With the PC version round the corner - releasing with a mountain of bonus material in a Limited Edition package that includes documentary videos and a ‘making of’ book - and with spinoff arcade action title American Nightmare hitting Xbox Live Arcade next week - it seems that Alan Wake is seeing something of a resurgence.
I spoke to Oskari about the trials and tribulations that led to the PC version’s cancellation (and then redevelopment), whether Remedy hopes to make money from this release and the story behind American Nightmare and whether it could influence future core Alan Wake games. There’s also mention of a certain chap called Max Payne too...
SPOnG: Let’s start this off with the upcoming PC version of Alan Wake. The game came out quite a while ago on the Xbox 360 - were you guys pleased with the reaction that it received?
Oskari Häkkinen: Yeah, it was critically acclaimed, and it’s become this cult classic. We see people today that are still discovering Alan Wake, and they rant and rave about it on our Facebook page and forums. They tell us how much of an engaging experience it was for them, which is really amazing. They feel urged to tell us how the game made them feel. It’s nice to also see people tell their friends about it and recommend it.
Commercially, it has done... enough for us to continue making games. Which is fortunate, because that’s where our passion is. And the PC version is something that we always wanted to do. There’s no doubt about that. When we heard that the PC version... the stars weren’t aligned for it... it was like losing one of your children. And now we’re putting it out on PC and getting that done, and getting the blessing to do it - it’s like finding your child again. The family is complete, the game is finally coming home. We do have a deep heritage in PC gaming.
Oskari Häkkinen: We didn’t really have a safety net at all. No. I think, whether you have an exclusive title or not, you have exactly the same risk as anyone else. We heavily invested in Alan Wake after the Max Payne games and selling that franchise, and we wanted to do something creatively different. We were invested in our company and our next property. So, yeah there was just as much risk, but thankfully it’s been commercially successful enough for us to continue making games.
SPOnG: The game had been in development for quite a number of years. Five - and it actually started with the PC version, right? And as you say, the stars didn’t quite align for that... could you elaborate on that a bit?
Oskari Häkkinen: Well, Alan Wake was announced for the PC and Xbox 360, and for some time it was kept that way. Then, at some point the stars became... unaligned, and it was then just an exclusive Xbox 360 title. But for Remedy, with our heritage in PC gaming from Death Rally, Max Payne 1 and 2... we definitely always wanted to do the PC version and we’ve been quite open about that fact.
I think the very instant that we got the blessing from Microsoft to do the PC version, we started working on it. And we’ve been working on it for about five months just trying to do the PC version justice. It’s not a simple port. We’ve really put in a lot of work to get this version right.
Oskari Häkkinen: Well, I’m not very technical, but I can talk generally about this. When you’re working with fixed hardware such as that of a console, you have to work within certain parameters. When you take those parameters away, which is the freedom you get on PC, you really see some cool stuff happening right away. You can immediately get a graphical improvement by simply turning the knobs up and accessing all that extra power... but then you start to see stuff that doesn’t look as nice. It’s like putting on glasses and noticing all these dodgy elements that previously looked fine before.
We’ve changed up a lot of the textures and stuff like that. But it’s just as important to get right how it plays, as well as its visuals. So we’ve put a lot of effort into getting the mouse and the keyboard configurations to work really well with the third person camera. We’ve also put in some cool, niche features like stereoscopic 3D. It supports multi-screen as well. Some stuff like Hide HUD, which was something the Xbox gamers were asking for, as it’s quite an immersive experience. They wanted a method to take away the clutter from the screen. Field of view, tonnes of different graphical settings just to allow for overall higher fidelity in the game.
SPOnG: Will people still be interested in buying Alan Wake, several years after it’s been released on another platform?
Oskari Häkkinen: For people who have played it before... I’m not expecting them to necessarily go out and pick it up. If they want to, and they enjoyed it so much that they want to play it with even higher fidelity and higher resolutions, then that’s okay. But it’s more for the PC gamers out there who were expecting it back in 2005 and didn’t get it.
Like I said, we have a deep heritage of PC gaming, and this is something that we’ve always wanted to do. It’s less about the commercial aspect - more about the promise and about who we are as game developers.
Oskari Häkkinen: Yeah - it’s been almost two years since Alan Wake came out. Well, if you haven’t played it before, then the game is up to speed. It’s up to speed with any other [new release] game that’s out there. I think it’s such a shame that games become ‘old’ within a month or two. Movies certainly don’t - there’s movies that I haven’t seen [from] two years ago that [I'm] picking up and they’re a fantastic movie. People respect that medium.