Posted in: Alan Wake II, Epic Games, Games, Interview, Remedy Entertainment, Video Games | Tagged: alan wake 2, Kyle Rowley

Interview: Alan Wake II Director Kyle Rowley Chats About The Game

During a recent event for the game Alan Wake II, we got to chat with the game's director, Kyle Rowley, about what's new for this title.

A couple of weeks ago, we got a chance to check out a demo for the upcoming survival horror game Alan Wake II, as we explored different aspects of the game for both of the protagonists. During that event, we were able to sit down and chat with Remedy Entertainment's Kyle Rowley, the director for this particular game. We briefly chatted about the game's story, its new mechanics, the second protagonist, and a few other topics as he got to see people dive into the demo for the first time in person.

BC: You got people playing the game now!

KR: We have finally, after all this time.

How does it feel to see people's reactions so far and how they're reacting to both the primary Alan Wake story and then the brand-new character?

It's exciting. I think that we've been cooped up in the writer's room for slightly too long, and it's been good to kind of finally get to see the stuff that we were working on. I've been on this project for almost five years now, so it's like quite a long time to be stuck in yourself and not really sure how people are going to react. But I think that the reaction to Saga, in particular, we're very happy about. It's an Alan Wake game, we were conscious of the fact that players want to play as Alan, but we really thought it was important that we added a new character as the experience to kind of allow us to have a perspective in the story who kind of represents new players, or players who played Alan Wake a long time ago and then haven't actually remembered any of it. She's kind of going on a journey, learning about what happened in [the first game], and as a player, you kind of go on that journey with her. So I'm just very glad that her as the character has been accepted, and people are kind of excited to play her.

How does it feel having this game that shatters through the fourth wall? Because it's not necessarily giving a wink and a nod to itself, but it kind of is at the same time. It seems like there's not a lot of room for video games that do that where it's not overdone, or tongue-in-cheek, or too cheeky.

I think it's a fine balance, right? Especially when we shifted the genre to be a horror game. There are certain expectations that players have about playing a horror game where it's like, "Okay, this game is going to be serious. It's going to have serious themes and all that kind of stuff." And we do have those themes, we had to have those kinds of more serious moments. But I think the franchise as a whole benefits from the fact that it differentiates itself from other games.. Because we don't always take ourselves super seriously. There's a kind of levity in the game. There's characters who are quirky, that small-town America Americana vibe it's such an important part of the appeal, I think we needed to kind of have that there to kind of make it feel like an Alan Wake game, and then also just differentiate us from some of those other games out there.

How was it for you guys creating the Mind Place, and, more specifically, the board? Because that is very much of a different element that you see in a lot of media like Criminal Minds and CSI. But to have it here is an interactive element that each of you has a go…

We try and start our games thinking about the characters that are in this game, and then obviously what you're thinking about their narrative arcs and their journey for the story. But then also from a gameplay perspective, we're trying to figure out, how can we fulfill the fantasy of becoming that character. So for Saga, obviously, we always knew that she was going to be an FBI agent and a profiler. We knew from a story setup perspective that she's going to be investigating these kind of ritualistic serial killings. But we really wanted to make it feel like you as the player were going on that journey of investigating with her. And then we were like, "How can we build that as a gameplay loop?" The concept of the Mind Place kind of come off came off of that. We have got a lot of references to Hannibal the TV show, like Will Graham and how he is doing his kind of profiling was something that was very interesting to us.. That kind of like leaned into representing profiling in a gameplay way. So then we're like, "How do we do that?" We can't do that just randomly in the world, so maybe we create this safe space, a place where you can go to in her head. So all these ideas that come together as "We should just definitely do like a space where you can instantly go to it." We have the hard drives, now SSDs, we can instantly access stuff on the fly, we can screen stuff really fast, and it kind of so came from there.

And then on the case, in particular, that was quite challenging because one of the challenges with these kinds of mechanics is we don't want the player to feel like they're much smarter than the character, and we don't want the character to be smart in the player. Because basically then either one doesn't need to be in sync. So we did a lot of iteration of how much agency should we give the player in terms of like where they can place the clues. At one iteration, we had the fact in place clues anywhere they wanted on the board, and then they would come back to their board and that board is a complete mess. And they were like, "Oh my God, I've lost track of everything I was doing!" because they kind of messed it up. So then we're like, maybe we should pull that back a bit. So just for a lot of iteration and for a game for people to play, working on it with the designers trying to make it so it feels like I have agency, but I'm not being bogged down by it. We still want you to play the game. We don't need to be in the Mind Place all the time. So it's a balancing act to that to be done.

You touched on switching the genre over before, now that you have this this change in dynamic, how is it for you guys to color outside the lines and present a very different motif if you will, compared to the original?

When we were thinking about doing this, when I joined the project and we were concepting and coming up with the idea of what the core of the game is going to be, we also look back on Alan Wake and thinking what went really well. The story and the characters and the world, all that stuff was great. We did feel like there was a bit of a dissonance between the action gameplay that we had. Mainly because, obviously we just come off to Max Payne, so that was kind of what we were good at and what we knew. So we have to have shooting and loss of enemies that make sense but really wanted them a story side with a horror story. We felt like they were just kind of fighting each other in a way. So I really wanted to, for this game, make the gameplay and the story be a cohesive package where they complement each other and support each other and make sure each other's areas of the game better. And then we're like, "I don't know why we didn't think of this earlier. We should just do a horror game, like a survivor horror game." They're much slower-paced. We're bringing the camera closer to the character. We see more of the world. I think that one of Remedy' strengths is that we're very good at worldbuilding, we're good at atmosphere, and those kinds of things heighten horror games. They get they make those kinds of games better. So we just felt like it was a natural fit and. But even though we shifted the genre to be a horror game, as I mentioned before, we still wanted to retain things that make Alan Wake "Alan Wake". Small-town Americana with quirky characters. I think one of the things that we kind of do differently is that we're not just horror all the time. We kind of want to have these peaks and troughs of, "I'm scared! Okay, actually, I'm going to go talk to some characters now." And I think that's what makes our games unique compared to other horror games.

What are you looking forward to the most for people to experience in the game?

I'm very excited to get people's feedback on how they feel we've tackled this,  because we shifted the genres you mentioned. Do people feel like the switching genre has made the game better? I personally feel that kind of genre game makes sense for Alan Wake as an IP. I'm very excited to see how people kind of react to that and the changes we've made in terms of pacing; we've had a much bigger emphasis on this game in terms of giving the player more things to do. The first game was kind of… There's a combat beat, and then there was this cinematic, and then there was a bit of running—it was kind of paced that way. But for here, we've tried to give more freedom to the player, both in terms of how you can explore the game world, how you can tackle and solve problems, and which order you want to play through those two stories. I'm very interested to see how players experience the game themselves because there's ways that we obviously play it internally. But I feel like people are going to just have different perspectives depending on how they play. So excited to see how that goes.

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