Alan Wake 2 harkens back to Max Payne in the most interesting – and typically Remedy – way

In the event you’ve a lot as booted up a Treatment sport within the final 20 years, you’ll know there’s one factor that each one of its tasks has. No, I’m not speaking a few Poets of the Fall/Outdated Gods of Asgard music (not this time, anyway). I’m speaking about live-action.

Give it some thought: the obvious implementation of live-action in Treatment video games comes from Quantum Break, an avant-garde experiment in integrating a live-action tv present in the midst of the sport. It was met with a considerably blended reception, however it proved that there’s positively a spot for live-action footage in video games, when it’s approached in the best manner.

Management – Treatment’s most up-to-date triple-A launch – additionally folded live-action footage into the sport by fleshing out the lore, and supplying you with video logs to observe that helped orientate the participant within the bizarre, great world of the Oldest Home. It was much less in-your-face than Quantum Break, however nonetheless a definite and stylised a part of the entire sport expertise.

Earlier than all this, although, Treatment was experimenting with live-action in a way more delicate (and technically restricted manner) way back to 2001.

“It’s one thing we do at Treatment,” says Alan Wake 2 sport director, Kyle Rowley, in an interview with VG247. “We used reside motion closely in Quantum Break, we used it in Management, and we even had it in Alan Wake 1, proper? The truth is, we even had it in Max Payne!”

Sam Lake, Treatment’s inventive director and lead author of Alan Wake 2, laughs, and provides: “Effectively, we had in-world TV sequence, however the expertise didn’t enable us to make use of video textures, so the nonetheless frames and an audio monitor needed to do.”

However the intent has at all times been there; experimenting with the format and utilizing varied methods to inform tales has at all times been one thing of an MO for Treatment. “ It’s at all times been one in all our storytelling methods,” continues Rowley. “In Management, the reside motion footage blended onto the sport world and was used for the ‘visions’. Right here, in Alan Wake 2, we’ve taken all that we realized from Management. And Quantum Break and Max Payne, actually – we didn’t simply need to do it once more as a result of we’d achieved it earlier than. We wished to utilise it in methods it’s by no means been achieved earlier than.”

In Alan Wake 2, Treatment has used live-action sequences to immerse you extra into the thoughts of participant character and a part of twin protagonist duo, Saga Anderson. Anderson is a famend prison profiler, notorious amongst her friends for her unrivalled (and barely curious) potential to uncover even probably the most obscure circumstances. To assist her obtain her aim, she retreats to her ‘Thoughts Palace’ (assume Will Graham in NBC’s Hannibal) and visualises her circumstances to assist her profile. That’s the place the reside motion is available in for Alan Wake 2.

“[As the rest of the game is,] it goes again to that concept of stylised; even the live-action footage follows the identical artwork path, and it’s stylised in the identical manner,” provides Lake. “The ambition has been to stylise and interlace sport and reside components in order that all of it feels way more flowing, and a part of the identical expertise.”

The seeds Treatment planted again within the Quantum Break days are bearing fruit now, then. It’s the end result of 20 years of experimentation and refinement, and the ultimate end result seem like they’re going to be one thing very particular certainly.

“In so some ways, in Alan Wake 2, we wished to take sure components of ‘the Treatment sport’, and push it so far as we may think about,” smiles Lake. And you may inform; from what I’ve seen up to now, I really feel assured in saying that Alan Wake 2 goes to be one thing particular, and one other trendy traditional for Treatment.

Alan Wake 2 is out October 17, and might be out there on PS5, PC, and Xbox Sequence X/S.