Virtual 100 – Game 13
For the past several days, I’ve been cranking away at Alan Wake II, a game that turned out to be considerably longer than I expected. I’m not sure if that’s due to the game length itself, or the fact that I have to poke my head around every single corner to make sure I’m not missing anything.
In any case, the Virtual 100 has been at a virtual standstill for over a week now. Some of that was due to Alan Wake, but some of that was due to my allergies being so agonizingly awful that the last thing I wanted to do was stare at a screen and try to concentrate on something.
But my allergies began to clear up, and now the only fog in my brain is that created by this extremely convoluted story.
The reason I chose to play Alan Wake II almost exclusively for the past week and a half was that I was becoming increasingly aware of the Spoiler Expiration Date. You know what I’m referring to, that imaginary amount of time that passes where podcasts and websites feel its now “okay” to just blurt details of a game or TV show plot, with no regard to warn anyone ahead of time. Up until now they’ve been holding their tongues; something I totally appreciate. But I already saw a spoilercast pop up on Youtube a few weeks ago and I can’t help but feel that my time is growing short.
For most games I don’t really care if the story is spoiled or not, unless of course, the story is the entire reason I was playing. If someone would have told me back in the day that Aerith was killed by Sephiroth at the Temple of the Ancients, I would have been pissed. See? I just spoiled that for you, but it’s okay because it’s been like, 25 years.
Of course games with heavy narratives always risk spoilers. But a game like The Callisto Protocol is heavy on story, but I couldn’t give a rat’s butthole if the beans were spilled or not. There are games that I choose to care about.
It might not even be a story beat, but instead a game mechanic. There was a part in Alan Wake II, for example, that was so bizarrely entertaining and unexpected, that it wouldn’t have had nearly the impact had I already known about it. And there were hints too. Podcasters would say things like, “the game is incredible, and the part where… well… I don’t wanna say..”
But you know the longer the game is out, the less they’ll be like, “I don’t wanna say,” and the more they’ll just blurt it out.
This is all a long-winded way to say that I’m not going to talk about the plot. Other than the fact that Alan Wake is trying to escape from the Dark Place, and Saga Anderson is trying to solve a series of cult murders. That’s really all you need to know. The rest you’ll have to discover for yourself.
To be completely honest, the story is not that heavy on big reveals or cliffhanger moments. But it’s complex. So much so that if I even tried to explain it, I would probably fail miserably.
So instead I’ll talk about the fact that this is probably the best looking game I’ve ever played. I’m serious. I’m not sure what technology Remedy stumbled upon between Control and Alan Wake II, but damn. Control wasn’t even really that graphically impressive, but it was pretty rough on consoles. Even after the patches, it was still a bit choppy in places. Alan Wake II is locked at 30 frames per second, and they took advantage of that limit to make what are probably some of the most impressively-lit environments I’ve seen yet. The character models look great, for sure, but if it wasn’t for the lighting in the game I don’t think it would have nearly the impact. The game oozes with atmosphere, and developers of the next Silent Hill game need to pay attention. For this to be Remedy’s first foray into survival horror, they knocked it out of the park.
I actually kinda feel sorry for games like the Alone in the Dark reboot. I know they pushed it back on purpose, specifically to distance itself away from Alan Wake, but damn. AW’s lighting and graphics are so far beyond what I’ve seen from the Alone in the Dark previews, going from this to that is going to be quite the downgrade.
That’s not to say AitD won’t be good, I actually hope it will be. I’ve been looking forward to it. But it’s gonna be an uphill battle for any survival horror game to equal the atmosphere that I’ve just experienced.
I actually still have the Dead Space reboot in my backlog, along with a few others like the ReMothered game and it’s sequel. There are also the two Fatal Frame games that released on Xbox, along with a few other indie titles like The Beast Inside and Tormented Souls. I’ve been purposefully spacing them apart so that I don’t get survival horror fatigue. I’ve already scratched off The Chant and The Callisto Protocol. It’s a process.
As good as Alan Wake II looks though, there are still some weird side effects of the lighting model. Character’s hair and various objects in a scene can get weirdly shiny. I’m not sure if that’s a result of the ray-tracing or path-tracing or whatever they’re using, but it can break the immersion from time to time when they’re really pushing the realism but Saga’s hair looks like it’s made of glass. Another weird thing, and perhaps this is a console limitation and doesn’t affect high-end PC’s, but there are very few reflections in the game. Bathroom mirrors all have that foggy look to them, and it’s always weird in a game to walk up to a mirror and not see anything.
Likewise, Saga’s reality is in a perpetual state of sunset and night, and it’s unclear how long of a time frame the story plays out. It seems to flip-flop back and forth between night and sunset, and I’m not sure if that’s the story playing out or the effects of the Dark Place or what, but it kind of screws up any sense of time progression. There’s a deadline in the game, the start of Deer Fest, but over the course of 20+ hours of playtime, I never had a sense of whether time was growing short. I actually never knew what time it was, ever. Does the game take place over the course of a day? A few days? I have no idea.
Time doesn’t matter at all in Alan’s case. He’s in the Dark Place for most of his story, and it’s a loop by its very nature. So at least there I had no reason to care what time it was. But it did make lining up his story and Saga’s confusing, for instance.
The sound in the game is incredible, which shouldn’t be surprising, since it literally won awards for its sound design. Everything is appropriately creepy, and the music is sparse, so that when it kicks up, it’s that much more effective.
If I did have any major gripe with the game, I did feel like it was almost a bit too long. Not that I have any complaint about the length, it’s just that Alan’s story is a loop, by design. It’s different every time, but due to the convoluted nature of the place, and the resulting story, it was difficult to track if he was making any progress. The story had a few interesting revelations, but it was so complicated that I never felt like I was any closer to his goal, despite the fact that he would literally say things like, “I was closer now,” or “I was getting closer.” Okay. I just kinda took his word for it. I do feel like they could have cut one loop from the game and it would’ve been fine.
The same can be said for Saga’s story. She has her Mind Place to help her figure things out, but there can be weird lapses in the crime board and the profiling, where you can pin up clues to story beats you’ve already experienced. For example, you’ll find X object and use it, then go in and profile a character, where she’ll be asking them were she can find X object. I get that this can happen if you don’t go in regularly and use the clues, but I was trying to stay on top of things and use the clues as soon as I received them, and I still found Saga asking questions that had already been answered. It didn’t really affect the game negatively, but it was just kinda weird. Like when you complete a side quest objective in an RPG before actually getting the side quest, and the developers didn’t bother to acknowledge that you already did it. It’s probably the result of the non-linear, linear story, if that makes any sense.
The player has the ability to swap between Saga and Alan at any point in the story, but I have to be honest, I think this hurts the game. A lot of times, I would choose whoever the game decided I was playing as— it will swap periodically when you’ve reached the end of whatever chapter or story arc —and just go with it until it swapped again. There are points at which you cannot proceed without playing the other character’s story to a certain point, so why even bother? All this really did was have me questioning whether I was missing something in the other storyline, and with the very timeline intentionally being a jumbled mess, it only made things more confusing. I would have much preferred that the game decided when I was playing who, just to keep things straight.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter, you don’t miss anything by playing one character or the other for too long.
If I had one major complaint with the game, it’s the endgame. I think Remedy needs to look up what it actually means to be the ‘endgame.’ Small spoiler, I guess? There’s a point in the game where you’ll reach a point of no return. The game will warn you, which is great, I actually do really appreciate when games do this. The problem was that the game warned of the ending, and I chose to proceed, thinking I was getting to the ending. I then continued to play the game for another three or four hours.
That’s the length of some entire games. There was a moment where the game seemed as though it was at its climax. It was exciting. It was tense. And then the game kept going after that. And then after that, it kept going some more. Then there was an extended Mind Place sequence that went on for a bit longer than I expected. It completely broke the excitement and the tension of what I thought was the “finale.”
If you want a comparison, remember Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King? Remember how that movie “ended” then went on for another hour and a half? If you remember sitting in a theater after three and a half hours, with your bladder about to burst and your legs falling asleep, you remember the feeling of just wanting it to end already.
There was a point in Alan Wake 2 when I just wanted it to end already. And I hate feeling that in games that I’m enjoying. I feel that way playing shitty games all the time. But it wasn’t because the game was bad, or because I wasn’t enjoying it. It was because I was given the false impression that the game was over.
It’s like when you’re a kid and your mom says it’s time to leave, and you all pile in the car, and then she stands outside and talks to her friend for another 45 minutes. And you’re like, “why the hell did you make me get in the car?”
Or like when you’re at a play or concert, or some other kind of stage production, and everyone claps at the end when the actors all walk off stage, and then you stay clapping, because it’s the classy thing to do, and they all come out for the second bow, and that’s fine and good, but then people people stay clapping, and they all stand there waving, and bowing, and you’re like “get the fuck off the stage already so I can stop clapping.” At some point you just have to say “enough is enough” and leave.
Just like this write-up. I probably should have ended it by now. But I’m still writing. And if you’re still reading, you’re probably asking yourself when it’s going to end. When will I be done? I’ve already said what I was going to say, and now I’m just rambling and repeating myself.
It’s like a story that keeps looping. Endlessly. Refusing to end. Each sentence is a new beginning. Each beginning is the same. But different. Endlessly. Round and round. Like a spiral.
