Alan Wake 2 creative director Sam Lake stopped by IGN’s gamescom studio to discuss the upcoming survival horror sequel and how it hopes to solve one of the original’s biggest criticisms.
Alan Wake 2 was featured in gamescom Opening Night Live 2023 and we got a look at “The Dark Place” – a dream reality that spawns forth from Alan’s mind. What makes this place even more unsettling and confusing is that it will feature a mix between gameplay and live-action.
This is just one part of Alan Wake’s new identity as a survival horror game, and that switch will hopefully address the issues fans had with combat from the first game. According to Lake, some complained that it became too “samey,” and the team took that to heart.
“There were several reasons that we were getting criticism on combat being too samey through the whole experience because there was a lot of it like you have in an action game,” Lake said. “So that was one thing that we wanted to fix. But at the other time, we really, really wanted to do more with interactive storytelling and merging gameplay with story and having elements of gameplay that are about the story.
“So, we were looking for solutions and then we just realized that in survival horror, the pacing is slower. It leans much more on building up to an encounter and then having more strategic resource management and all. So we chose to give more variety in combat but also have less combat, instead we’ll have more moments to do things with the story. So all of this made us go, ‘Wait a minute, why haven’t we thought about this before when we started going into this?’ And yeah, it’s been great.”
Fans won’t have too long to wait to see if this new direction paid off as Alan Wake 2 is set to be released on October 27, 2023.
If you need more Alan Wake 2 in your life, be sure to check out our preview after watching 40 minutes of the game that makes us believe this will be survival horror as you’ve never seen it before. Furthermore, take a look at our roundup of everything else announced during gamescom Opening Night Live 2023.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
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