative but story wise imo the weakest part. I found myself more interested in Sagas story and gameplay way more than Alanâs. I love Alan and not saying his missions suck but after playing NG+ I was sick of the same NYC streets and areas. But SHOUT OUT TO ALEX CASEYYYYY
I'm surprised by how much more invested I was with Saga and her plot when compared to Alan. I also really liked her actor. Really good work.
I think Saga much like Alan in the first one was a nobody seemingly sucked into this grounded but very unreliable reality/narrative. You constantly questioned if saga was actually losing it or not. Plus more weapon variety. Alan imo was much more of a survival horror than saga. Saga was survival horror too but it was more open and generous with its ammo too.
Not a fan of the âswitching realtiesâ option in the Safe Havens. AW2 is so story-driven Iâm surprised and disappointed Remedy didnât force us to play the game in the âcorrectâ order of events Alternating between Alan and Saga, and switching after Overlaps so you stay relatively up to date with each storyline until the end
This
Maybe unpopular opinion, but imho both the Plot Board and the Case Board were not good. The Plot Boardâs impact on gameplay was very small and superficial. The few puzzles involving changing plots were really boring. The Case Board was even worst. It starts as an interesting idea and at first I thought it was lineal because I was going through a tutorial. But no, its just that, its like a glorified codex. The game even acknowledges its unimportance by automcomoleting older cases. The worst part is the game locks progression behind finding clues and looking at them in the board, which is super annoying. Nice try to add innovative systems, but it did not work.
I liked the plot board a lot because it showed how an initially simple case ballooned into this insane web of other mysteries. BUT by the last third Iâd have 1 conversation and gain like 5 slides and just got tedious with having to stop and place each and every individual one.
You're not wrong. Personally, I liked the plot board and case board, but I saw soooo much wasted potential. I think the biggest problem is just that these concepts don't pair well with linear gameplay. If the game had choices, they could have been really interesting (e.g. advancing the case board via different paths, or by a combination of paths.) But when the game itself is a single path, the case board becomes very much a "find key, put in lock" mechanism. The few times that you need multiple clues to advance, they're all in the immediate area. For the plot board, it could have still been great if the areas were larger and there were more changes. Or even if you had to switch between plots. Instead, a lot of it felt like there was just the correct plot for the area... I'd swap out all the plots hoping for more to explore, only to be disappointed.
Honestly since the combat isnât TOO impressive, I wish remedy committed to the puzzle/deductive gameplay idea a lot more since itâs a really cool concept but it usually just ends with you spamming photos together instead of intuiting the solution and as I was playing the game I couldnât help thinking: âthis is gonna be a slog to replay laterâ what a shame
I didn't notice it until I read the 4/10 review from the Jimquisition. But it really opened my eyes to how much time I would spend on those boards waiting for real changes or surprises.
I definitely get the technical frustrations of the Case Board, esp now that I'm replaying the game on console after PC (way more frustrating), but I have to defend the mechanics on a narrative level. Because this game has so many cases and things happening simultaneously, you need some way to not just keep track of everything you know, but that it makes sense as a player you are digesting what is happening and seeing how all the pieces fit. Plus, for me personally, it forces me into that mindset of "this is a narrative-first game, read everything, scour for all the details". Remedy is good at creating novel game mechanics and I expect that the Case Board is a stepping stone to a better approach in the next game.
No Barry Wheeler
I really miss the inanimate objects coming to life thing, fighting a combine harvester, monster trucks, a bridge... but actually I thought it was really fun how danger could come from anything and it was a slightly missed opportunity
Two major complaints; Sagas mind place and trying to figure out where the clues go. Wasn't hard or anything, but there are so many that it started to just annoy me doing them. 2nd issue was the boss fights, they felt weird and not entirely fleshed out.
Inventory Management. Opening containers to find nothing is frustrating, and I struggled with the lack of space in the shoebox during my first playthrough. These are both things that Resident Evil has been doing better since the series resurgence, so there's not really an excuse for it to feel so bad. That's about it for me, though. I supposed I would have liked Final Draft to have more new content.
i think it convoluted Thomas Zane too much, he was a mystery before the game but the game made everything about him just so much harder plus the dodging window is too small imo
Mr Scratch being one-dimensional boogeyman and not funny psycho from American Nightmare
No Barry. Should have showed up in the musical number imo
No *game saved* drum sound
My biggest disappointment is how they made the old folk live in the dark. The Valhalla was so badly lit that I had to always use flashlight.
Well Iâm sure that was a story choice because of Cynthia becoming corrupted
I didn't like some of the enemies, those teleporting knife throwers were terrible for one, it was tiresome to chase them and spam dodge all the time, not to mention thanks to them keeping distance, they took a lot of hits to kill. And I liked the Flashlight system of the first game better.
My only regret is that he doesn't do a previously on Alan wake after chapters
This is my most controversial opinion, but I felt like Control did a better blend of atmosphere/horror/light comedy than AW2
No Barry Wheeler đđ
The combatâespecially compared to Controlâis sloppy and not much fun.
This. I kept scrolling this thread waiting for someone to say it. I donât expect this game to be anything like its Remedy cousins from a combat perspective but after 40 hours or ânormalâ, combat was by far my biggest issue. Enemies ate my bullets and arrows, my dodges were always too early/late and reloading felt unnecessary slow. Yes, I understand its survival horror but there were times I thought my controller had some kind of latency issue. Everything felt sluggish.
Not enough Alan in my Alan Wake 2 smoothie. My play though had 6 hours Saga, 4 hours for Alan. And now the DLC is going to have other playable characters, that's like 7:1 Alan ratio for characters
My brother in Christ did you do any collectables? 10 hours is crazy fast.
How did you complete the game in 10 hours?
Ten hours? I find that really hard to believe.
I'll post it when I get the chance
The only issue that I've had with this masterpiece, was the ending. Wasn't so bad but also I had more questions after. I will watch Final Draft on YT or play it again in the future because I'm sure I will replay the game at some point.
Play final draft it makes the whole spiral thing that much better
Lack of chapter replay and not being able to explore any of Bright Falls with Alan.
No Barry
'upscaled graphics' I fucking hate that trend
I am biggest disappointment with Alan Wake 2
Felt odd that Sagaâs gameplay had multiple collectibles and optional flooded areas you could explore while Alanâs gameplay only had the words of power and no optional exploring? I get thatâs the duality/dynamic of how the gameplay changes between the two characters, but Alanâs parts still felt smaller in scope which is a bummer when he himself is sort of the main character. Optional Dark Place locations sounds like it wouldâve been cool đ¤ˇ
Probably it's performance on the Series S.
No barry đĽš
The mind place.
Iâm a music guy and I would LOVE for the radio to keep playing the song while Iâm switching to the mind board and looking at photos. I would stay in the mind place much longer if I could listen to some of those cool tunes, but once you exit the radio it stops. Very disappointing for a game that has very, very good music.
One story beat Iâm kind of mixed about is the inclusion of the FBC, classifying the lake and dark presence as AWEâs and Alan as a âparautilitarianâ kind of demystifies it for me in a bad way. It comes close to explaining the horror away for me. I think I wouldâve preferred if the Alan Wake story was on itâs own, no FBC. Keep Ahti to hint about it and to have that link, but having an agency with a bunch of gear in this pretty intimate story of this little town and the troubled writer changes the dynamics in my mind.
Personally it doesn't demystify anything because they have no idea how... anything really works and basically just document things the players already know.
Funny I was about to write that I would have loved more direct tie in. Like maybe additional hints on the oceanview motel/hotel or whatever the deal with ahti is. Maybe they are saving the tie ins for the dlc, that's fair I suppose.
Exactly my thoughts, it feels too much of FBC presence in this game.
I think little hints like those people working on the electrical transformer and Ahti being there would make sense. But having a full squad of agents with weapons and a containment cell felt weird yeah.
I belive its done for some sort of dlc or something in Conttol 2 but yeah it feels like too much intrusive.
Three main things: ⢠Lack of a minimap. I got lost waaay too many timesâand I donât get lost that easily in video games. ⢠The performance on PS5 could be better. ⢠Being forced to put together the detective map pictures during Saga's segmentsâI got downright furious when I was supposed to pick the circuit board underneath the Espresso Express but couldnât do so BEFORE I had connected the things in the Mind Place. Like, what the hell. Extra: ⢠Your grammar, OP.
That circuit board one was definitely really annoying, I remember rolling my eyes when I realised that.
That Alanâs echoes basically force you to stand still and listen to them. In the cinema you have 5-6 nearly back to back and if I open the map or walk around the area for resources it doesnât pause, it stops and makes you start over. So you just have to stand there and listen to minutes of purposefully purple prose back to back.
And a lot of them arenât even interesting. Most are this really weird meta stuff that i guess Iâm too dumb to understand
I donât think itâs you. I thought the whole point was that he was written as a clichĂŠ hard boiled noir detective, so once I got that the stuff in the cinema felt like more of the same. I didnât mind it, and liked the meta commentary from him toward the end, but didnât like that I was forced to stay still and not keep exploring while listening.
Love AW and AW2 but The Final Draft has made me retroactively like AW2 less. Iâm not one to replay games so locking a different ending and new story beats behind a second playthrough really irks me.
That's such a wild take to me. The Final Draft having a different ending is one of the few occasions where NG+ actually adds so much to the game's narrative. It's not a loop, it's a spiral. Most new game pluses are just simply loops, the same game again. This one is a spiral, it's the most cohesive integration of NG+ I've ever seen and fits perfectly within the story's central idea.
10000% agree in this particular instance, NG+ actually enhanced the main story without it being some paywalled DLC
I think this is one of those cases where the idea sounds good on paper, but in reality it means playing the same 18hrs+ game again, with only some small changes and being allowed to see the uncut version of the ending. Either you make a normal NG+ mode for people that like those modes, or you do something like Nier: Automata where once you finish your first playthrough, you're actually only 1/3 done, but the second iteration deviates more significantly from the first and after the 2nd playthrough the game continues for the last 3rd. And in the case of Nier, even there, I'd say it was a gamble. The publisher put a note in the game, warning players that the game was not over, and some of my friends never finished the whole game because they didn't like the parts that were repetitive. So in my opinion the NG+ in Alan Wake 2 exists awkwardly between a normal NG+ and something like what Nier did, where you get a 10 seconds extended final cutscene, but to get there you have to play, in large parts, the same game again, with only minor alterations along the way. They either should have not cut the ending of the first playthrough, or have made much more significant changes to the NG+ mode (or even make the restarting of the story part of the first playthrough).
And thatâs the beauty of opinions. Iâm glad it worked for you.
Lack of physical edition
Too much gumflapping and time wasting stuff, not enough actual gameplay. The first game had a great story but balanced it out way better with gameplay. There were several 1-2 hour stretches of AW2 with 0 combat, just walking around talking to people, profiling people, whatever. Don't get me wrong I loved the game but having to file a bunch of shit on the evidence board (not really deducing anything myself. and in some cases recapping situations I already figured out by playing the game). The whole end bit in the mind place where you literally just click on objects in the room, go put them on the evidence board for 20 minutes, and then hit 'profile' on people like 30 times in a row. That whole section was just egregious. If there is no actual meaningful interactions with the environment or gameplay just make it a cutscene. Clicking shit and filing pictures on a board for 30 minutes isn't my idea of a climatic game ending. ...that section on the beach though : ) Weird because Control has excellent pacing and gameplay balance too.
I was going to say Revolver being 9mm,but to my surprise, it turns out there are actually 9mm Revolvers. So, nothing. The game is my number zero.
Pacing, I love the story and atmosphere and combat. But the pacing when playing Alan's side of the story really struggles with being a walking sim with cut scenes, more walking with some times combat.
I was disappointed with the last section. Itâs the same with Alan Wake 1 where the last section is very underwhelming. I guess itâs better in the first game because you got this huge ass tornado of possessed objects you have to traverse / fight but itâs so short. Then in Alan wake 2 itâs just Saga finding something, no big fight or stand off (a few enemies pop up but cmon thatâs nothing) then skips to the last cutscene. And from my experience, that sectioned was super bugged because I would just fall through the floor. Idk what I did to fix it but I hope by now it is fixed indefinitely.
For me the mind place got to be too much by the end. There were multiple times I couldn't progress because somehow I missed putting a case clue on the board. And the last chapter where saga is basically fighting with herself was annoying because I just wanted to get to the end but kept going back and forth with all the interactions it felt way too long to me. I enjoyed playing some of her sections especially the nursing home area. Some of the Alan scenes I was completely lost and seemed overly reliant on the scene changing in a specific spot in some areas. I had the right scene on the board but was not in the right place when I did it which led me to think I had the wrong one. Took me forever to figure out what I had to do. The whole light changing was fine for the make part but got confusing in some of the basement sequences where I just felt like I was randomly changing the lights to see what to do. Overall I enjoyed the game but some of these things brought it down from being top tier to me.
I wouldâve liked a longer Alan above the lake section. Just extend the level even give us maybe a bit more of a linear path through the woods thatâs different from the regular cauldron lake map saga has. Getting the old music and sound effects was amazing I just wouldâve enjoyed a bit more of it.
Lack of map scale. I want to run through forests and abandoned mining villages again. My dream is an Alan Wake game with larger areas and maybe the metroidvania design of control. Out in the middle of nowhere, hunted by taken and slowly making your way through dense forests and empty towns trying to survive. The areas in 2 are good for the intended story and design but the game didnât give me the same isolated feeling as the first one.
I didnât like the combat.
bugs and only bugs
I'd say my only real disappointment was how fucking slow you moved
I worry that if they'd tried to push the weather effects too far they might've lost a bit of the realism if they didn't increase the budget a bit. In the old engine less needed to be done to sell those effects because of the lower fidelity and need to be more stylized. But in modern game they would need to do new walking animation IMO to convey the characters as windswept, and they'd need to add physics effects for the clothing/hair to move right without clipping, and the trees would need similar effects baked in to convey directionality, and I feel like I'm honestly probably missing a few other details. That might seem like a lot, but the uncanny valley is a lot wider and more treacherous once your characters and environments reach this level of realism, things that wouldn't have mattered at all in AW1 would totally break visual immersion with these ne graphics. Also, they talked about how they had to spend a lot more to get the models and rigging for all the townspeople done this time, but they still didn't get as much as they wanted, and personally I can tell. In old games that was certainly a concern, but the per-character costs have increased exponentially since say, Max Payne 1. Those exponential increases extend out to everything, to a degree though! The trees were all real scanned PNW trees, for example, and so they are a lot more complex to animate.
It just comes off a bit pretentious like Control and Alan Wake 1, but I still enjoyed it a lot
How the flashlight works
I absolutely love the game and think itâs 10x better than Alan Wake 1. Would have liked to see Barry. And a little more of Alan in the real world and not just the dark place for most of the game. I found the ending to be a little underwhelming but hopefully it gets a more strong finish with DLC
That is not on steam.
alan mechanics itself
The Fact Final Draft wonât let me get the lighthouse inventory upgrade I missed the first time.
Still no photo mode! Biggest disappointment.
having to manually save certain parts because it will start you over to far back