[ Alan Wake Remastered ] Alan Wake 1 Last Boss & True Ending, DLC2 - The Writer

Ah Alan Wake and Remedy Entertainment. I could, no pun intended, write a book on the subject. I'd write about how Sam Lake, my favorite writer in video games and a fantastic human being, draws inspiration from things like Twin Peaks, The Twilight Zone, Stephen King, Lovecraft and a myriad of other wells of pop culture wealth to create this mysterious, psychological action thriller about a writer called A.Wake. I'd write about how this once small Death Rally developer in Finland made this hard boiled detective noir classic called Max Payne and changed 3rd person action and style forever. I'd write pages about the studios approach to storytelling in games and about Sam Lakes approach to writing them. I recently played through Alan Wake again, this time in remastered form and as I went through it I realized I wanted to share almost the entire game on YouTube. The game is so full of exceptionally well written suspensful moments that to choose something to start with I just had to start with the ending. The true ending. Alan Wake ends satisfying and mysterious enough for me to love it as is, but with the 2 DLC chapters "The Signal" and "The Writer" this ending gets more fleshed out and better goes into both a sequel and the DLC for Control, Remedys latest masterclass in game design and story telling. With Alan Wake 2 finally being on the horizon as my most anticipated game for the foreseeable future I thought this might be a good time to share the ending to AW1 for people who want the quickest recap possible before jumping into 2 or a refresher on what exactly happened towards the end of the DLC Chapters. The First DLC, The Signal, has Alan overwhelmed trying to find his footing now trapped in the dark place. He is trapped within the nightmares of his own mind and is just sinking deeper into the twisted reality that is the dark place. Thankfully Thomas Zane finds a way to send a signal deep into Alans subconscious to try and guide him back to something resembling consciousness. He does this in the form of an ancient diving suit which he uses to navigate the dark place like a giant dark ocean. Thomas, who has been trapped in the Dark Place for a very long time has more or less become this entity of light trapped in a diving suit. He tries to give Alan the signs and tools he can to steer him in the right direction so that he can take control of his own mind again. In the second DLC, The Writer, Alan has become more aware that he is trapped in his own mind as the more rational part of his brain. His other self is lying on the floor of the bird lake cabin and is going insane. This insanity constantly breaks through and makes life tough for the more rational part of Alans mind, aka you the player. The guidance from Thomas Zana, the diver, becomes more direct as Alan battles his own guilt, anger and fear to make his way to more "shallow waters" of his subconscious . Eventually Zane can materialize and rationalize the final goal to mental control as a Lighthouse. Getting to the lighthouse takes Alan through an alien landscape that is "no longer even trying to be normal" while constantly being haunted by a subconscious version of Barry that is fueled by Alans own insecurity and paranoia. Climbing the lighthouse eventually ends you back at the version of the bird lake cabin that is in the dark place where inside, the broken part of your mind is quickly giving into eternal insanity. A boss fight ensues where you battle phantoms of your own doubt based on characters in Bright Falls. With that out of the way you are free to enter your mental prison, the cabin, and regain control of yourself again. In doing so you are still trapped in this weird, dark, mysterious alternate reality called the dark place but you can now begin to actually get out of there instead of out of your own mind. Following the logic of the story in the main game you begin to do so by writing yourself out of there, using your creative powers to see if there's a way back to any kind of "normal world" again. You begin to write "Return, by Alan Wake".