Fans of Control’s incredible ‘Ashtray Maze’ setpiece are going to love Alan Wake 2

“In so some ways, in Alan Wake 2, we needed to take sure parts of ‘the Treatment sport’, and push it so far as we may think about,” Treatment inventive director and lead author, Sam Lake, tells me in an interview.

Particularly, I’ve requested concerning the reception to the ‘Ashtray Maze’ from Management, the studio’s final main launch, and the immediately iconic status it picked up. For those who’re unfamiliar, the ‘Ashtray Maze’ is a late sport setpiece that acts as a implausible gameplay and narrative machine – a mystical safety machine designed to forestall individuals with out correct clearance accessing the deepest reaches of the Oldest Home.

The way it manifests, although, is as a non-euclidean and shifting house – unimaginable to map and actually know. When navigating it, you might be required to put on a cassette participant given to you by janitor and (for my part) among the best characters in all of fiction, Ahti. Loaded with the observe Take Management by Previous Gods of Asgard – an in-game pseudonym for Poets of the Fall – this cassette participant permits you to freely traverse the ‘Ashtray Maze’, a peculiar supernatural object that has take the lifetime of many curious civilians.

How that interprets for you, participant, as you’re employed by this interactive music video, is outstanding. It’s among the best setpieces in fashionable gaming – and Treatment is eager to recapture that music-loving power for its subsequent sport.

“Definitely, we realized that folks beloved [the “Ashtray Maze’] in Management, for example of how we use music in our video games,” says Lake. “And that concept got here from the unique Alan Wake with the on-stage struggle in the course of the sphere with Previous Gods of Asgard beginning to play and Alan Wake and Barry preventing Taken, with every little thing coming at them. It’s one thing we’ve at all times been considering.”

Lake goes on to elucidate that one of many driving forces for Treatment when it develops new video games is creatively fascinated with how music can be utilized as a part of the storytelling expertise, and the way the developer can organically and authentically fold Previous Gods of Asgard tracks into the challenge in memorable and distinctive methods. Paired with extra “impactful, strategic, and determined” tone of the sport, all of it sounds tantalizing.

“So it has been this journey, and with out going into something particular – as a result of we now have an introduced something particular – we simply needed experiment with music, and creating customized music of various varieties. Much more than ever earlier than.”

Lake smiles wryly, and tells me that – if I loved the ‘Ashtray Maze’ in Management – I’m definitely going to love what’s being cooked up in Alan Wake 2. That 10 yr wait all of a sudden appears very worthwhile.

Alan Wake 2 is out October 17, and can be obtainable on PS5, PC, and Xbox Collection X/S.