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Obviously spoiler warning ahead of time.
So before like two months ago I had never played a Remedy game but I knew Alan Wake 2 was coming out so I went and played both Control (and its DLCs) and the Alan Wake Remaster so that I could make sure I'm understanding what's going on in AW2. I was a HUGE fan of Control and the Federal Bureau of Control. You kind of have to understand the anomalous things in the Remedy games aren't the typical SCP stuff so I think I was disappointed at first because I wasn't seeing any crazy SCP shit, but now that I'm aligned to the kind of stuff that exists in these games I'm very fond of Control.
Alan Wake on the other hand I thought was kind of messy. Alan Wake himself as a character was awesome and his mannerisms are super goofy in an endearing way, sort of like John Wicke crossed with a lost puppy dog. The actual *gameplay* though was kind of boring and the combat wasn't really fun. Like, what was good and fun about Alan Wake was everything BUT the gameplay. I loved the voice lines of the Taken as they're running around, the visuals of how everything looks, the plot, etc. The game just wasn't really any fun.
So going into Alan Wake 2 I was praying they integrated in the FBC and the stuff Control introduced, and I am really pleased to see how much they followed up on it. We get to interact with a few FBC agents with one of them being an important character, we see Jesse Faden for like a split second (I'm guessing this was during the Control AWE DLC when they made contact?), I think we saw a book by Dr. Darling just lying around somewhere, and a bunch of FBC nomenclature and concepts were shown in AW2. Going into AW2 after playing Control was super fun because you're doing some stuff as Saga and shit gets weird and you're like oh wait, this is like a Threshold from Control. Or we see the Clicker and we recognize it's an Object of Power kind of thing, and playing as Jesse and being introduced to characters who hold anomalous powers in their heads makes the stuff shown in AW2 fit in super cleanly.
An example of an interesting character that gets enlightened by Control would be someone like Mr. Door who at first seems to just be part of the stories Alan Wake is writing but then you start noticing that it's actually more like something out of the Matrix where Mr. Door has himself in a little realm-between-realms and that this guy is more like Ahti than just an aspect of the Dark Presence or whatever.
And speaking of Ahti, I love this guy so much now. I loved him in Control and the fact that he shows up again and is still doing his weird shit he did in Control with moving around and teleporting. It's super cool that there's basically like Norse gods just chillin at Cauldron Lake and they're also freaky and like magical bards or something. His voice is so beautiful.
Alan Wake's performance was again really fun and I loved all the Old Gods of Asgard integration into the game. That one Wake part where you're walking through a set of Alan Wake 1 with the music video playing on all the panels was super cool.
HOWEVER, the gameplay is still kind of bland. It's definitely BETTER than Alan Wake 1's gameplay (Alan Wake no longer gets tired and hobbles like an idiot, more interesting levels), but it was still a little boring to play in between the interesting stuff. I think I'm not really fond of that typical third-person view and lightly jogging everywhere kind of movement and I prefer actual running. Thinking back to Control for example, even Jesse Faden felt like she had more hustle and on top of that they gave us movement abilities to supplement our movement. When you want to get from point A to point B in AW2, you just hold forward until you get there. In Control, you're jumping and levitating and boosting to platform around. I'm a little spoiled by Control because it's just so much more FUN to play than AW1 and AW2.
Overall though, it was a very fun game and it was totally worth playing the three games I did for it. I look forward to more games being in this shared universe and I hope Ahti is in every game somewhere.
So before like two months ago I had never played a Remedy game but I knew Alan Wake 2 was coming out so I went and played both Control (and its DLCs) and the Alan Wake Remaster so that I could make sure I'm understanding what's going on in AW2. I was a HUGE fan of Control and the Federal Bureau of Control. You kind of have to understand the anomalous things in the Remedy games aren't the typical SCP stuff so I think I was disappointed at first because I wasn't seeing any crazy SCP shit, but now that I'm aligned to the kind of stuff that exists in these games I'm very fond of Control.
Alan Wake on the other hand I thought was kind of messy. Alan Wake himself as a character was awesome and his mannerisms are super goofy in an endearing way, sort of like John Wicke crossed with a lost puppy dog. The actual *gameplay* though was kind of boring and the combat wasn't really fun. Like, what was good and fun about Alan Wake was everything BUT the gameplay. I loved the voice lines of the Taken as they're running around, the visuals of how everything looks, the plot, etc. The game just wasn't really any fun.
So going into Alan Wake 2 I was praying they integrated in the FBC and the stuff Control introduced, and I am really pleased to see how much they followed up on it. We get to interact with a few FBC agents with one of them being an important character, we see Jesse Faden for like a split second (I'm guessing this was during the Control AWE DLC when they made contact?), I think we saw a book by Dr. Darling just lying around somewhere, and a bunch of FBC nomenclature and concepts were shown in AW2. Going into AW2 after playing Control was super fun because you're doing some stuff as Saga and shit gets weird and you're like oh wait, this is like a Threshold from Control. Or we see the Clicker and we recognize it's an Object of Power kind of thing, and playing as Jesse and being introduced to characters who hold anomalous powers in their heads makes the stuff shown in AW2 fit in super cleanly.
An example of an interesting character that gets enlightened by Control would be someone like Mr. Door who at first seems to just be part of the stories Alan Wake is writing but then you start noticing that it's actually more like something out of the Matrix where Mr. Door has himself in a little realm-between-realms and that this guy is more like Ahti than just an aspect of the Dark Presence or whatever.
And speaking of Ahti, I love this guy so much now. I loved him in Control and the fact that he shows up again and is still doing his weird shit he did in Control with moving around and teleporting. It's super cool that there's basically like Norse gods just chillin at Cauldron Lake and they're also freaky and like magical bards or something. His voice is so beautiful.
Alan Wake's performance was again really fun and I loved all the Old Gods of Asgard integration into the game. That one Wake part where you're walking through a set of Alan Wake 1 with the music video playing on all the panels was super cool.
HOWEVER, the gameplay is still kind of bland. It's definitely BETTER than Alan Wake 1's gameplay (Alan Wake no longer gets tired and hobbles like an idiot, more interesting levels), but it was still a little boring to play in between the interesting stuff. I think I'm not really fond of that typical third-person view and lightly jogging everywhere kind of movement and I prefer actual running. Thinking back to Control for example, even Jesse Faden felt like she had more hustle and on top of that they gave us movement abilities to supplement our movement. When you want to get from point A to point B in AW2, you just hold forward until you get there. In Control, you're jumping and levitating and boosting to platform around. I'm a little spoiled by Control because it's just so much more FUN to play than AW1 and AW2.
Overall though, it was a very fun game and it was totally worth playing the three games I did for it. I look forward to more games being in this shared universe and I hope Ahti is in every game somewhere.
