Alan Wake

0:16 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Other Castle. The Other Castle, I've missed you. We've both missed you. I wasn't talking to you, I'm glad you understood that. I am talking to the listeners. Welcome back to season eight of The Other Castle, the podcast where we break down the plot, lore, and more behind all your favorite video games. My name is Tom. I'm Andrea, and I'm very excited for today's episode. Ooh, I am as well. And if this is your first time listening to us, you can check us out at our website, theothercastlepodcast.com. That's theothercastlepodcast.com. You need to stop trying to seduce them with that second call out. I'm not, I had a thing in my throat. It's called being sexy.

0:57 Oh, is this a sexy game that we're doing this time? Nah, but on our website, you can check out all the games we've done, the whole back catalog, links to our Discord, so you can bully me out of doing that, because I'm not going to do it without a fight. Anything you want, also links to our Patreon. Yes, you can sign up for all the fun things over there on our website. The Patreon's also going to have the DLC to Alan Wake, so before you're like, this is the old one, fuck you. Yeah, man, I know, it's 2024. I've played the second one. We have to build to it. Right. So we were covering the full Alan Wake one game today, and on our Patreon, we'll be covering the Signal, the Writer, and the American Nightmare DLCs.

1:39 So there's three separate ones? Yes, the Signal and the Writer came out all at once. We'll get to it. Okay. Tom, you can listen to it on the Patreon. For just $2 a month. Yeah. And there's a free trial. If you're balling on a budget, no harm, no foul. We just want to make sure it's getting to the people that want to get it. So there's a free trial if you just want to binge it for a little bit and turn it off. I'm not going to be mad about it. Not one bit. Mm-mm. And that's all great. So today's episode, we are covering Alan Wake, and I know the fucking dance, but it doesn't translate well to podcasting. So I'm just going to have to tell you all about who made this, why, and what happens in it. Oh, goodness. Now you've never played these.

2:19 Not one bit whatsoever. I'm not a horror game fan. I play the entire Alan Wake series now. You have. You binged this entire series over the course of like a month and a half. You know what I did though? It got requested in our Discord. Oh, okay. I apologize. I don't remember who, but it was requested, and I went, let's check it out. Three weeks later, I have played every single Alan Wake game known to man. No, seriously, you were like Scarface with the Mountain of Cocaine on the Remedy series. On the Remedy games? That's a wild thing to fucking say, but it's true. I fell down the rabbit hole. I hadn't played a single one until recently, but I played Alan Wake, Alan Wake DLCs, and then Alan Wake 2, like back to back to back, which was kind of a trip, and I'm playing a different game right now where I can shoot things and run, which is very, very fun.

3:11 But Alan Wake is wonderful, and I've also fallen down the rabbit hole of watching fan cams of Sam Lake, so that's kind of where my life's been lately. It's just been Sam Lake interviews nonstop. So let's introduce the audience to who Sam Lake is. He's a charming man. Alan Wake is a psychological supernatural thriller that came out in May of 2010 from Remedy Studios. Now Remedy Studios is based in Finland, in Helsinki, and they were founded in August of 1995. Oh, wow. Their first game came out in 1996, and it's called Death Rally, and it's literally just like an angry car game. I'm not being flippant. That's all it is.

3:51 Now the people who created Remedy, they're Finnish guys. They were like, hey, we're making this game with cars, and we need someone who can write in English, because that sells more games. Most media is in English. They had a friend that they played D&D with named Sam Lake, and Sam Lake was their dungeon master in all their D&D campaigns. And he was this fantastic creative writer, and he was a wonderful storyteller, and would take them on these crazy adventures, and they're like, what if we hit up our D&D buddy? That seems fine. Now at the time, Sam Lake was a college student in a university in Helsinki studying English literature. Sam wanted to be a writer, and he was really interested in doing TV and horror, and he was really into Twin Peaks and this kind of surreal world that's a little spooky.

4:40 Oh, okay. So that's where this psychological thriller is gonna come into play. We're getting there. Like you said, we're building up to it. So they're like, hey, Sam, come write this shit for us. You're literally studying English. We need someone to be like, menu, start. Just start with the basics first. Entirely. So he did that. He was like, I knocked that shit out, but I think we could do something cool. So in like the text boxes between races and shit, he would just inject story like, fuck this driver, do this for your family. All sorts of wild shit just to fill out the world of, what is it, Death Rally? Death Rally. It's a crazy car game. Like, it's so wild that that's kind of how they got started.

5:22 And they're like, hey, man, thanks. If you want to come do some more games with us, you can't. And Sam Lake said, that sounds like something I could commit to for the rest of my life. And he did. Let's do it. Because the next game after Death Rally was the first Max Payne. Okay, Max Payne. Now that's also a game people have requested us cover in the show. Oh shit, have they? Yeah. And now that you love Remedy so much, I think that's just going to have to be on you. That's actually fine because they have announced a remake of the first two Max Payne games, because Max Payne 1 came out in 2001. So 23 years later, I don't want to play a 23 year old game. Please don't make me do that.

6:03 That's fair. I'll play it when it's clean, and I can do it on a PS5 with all smooth sailing. But I'm bringing up Max Payne just to talk about the lineage of how we got there. So Max Payne is particularly important in the zeitgeist of video games because it's credited with inventing bullet time. From The Matrix? Yes. So bullet time, could you describe bullet time actually? That's when like the world slows down and you can see the bullets moving through the air. If you're familiar with Red Dead 2, this is Deadeye mode. Yeah, that too. So it is iconic. The other part of Max Payne, which is so fun, is that the face of Max Payne is Sam Blake.

6:44 Oh, really? So they rendered him to look like the character. In Fucking Tirely. Okay, so they will say, and by they I mean Sam, will be like, we know we were balling on a budget, we didn't have a lot of money, we couldn't hire actors. You still volunteered your face to be the protagonist of this series. And he's like, yes, the fuck I did. The lead of an action series. Right, so they filled out Max Payne 1 in 2001, Max Payne 2, The Fall of Max Payne came out in 2003. And then after that, the team got to work on their fourth game, Alan Wake. Wow, I didn't realize it was only its fourth game. Yeah, yeah, we're really moving. So like, yeah, dumb kind of car game to huge games.

7:27 And the franchise, Max Payne, actually got moved over to Rockstar. Rockstar started putting out the Max Paynes after too. So it kind of moved over. I believe they did take Sam Lake's face off and kind of adjusted it, because they're like, we can't have the head of a studio be the face of our game. What the fuck, man? And they're like, we get it. Okay, there are mods now though, where you can do Sam Lake's original Max Payne face, Sam Lake's fucking face. You know what I mean? Anyway, that's a different game. We'll probably get there since you just said that it's been requested, and if you guys bully me enough, I will do it. I succumb to peer pressure all the time. Yeah, really easily. So with their fourth title, Alan Wake, the studio culturally took a step back to relieve themselves of the crunch mindset.

8:11 Again, Max Payne 1 came out in 2001, the second one came out in 2003. For a pretty large narrative that was heavy on shooters and things like that, and creating elements like bullet time, they did need a break. And one other thing with Remedy is that they use their own in-game engines and they build their own engines, which is an incredible undertaking to build the absolute foundation of everything. It's not just racing the car, it's building the car screw by screw. Yeah, I mean, honestly, that's why we don't have Half-Life 3, is because they didn't want to build an engine at the same time as building a game anymore, and then they just stopped making Half-Life 3. Oh, I believe that too.

8:51 And that's why so many things come out on Unity or on Unreal. These are incredible pieces of technology that people are like, well, I'm not gonna fucking build every pixel by pixel tree. Yeah. I'm gonna use one out of the toolbox and focus on narrative and everything else about a game. Remedy's like, fuck that, we're doing our own thing. We're gonna do everything. Yeah. So Remedy started internally pitching ideas and stories that they want to tell. They're like, okay, we've done this hard-boiled detective, we've done an angry car game, as I'm just gonna fully be dismissive of it with Death Rally. What steps should we take as we kind of move our group into this next fold of gaming?

9:31 We've established ourselves, we've sold off our last franchise title. What do we do? The team took about a year to settle on the story of Alan Wake. Oh wow. Which feels like a long time just to say, okay, we're gonna circle this post it and fucking do it. The team internally was about 40 people strong, led by creative director, Sam Blake, who moved up in the world from just copywriter. Now, Sam is such a fucking nerd. He loves David Lynch. He loves Twin Peaks. Like I mentioned, he loves creepy shit. And he was studying screenwriting at the time in school. And he was actually still studying while he was getting into Alan Wake. Oh really? Actually, in one screenwriting class assignment, he was also working for Remedy at the time.

10:15 And he actually turned in a draft of an early Max Payne script as homework to get feedback from his professors that were tweaked in the official fucking final script of Max Payne. That's some work smarter, not harder kind of shit though. I thought you'd laugh at that. You're just like, game, recognize game, bitch. I have fully done that in college. I'm working on something personally, but I could technically submit this. So it worked out for him. But that's all to say, this kid is fresh. He is young. He's still kind of getting through college. He's figuring his shit out. He is Max Payne and he's gonna do some shit, you know?

10:55 So the Remedy team was like, do your thing. We have our own engine. The team started modding the original Max Payne engine for Alan Wake, but due to the physics and elements of Alan Wake that they wanted to accomplish, they said, fuck, we're gonna have to scrap this and build a brand new engine just for Alan Wake. Oh, God. So you wanna say it's gonna build on itself and you're gonna create something new? They're like, fuck it, ground up, let's go. Start over. Yeah. In addition to this, they were writing, doing mocap and developing live filmed elements. All of these crazy wild moving pieces created a six-year production cycle for Alan Wake.

11:35 So this game has live action included? Yes. Oh my goodness. Which is kind of a staple of remedy games as we know them today. Oh, is it? Okay. Yeah. The budget for this six-year production was about $7 million. Some of those dollars went to casting two different actors to play Alan Wake. I'm sorry, what? So the voice is done by Matthew Peretta, an American actor who was in Robin Hood Men in Tights. And then the face and mocap actor for Alan Wake is a Finnish actor named Ilkka Vili. Ilkka Vili. No, Ilkka Vili. I have watched so much fucking Finnish content.

12:18 I know I'm pronouncing that a lot better than you are. I'm gonna take a controversial statement right now. Matthew Peretta has done other Remedy games. He's also done live action. I think he's more fuckable. I'll throw that out there. Not saying boyfriend material, just saying fuckable. Although Ilcavilli does kind of look like Jake Gyllenhaal. I guess. You've seen him. I have. The team internally loves both of them. Ilcavilli and Matthew Peretta have done multiple, multiple projects with Remedy, and they really love this dichotomy of these two people. They wanted Alan Wake as a character to have a New York accent and be very American, so they brought in Matthew Peretta for this very specifically American.

13:04 He's like an East Coast boy, all about it. And then Ilcavilli, he's local. He could show up in studio, do whatever they need to do. And he, I'm not shitting on him. He is a very handsome man. Not my, you know, not my flavor, but I respect that it's on the menu. He's been in the Remedy universe since 2005. So Ilcavilli came in about two years into the Alan Wake process, and he's been very happy. They both have been very happy to be a part of this world for fucking decades at this point. To compliment both Alans, they hired actress Brett Madden as Alice Wake, Alan's wife. Remedy saw about 200 actresses who came in to audition for her.

13:48 That's so fucking many. That's so many. And then to finally settle on one, but still just, you had to have a very specific vision for this character to see that many people. Oh, absolutely. And honestly, I'm so lazy. At number 60, I'd be like, I think we fucking have it. Sam Lake, do you want to put a wig on? Fucking jump in there. One more line item in that budget was a lead in material for the game. Now we saw this with the Far Cry 5 promotional campaign, but a few weeks before the game dropped, a six episode live action mini series called Bright Falls launched in anticipation of Alan Wake.

14:30 A whole ass TV series. Yeah, so I'm sorry. So for Far Cry 5, it was like a 30, 40 minute short. But for this, it's about 34 minutes or so altogether, just kind of chopped up. This came out on Xbox Live and online, and it's about the town of Bright Falls, which is where the game takes place, right before Alan and Alice arrive. Now one quick second. My question is, this being, you said Helsinki, Finland, correct? Yes. Is where they made it? Yes. Now, historically, European studios make a video game about the Pacific Northwest. Why do you say that? That's what's happened in every European studio game that's taken place in the United States so far.

15:11 I'm thinking life is strange. Life is strange. Heavy rain takes place in the Pacific Northwest, stuff like that. So am I right or am I wrong? You're not wrong. So this takes place in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, Bright Falls is in Washington. Why do you look so fucking smug? Why do they all take place in the Pacific Northwest? It's so weird to me that they all pick that area. You guys know San Diego exists, right? Right, there are so many other places. Well, Bright Falls is inspired by the ring. The ring? I'm gonna give you that right now.

15:51 The ring was a huge atmospheric inspiration for Bright Falls. Interesting. They loved this gray, sprawling, foresty, but still kind of city, but also we could have a small town feel energy. And yeah, they fucking... You know what? Europeans love the fucking Pacific Northwest. I don't know what it is. I'm not European. I can't speak to it, but the Nordic Circle loves the Pacific Northwest. I don't either. I'm amazed that I was correct, but I'm also not surprised. Wait, do you think Portlandia is in syndication? It's gotta be something. I have no idea. They just love that fucking area. European listeners, please tell me. I am dying to know.

16:32 So Bright Falls is a six short episode series that follows a journalist who's in town looking into a man named Dr. Emil Hartmann, who works in Bright Falls, and all the spooky shit that happens to him during his trip. It's basically a Twin Peaks Twilight Zone moment. Okay. Alan Wake launched officially in May of 2010 across Xbox 360 and PC. Now Remedy was deeply connected with Microsoft games, the way Naughty Dog is a Sony studio. So they were like, fuck yeah, Xbox all day. What's up, Todd Howard? Yeah, I think when we watched the trailer, it said Microsoft Studios at the very end. Just straight up Microsoft.

17:12 So as it came out, it was a fucking phenomenon, but it was overshadowed by the release of Red Dead Redemption. While Time Magazine did call Alan Wake the game of the year for 2010, it came out within a week of the first goddamn Red Dead Redemption game. And Alan Wake got swept up after the marketing campaign, a little Johnny Marston rolling through town. Yeah. And you can't even fucking fault them for it. Oh, damn, that is fucking wild. And I feel like, honestly, history kind of repeated with Alan Wake 2. Because it came out in October of 2023 when Spider-Man 2 came out, the game I was dying for, and I feel like did dominate the news cycle.

17:59 But much like Alan Wake 2, after it all died down, people were still talking about Alan Wake. That's fair. And honestly, I've heard so many people say, even after how amazing 2023 was overall, putting Alan Wake 2 at the very top. Yeah, it's up there with Baldur's Gate for most people. And frankly, my experience playing Alan Wake 2 to Spider-Man 2, I would pick up Alan Wake 2 again over Spider-Man 2. Damn, and you did love Spider-Man 2. I did. I absolutely did. And I've played Spider-Man and Spider-Man Miles Morales and the Spider-Man DLCs multiple times. Right. I have New Game Plus'd it. I have gone through, but between the two, I've run through them both once.

18:39 I'd rather run through Alan Wake 2 again. Okay, fair. Well, we're on Alan Wake 1 still. Yeah, let's get there. Let's fucking get there. So this hype and the sales really brought some love for the game, and it eventually did become Xbox's second most pirated game of 2010 behind Call of Duty Black Ops. Most pirated? And like, they did the funniest fucking thing. So the devs saw this and went, huh, we got you. And if you pirated Alan Wake, Alan would be wearing an eye patch like a pirate. Really? Which is the cutest fucking like, fuck you Easter egg. I kind of love it because they're just accepting it and leaning into it.

19:20 Yeah. But just a minor punishment, because I've seen other devs like glitch the game in the last 10% of it. Oh, that's evil. Yeah. Oh, just to fucking infuriate a pirated comedy. I kind of sympathize with that a little more, because it's these people that are pouring years of their life into this, and you can't afford 20 bucks or whatever. Yeah. But this one, they were like, they're kind of silly Finnish boys. They have such a specific, absurdist sense of humor that they bring into things, where they're like, fuck it, let's have fun. It almost encourages the pirating. I'm not going to lie. Yeah, I know, right? Today, that's a DLC microtransaction. Yeah, that's a skin, bitch. Yeah. Eleven years after the first Alan Wake, a remaster was announced.

20:04 The announcement came in a 2021 PlayStation showcase, which does speak to how the relationship with Microsoft is going. Yeah. And had a nice trailer. I played the remake, so this episode is going to reflect that world and structure. And before anyone jumps the gun, I will talk about the biggest difference between the original and the 2021 remaster. And I think you're going to enjoy this. And as a marketer, it made me lose my fucking mind. Oh, no. Okay. Because the biggest adjustment from the original game to the remaster is the removal of blatant product placement. Wait, really? Now, this is not a spoiler. There will be spoilers eventually. That is the point of the show.

20:44 But in the original Alan Wake, you had to go through and there would be product placement for both Energizer specific batteries, there would be TVs that had Verizon wireless commercials playing in game. Oh my God. And there are Ford and Lincoln branded cars there. And they still only got seven million dollars to make this game? I don't know how that line item is tallied. If that's on the back end, I'm not quite sure. But what a fucking era. That's insane to me. Like the only games I remember having a lot of product placement were like sports games.

21:27 Okay, yeah, I'm sure you'd see like a Gatorade or like the stadium names would be there. Yeah, on the stadiums where normal ads would be at an actual stadium. There were ads there. Yeah, and I know people bring up, I believe it's the second Uncharted where you had Subway plug-ins. And right now there's that Final Fantasy 14, 15 that has the, that has the Nissen Ramen Cup Noodle shit. Cup Noodles. But this was just straight up, you'd walk up to a TV and it'd be like, can you hear me now? That kind of shit. Oh my God. The cars are still there because it's like the build of a car. It's a Ford and a Lincoln. What are you going to do? The batteries just say lithium batteries instead of having the branding or the fucking rabbit on them or whatever.

22:10 Oh, wow. And the TVs just don't play the wireless commercials. But sometimes you can still see things like there are electronics that are Verizon brand. Holy shit, that's wild. It's pretty bad. I just I can't imagine how much that fucking campaign cost. Right. They didn't renew it with the remake. Oh, I know Verizon cough up the fucking money. Like, how expensive could it fucking be? Energizer's still around. Clearly the marketing worked. None of these companies folded. All thanks to Alan Wake. Singular didn't book the fucking deal. And it just, it feels so wild to have such a dark, dreary kind of almost horror game do marketing, but whatever.

22:53 Fortnite's figured it out. Right. And for what it's worth, Alan Wake is in Fortnite. Is he now? Kind of. I mean, who the fuck isn't? That's fair. There is an island in Fortnite where you can play a truncated version of this game. Really? That's pretty cool. That's the best way you can describe it, and that's not the version we're doing today. But it does exist. The code is still floating around online. I believe it's still active. Don't quote me, but go for it. One more thing on product placement. There was a test demo for Two that came out just like a year or two after this one, where they had four shell Subway sandwiches and Coca-Cola featured in the product placement of the demo.

23:36 So blatant. Subway was in their bag with video games at this era, though. They really were. I mean, somebody had to try it. Somebody had to. Now, that version never went past the demo, and Alan Wake 2, as we know it, is a very different game with no Subway sandwiches. But it's the dark place. It is what it is. So with the 2021 remaster, we got a bunch of gorgeous updates. Things were a little bit smoother. They deleted their marketing contracts. It's a different world. We see the faces better. And as we get closer to today, Alan Wake 2 was announced at the 2021 Game Awards, and it was this whole ass thing. People were stoked. At one point, Sam Lake said, We started Alan Wake 2.

24:17 We're not doing it. We're doing new IP, which brought them to Quantum Break their game after this. It was a live action TV slash game hybrid through Microsoft. They did Control, which is an excellent fucking game. Great soundtrack. All this stuff. No one really expected Alan Wake 2. So Alan Wake 2, like we mentioned, came out over Halloween of 23 and has largely been praised as an excellent game. Remedy took Alan Wake 2 and said, we want to make this work if you've never played the first one. OK. So while the sequel absolutely helps the story, makes a lot of sense, Alan Wake 2 is meant to be a standalone experience. So if you're curious about that and you just kind of want to catch up and not play an older game, hang out with us.

25:01 We got you. Yeah. Alan Wake 2 did end up being nominated for Game of the Year and the Game Awards and took home best art direction, best narrative, best game direction, and frankly, the best musical number of the fucking night despite not winning any music awards. But anyway, let's take this back to where it all started. Bright Falls, baby. This is Alan Wake. Alan Wake is set up across six chapters because Remedy was inspired by episodic TV storytelling specifically for the pacing structure. They like that idea of kind of a short arc to add to a long arc, building on itself.

25:42 And it does reflect it in the pre-show where that's only six episodes, but also builds it to a larger thing. It's a whole thing. Sam Lake specifically loves screenwriting too, so I'm sure it's just a very cinematic world in his head. So originally, Remedy wanted to release Alan Wake episodically, similar to Life is Strange, our other European Pacific Northwest inspired moment. But Phil Spencer at Xbox was like, no, don't do it. What the fuck? That's way too experimental. And at this point, he looked back and was like, I should have fucking let them. That would have been cool. And fucking envelope pushing. And we could have been like, ha, tell Taylor we got there first.

26:22 I don't know. I really like games that are just fucking done. Just a one file. Let's do it. Yeah, I get you. Call me crazy. I won't because I get it. I like to binge too. Like, that's how I enjoy consuming media. Don't tell me when to stop. And don't make me wait for the next one. Honestly, I feel so burned from Half-Life 2, Episode 3 that like it never came. So I'm just like, I don't trust this episodic bullshit. You're in your fucking feels about Half-Life 3 today. I really am. The game starts with a sweeping shot of the mountain range across the Pacific Northwest, the one that Europeans all love. Matthew Perretta's surgically precise, gravelly Alan Wake voice opens the scene with a voiceover.

27:08 Stephen King once wrote that nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations. They're antithetical to the poetry of fear. So that's the kind of fucking protagonist Alan Wake is. He'll just drop cryptic shit like that. That quote is from an Entertainment Weekly article Stephen King wrote in 2008 titled Why Hollywood Can't Do Horror, which almost feels like a meta moment. Which is wild to do because Stephen King was a regular contributor to Entertainment Weekly. Oh shit, I didn't know that. So to pull a quote from a random ass issue is pretty fucking wild. I had to dig for that. It just said Stephen King said this, and I was like, did he though?

27:53 In that piece, which I did read, he also discusses summer blockbuster movies and says those flicks tend to be like sandwiches, overstuffed with weirdly tasteless meat and cheese, meals that glut the belly but do nothing for the soul. Anyway, back to Alan. He muses on horror storytelling for a bit as we float through the Pacific Northwestern sky. Alan then introduces himself. He says, I'm a writer. That's the beat. He says, I'm a writer. And then we cut to a black title screen. If you've ever met a writer, that's how they introduce themselves.

28:34 At least in college, as long as you don't meet them in a coffee shop, you're probably fine. One of my very dear friends, Amber, is a writer, and she's fucking brilliant. I read her work every week. Hi, girl. I'm technically a writer. Uh, I literally get paid to write at work. Oh, yeah, I am a writer, huh? Yeah. Do I sound like this? No, because you don't walk up to people and say, I'm a writer. No, I go, I'm kind of a shithead. I should work on my intro. Anyway, we leave the title screen, and we see a smoky lighthouse at night. Are you pouring me a drink? Ooh, a bio shot, yes. I mean, if there's gonna be a lighthouse. There's always a lighthouse. Alan says he's always had a vivid imagination and was haunted by nightmares, a recent one of which was really spooking him.

29:20 In this dream, he's desperately driving towards a lighthouse, and he hits a hitchhiker with his car. Alan goes to tend to him, but the hitchhiker is dead. Oh, shit. He starts to figure out what his plan is because in his words, he can't go to jail. When the car's headlights cut off, Alan takes his eyes off the hitchhiker for a split second, and then the hitchhiker is gone. Okay, well, he's not dead. Episode one. Nightmare. Oh. I have to do this disclaimer since our Dead Space episode. But the episode titles do not reveal anything. Sinister, if you put them together. Alan is still alone on the road by his busted car.

30:01 He's shaken up from the crime he probably just committed, but he's like, whatever, I can't go to jail. I got priors, and he wanders down the road. The road is dark, save for some spaced out streetlights. In the distance, he sees the lighthouse, and he heads towards it, because there's always a goddamn lighthouse. On the trail, there are some posters for one of his novels, which is a stupid place to market a book. But as Alan actually makes some progress towards the lighthouse, the camera whips back to his busted ass car, and there's a shadow of a man standing there. This figure is completely blacked out. He's a ghost. He's big, and he's also very angry. This smoky apparition then appears in front of Alan, and he asks, You don't remember me, do you, writer?

30:48 He continues as he starts swinging an axe back and forth. You think you're God? You think you could just make stuff up, play with people's lives, and kill them when you think it adds to the drama? You're in this story now, and I'll make you suffer. I'm loving the voice work. Oh my God, thank you. Alan runs down the trail and makes it a bit away from the figure, then turns around to hear him say, You're a joke. There wouldn't be a single readable sentence in your books if it wasn't for your editor. Is this a fucking roast? He then points down at Alan and says, You'll never publish another one of your shitty stories, because I'm gonna kill you.

31:32 I thought it was gonna be like, You'll never work in this town again. Dull. Flicks a cigarette. Okay, so I'd like to remind everyone that English is not Sam Lake's first language. He is Finnish. He finishes his first language. While he is absolutely fluent in English, there are gonna be some nuances that don't land. Just like a lot of our other European friends who do Pacific Northwest games, there's always a couple little things that just don't sound inherently American. Yeah, I definitely agree. It happens. Anyway, it's not always gonna sound natural, but the point of the game is to be supernatural, so don't let the language hold you back. The smokey figure calls Alan a lousy writer, among other things, while we get some gameplay tutorials and like dodging attacks and stuff like that.

32:22 Okay. After a bit, Alan is alone in the dark in the woods and realizes that Hitchhiker is a character in a story he's working on. So that was a really personal roast. I'm sorry, what the fuck? Have you ever just been like plagued by your inner demons, but sometimes they're a hitchhiker that tries to kill you? One of my characters came to life. What a fucking nightmare. You know what my senior seminar fucking story was about? A man that gets pregnant, like a biologically AMAB man, my best friend Andrew, who gets pregnant and he gets fucking torn apart for being a male who got pregnant because he's a slut. I got an A.

33:02 Good for you. It was very funny. It was a commentary on gender. It doesn't matter. Alan runs across this high bridge and sees a man, a regular ass man, being like, hey, over here. This man is named Clay, and he asks Alan if he remembers him. Alan runs into the cabin behind Clay, and as Alan makes it to safety, the hitchhiker appears and ax wounds the shit out of Clay. Sorry, Clay, it's been a good run. Has it? We just met him, but okay. He helped him get in the cabin. Alan escapes the cabin, and on his way to the lighthouse, he hears a man's voice. It tells him, for he did not know that beyond the lake he called home lies a deeper, darker ocean, green, where waves were both wilder and more serene.

33:51 To its ports I've been, to its ports I've been, do you understand? No, ma'am, we don't. I don't understand anything that's happening yet. This is very Twin Peaks. Alan is like, abso-fucking-lutely, I feel you, god voice. Now this voice that's coming through, we don't know it as the player, but in this world, we know that this is James McCaffrey, who was the voice of the original Max Payne, who has recently passed in the last year or two. Incredible performer, has been in nearly every Remedy title. Oh, that's too bad, but at least his voice gets to live on. He left an incredible legacy that's more than a lot of us can ask for.

34:34 This voice guides Alan through light, which is a safe haven of health and protection in this world. It tells him that it entered Alan's dream to teach him the darkness is dangerous, but it's asleep right now. It'll wake up when it feels Alan coming to it. Then the voice and the light lead Alan to a clearing with the hitchhiker. The voice says the hitchhiker has been taken over by the dark presence. When someone is taken over by the dark presence, the darkness protects them, and they can't feel pain or experience damage. Only light can drive away the darkness and allow for these beings to become vulnerable to attacks.

35:15 So this is the biggest tutorial for the game's battle mechanic. If something or someone is possessed by the dark presence, there's usually like a dark, glowy kind of shadow around them. You have to shine a flashlight or get some kind of light on them until the dark presence is dissipated out of the system. And then, and only then, can you shoot that motherfucker right in the dick. So wait, so even if the dark presence is gone, the person still sucks and you got to kill them? Yep. Okay. Alan flashes his flashlight, powered by Energizer batteries, at the hitchhiker, who has a visible moment of being overpowered by light.

35:57 It's kind of like a stumble. And then Alan shoots him with a gun he found on a tree stump, a perfect place to look for weapons. That's where I leave my gun. Don't do that, Tom! We live in a neighborhood! There's kids here. When someone has the dark presence removed, they're still too far gone. So yeah, they're unsavable. It's okay to brutally shoot them to death, unceremoniously, in the dick. You love just shooting people in the dick in a video game, if you can. Why would I not? After Alan kills the hitchhiker, the voice and the light tell him, he did a good job, and he can go back to a dream now.

36:39 And as the voice and light float away, Alan is like, well, that sucked, but the last safe place to go is the lighthouse. So he's like, all right, let's fucking go to the lighthouse, I guess. Alan loads up on loose revolver ammo and energizer batteries and heads down, you know, because there's always a man in a lighthouse. Right. Alan makes it to the lighthouse, and as he explores into the depths of the tower, he winces as he hears an old woman's voice say, he's here. The screen goes black. In our state of darkness, Alan hears a familiar voice, Alice Wake, his wife. Okay, good. She's like, wake up. And in this light, we get a better look at Alan, you know, Ilkaville.

37:23 Sam Lake said he wanted Alan to look like a rock star writer, just very of this era. So his jacket has elbow pads, which Sam Lake like fully went all in on, and was like, this is going to make him look fucking cool. Like Burberry? No. Okay, not that fancy elbow pads. It's more like Professor. It's giving Professor Mosby, if you kind of think about in How I Met Your Mother, how he had the jacket with elbow pads and shit. Got it. Stylistically, they found a lot of images of Bono and other rock stars in that world for the stylist look of Alan. He's kind of got a hoodie and then a jacket on and jeans. He's in jeans this entire time, by the way. So imagine being in the woods in jeans.

38:03 It's awful. You hate jeans in general. Imagine being in jeans. Now, Alice, as we look at her, she's a blonde white woman. She's pretty. She's cute. And she is a photographer. And she actually does all of the art layouts for Alan's books. Oh, OK. Yeah. She's really supported Alan's writing career and has taken a big backseat to his success. They're both kind of in their mid-30s. Alan wakes up in a car, and Alice is like, hey, get up, we're almost here. And then we see the car is on a boat, and we're on a barge heading into a small town, Bright Falls. Bright Falls is also, in addition to The Ring, majorly inspired by Crater Lake in Washington.

38:46 And you know, like, life is strange, oxen free, fucking heavy rain. So Remedy's art team flew out to the Pacific Northwest, and over the course of two weeks, drove over 2,000 miles, exploring the area and getting reference shots for the games. Holy shit. Sam Lake was not invited. Really? Yeah, he didn't go. For his own game? He was writing. Yeah, but like... You think he'd want to go for atmosphere and for language, like talk to the locals, find some colloquialisms, cute shit like that. And you can write it off, like shit. They had $7 million, like, fly my boy out.

39:27 And like, you know, that's kind of the thing. Sam Lake based both Max Payne games in New York and hadn't actually been there at the time of production. Like, he's been there since, like, he's done Tribeca, but he wrote Max Payne from across the pond. Like, he based all his knowledge of New York based on, like, Friends, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, How I Met Your Mother. Oh, my gosh. Shit like that. Just off American television. Yeah. I'm also naming sitcoms that are famously based in New York, filmed in LA. So fuck you. Alan gets out of the car and is like, I'm walking here. I'm a New Yorker. And Alice is like, go make friends with this old man on the boat. I think it's gonna be cute.

40:07 Now, I'm gonna take a beat just to talk about Alan and Alice. So there's some things you can kind of read between the lines. They've been married for a minute, no kids, dual income, no kids. Their marriage is a little rough right now. Ooh, okay. Yeah, they are kind of on like a reboot honeymoon situation. They wanted to get somewhere quiet and rekindle a little love. So I think they're both kind of putting some effort in, you know? This is the save the marriage trip? Okay. So on the boat, there's another adult man in camo who's like kind of by himself, quiet, looking out on the water, watching it. And there's this old man kind of up at the front. Alice is like, go stand near the old man. I'm going to take a picture. You guys are cute.

40:48 Alice is a professional photographer. She thinks this is funny. Well, yeah, the guy in camo wouldn't show up in the picture. So he's not a fucking vampire. He's just a dork. Alan goes up to this old man who is like, oh, my God, Deerfest is two weeks away. Wait, I know you. You're Alan Wake. I'm Pat Main. I'm the local radio host. There's always a local famous person. Right. He's like, I would love if you don't mind coming up for an interview. You're such a big writer. I fucking love your work. I have dozens of listeners. Sounds like us. And Alan was like, hey, man, I'm not doing interviews. I'm trying to save my marriage. My wife clearly fucking hates me.

41:30 Why else would I be here? And he's like, all right, I respect it. You're laying low. But if you feel like it again, my name is Pat Main. I'm on the radio. Alan is tense, and he clearly doesn't want to be on vacation. He's just a gruff New Yorker who wants to focus on business. He's the guy that gets dumped in the Hallmark holiday movies. It sucks. He would actually like to go to that interview. Yeah, probably. He'd be like, excuse me, an hour away from the fucking Mrs. Is that Gen X humor of like hating your partner? Speaking of business, Alan's business manager, Barry, calls him. Barry is like, hey, man, how's vacation? Are you writing? Are you writing more?

42:11 Are you making me a new book? Are you working? Because if you don't work, neither of us gets paid. Anyway, Alan blows him off, and then Barry starts texting him to be like, I guess say hi to your wife. Alice and Barry do not like each other, but Alan and Barry are homies. They are best friends, and Barry is just like a real fast-talking agent kind of deal. He's wonderful. I fucking love Barry. I couldn't have a friend that hated you. Yeah. You know, I was thinking about it. No, yeah, I get that. No, I couldn't have a friend and keep them around if they didn't like you. I think all my friends liked you. Yeah. They've at least never said anything. Yeah. If they don't like you, they've been very polite.

42:51 Right. Anyway, the boat lands. They get off the boat with their car, and Alice sends Alan into a diner to pick up the keys to their cabin while she fills up the car, gets like water bottles, you know, does the whole like, we're going to get settled. We'll be here for like a week, whatever. Alan enters the sweet, tiny town diner called the Oh Dear Diner, and it's exactly what you want in a small town. There's lots of coffee, gruff regulars, the usual stuff. As soon as he walks in the diner, he looks to his left, and the most embarrassing shit on earth is there. It is a cardboard cutout of Alan holding his last book, like the kind you would see at a fucking bookstore signing, like marketing materials in a diner.

43:34 This is mortifying. Why is that there? The waitress on duty in an old timey waitress outfit, like with the fucking hat and the apron and shit, you know what I mean? Her name is Rose. She turns around, clocks him, and immediately starts fangirling like crazy. Like she is so wet, it looks like her water broke. She is like, I am your biggest fucking fan. I've read all your books. I run a fan website. I love you. And he's like, I've been in town for two minutes. What writer has this kind of a following first off? Does anyone want to fuck writers? Are they fuckable people?

44:14 I feel like I've never seen a writer where I've been like, damn, can get it, you know? Like even at the height of Harry Potter, before she found out she was a transphobe, no one was trying to lick JK. Rowling's asshole. No. George RR. Martin is not dripping. If it is, it's not really in pussy. No, it's just sweat. It's hot in there under all that pressure, I see you. But yeah, no, they really tried to make it be like, no, he is a rock star in the literary world. He is like the bad boy of fucking crime novels. I'm sorry, it's so absurd to say. But yeah, he is apparently the world's most fuckable writer.

44:55 And Rose is trying to fuck him so fucking hard. In front of his wife. His wife's not here right now. She's filling up the car with gas. Alan's by himself. And Alan's like, I'm going to divert this. I'm looking for Carl Stuckey. I'm renting one of his cabin. He said he would be here and would hand off my keys in the cabin. Rose is like, I have all of your books. And after the last one, I finessed the bookstore to give me the cardboard cutout so I could bring it to the restaurant and I could stare at you every shift. She is squealing. And then she's like, oh my God, is your wife here? I get off at six. Dear God. She really just like was like, I know you're married. I'm going to shoot my shot.

45:37 Okay. He goes, okay, we will keep that in mind, but where's Carl Stucky? I just want to get my keys. Oh my God, I'm going to get assaulted. He's like, she's going to R word me. Among the regulars, there are two aging punk rockers in the back who ask Alan to put on a song on the jukebox. These are also some of my favorite characters. They are in their twilight years and one has an eye patch. And they are like, they look like biker punks. They're all in like leather and black bandanas. You get it. They are old brothers, and they are messy and fun and loud. These are the Anderson brothers. One is named Tor and the other is named Odin.

46:18 They're in a band called the Old Guards of Asgard, a band that was huge in the 70s and then settled down in Bright Falls. They are wonderful. They are a big part of the Remedy Universe, and I love them. A cop at the counter is like, oh, they're patients of Dr. Hartman. He's going to pick them up soon. Don't worry about these two fucking weirdos. Alan is creeped out, annoyed over everything. He's getting hit on. He's getting obsessed on by this definitely stalker, and he just wants to get his goddamn keys so he could make his goddamn wife love him again. So he goes towards the back, towards like where the bathrooms are. He's like, maybe crawls back here. I don't know, knocking on the fucking shitter door is worth it to get away from this bitch.

47:00 There's an older kind of middle-aged woman hovering by the dark hallway who tells Alan that he needs to be careful. He could get hurt in the dark. She looks scared and frail, and Alan is like, okay, lady, I fucking hate it here. I want to go back to New York. This lady is Cynthia Weaver, who is a bit of a local historian. Alan goes down the hallway and knocks on the bathroom door asking for Carl because he's like, this is, I'm not talking about, god damn it. But a woman, fully clothed in a black, like complete funeral veil outfit, opens the door and hands Alan a card with keys. She says she'll check up on them later. Alan's like, okay, you look like death itself, but whatever, I have the keys.

47:43 I'm getting the fuck out of here. Sam Lake has said this lady was partially inspired by the Baba Yaga, and her name is Barbara Yager. Damn, you know what I love about it? The subtlety. So the Baba Yaga is kind of just like a creepy old bitch who is sometimes a house and is sometimes John Wick. I believe there is a Baba Yaga in Final Fantasy VII, right? Oh yeah, there's Baba Yaga's. As Alan starts to leave the diner, Odin Anderson calls Alan by the name Tom, and he says, I haven't seen you in a while, Tom.

48:23 That's weird. Alan's like, I fucking hate this. Let's go. He gets in the car with Alice and they drive off. As they do, Carl Stuckey runs out of the diner and says, wait, you forgot your keys. And we know it's Carl Stuckey because he's got like a little mechanic outfit on with his name plastered all over it. They're already gone. Alan tells Alice that diner was a fucking nuthouse. Alice giggles and tells Alan, this town is so cute, and it could be a great setting for a book. Alan is like, absolutely fucking not. We're on vacation. I refuse to work. God damn it. Internally, he's like, honestly, I don't want to fucking talk about work. I'm a successful writer, but I haven't written a goddamn word since my last book two years ago.

49:08 Oh shit. Alan is in some crazy writer's block and has been so messy since his last novel was published two years ago, The Sudden Stop. Which is, like, very ironic, considering it was the sudden stop of his work. Yeah, and this last novel, he wrote all these crime novels surrounding this one detective, Alex Casey, and he was just like, I'm fucking sick of it. So in The Sudden Stop, he killed off Alex Casey. Oh, very Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, just to be like, I'm done with this character. I have to do something else. And then he looked out and went, oh, no. Now what do I do? Alan and Alice make it to the cabin which is on this small, tiny island on Cauldron Lake all by itself.

49:51 It's literally like one island on one cabin. And there's a sign that says Divers Isle. Alice is like, oh, my God, we have a private island. This is fucking sick. Alan's like, it's not goddamn Fiji. Calm down. I see some issues here, though. Alice is terrified of the dark. Like she will have a genuine panic attack if she's in the dark. So he has to run over into the island and turn on the lights before the sun goes down. There's some crows all over the island, probably not foreshadowing. Alan goes up, he's like, all right, I'm gonna go hit the lights, and leaves Alice to take all their luggage from the car over a bridge into the island. Yeah, Alan is not really doing well in my book right now.

50:33 You don't think he's like connecting well with his girl? Not in one bit whatsoever. Even with him like, no, I'm not gonna work. He's still doing a terrible job of trying to connect with her. Yeah, he said it like a dick. There's a difference between like, we're here to relax between or like, can you not? Yeah. So the cabin's lights are blown. So of course, Alan has to find the fuse box. And what does every game have? Oh my God, is there a goddamn generator? Of course there is. There's always a goddamn generator. This cabin is an absolute relic. Like he even finds a calendar from 1970 inside. Wow. As he wanders around, Alan has a sudden flash of a woman, all in black, the same one that he saw at the fucking diner, but barely for a split second.

51:21 It's just a jump scare, but it's cool, so deal with it. There's some silly stuff out here, like there's taxidermy, there's like fancy plates, you know, like old shit. There's a box of books written by someone named Thomas Zane, you know, which is weird, because that's what the Anderson brothers were calling him. And whatever, it's fine. It's probably nothing. It's probably not connected. So Alan gets the generator going, gets the lights on, and Alice is like, OK, I may enter the cabin now that the lights are on. Thanks, babe. I will unpack and do all of the work while you go do boy stuff. So Alan goes to do boy stuff and just stands at the edge of the lake, looking on and thinking about resting while his wife unpacks.

52:02 I kind of hate Alan too, actually. He's not great. He's not fuckable. No, it's like going grocery shopping and then just leaving the other person to put it all away. Just staring at them and watching them. Yeah, talking to them while they do it. Complaining about how you don't want to work. After standing outside for what seems like an hour or two, Alan goes back into the cabin to look for Alice. He can turn on the radio where he hears the radio host Pat Main talking about, you know, a cough cough famous writer he met on the ferry. And then Pat Main takes a call from Rose from the diner who goes, It was Alan Wake. I saw him. I'm trying to triangulate his fucking exact whereabouts so I can touch him and like smell him and shit.

52:43 She's stalking him so publicly. It's so uncomfy. So the word's out. Yeah, right. Immediately. Alice calls down to Alan and is like, Hey, baby, come upstairs. I have a surprise for you. Alan sprints like his life fucking depends on it because I'm sure they haven't had sex in months. Right. And Alice is sitting on the bed. No bra, white tank top, black panties. Like she looks like Ellen Ripley without the merkin in Alien. And she goes, I'm not your surprise. Go in the study. Come on, bitch. Put on some fucking pants if you're not the goddamn surprise. Is it the surprise that we're not fucking? Oh, because that's not a surprise. We clearly haven't had sex in seven months. That's why we're on a fucking vacation.

53:25 Anyway, Alan goes in the study and sees a typewriter. Alice follows him and goes, surprise. I figured on this vacation, you could start writing and get your groove back. You've been in this horrible funk for two years, and you're driving me fucking crazy, babe. Oh, so she's trying to, like, re-inspire him. Alan hates that. He turns around and he goes, god damn it, Alice. Everyone's on my dick about everything. Ah! He's just, he has a fucking meltdown at the notion of his wife supporting his career. Alice is like, okay, you need to shut the fuck up. There's a doctor in town. His name is Dr. Hartman. He's a therapist, and he specializes in helping artists reclaim their art through therapy and unpacking the stress around creation.

54:09 And Alan interrupts her, red flag, and screams, so you want to have me committed. Okay, that's not what's happening here. As he screams in his sweet wife's face for trying to support him, the lights start flickering. Alice gets scared immediately, and once the lights come back on, he's like, honestly, this sucks, this place sucks, this whole fucking island sucks, you suck. And he storms out of the cabin and into the island. He was kind of lied to about what this vacation was. That part I can get behind? Yeah, he's still not appropriate for how he's expressing himself. Not one bit whatsoever.

54:50 So he runs out, and he's like, it's nighttime, so I know she won't follow me because she's scared of the dark, which is also kind of weaponizing her fears, and he admits to it, which I don't. I don't think I like Alan. Not yet, anyway. No. From the outside, he hears Alice screaming from inside the cabin, and he's like, what the fuck? Really? So she's screaming for Alan. Alan's running up. Once he gets back in the cabin, he sees that the balcony of the cabin is broken, and it looks like Alice has gone down into the lake from the cabin. Oh, shit. Alan dives into the water and blacks out. Alan wakes up to the sound of Alice's voice calling for him, but he's dry and he's in a crashed car.

55:34 The fuck? He has no idea how he got there, but he knew Alice was in trouble and he had to find her. Alan gets out of the crashed car with this big gash on his head. It's night, he's alone in the woods, like the car spun out and went tumbling down. He leaves the crashed car, and Alan sees a book that belonged to his wife, written by Dr. Hartman, the artist doctor she wanted him to see. And he's like, oh, fuck this guy! She's reading his books and not mine! Oh my god. He's so upset. He's like, I gotta find this bitch and yell at her. There's a gas station down the way that he can kind of see through the distance, and he's like, alright, I'm bleeding, probably can cuss. Gotta find my wife so I can yell at her.

56:15 Let's go that way. As Alan gets to the woods, a few loose sheets of paper land at his feet. They're from a manuscript called Departure, written by Alan Wake. Except Alan hadn't written that ever. He hasn't written anything in two years. He had written the title as Departure for his next work as kind of like a meta-commentary on departing from Alex Casey, but he hadn't started it at all. He hadn't even written that down. It was just in his head. His book titles are not subtle about like what's going on in his world. They're very reflective of the situation. I'll give you that, yeah. The Sudden End or whatever it was called?

56:56 The Sudden Stop. The Sudden Stop and Departure. Yeah. I'm gonna give you a minor spoiler. You know what the book is called in Alan Wake 2? What? Return. I'm not surprised. Anyway, so he's finding these pages for a book called Departure, but again, it only sat in his head. He hadn't actually written it to paper yet. These pages show a hero getting followed by an axe murderer, which is not promising as good considering his current situation. Right. Alan is like, damn, that's crazy. Anyway, and he keeps running through the woods to get to the gas station. Now, Alan has been chided by players for not being particularly physical.

57:37 Like, the sprint is not great. But again, he's in his mid-30s. He's in jeans. He just got out of a car accident in this specific thing, so we're just going to deal with that. And also, he's a fucking writer. Like, yeah, Max Payne is going to sprint faster than this guy. So he's moving like Henry from Bendy and the Ink Machine? That guy's 60. He's moving like someone in their mid-30s in Denim. Yeah. We're not built great. Alan gets down to a logging area. A man with darkness floating around him introduces himself as Carl Stuckey. But this dude is not the same way that we saw him when the player saw him earlier.

58:18 Carl has an axe and keeps saying normal things, but is trying to kill you. He keeps saying things like premium cabins for rent, deposit is non-refundable, and then swinging an axe at Alan, which is crazy. So I'm going to take a beat to talk about what Alan is seeing, because this is truly Carl Stuckey. Like, hardcore, this is not a fake Carl Stuckey. This is the body of Carl Stuckey. He is possessed by the Dark Presence. However, while being possessed by the Dark Presence, your brain is still somewhat active. So when you see people possessed by the Dark Presence, they will say normal shit. They'll be like, how's the weather today? And then try to punch you in the dick. And it's so unsettling.

58:59 Because the voice lines that will come out of these people are crazy. Like, Carl's literally like, hey, you guys should try Nordic walking. It's beautiful this time of year and great for your cholesterol. But he's like throwing shit at you to murder you. Because while the Dark Presence has a hold on your body, it is slowly sucking your soul and shit out of you. So you still have some semblance of who you are as a person and your function in this world. But you have no control over what you're doing. So it's very unsettling. Oh, that's got to be a nightmare inside your head. Yeah, but then it comes, you end up with these wild ass things where Alan's like desperately shooting at someone who's like, don't forget to wear sunscreen. And you're like, that's a nice sentiment. Why?

59:39 Which really makes me think the real person might still be in there. They don't have to get murdered, but okay. No, we got to kill these motherfuckers. You're too optimistic. Alan tears ass to get away from him and manages to find a gun. So now our boy is armed with a Boy Scout ass, energizer, battery, flashlight, and a whole ass gun. So this is we get the tutorial again. Flashlight first, bang, bang, bang. You got him. You also have to do management of bullets and flashlight. Nothing is forever. You get it. Just like your energizer batteries, you got to replace them. Which I'm surprised energizer allowed that mechanic to be a thing. I know it's good because then you're looking for energizer batteries.

1:00:21 I know, but then they're also like, our batteries don't wear out. Oh, that was their whole deal, huh? Yeah, they keep going. Fuck the rabbit. So these Dark Presence people are called The Taken because the Dark Presence has taken them. Alan's running through the woods to get to the gas station. Taken are showing up. They're trying to swing at him. He's running his hiding. And then we catch in one cabin area, the first episode of a live action TV in the game. There is a Twilight Zone inspired black and white sci-fi show that exists in this world called Night Springs. Which is kind of the inverse of Bright Falls. Yeah. It's exactly Twilight Zone.

1:01:02 Down to the voiceover at the end being like, Whoa, that's fucking crazy in Night Springs. And Alan clocks us and is like, Oh, that's wild. When I started writing, I actually wrote a few episodes of that. Huh, it's probably nothing. Alan makes it to the gas station and basks in the light of all the electric forces around him. He's like, Oh, thank God. As he explores the gas station, he sees a sign that reads, Deer Fest in seven days. Now, when we were on the boat yesterday, Pat Maine said the Deer Fest was in two weeks. Yeah. Now it's a week away. Alan realizes he lost an entire week of time while he was blacked out between diving into the lake and waking up in the crashed car.

1:01:45 Oh, shit. In the gas station, we also see one of the first of many very strange clips of Alan Wake himself. In this one, he's sitting down to write something in the study of the cabin at the typewriter Alice had presented to him. The TV footage of Alan shows him talking to himself, saying he's going to bring her back if he writes it, and the story will come true. Real-time Alan is like, What the fuck? That's crazy. That was me on TV. How did I get on TV? Oh, my God. I have so much fucking head drama right now. Unfortunately, the gas station is empty, but their phone is working, so Alan calls the cops on himself. Right.

1:02:25 I guess he's the one shooting the gun. Shortly after, the sheriff, Sheriff Breaker, comes up. Her name is Sarah Breaker. She's a bad bitch. We trust her. We love her. Okay, good. Alan frantically tells Sheriff Breaker what happened and that Alice is missing, and they were in this cabin in the middle of Cauldron Lake, and Sheriff Breaker goes, Whoa, there hasn't been an island in Cauldron Lake since the 1970s when there's an eruption from a volcano, and the island was swallowed up by the lake. What the fuck are you talking about? Alan was like, No, no, no, Divers Isle in the middle of Cauldron Lake. I fucking rented it for Carl Stuckey. My wife and I are there. It's real. Sheriff Breaker notices Alan is bleeding pretty profusely from his head, and she's like, Okay, so I think I see what happened.

1:03:08 Hey, have you seen Carl Stuckey? He runs this gas station, and I just want to check in on him. Alan is like, Well, I can't tell her that he was a possessed ghost and that I shot him. Right. No, I haven't seen him. Can you help me find my wife, please? Sheriff Breaker drives Alan to the edge of Cauldron Lake, and as Alan looks out, he sees there truly is no island. The island they were on is gone. End of episode one. What the fuck? Like such a little Twilight Zone moment. Episode two, taken. We actually start this one three years ago in New York City. Alan comes into his apartment with a bag of groceries.

1:03:49 He's in the same outfit because he's a fucking cartoon character. He yells out to Alice that he's home, and the weather fucking sucks outside because we live in New York City, and it's raining half the fucking time. Alice is like, make coffee. Now, in Finland, I found out, they drink an average of four glasses of coffee per person every day. They fucking love coffee in Finland, so there's a lot of coffee in this. I think they're in the top two or three, if not the most consumed coffee per capita per country in the world. Really? That's wild. Yeah. There's so much footage of Sam Lake just drinking coffee and staring into a camera. There are 100 hidden coffee thermoses throughout this game that you can collect.

1:04:34 Oh, is it the collectible? Yeah, just coffee. They fucking love coffee. And at one point, Remedy actually licensed a Bright Falls blend coffee in real life that you could buy. I was just about to ask about more licensing and wondering if it was Thermos brand thermoses as well. Oh, I bet you they tried. I bet they called Folgers and they're like, look, Verizon's in. Are you in? And they're like, who the fuck is that? Are you calling from Finland? Who are you? So it's super snowy and it's nighttime in their fancy New York high rise apartment. Alan gets the coffee on and checks on Alice, who's working on some cover mockups for Alan's latest novel, The Sudden Stop. We recognize this art is the same one that we use in the cardboard cutout in the diner.

1:05:18 The lights suddenly go out and Alice starts screaming bloody fucking murder like a child. It's a weather power outage, and Alan flashes a flashlight into Alice's face to make her feel better. I would not feel better if you ever flashed a light directly into my eyes. Yeah, I don't see how that makes anybody feel better. They light a bunch of candles and lay on the couch all cuddly, you know, before their marriage fell apart. Alice lays on his chest and goes, Hey, tell me a story, writer. Alan's like, Hell yeah, I'm super self-indulgent. I got this. He tells her about when he was young, he would get these terrible nightmares. He was afraid of the dark and falling asleep into his nightmare world. So his mom found an old light switch and she called this the clicker.

1:05:59 It's kind of like a lamp light switch, kind of not a button that goes off and on, but a little nubby that goes off and on. When he would get scared, he'd simply hit that clicker and the light from the magic clicker would scare the monsters away. And his dad gave it to him and he didn't know his dad, so it felt extra special. Then Alan produces the clicker from his coat and he goes, Here you go, Alice, maybe this will help. And she goes, Oh, my God, you are such a fucking liar, but I love you. We should make out. They make out and we see snow descend from the sky. Oh, now this cold clicker thing is cute, especially because growing up, Sam Lake loved collecting junk.

1:06:43 He called it junk, not me. When he was a kid, his family rented a cabin in an apple farm, and Sam would explore the farm and was amused by all the weird little things. And the farmer who owned the land noticed this and would give Sam junk and little trinkets. And one was a clicker just like this. Oh, he fucking loved it. Which also is like, are you Alan Wake? Sam Lake. Alan Wake. Yeah. It's probably nothing. Now it's present day in Bright Falls, and Alan is getting checked out by a doctor, a real doctor, not Dr. Hartman, who's like the artist therapist, who's trying to figure out how bad this guy's head trauma is.

1:07:23 Alan is like, I'm completely fine. I am free of all traumas. And the doctor is like, no, the fuck you're not, clearly. But you know what? You're probably fine. You got a couple of stitches. It's whatever. Just take it easy for a couple of days, OK? I know you're a big city boy, but you know, this isn't fucking New York City. Just, you know, watch your head. Alan exits the room, and they're in the sheriff's office. Here we see Cynthia Weaver, that old woman who warned Alan about the dark earlier. She's flicking the lights on and off at the sheriff's office, just flick flick, flick flick. And she's warning the officer at the desk that they need to have the bulbs checked regularly. They can't be left in the dark.

1:08:03 After Cynthia Weaver leaves, the officer explains, that lady's, like, obsessed with lights in town and making sure we're never in the dark. It's totally nothing. She's just kooky, you know? Small town quirks. A lot of people have issues with light and darkness in this game already. It's pretty straightforward, yeah. Alan wanders around looking for Sheriff Breaker so he can continue the search for Alice. They talk, but Alan dances around the dark presence and all that stuff because he's like, I can't just fucking tell a normal person that I just met that people are being possessed, and by the darkness, they have to put fucking Energizer batteries on them to save them? Like, that's not a thing. So he's like, yeah, I don't know, people seem weird. Can you please help me find my wife?

1:08:43 There was an island, I swear to God, and he's like, please, please, please. And then he gets a call from an unknown number and steps away from the sheriff. He picks up, he's like, what's up? And he hears Alice. Alice is like, Alan, help me. And then a man's voice comes over and is like, don't talk to the cops if you want your wife alive, Pally boy. He calls him Pally boy. Oh, really? Yeah, that wasn't hyperbole in my part. Oh god, that's awful. The voice instructs Alan to leave the police station and meet him at Lovers Peak in the National Park and to stay away from the cops and to come alone. You know, green flag stuff. Right, classic kidnapper behavior. Alan is like, I am absolutely down for this and starts following the instructions of the kidnapper.

1:09:26 He follows the instructions, leaving the police station, and then we find another manuscript page. But this one is describing the kidnapper firing his gun at a shadow and saying, see, nothing to it, wake. It describes the kidnapper alone with Alan at Lever's Peak. It describes Alan demanding to know where his wife is. The manuscript here we're seeing is for the story called Departure, and now it seems to be shaping up the story of Alan Wake right now. Like that fucking Will Ferrell movie? Stranger Than Fiction? I haven't seen that. But you're not wrong at all. Alan finds Alice's driver's license on the path the kidnapper laid out.

1:10:06 So now he knows this guy actually means business. And he's like, Oh my God. Holy shit. This guy told me to leave the police station through this door. I found my fucking wife's driver's license. This is for real. They hang up, and then Barry calls Alan. Barry is frantic and is like, What the fuck? I couldn't reach you or Alice for an entire week. I'm so scared. I fucking flew here. I flew to Washington. I'm in Washington for fucking God knows what. Are you dead? Alan is like, I am not dead. I am talking to you. Alan is like, I am at the police station. Come fucking get me and wear something pretty. Make haste. And wear something pretty. I do want to point out that Barry has the same energy as Matthew McConaughey in Tropic Thunder.

1:10:50 I was just going to fucking say that. Can you describe that for me? Yeah, Matthew McConaughey in Tropic Thunder playing Ben Stiller's fucking agent. And the fact that he flies out to the middle of the jungle to get him his TiVo. Yeah. He's wearing a panda skin, and Matthew McConaughey is like, I brought you TiVo. No, Barry is like, I will come at the drop of a hat. I am your agent, and my paycheck relies on you. So I need to get your shit together, buddy. Oh, that's great. As Alan gets back to the police station to go through the building and meet Barry, there's an old man speaking to the front desk about Tor and Odin Anderson.

1:11:32 Those old rocker dudes, my boyfriends. I love them. No, my grandpa's. He's clearly like, this guy is schmoozing the cops. And like, not to be dramatic, he's just like, you know, the boys were just on their last outing. They're silly boys. I'm gonna take them home. Everything's gonna be fine. The cop is like, you know, the Andersons never had any issues when they still lived at their farm. And the doctor guy, this is the doctor, I spoiled it, is like, look, it's fine. Everything's fine. We're good. Alan walks up and is like, hey, I can leave, right? I have my stitches, I'm good. Sheriff Breaker is like, you know, can we talk, though? Alan goes, am I under arrest, though? Am I being detained? The doctor interjects and is like, oh, hey, I'm Dr.

1:12:14 Emil Hartman. I insist, please, you should come to Cauldron Lake Lodge. Alan looks at him, clocks him as the doctor that Alice was talking about, and immediately gets right the fuck up in his face and goes, did you talk to my wife? Dr. Hartman is like, oh, my God, yeah, I talked to Alice. We had a couple calls talking about your situation a few times. I actually invited her here to Bright Falls so she could come to our clinic and you could come to the clinic. And before he can finish that thought, Alan has punched the doctor square in the face right in front of the sheriff in the middle of the police station. So Alan's not a smart man.

1:12:55 He's a writer, not anything else. He's impulsive. Dr. Hartman crumbles to the ground as a mouthy squat man bursts through the doors and says, Get your hands off my client. And of course, this is where we're meeting Barry. Barry walked in right when Alan punches someone square in the mouth. Barry introduces himself as Alan's agent, and he calls all the cops yokels. Oh, God, don't open the fat. These people have guns, Barry. Barry is like a round bodied man. He wears a red puffy coat, a Hawaiian button up and cargo shorts. No one knows what he's dressed for.

1:13:37 He's losing his hair, and he has like, I'm from New York energy. Like I just I fucking love Barry. Barry is played by Fred Berman, who is like eight times more traditionally attractive than Barry, like good for you, God bless. That does not let him stop from being an absolute shithead of a character, and it's a goddamn delight. He's also a remedy actor. He shows up at a couple different things. They actually put Barry in the remake re-release of Death Rally for some fucking reason. So they were just like, man, Barry is the shit. I fucking love Barry. Dr. Hartman gets up and he's like, oh, shit, I am not pressing charges, but you rang my fucking bell. Oh my God.

1:14:17 But my offer still stands, Alan. Please come to the clinic. I would love to see you. Being very weirdly reasonable about this. He is so chill about being punched in the face. So Barry and Alan leave, and Barry is like, why the fuck are you like this? Why? What is happening? He takes Alan off, and Alan's like, just fucking drive, and they go down in the woods. On the drive, Alan tells Barry everything, like actually everything. He's like, yo, there's fucking dark, possessed people, all this crazy shit. But Barry is just like, uh-huh, uh-huh. All he heard is the new manuscript that Alan mentioned. He's like, you said there's a manuscript? See, Barry is greedy, and Alan knows this.

1:14:58 So he knows dangling these pages in front of his agent will get his agent motivated, regardless of the fact that this is actually a very serious situation where there are ghosts trying to kill them or whatever. Since Alan has to meet the kidnapper tonight at Lover's Peak, he figured they would rent a cabin in the woods nearby, and Alan could just head over right when night falls. Barry and Alan pull up to the mainstay of this like cabin renting area where you check in and there's a visitor center, all this shit. As they come in, guess who's fucking here? Rose from the diner. Oh no, the obsessed bitch. Yeah, it's clear that Barry has met her in town already because they're on a first name basis. He's like, what's up, Rose? Rose is like, oh my god, hey, I was just bringing Rusty some coffee, but oh my god, it's Alan Wake.

1:15:43 Hi, Alan. Hi, I haven't seen you in seven days and two hours. Where have you been? I love you. Have my babies. Oh my god. They head in, and Alan is like, she's a fucking airhead. Barry goes, you know what? That girl has a fucking fan site dedicated to you. Show your fans some goddamn respect, which, hell yeah, Barry. Honestly, he's probably interacted with her outside of today. He's probably been like, oh, that sad bitch from the fan club. Yeah. Alan meets up with Rusty, who's a trooper on duty, who gets his coffee personally delivered by Rose for some fucking reason and helps him get the cabin rental set up. Barry's in his ear like, hey, you probably shouldn't meet with the kidnapper alone because that seems fucking insane.

1:16:25 And Alan is like, no, I have to save my wife. This is the only way. Barry goes, all right, you know, you're a skeptic. You yelled at me for an hour about homeopathic shit last month because you hate aromatherapy, and now you think possession is real, but whatever. Alan's like, I don't give a shit what New York Alan thought. This Alan knows ghosts are real, so fuck you. Also, I didn't ask for you to be here. And Barry is like, I know, I'm not going home. We're in this shit together because I want that fucking manuscript, man. At the cabin, Barry tries one more time to get Alan to call the cops, and Alan pushes a lamp over saying, God damn it, Barry, they'll kill her. It is so unnecessarily dramatic, and I love it.

1:17:07 Alan has to go to Lover's Peak, so he heads off into the night. There is clear presence of dark presence out in these woods. He comes up on Rusty again in the main cabin, and Rusty's been attacked. The lights have been sabotaged, and Rusty and his rangers are all possessed, and they're all taken now, which sucks because we liked Rusty. This is where I can sometimes also get more goofy, too, because these rangers will be charging you going, You need a permit to fish. Don't feed the animals. No jaywalking. Stay on the trail. At one point, Barry will also call Alan and be like, Hey, I'm in the cabin window, like, watching you. Are you OK? And Alan's like, No.

1:17:48 But, you know, like, I'm crazy. Haha, you thought this was stupid. Don't leave the cabin. Stay in there, dum dum. The woods are crawling with Taken. Alan heads to Lever's Peak and is like, I'm ready to negotiate with this kidnapper. It's a whole thing, and it's actually quite fun once you get the rhythm of the combat of like, shoot, shoot, and then pew pew. Like, it's really cool. At one point, Alan actually gets jumped by a bunch of Taken. They surround him, brandishing sharp, rusted melee weapons, which is so horrifying. Right. But then someone else lights a flare, and all of the Taken are extinguished in the glow of the flare. It's a man in camo who says, Come on, we have to go. There will be more of them. The camo guy hands Alan some flares, and Alan realizes the camo guy is the same camo guy from the boat.

1:18:34 No way. And the only reason he would be out here is if he's the kidnapper I'm here to meet, you son of a bitch. Oh shit, okay. But it's too dangerous, and Alan reluctantly lights flares as the kidnapper shoots down the Taken with them as they head for the light of Lover's Peak. Alan loses his gun in the shuffle, but the kidnapper is still strapped, so they work together to continue towards Lover's Peak for cinematic reasons. After the fight, the kidnapper says, See? Nothing to it. Just like the manuscript said, we're finding pages that will tell us exactly what happens in the game. This is fucking weird. And there are obviously tons of manuscript pages all throughout.

1:19:14 Some of them are pieces of things that we don't see as Alan. It's like, oh, Barry meets Rose in the fucking place, or like, oh, here's Sheriff Breaker drinking coffee going, man, that's crazy what Alan said. But a lot of it is what Alan goes through beat for beat. Which is really fun because it actually makes you want to collect things, which I have trouble with. I'm sometimes like, I'm not going to fucking collect your coins, Abby, fuck you. You find your own goddamn quarters. But this is actually like, oh, I'm finding spoilers for the game I'm playing. You're collecting the pages of a novel. Yeah, that I'm playing. So Alan's like, fuck you, where's my wife? The kidnapper says he's read it all before. He knows what's going to happen. And Alan goes, I don't know what the fuck that means.

1:19:56 Where's my wife? The kidnapper says he needs the manuscript. The one Alan wrote has been picking up the pieces of. What fucking departure? Alan launches his body at the kidnapper, and they tumble down through the woods and down the mountain slopes. Alan screams threats at the kidnapper while he gets his bearings. He's like, I'm going to kill you. Where's my wife? It's very, was it the fugitive? The fugitive, yeah. I didn't kill my wife. Alan's like, OK, you know what? This dude has Alice. He wants this manuscript I wrote, but I don't remember writing, and I keep finding just loose in the world. I have to go find Barry and figure this shit out because I secretly wrote a whole ass book in bum fuck misery out here, and I have to find my girl, find this book, fucking hate everything.

1:20:41 Also, there's a lot of foreshadowing, so I should also just find the book for my own goddamn knowledge. I hate it. I hate it here. Fucking hate Washington. Occasionally through the map, when Alan's flashlight hits certain walls or structures, we will see yellow paint, and that paint will only be visible when the light is pointed at it. Sometimes it's an arrow, and if you follow the arrow, it'll bring Alan to a cache of weapons or bullets or something. Sometimes it's a warning about the darkness and the light. Sometimes it's ramblings about a man named Tom, Such a good name. We'll circle back on that, but it's interesting to see. One out here says, The darkness wears her face.

1:21:22 That's crazy. In the dark, Alan gets a call from the kidnapper who got away during all that shuffle. Alan is like, Hey, I can get you the manuscript, but it's not done. I need more time to edit and write. Can I have a week? Like a fucking writer, he immediately asked for an extension. The kidnapper settles on giving him two days. As Alan makes it to the cabin back with Barry, he is attacked by birds. Oh, like the crows? Yes, okay, it is exactly crows. There are dark, presence-possessed crows that will attack you, and you have to shine flashlights on them and throw flares at them and use flare guns to kill the birds. And it's exactly like a murder of crows in Bioshock Infinite.

1:22:03 I was thinking the krill in Gears of War. Yep, I love it. It's a whole fucking thing, and if you don't have the rhythm down, it's really fucking hard to do, and it sucks. But once you get it, you're like, I am a god. We can hear Barry inside the cabin yelling at Alan to make the birds go away, which is such a sweet, darling thing for this New Yorker who's seen rats kill pigeons with their bare hands. I find it charming. Once the birds are vanquished, Barry apologizes to Alan for being like, hey, I'm sorry I thought you were crazy. You're not crazy. The situation is crazy. This fucking sucks, man. Alan hunkers down to try and write a manuscript. He's like, all right, I'm going to shit out a book, I guess.

1:22:45 But he can't. He's all washed up. He's all Jackson, no aces. Elsewhere, Barry gets a call from Rose, and Rose is like, Barry, I found Alan's manuscript, but I want you guys to pick it up in person from me just to know it's safe. I live in a trailer just outside of town. Barry is like, oh my god, we're coming up fucking Millhouse. We got this. And he speeds off to tell Alan the good news. The camera cuts to Rose in her trailer, who hangs up the phone. Behind her is the old woman in the full dark outfit with the veil. The woman in black says, good girl. End of chapter two.

1:23:26 There's also music in between all the chapters. Is there? Yeah. Chapter three. Ransom. There's also a last time on Alan Wake. Really? Yeah. Like it's fucking shameless. Even though it released as one full game. Yes. Which now that you say it out loud, did feel weird playing it in like one sitting. Like, oh yeah, I know. I was here. I think I was in another room when I heard it say previously on, and I asked you, I was like, did this release episodically? You go, nope. I'm sorry that tonal moment gave away. I try not to tell you too much about what I'm going through.

1:24:07 Sometimes you just watch me play because we're gaming in the same room. You are watching me play a video game right now, and you're like, holy shit, are you okay? And I'm like, nah. I have no idea what's going on in that game, but I catch some weird moments. You just hear me screaming at some of the bad dialogue of the game that I'm playing right now, not Alan Wake. But yeah, there are some times where I really try to protect you from what's going on. And this makes more sense episodically as we describe it, not as you sit there and play it. Right. Barry and Alan head over super quick over to Rose's trailer. On the way, Alan gets a call from Sheriff Breaker that an FBI agent actually just got to town and wants to see him as soon as possible. Alan's like, Jesus fucking Christ, it's one missing white woman.

1:24:48 Come on. Alan resolves to get his manuscript from Rose, and then he'll come to the station. He's like, Yep, I got you. I have to deal with my fucking kidnapper first. Come on, bitch. While Barry and Alan follow the park ranger to Rose's trailer, Barry tells Alan all about what he learned from the city because he went on a scavenging mission to get intel. Barry tells Alan there was once an island in Cauldron Lake owned by a writer named Thomas Zane. The weird thing is, he can't find any evidence of Tom Zane being a writer. He Googled him. That should have helped. Yeah, but if that island's been gone since the 70s, Anyway, Zane had an island there called Divers Island, which is the same as the fucking sign we saw in the middle of the lake in 1970.

1:25:30 But eventually there was an eruption, and Zane went down with the island. Only a week before the eruption, a girl named Barbara Yager drowned on the island. She was Zane's girlfriend. The park manager of the trailer park interjects and is like, oh shit, yeah, Barbara Yager's our local ghost story. We're like, oh, she'll come for you in the dark. It's nothing. And you're like, oh, no. Poor Barbara. The one thing they all have is that coverage of the situation was written by a local journalist named Cynthia Weaver, the light lady. The park manager is like, oh, my God, the lady of the light. She's just a kooky little like fun lady. You know, she's just kooky.

1:26:11 Barry continues on with the local drama that Cynthia knew Zane and Jagger personally, and when they died, she had a fucking meltdown. Alan is like, huh, wild. Anyway, at the trailer, Alan is so dismissive of shit going on. Honestly, so is this town. They seem all very much like this person has serious mental problems, but no, it's actually just like, oh, they're just weirdos. They hadn't really been introduced to the concept of the spectrum. They're just like, oh, you're quirky, you know. At the trailer, Rose is talking like she is possessed in this very, where she was bubbly and excited and giggly. She's very monotone, and she invites Barry and Alan in for the manuscript.

1:26:54 She pours them coffee, which naturally, because she's possessed, is spiked. Barry passes out immediately, and Alan follows soon after. In his unconscious haze, Alan has a vision of the light he followed from the tutorial. The voice thing that was like, I have a poem for you or whatever. It tells him, Tis coming for you, hiding in my Barbara's skin. I'm too weak to stop it. You must turn the lights on. Then Alan has visions of the woman in black telling him he must finish what he started. Alan wakes up in Rose's bed, fully clothed. Nothing weird, like she didn't touch him, probably. There is a literal wall of pictures of his face and his books on display.

1:27:38 She has a fucking whole fangirl wall. This bitch is grown. She is over 18. She does not live with parents. She is not a child. This is a woman doing this. This is somebody spending her adult money on this shit. Yeah. Alan comes out, and Rose is just curled up in a ball, and she's talking to herself. She's going, Welcome to the Odeer Diner. What can I get you? And he's like, Oh no, her mind is broken. Barry is passed out and can't get up, so Alan's like, Jesus Christ, I fucking hate it here. Why did I just get roofied and probably touched by this lady? Yeah. As Alan makes it to the entrance of the trailer park, he sees it's blocked off by flashing lights.

1:28:20 The cops are here. Sheriff Breaker, our baby girl, and FBI agent, Agent Nightingale. I fucking hate Agent Nightingale. Just going right into it. Yep. Over the course of the game, Agent Nightingale will opt to call Alan just the name of any writer he can think of. In this first touch point, he looks at Alan and goes, get him up, Hemingway. Stay right where you are, Spillane, who's like a mobster writer. He's the worst. And there's also a subplot where Nightingale is a massive drunk, and everyone fucking knows it. So like, fuck this guy. You know what? This is not a trope that doesn't exist in the real world, because I had it happen to me once.

1:29:01 What do you mean? Please tell me everything. I worked in a restaurant where one of my coworkers said a different famous Tom or Thomas Shut up. to me every single time. That's really funny. Thomas Jefferson, Tom and Jerry, Tommy Lee Jones, stuff like that. He would call me a different famous Tom every time he saw me. Do you know what you're saved as in my dad's cell phone? What? Major Tom. Major Tom. I'm so sorry if that ruins your relationship with my father. No, not at all. But I think it's just funny. This is something that really does happen. My dad loves Bowie. Anyway, there's a quick shootout, and in the confusion and action, Alan runs down and gets down this hill and out and escapes.

1:29:44 He's like, all right, cool. Now I'm in the woods. I'm escaping the cops. This is going great for me. I miss New York. So Alan's just hauling through the fucking forest, and then Taken are showing up, because he's like, great. Cops and Taken. This is a wonderful fucking day. I love it here. Over some radios, Alan can hear that the cops took Barry in, thinking he's a drunk, which is why he couldn't get up. He was asleep and shit. And he also took in Rose, thinking, oh, she's just loopy. They're so dismissive of all the women in this world, except for Sheriff Breaker, who's a bad bitch. They're like, oh, girls are just crazy. They need a lady break. They do need a lady break. Just go have a period.

1:30:25 They have a doctor on the way to the station to examine both Barry and Rose, and the cops have fully lost Alan. And Alan's like, okay, cool. He's running through, and then he has to fight a gate. That's right. I just said he has to fight a gate. Is the gate sentient? The gate is possessed by the Dark Presence. So now we get introduced to the Dark Presence possessing inanimate objects in addition to townspeople. It's just another game inspired by Earthbound. It's a whole thing. Yeah. Everything is Earthbound, right? Alan's like, Oh, my God, not tonight. I have to meet up with a kidnapper. I had a book to write, so I really can't get arrested right now. Otherwise, I'll get killed by possessed townies or the cops or the gate or the gate.

1:31:07 Maybe furniture. This sucks. Is this now the Beast's Castle from Beauty and the Beast? Oh, my God. Lumiere is going to kick the shit fucking shit in. Alan is like, Fuck me. Rose said she had the manuscript. She was lying. She was just possessed to get me off track. Fucking I don't have the manuscript. I don't have shit. But I'm going to roll up to this kidnapper and meet him tonight, I guess, because what else am I going to fucking do? This sucks. So he's on his way up to a coal mine, but he ends up at a radio station. He's like, Oh, wait. Oh, shit. I met Pat Maine, the radio host guy. He actually was really cool. And maybe he'll actually help me. He seemed like a good dude. Like I might have an ally. Let's see.

1:31:47 And he's got an audience. Yeah. So Alan walks in to see his boat buddy, and almost immediately the cops show up. And that motherfucker, Agent Nightingale, goes, Nowhere to run now, Dan Brown! Which is double frustrating because it's almost a rhyme, but he fucked it up. Come on, man. Pat Maine looks around and is like, Okay, everyone put your fucking guns down. This is a public access radio show. No one's getting shot on my nightly talk news show. What is wrong with all of you? Sheriff Breaker tells Agent Nightingale to put his goddamn gun down because he's going to fucking kill someone, and this is way too dramatic for that.

1:32:30 But Nightingale manages to accidentally fire off a bullet. And in the drama of this, Alan slips away again. As Alan runs down the hill, he hears Nightingale say, I'll find you, HP Lovecraft. See, it's so uncomfortable, and it made me angry the first time I was playing it because I was like, honestly, I'm going to fucking shoot this guy in the goddamn face. Not in the dick. This guy's getting in the face. I want to fuck his mouth up. The words he's saying. I'm going to kill him. When you get bloodlust for a character that may or may not even be applicable to kill at one point, because you're just like, I fucking hate this dude. Alan at least does get away before Pat Maine is like aware of what he's doing.

1:33:13 So he's like, all right, Pat Maine is cool, but I didn't tell him where he's going. So Pat Maine can't spill, you know, Pat Maine's the homie. All my homies love Pat Maine. On the way out, Alan gets a call, and it starts with Alice's voice. She's saying he's the most stubborn man she's met. Then she says he keeps her in the dark. She needs help. She's so alone. Be careful. Cooperate with them. Her speech is broken up, and Alan even says, it sounded like her, but the words all sounded wrong. It's her, but it's not her. Maybe she's possessed, Alan, because that happens now. Anyway, Alan fights a service bridge and steals a car, and then he makes his way to the coal mine through the night and into the next day.

1:33:56 Alan gets into the coal mine and hunkers down, waiting to meet the kidnapper and be like, I didn't finish your book, but please give me my wife. I'll shoot you in the dick. Pretty please? He knows the cops are after him, but he also knows the only person to find him here is the kidnapper. So he's like, honestly, probably an okay place to hide. He sits down and he waits for the kidnapper to show up. Deep at night, it's fucking way past his time, and Alan realizes the kidnapper isn't showing up for their date. That motherfucker. Alan's phone rings, and the kidnapper tells him, Change of plans, Pally boy, meet me at Mirror Peak. It's a different place, out in the woods. They're both aggro as fuck at each other, but Alan is like, fine, fuck you, I'm on the way.

1:34:38 I'm going to go steal a car while I do it. Okay, bye. He also casually steals a bunch of cars through this game. Oh, really? Yeah. He just pops into cars. This is why you don't leave the cars in the vehicle, ever. He's already killing people, so... Is he or is he just making them disappear into the night? It's confusing. It is confusing, yeah. The situation's a lot more nuanced than that. Yeah. So Alan does just that. He steals cars, he makes it to Mirror Peak, just in time to hear the kidnapper pleading with someone. He's saying, I'm sorry, lady, I didn't know, I swear. We don't have his wife, she probably drowned. When Alan comes into view of the kidnapper, he's on his knees, sobbing.

1:35:20 From behind him, a tornado of darkness whips around, picks him up, and eats his body whole within itself. Oh my god. We hear the kidnapper's bones crack, and his last screams ring out before... nothing ever comes out of him again. Holy shit. The tornado picks up Alan too, but he manages to crack a flare, and instead of being eaten by the darkness too, he's merely flung off a mountain into the water, which also should kill him. Yeah. Alan floats and sees a vision of himself typing furiously before he's pulled out of the lake. End of episode three. Holy shit. Like, they are dramatic as fuck episodes.

1:36:01 Yeah, they have these really great, just like, bam, end of episode. Very HBO like, holy shit, what? Episode four, The Truth. Alan opens his eyes to see Alice saying, it was just a nightmare. He looks at her and his vision comes into focus, and the vision of Alice turns into Dr. Hartman, who tells Alan he just gave him a sedative. Dr. Hartman is telling Alan to stay calm, and that he's been a patient at his clinic for a while now, that the shock of Alice's death kicked off a mental episode, and he's been treating him, and then the screen whites out. The fuck, Alice is dead now? Alan passes out and wakes up for real in a bed in the lodge, like we are back to its center.

1:36:45 The door to his room is locked, and Alan realizes he is a prisoner in Dr. Hartman's lodge. Dr. Hartman comes to the door and unlocks it to confirm Alan is feeling calm now. Dr. Hartman is also wearing a bandage across his nose from where Alan socked the shit out of him the other day. Dr. Hartman makes it a whole ass deal to say, hey, Alan, I forgive you, and asks him to walk together to catch up, like a little boy hot girl walk. Dr. Hartman gives Alan a bit of a tour of the clinic where he treats artists, and he reiterates that Alice is dead and died and drowned. Alan denies this. The fuck, when? I mean, Alan lost some time. I know, it's just, I'm getting upset.

1:37:26 You should, that means this is good media. Dr. Hartman doubles down and reiterates that Alice is dead and drowned and died, man, and Alan has been hallucinating and is delusional, and the stress is just all in his head. Dr. Hartman and Alan walk around the grounds, and at a lookout, Alan sees all of Cauldron Lake again with no island in the middle at all. He's seeing right now the island that was there isn't there, but it used to be there. What the fuck, man? Dr. Hartman talks on and on to Alan about how sick Alan is, and he's like, man, you are fucking going through it. You need to trust the process. You need to accept treatment. Like, I can help you unpack this.

1:38:06 This is a major trauma. Alan visibly hates him. He is clearly fucking seething. Dr. Hartman's like, oh, and you know what? I know you're a writer. I don't want to give you a computer. I got you a typewriter so you could work on it through therapy. You should write. Fucking typewriter. Alan is going to fucking hit him again. With the typewriter. Yeah. In the rec room of the lodge, we see some familiar faces, the Anderson brothers. Oh. Tor and Odin. Unfortunately, Dr. Hartman has had them under his care for a while now, and they're a bit too old to really fight it at this point. Dr. Hartman introduces them as the rock stars from the band the Old Gods of Asgard, and they have a farm they used to live on kind of out in the country, but Dr.

1:38:49 Hartman says they've gone through dementia and they need to be under constant care to make sure they're properly being provided for and, you know, not hurting themselves. Oh, that's sad. They seem more sedated than unwell, but who knows? The lights flicker and Dr. Hartman runs off to get the generator going. As he leave, the Andersons are left alone with Alan, and they start talking mad shit on Dr. Hartman. Thor says he wants to bash Dr. Hartman's head in with a hammer. Oh, shit. And I'm saying Thor, not Thor, because it's written as T-O-R, not T-H-O-R, just to be very clear. I figured as much. Yeah. He then hits Alan with a squishy toy hammer, which is also just so darling that he plays with hammers.

1:39:32 They tell Alan he needs to go to the Anderson farm, their old farm. There's a message hidden in the farm that will help Alan fight the darkness. Although they're calling Alan Tom. What? They asked Tom if he has any booze on him. Alan is like, no, and he doesn't even bother trying to correct them on his name. They say, OK, well, go to the farm. We had a shit ton of moonshine there. Go have a drink. It'll make you see things. Oh, buddy. Like some dude named Tom. They also start to kind of bicker amongst themselves, and then they look at Tom saying, look at those fucking elbow pads on his jacket. That's not very rock and roll. Like they're roasting his fucking fit.

1:40:15 Then Odin looks at him and says, Tom's just lost. Baba Yaga got to him, the damn witch. She also took his ravens. Tor says, yeah, that bitch took my thunder. Fucking hag. Odin says that this place, the lake right there, it gives creatives power somehow and makes you a god. Odin says that the lamp lady also knows what happened to the last writer who came through here. Tor accuses Tom Alan of opening the door and letting the old lady, the hag, in. Alan takes that whole fucking ass rant in and is like, you know what? It's probably not exactly what it fucking sounds like. Yeah. But for real, this is foreshadowing, so remember this rant for later.

1:40:58 Alan goes back to his patient room and sits at the typewriter and immediately has a panic attack. While this is happening, the Anderson brothers start throwing shit and partying, and they're like, you know what? Fuck it. Rock and roll. And the orderlies run in to sedate them. As it turns out, the Andersons actually knocked out the orderlies, and Tor really did grab a real hammer and hit the nurse with it, so everyone's just doing their own thing now. Oh my god. Hell yeah, Tor. The hammer of Tor. Yeah, Tor's tunder, bitch. Alan grabs the keys off of the head nurse while Tor and Odin give each other high fives and celebrate being aging rock star degenerates. Tor says, it's his storm after all, and it's a comeback tour.

1:41:38 Hell yeah, I fucking love them. They're just chaos. They're having a good time. They're here to party. Fuck yeah. I love that you guys mule near action too. I know. While looking for his shit to escape, Alan runs into Barry. Barry had come out looking for Alan. He's like, the cops let me go. Fucking Rose Rufitas, she probably touched you. Probably, you know? Yeah, it definitely happened. Even possessed, I'm sure Rose would be like, what if I just slid my hand on this? Let's just see what he's working with. What if I molest this man? This game has everything. Barry is like, all right, let's fucking get out of here. Let's go. He also manages to find a bunch of manuscript pages that were picked up by Dr.

1:42:19 Hartman and some new ones. So Alan's like, oh shit, yeah, okay, perfect. We have more book. Let's figure this out. Then he also finds a gun, which is great because when Dr. Hartman comes up behind them, Alan points the gun immediately at his face. Oh shit. Alan barks at Barry to go outside and get the car started, like fully fucking get the getaway moving, while Alan holds Dr. Hartman at gunpoint. Before Alan can do anything, the dark presence begins to seep in through the fucking walls. It comes out like a ghost, then a shadow, then a full blanket of endless night inside this cabin. Alan runs out the door and holds it closed as the dark presence eats up Dr. Hartman from behind the door.

1:43:01 Alan looks a little pleased with himself as he feeds this man to the darkness. Hell yeah. Dr. Hartman eaten by the dark presence. Bye, bitch. The dark presence, unfortunately, also starts infecting the entire lodge. So in addition to eating Dr. Hartman, all the furniture is now possessed, and Alan has to evade some couches and chandeliers and shit. And if you're wondering, like I was, the Andersons did manage to escape right in time, get away from the cabin right before the whole place gets fucking sucked up. Well, thank goodness for them. Valhalla, baby. Alan and Barry get out, and they drive off in a car. Barry managed to acquire?

1:43:43 Acquire. It's probably stolen. These New Yorkers. Alan is insistent that Alice is alive. He's like, he's fucking lying to me. She's OK. He tells Barry that all the works of art that are made at the lake come true. That's what the Andersons knew. That's what fucking Dr. Hartman knew. That's why he took creatives from the fucking water and kept them from the power so they couldn't change the timeline. Which, OK, actually, that kind of fucking makes some sense. Yeah, I'm like, that actually is starting to make stuff line up. If you have rock stars that can create art and art can be affected by the lake to be real, yeah, let's keep the guys who think they're literal Asgardian gods. Away from the water. Most definitely, but it's also why writers are probably not often welcome here.

1:44:28 Yeah. Because they're creating a lot in their, like, creative space. Mm-hmm. Alan says it's what happened to Thomas Zane, it's what happened to the Anderson brothers, and now it's happening to me, like, exactly. Oh, shit. And now it's got Alice trapped under the darkness of the lake. She was never kidnapped. There's only a kidnapper literally because of this manuscript that I don't remember writing. It's twisting reality to play with everyone, especially Alan. And Barry is like, it's weird, but I'm with you. Let's do this. Alan's like, okay, so the Andersons knew all about this, and even though they're heavily sedated by Dr. Hartman, so they keep from creating music, they knew enough to write all this down, and the cure is at their abandoned farm at the base of the mountain.

1:45:12 So that's the first step. Find the farm, figure out the message, find a way out. Barry fucking crashes the car. So many car crashes, goddamn. It's very windy up in the Pacific Northwest, you know? Like, it happens. Now Alan and Barry are hanging on the side of a mountain after a goddamn car crash, because these big city boys can't fucking drive in the rain. Thankfully, they crashed relatively close to the farm, so I guess we're still on track to get there. Barry was flung way the fuck farther from Alan. He's a denser man, so there's a little more force behind the bush. So now they're separated, so Alan also has to make his way to the farm by himself. It's a whole thing to get to the farm, but once Alan makes it, he sees Barry has beat him to the farm, which is great.

1:45:58 It starts off as a regular fucking farm with like crops and shit, but then in the middle of this fucking farm, there's a festival stage. Wait, really? These guys are rock stars as fuck. So Barry's like, wait, that's fucking sick, runs up to the stage and tells Alan to run because, oh my god, there's so many taken here. Now the stage, this is the old gods of Asgard. They're into Nordic lore, they're into fucking bombastic 70s shit. We're thinking like, I want to say like a black Sabbath level of production when you think of like Osfast and Pyro and shit. Well, I'm also thinking of European music that loves like that death metal, baby clock and death clock and shit like that.

1:46:40 Yeah, I know they're not real like that. So this stage is so fucking cool, and it sings to my heart because this stage has a giant dragon above it in the center, just like the wicked one. Oh, that doesn't do anything. It breathes fire, bitch. It's more than the wicked one. So Barry is like, we're getting chased wherever we want to go. I want to go that fucking way. That thing's fucking sick as shit. A whole army of taken warriors come down, and Alan and Barry on the stage are like, what do we do? Wait, these guys are rock stars. So Barry does a normal thing and starts to play with the pyrotechnics and the lights on stage.

1:47:25 The stage fires up and blasts light, and then the music starts kicking in. And honestly, it's so fucking cool. You are a legit Nordic rock star shooting bad guys on stage running back and forth. There is a dragon breathing fire. There are pyrotechnics coming up from the ground. It is the coolest fucking rock and roll metal as fuck, like, assault ever. Is there music playing through the whole thing, too? Yes, it's the old gods of Asgard, bitch! So they're like playing through the massacre. That's fucking great. Now, every single Remedy game is a musical. I'm going to let you know, right? I know you know what happens in Alan Wake 2, because I've made you watch me do the dance.

1:48:07 But if you've seen the Game Awards, it's that! There's fucking pyros! It's fucking amazing! It's so cool. It's everyone's favorite sequence in the game. It's Sam Lake's favorite sequence in the game. It's mine. And there's a moment where Alan looks up, and there's like pyros going, he goes, hell yeah. And as the player, you also go, hell yeah. Guys will look at this and think, hell yeah. I always add it in, so hell yeah. People will look at this and think, hell yeah. This is non-gender specific. I don't give a fuck what's between your legs. Whatever it is, it's hard or wet. You fucking love this shit. This was cool. I love that Remedy is just always doing musicals. So Barry is like, that was fucking sick, and Alan's like, I'm very upset, but yes, that was very cool.

1:48:54 So Matthew Peretta and Ilka Vili have both said that the biggest direction note they've gotten for Alan is he's terrified, but he's very cool. Like he's very, everything sucks. Everything horrible is happening to him, but he's a cool dude on top of it. And even in this moment, he's like, man, that was fucking sick. He can't help it. He can't help it. It's a fantastic fucking assault. So after this amazing set piece, Barry and Alan are heading to the farmhouse where the Anderson brothers live. And Barry reveals that he actually saved an Alan Wake cardboard cutout from the town and promised nothing bad will happen to it. Oh, God. So he's carrying a cardboard cutout of his friend, and he sometimes talks to it during the run, which is fine.

1:49:36 He's not losing his mind at all. Everyone's fucking crying and broken inside. At one point, Alan Wake fights a possessed tractor. Of course he does. Barry discovers some of the Anderson moonshine machinery and gets distracted with the idea of signing the Andersons and selling their shit as like a rock and roll booze brand and like making them pump out some music. His fucking agent brain is braining. He is trying to get the bag. He's like, well, Alan's fucking losing his mind. Who's going to pay for my condo? It just sounds like it's the same ideas that they have outside of the world, too, where they tried to brand their own fucking foods and shit. And they did get their own coffee. Oh, no. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's like it's just all collapsing in on itself.

1:50:19 Is Sam Wake Alan Wake in real life? Yeah, right. He's married, and I assume it's a happy marriage, but you know, he hasn't hit a writer's block, to my knowledge. And her name's Samantha, probably, if it's Alice and Alan. Like, as a Tom, could you date, like, a Tammy? A Tamra? No. My best friends, my name's Andrea. One of my best male friends is Andrew, but, like, I've never dated someone with, like, an Andy or an Andrew or an Andre or, like, any variation of that name. Right. Because I think that's weird. No, I couldn't do it. I've also dated women. I've never dated another Andrea. Like, it's not a call-me-by-your-name situation. Like, I don't think I could do that.

1:51:00 I think that's weird. I also couldn't date, like, a parent's name. I was going to say parent, and for me, sibling. You're an only child, so you don't get that one. But couldn't date anybody with the same name as my sister. Yeah, that'd be weird. Anyway, Barry and Alan make it to the Anderson house, which is obviously abandoned. Alan finds a record from the band that has some very ominous lyrics in the music. And now to see your love set free, you need the witch's cabin key. Find the lady of the light, gone mad with the night. That's how you reshape destiny. So they're pretty quickly like, okay, we find Cynthia Weaver, that crazy bitch who loves lights. She'll be able to show us how to defeat the light and rescue Alice.

1:51:40 Hell yeah. But it's still pretty dark outside, so we should probably stay in the house until it's light out, because she would probably have a meltdown if she had a night visitor, considering that she knows all of this is happening, presumably. So let's hang out. And Barry does the responsible thing, lifts up a bottle of the moonshine and says, Al, let's get drunk. On moonshine, though, that can make you literally go blind. This is Backwood's Nordic fucking Finnish rock star moonshine. Yeah, I've had moonshine a few times in my life. Shlevo? Well, there's Shlevo, but I've had other Backwood shit as well. Really? And that's just fucking poison. I don't think I've ever had... I've had Shlevo.

1:52:21 Yeah. I've had Shlevo with you, and that, I think it turned my tongue a different shade of color. Like, I think it literally stripped those taste buds off of me. I couldn't taste sour for a month. Yeah, Shlevo is a Serbian version of, like, a moonshine that they make themselves. They're not fucking around. No, they do not fuck around. They fucking party so hard. It was a great wedding. Yeah. And Alan is like, no, you're right, we should get drunk. He immediately gives up. He's like, you're absolutely right. Let's get fucking hammered. It's cute. We get this great scene of Barry professing his bro love to Alan. And then Alan hears this and goes, I don't care. I'm a writer.

1:53:01 I can write 10 bestsellers a year. Barry says, no, you couldn't. Alan says, you're right, I couldn't. But I could because I'm a writer. Barry bumbles around saying he's going to seriously get this fucking recipe from the hooch because holy shit, these boys know what they're doing. And then Alan starts crying because he misses Alice. It's a whole boy's night. And there's a cardboard cutout of Alan Wake there watching them, which just makes it all weirder. Just sitting there judging them silently. Yeah, because, you know, they got drunk on that Nordic moonshine. And hidden in the manuscript pages is the secret that the moonshine's star ingredient is cauldron lake water.

1:53:42 Oh, and that cauldron lake water makes you see the truth. Okay, so it's poison. Yes, it's poison. But also, like, appreciate the poetry of it, that it makes you see the truth, and Barry does love Alan, and Alan is only obsessed with himself as a writer and shit like that, you know. Turns out it's just magic mushrooms grow all around. Oh, my God. Psychedelic moonshine. I brought that into our house once. Do you remember that? Oh, yes. I tried to give some to your nephew. Sorry about that. I'm fun. Nephew's 30. It's okay. He's not 12. I'm so sorry. That sounded bad right now. He's my age. I'm the fun aunt.

1:54:23 I have candy in my purse. While passed out drunk under the shade of the moonshine, Alan has a dream that reveals what happened the first night at Divers Isle in Bright Falls. He sees himself running back to the cabin after he hears Alice scream. He sees himself dive into the water for her, which is where his memory of the event is gone and where he blacked out for a week. But in this dream, we see Alan get out of the water and cry out for Alice. We see the Lady in Black, Barbara Yager, telling Alan maybe she's still alive. She guides Alan up into the cabin, into the room with the typewriter, and tells Alan that Alice is drowned and it's his fault his wife is dead when all she wanted to do was help him write.

1:55:09 She tells him to hush as Alan cries out in pain. She tells him to sit at the typewriter and write, and that she will tell him what to do. She tells him that Cauldron Lake has special magic for creators, and she will guide Alan and tell him he can write his way out of this and how to get Alice back. But it has to be specific, and it has to be written the way she wants. Alan is in a trance at the typewriter and says, Yes, I'll bring her back. All right. And these are those clips that we see on the TV of Alan writing, like sometimes on TVs, we'll just see him like pacing around or furiously being like, I have to save Alice. It's all from this. In real time, Alan wakes up from his nightmare, remembering the entire week he missed.

1:55:52 It all came back to him, that he sat at the typewriter and wrote and wrote under the watchful eye of Barbara Yager, who told him what to say in his story to make him more and more powerful. Under the Dark Presence, she twisted his creation to bring her all the taken, all the power, and keep him under her thumb. So was he under the influence of the Dark Presence? He was not taken. Okay, so he wasn't taken. But the Dark Presence, like, transfixed him into writing what they wanted. Influenced him, all that shit. Yeah. Because he thought he could save Alice if he did this, but really, it was just, like, feeding into the Dark Presence's agenda.

1:56:34 He remembers that he had written the light of Thomas Zane into the story to save himself from his life trapped in the cabin, and that Thomas Zane released him from his Dark Presence trance. In the cabin, a man in a diving suit breaks through into the cabin, and that's Thomas Zane, the diver, Diver's Isle. He literally says, I'm here because it was written. I brought you light. Like it was the prophecy. Yeah, and it sounds like James McCaffrey has this incredible booming voice as Thomas Zane who's like, I am here as it was written. It also says it, quote unquote, stole the skin of his Barbara, that the Dark Presence was using Barbara as a puppet, and that she looks so old and that he's so sad as he says this.

1:57:21 Ugh. So the Dark Presence is using Barbara as a puppet. It's not really just Barbara. It's the Dark Presence. So it is just like an overarching darkness. So after Tom Zane came to save Alan from the cabin, Alan ran until he found a car and he stole it. He was barely conscious and fading fast, but he drove as fast as far as he could. The Dark Presence was weakened by Thomas Zane's presence, but not harmed entirely. It was just enough of a window for Alan to escape, without being followed. In his memory, he remembers passing out behind the wheel, and after a week had gone by, catching up, when all this shit started. In real time, Alan opens his eyes and says, it's my fault because I wrote it.

1:58:05 And then, Agent Nightingale cocks his gun at Alan and says, that's right, James Joyce, and you're gonna pay for it. These writers don't always have things in common, too. He's like, Dan Brown and James Joyce, those are different readers, man. Totally different genres, everything. You just Googled famous writers and had a list. That's the end of chapter four, obviously. So we're at another chapter break. You know what this story is really starting to remind me of? Just a little bit. The never-ending story. We have the nothing kind of overtaking everything. An aspect of the never-ending story is like, the kid has to write the ending of the story in order to finish it.

1:58:50 You have to name me. Yeah, you got to give her the fucking name and shit. And so this is just very much feeling kind of like the same thing, where he's got to kind of write out how the story is going to end for himself. And it's a musical. And it's a musical. Look at what you see. That Stranger Things moment. Oh, I forgot about that. I'm glad that popped up. I don't get mad when shit pops off because it's in things like, don't be mad fucking murder on the dance floors in Saltburn. That's a great fucking song. Be mad at Saltburn. I was going to say, you need to stop talking about Saltburn. I can't stop talking about Saltburn. It is consuming my soul. And I don't even think I liked it. No, I just need to talk to someone about it.

1:59:32 You guys want to talk to me about Saltburn in the discord? A therapist. Oh, God damn it. You need to talk to a therapist about Saltburn. I think a lot of people have to talk to a therapist about Saltburn. It's Saltburn-dew. Oh. Chapter five, the clicker. Alan is in a jail cell with Barry. This is going great. Alan has like a hallucination vision of Cynthia Weaver talking to herself, and she says, someone will come for it when the time is right. Thomas said so. He wrote it. This key is insurance. It's my job to keep it safe. Safe in the light, always in the light, always in the light. And Alan's like Jesus Christ, and he falls back asleep. In the morning, Barry and Alan realize that Agent Nightingale took the entire manuscript away.

2:00:17 Okay. Okay, Barry is furiously hungover from the moonshine and is nearly in tears. I thought you were gonna say furious that he took the manuscript because that's his paycheck. Oh, it's not helping. What's the most hungover you've ever been? Oh my God, I couldn't even tell you. In my 20s, I started getting two-day and three-day hangovers and I was like, I need to cut back on drinking. And now I barely drink. I drink maybe once if it's at an event and it's like a seltzer. It's never like shots. Last time I did a shot, I ended up smoking half a pack of cigarettes and I threw up so much. And I think I threw up more from the cigarettes than the alcohol. Yeah, I would say it's that Christmas at your parents' house that one year.

2:00:59 When you ruined Christmas? Yeah. Oh, that was hysterical. I had ruined Christmas. It wasn't better because of you. I was just very sick all day long. My dad looked at you and went, townies, and walked away. It was just like, he couldn't hang. It was like, my high school friends are monsters. I'm sorry. I couldn't party as hard as Oakland had to offer. That's what Barry's going through right now. He is sweating pure whiskey, like the Gatorade commercials, but just whiskey. He is shaking. He's nearly in tears with how much pain he's in. And Alan is like, I'm fine, actually. I'm a functioning alcoholic, so this is normal for me. I need to talk to Cynthia Weaver. She is the lady of the light.

2:01:40 Sheriff Breaker and Agent Nightingale come in to see Alan, but as they do, Alan kneels over with a migraine and immediately gets a vision of the dark presence pulling Alice underwater. Sheriff Breaker opens the cell and is like, holy shit, is he okay? Agent Nightingale makes it all about himself for some reason and then pulls a gun on all three of them, which is just his favorite fucking thing to do. I hate a trigger happy cop. In any media or in life, period. As he yells at Alan and calls him Brett Easton Ellis and Stephen King in the same breath. Brett Easton Ellis, he's like, this guy feels really well read.

2:02:22 I feel like he actually just reads book reviews. I don't think he reads books, you know, like it feels peripheral because it doesn't always connect. Like there's nothing James Joyce about this happening right now. Or Brett Easton Ellis. Being hung over feels a little Brett Easton Ellis. Stephen King not though. Like if you're going to Stephen King it bring it in with a misery thing. Like that's the most logical part. But no, he's just saying shit at him. And then Nightingale goes, oh, wait, wait, I know this. What do you mean you know this? He pulls out a manuscript page out of his coat. And as he puts it all together, the door behind him swings open and a tornado of darkness wraps around his waist and drags him through the doorway.

2:03:07 Into complete darkness. Sheriff Breaker goes, oh my God. Alan says, we need light. We need all the light we can get. Barry is terrified and also has a head splitting hangover. So he's genuinely about to die. Right, he's like, the last thing I want is fucking light right now. I need darkness and I need a blanket. Remember in Disco Elysium, I killed myself by turning on the light one time. Because you were hungover. That's how it feels, honestly. I have a very visceral memory of us playing, I'm sure we were doing Lizard Staff in our apartment, which is a horrible game no one should play, but if you do, it's where you drink your height in beer.

2:03:49 You drink a beer, put it on the ground, drink another beer, tape it to the beer that's on the ground, and you drink until you get to your height. We are stupid and we are, I'm 5'4. I'm a bit taller. It's a terrible game, but the day after we played it, I remember walking to the corner store for Gatorade, and I had a moment where I went, someone could come up here, grab my wallet, and run, and I wouldn't even fight. I just say, please, just take it. I don't even fucking care. Just leave me here. Leave me here to die. That's where Barry's at with his life, is just the leave me here to die hangover. But the three run, God bless Barry, I'm so sorry, to get some goddamn light and hunker down in Sheriff Breaker's office.

2:04:32 Alan says, I need light, and I need to find Cynthia Weaver. Sheriff Breaker is the most down ass bitch. And she goes, I got it. Let's grab ammo. We can take the chopper. It's at the top of the hill. The chopper. She's so fucking cool. Also, why does the Bright Falls Police Department have a helicopter? Right. I guess it's a mountain area, so you may need it for rescue if there's like tourists or like hikers that get lost, but it feels a little excessive for just the local cop to have the keys. It seems way outside the budget. She also tells Barry to take a list of names and phone numbers and tell them the code NIGHTSPRINGS. It's an activation statement. She is so fucking cool. There is a code word for shit going down.

2:05:13 Barry gets the list and is like, Oh, Frank Breaker, any relation? She says, Oh yeah, that's my dad. Now I'm going to take a beat and just say, Frank Breaker used to be the sheriff of Bright Falls. So he actually is very familiar with all the on-goings, everyone in town. He at one point was also involved with a group called the Federal Bureau of Control. Alan and Sheriff Breaker go running for the helicopter, and she jokes that the code word is Night Springs because weird shit happens in their town so much, like the show. Right. She's really just like, man, we live in a fucking hell mouth, so actually the show is our code for danger, and it activates everyone, so we all prepare accordingly. It's how we take back control.

2:05:54 On the way to the helicopter, they see Barry sprinting down the street being chased by a dark presence. The dark presence throws a school bus at him. Alan and Sheriff Breaker watch this, and they're like, oh, God damn it, we can't catch a fucking break. A whole school bus, though? They throw on buses at us, man. Holy shit, these things are strong. They really amplify, they really go from, hey, we're gonna throw a fence at you, to a tractor, to a fucking school bus. They take a shortcut through the bookstore, and Sheriff Breaker says that the bookstore has been selling a lot of his Alex Casey novels. Alan says, you know, I'm not really a fan of my own writing right now. Sheriff Breaker and Alan cross paths with Barry again, and they head up the hill and off to take to the sky.

2:06:38 Alan defends the chopper from the taken while they get set up, and then they take off to go to Cynthia Weaver's remote location. In the helicopter, Sheriff Breaker is ribbing Alan, going, well, you're in New York, or you deal with weird shit, right? Alan is like, you know what? I've never even held a gun until a few days ago. I was a liberal arts major. And now I have a body count. Yeah, Sheriff Breaker is like, oh my God, my dad was a cop in New York. He's seen some shit. I actually used to tease my dad about being like Alex Casey. Instead of clocking that this woman confirmed that Frank Breaker, who was on the activate list, who was a cop in New York, has seen some weird shit, and there's gotta be more to this guy. We're introduced as someone who's like, absolutely darling to have in weird situations like this when we're in the trenches.

2:07:23 Like, if he's familiar with these worlds being altered in unique events, maybe he would be a prime candidate for taking control of the situation, right? If only. All Alan hears is, oh my God, you've read my books. And she's like, yeah, you're a little metaphor heavy, but you're a good writer. And Alan says, no one's ever said that before. Metaphor heavy? Yeah. Not that you're a good writer. Yeah. Oh no, he's been told he's a great writer. Several times by Rose Today. Sheriff Breaker starts to land when a bunch of dark presence crows attack the copter. Alan falls out, but it's okay, because there's no doors on helicopters. Like, it's not a safe thing.

2:08:03 Don't trust him. Barry and Sheriff Breaker are still in the helicopter, and Sheriff Breaker tells Alan, I'll meet you up at the plant. Turns out, the lady obsessed with light is at a power plant, so I guess that kind of suits the situation. Alan makes it to the power plant, and near the door, we see a comforting set of yellow text under the entry sign. In the yellow, helpful glow, we see the words, safe haven. The yellow signs and hints and secrets throughout the game were all from Cynthia Weaver. God bless her. Good for her. Alan opens the door to the power plant, and has to calm an immediately on edge Cynthia Weaver. He goes, I'm a friend. You know Tom Zane. You're the lady of the light in the song. Cynthia was, oh my God, about time.

2:08:44 I've been waiting a long time for you. The key to driving the darkness back is in the well-lit room, but I need to do a fetch quest. Of course. Alan is quite fetching, and when he meets back up with Cynthia, she guides him to a well-lit pipe that leads to the well-lit room. She's nostalgic, and she says she had a huge crush on Tom Zane, and she was jealous of Barbara for being Tom's muse. And she admits when Barbara died, she was a little happy, which is such a weird thing. She just opened up with. She tells Alan that he started writing again and trying to bring her back, but he couldn't. Alan is like, that's great. That bodes well for me.

2:09:25 Oh no. Cynthia says that the darkness took on the presence of Barbara to lure in Tom. Tom tried to undo everything he had ever written to reverse whatever was happening with the dark presence and to get Barbara back. She said he was so famous, but after he did that, every trace of his writings were gone, which is why Barry said, it says he's a writer, but I can't find any of his writings. That was real. Barry's just not a shitty Googler. Right. He ended up only being known as a filmmaker for one project where he played a diver once, not the poet he actually was. Before he wrote it out, he went to Cynthia and left one thing behind in her care in case, quote unquote, it happened again as insurance.

2:10:09 She says he may have used her a little because he knew she had a crush on him and she was dedicated and would do anything he asked, but whatever, she still played her role and is loyal to him. She takes Alan to a small pipe room that is well lit and well sealed. Cynthia warns Alan he has to finish it to take the dark presence's power away. Alan is like perfect. I'm gonna call Barry and Sheriff Breaker and let them know exactly what's happening so they know exactly where to go. They're in the fucking sky. Give me a second. He calls them and he's like, all right, meet me at the dam. But then it sounds like the helicopter crashes mid phone call. Alan is like, shit, I have to go see if they're okay. Cynthia looks at him and goes, they're probably dead.

2:10:51 I'll be at the well lit room and you're an idiot. I'll see you there if you live. Yeah, a helicopter crashing, unlikely they're gonna survive it. Yeah, in general, yeah. And Cynthia's super dismissive. She's like, they're dead, dumb ass. Alan runs out and sees the crashed helicopter and rushes to see if Barry and Sheriff Break are okay. The helicopter is empty, so at least he hasn't found their bodies, and he goes looking for them on the trails. Alan actually catches up to them just in time to ward off a horde of Taken. And Barry is draped in Christmas lights across his puffer jacket as his personal shield, because he is a resourceful New Yorker. I love that for him. We had a power outage once when we lived in LA, and I had Christmas lights around my neck, and we walked around the neighborhood.

2:11:35 Do you remember that? That was really smart. It was cute. It was a good look. I looked adorable. I look great in the dark. The three of them fight to get up to the dam to reconnect with Cynthia Weaver at the well-lit room. Alan almost immediately gets separated, and as he does, he hears the voice of Barbara Yager, the dark presence telling him to stop, that he's not going any further. Then she throws a bus at him, but Alan is still able to catch up with everyone and get to the well-lit room. Another fucking bus. This bitch loves buses. The well-lit room is exactly what it sounds like. It was an army base at one point, but Cynthia Weaver had taken it over since Tom Zane entrusted her with the key. The room is a very bright room with lights and lights and lights and lights strung up over everywhere and on top of each other.

2:12:21 In the middle of the room, there's a small table with a shoebox. In that shoebox, Alan sees a page of text that was written by Thomas Zane about a memory of Alan's from his childhood. There wasn't supposed to be any evidence at all Thomas was ever a writer, but somehow through the well-lit room, this page was spared from being eaten by the dark presence. Oh. The page covers a story about when Alan was seven years old and how he'd have nightmares. One night, his mother offered him an old light switch that she called the clicker. Flicking the clicker would drive the monsters away. To make it an even more elaborate lie, she said it was a gift from Alan's father.

2:13:03 Alan never knew his father, so this was especially devious on her part, but whatever. With the clicker, Alan finally got to sleep. Then the page says, Alan is there, 30 years later, at the edge of Cauldron Lake with the clicker. And there in the box next to the page is the clicker. Alan knew he physically gave it to Alice in New York years ago. And he hasn't had it since, but here it was in his hands. Thomas Zane wrote this into existence in a story he wrote. With the clicker in hand, Alan is ready to be the champion of light, the herald of darkness. Oh my God. End of chapter five. The fucking song. Shut up.

2:13:44 Let me have this. I've been so good about not being indulgent. Oh God, it's great. Alan's a much more indulgent writer than I am. I showed some fucking restraint. You want to hear restraint? You're saying Barry and Alan the entire time, and I'm not saying anything about the flash this entire episode. Oh, isn't it driving you crazy? It drives me fucking nuts. Chapter six, Departure. With a flash, we're... Are you gonna throw something at me? We're in New York, and it's two years earlier. Alan wakes up in dirty jeans, deathly hungover.

2:14:26 He rolls out of bed with a throbbing headache and immediately puts on sunglasses and gets prescription painkillers. So just normal stuff. He drank too much, and now he thinks he's dying. Right. Now, at this point, Alan, it's subtle, but it has been confirmed. Alan is a heavy drinker, full functioning alcoholic, and has a coke problem. A writer? No way. Yeah, a writer indulging in drugs and alcohol. At no point is he called Burkowski, which is probably the most appropriate thing. Whatever. He has a message on his machine from Barry that his interview last night should be on the TiVo, and that his manager brought him TiVo like a good manager.

2:15:06 TiVo, wait, why did the TiVo come back from our conversation earlier? That's great. Because with all good writers, you have to sow the seeds. Alan drags his ass to the living room to catch up on his TiVo appearance on the Harry Garrett show last night. This is one of the live action film segments, and obviously a big signature of Remedy is mixing media. We're bringing musicals into video games. We're bringing live action into video games. This is the live action segment. And to confirm in the live action segment, it is Ilka Vili on screen, and it's still Matthew Perretta talking over his lip sync. Oh my gosh, they dub it? Yeah, which is also how they do it in Alan Wake too. That's incredible.

2:15:47 It's a lot of work. Just hire one actor. Anyway, you'd think it'd be cheaper and more effective for the performance. His accent must be so thick if they thought you just couldn't carry a game with it. I'm gonna tell you right now, it's not. Really? He's performed, he's been in Netflix shows and stuff, speaking English completely fine. He can speak, I've listened to a lot of interviews with him. His accent is almost gone. He actually lived in Seattle for a couple of years in the nineties. What a strange decision to just be like, we need this New York accent so badly. That badly. But honestly, Il Kavili, incredible performer, has great control of his voice, can pull off being American straight up.

2:16:31 And yet they interviewed 200 women. For this woman who really didn't have a lot of lines, to be real, we've seen her maybe twice, maybe three times with speaking segments in this. But when it came to Alan, they're like, no, we need two completely different fucking people for this character. It's when you have a shitty job, like a shitty hourly job, and everything is a two man job, you're like me and my girlfriend have to take the trash out together. It's gonna be a 20 minute smoke break. But on a very highly professional performance level, which is fucking wild. I love Matthew Prada and Il Kavili. I think they're both great, but it's wild that they do this. Anyway, so The Harry Garrett Show is a talk show, and Alan is there promoting his last book, The Sudden Stop.

2:17:18 In this book, Alan kills his fan favorite protagonist detective, Alex Casey. Alan is like, look, Alex Casey had a good run, but I wanna do new things. He also manages to say that he's married, his wife is his muse. The host calls out Alan for partying pretty hard and getting into a fist fight with a paparazzi. Why the fuck is there paparazzi for writers? Right. It shows that Alan is the bad boy of the English department, which is the worst thing to be. It is. Oh my God. He's not a Hunter S. Thompson. No, he's barely a Murkowski, like I said. He's probably Dan Brown. Along with Alan, the other guest on this episode is Sam Lake as Sam Lake.

2:18:04 Sam Lake. The flying fuck did you just say? Sam Lake exists in this world and plays himself. And then the host asked Sam Lake to quote unquote, like do the face, and Sam Lake does the face on the cover of the Max Payne art. It's a whole thing. What the fuck is this game? And then the host thanks their musical guest, Poets of the Fall, which is the actual in real world band behind the Old Gods of Asgard. What, what, so Tor and Odin IRL? Yeah. You just gave me the most defeated okay. Well, this game was starting to make sense. Was it?

2:18:45 It was, and then this happened. Are you upset more about the band, or are you upset about Sam Lake? All of it. Okay, just in general. I think Sam Lake a little bit more. Did they address the fact that Sam Lake created fucking Alan Wake? They allude to it being Sam Lake as Sam Lake, because why would Sam Lake do the Max Payne face if not for being Sam Lake of Remedy Entertainment? You know what I mean? Totally. So yeah, I think Sam Lake is Alan Wake. He's a little self-indulgent. So is Alan Wake. Okay. The performer who does the talk show host actually did a lot of mocap just randomly, and he does a lot of mocap for Barbara Yager just as where her body needs to be.

2:19:33 So he's played a bunch of different random people and models in the game, which is kind of fun. And you're like, oh, there he is. And Alan Wake appearing on a talk show with Sam Lake does come back in the sequel. Really? What the fuck? You've seen the Game Awards? Yeah, this is just the fourth wall just doesn't exist anymore. What wall? Yeah. It's all the Easter eggs. Not all jokes have to be layered. OK, sometimes they can just be weird. Alice comes home and watches Alan standing in her living room in dirty jeans from last night, drenched in coke and sweat. Sunglasses on Xanax not kicking in yet and goes, hey, Alan, do you need an aspirin?

2:20:15 Alan whips his body around and screams, are you going to get on me about the drinking? Oh, my God. Alice goes, Jesus Christ, go back to sleep. Alan has, like, the worst fucking drinking problem and he's such a cunt about it. Alan, you know, he's just a dick. He's like, me. Why are you ignoring me? Alice goes, well, she's so calm. She is so wonderful. She goes, I'm upset because you said you'd be home by midnight after your appearance. And you got home at 7am and passed out on me mid-sentence. I took a walk. I moved on. I cooled off. I'm over it. Are you okay? That is the most mature fucking way to deal with this fucking baby.

2:20:56 She really is handling that way better than I think anybody else should. Alan goes, it's the press tour. It's not my decisions. Alice is just like, honey, just reset, take a shower, go back to bed. It's okay. As soon as Alan is sad for himself, she goes to dode on him, and she's like, okay, you know what, relax, it's fine. He does not fucking deserve her. She is literally Alice Angel. Right. Alice promises her after the tour ends, they can go on vacation somewhere quiet. Now it's present day at Bright Falls, and Alan has his magical clicker. He tells Barry and Sheriff Breaker he's going back to the lake to write an ending to the manuscript, to make it right.

2:21:37 He has to go to the typewriter and read it and make sure everything is perfect so it all resets. Barry and Sheriff Breaker stay put in the well-lit room with Cynthia to stay safe. Alan leaves alone to put an end to all of this now. When he comes out, it's a bright sunny day. He thinks it may have been because he hit the clicker, or maybe it's just, you know, daytime, you dumb dipshit. He has to take advantage of the light to get to the lake safely. Alan steals a car and heads out to where he thought Divers Island was supposed to be, or kind of where it was last time. On his way over, Alan starts to have visions of Barbara Yager and the darkness pulling Alice down into the lake. He hears Barbara just straight up say, I will kill your wife.

2:22:20 With that, it's nighttime again. Because the Dark Presence has a hold on Alan, it'll always be connected to him. It knows what Alan wants and where he wants, and there's no hiding from it. It throws cars and flocks of birds at him. The Dark Presence really just like throws everything it can figure out at Alan to get him to stop his progress towards Alice and breaking the hold. On his way to the lake, Alan comes up on a full tornado at the edge of a mountain. It's throwing train cars and regular cars, and I think I saw a boat somewhere in there? Jesus. Alan runs face first into the heart of the tornado, evading all sorts of traffic vehicles it has spinning in its darkness.

2:23:03 With flares at hand and focus in mind, Alan makes it to the center and the heart of the hurricane. All is still for a moment, and he walks to the edge of the peak above the lake. He holds his magic clicker, closes his eyes, and squeezes. And with that, Alan leaps into Cauldron Lake. Alan wakes up suddenly catching his breath next to Alice. Of course. She goes, baby, it was just another nightmare. You're home or okay. They're in their bed in New York City. Alan says, no, no, it's not a dream. It's a dream. It's not a dream. It's a dream. He rolls out of bed and demands the lights go on. He realizes this isn't his apartment.

2:23:43 He's not okay. Oh. The apartment is drenched in darkness, and Alice tells him to stop trying to turn the lights on. Well, that's definitely not Alice, then. Right. Outside their windows, we see a fog of darkness roll by enveloping New York City. Alan goes further into the apartment where Alice tells him to come back to bed. The Dark Presence tries to lure him into endless dreams with Alice where he can float and just be with her finally, but he knows it's not real, and he knows he needs to solve this in the real world because Alice is still in danger. He finds the clicker and he hits it. The apartment lights up, and then Alan is in a dream state talking to the diver, Tom Zane.

2:24:24 He says he has to get to the cabin. He says the Dark Presence has no heart, only darkness. Alan needs to fill the Dark Presence heart with light. Alan turns to the side and sees a carbon copy of himself. They look and are dressed the same, but the copy has a smile on his face. The real Alan can't even fake. Tom Zane says, oh, don't mind him. That's Mr. Scratch. Your friends will meet him when you're gone. What? Better not. Yeah, so there's just this creepy doppelganger with this big smile on him, and Alan's like, what the fuck? I've never smiled in my life. They'll know it's not me. Alan and Mr. Scratch look into each other's eyes, and Tom Zane tells Alan bluntly, use the clicker.

2:25:08 Yeah, good job, buddy. From here, we get a strange puzzle where single words show up on the screen across a play area surrounded by darkness. In these arenas are literally words like telephone pole. And when Alan shines his light on the word, the thing appears. So the word telephone pole becomes an inward telephone pole. He occasionally sees the word Alice, but it blacks out and goes away. In this nightmare puzzle, we hear Alice leaving Alan because she's fallen out of love with him, and she calls him a hack. Alan clarifies that this never happened, and he's just hearing the dark presence try to fuck with him as he runs to Divers Island. Nobody's ever called me a hack. I'm not a hack. I'm a little heavy on the metaphor.

2:25:49 Allegedly. We see the word Barbara, and we hear Tom Zane and Barbara's last moments. Barbara is possessed by the dark presence, and Tom Zane knew it, so he cut out her heart in the cabin. The shit? It gave the dark presence Barbara's body to use as its mask, and doomed Tom Zane to be beheld by the dark presence this whole time, just because he didn't fucking cleanse her right. Alan makes it to the cabin, determined to finish the manuscript, and free himself and Alice. Barbara Jagger's obviously waiting for Alan inside. Through her chest is a hole, straight from where her heart used to be, where Tom Zane once broke her body open.

2:26:30 She tells him, she'll find a new face to wear, someone else to dream her free. Alan goes up to her and sticks the clicker inside her heart hole and flips the switch. Light comes pouring out of every opening of her body, and then we see light fill up the entire cabin and overflow through the windows. All goes dark. Alan is alone, catching his breath in the cabin. He stands and walks to the typewriter. He says he feels Alice's presence nearby, that all he has to do now is write the ending to departure. There is light and darkness. There is guilt and atonement, but the scales have to balance. Everything has a price, something he says Zane got wrong.

2:27:12 There's a long journey through the night, back into the light. Alan types and types and types, and the hands on the clock on the wall begin to spin backwards. The screen cuts to the early screen of Alan discovering Alice had been pulled into the lake by the darkness. We see Alan jump in after her. We see the weather rapidly change around Cauldron Lake, as we see the last few days pass once again. We see a vision of Alice opening her eyes underwater and swimming to the surface and making it to the edge of the dock. She pulls herself up out of the lake and onto the landing and catches her breath. She's freezing, and she collapses, and she starts coughing up Cauldron Lake water.

2:27:55 She calls out for Alan, but she's alone. Again, still going full Ellen Ripley. Just tank top and panties. Freezing. She calls out for Alan more and more, but no one reaches back out to her. No one calls out. No one is there. The camera pans back through the lakeside town of Bright Falls as Deerfest begins downtown. We see the town folks celebrating in the streets and enjoying their day. We see Torrin, Ode, and Anderson drinking moonshine in the streets and cheering. We see the waitress Rose holding a lamp looking scared, just like Cynthia Weaver before her. We see a smoky dark presence possessed just surrounding the figure of Agent Nightingale.

2:28:40 Perhaps the new puppet of the dark presence? Perhaps following the legacy of Barbara Yager after being eaten up. I thought we were done with this guy. I fucking hate this dude. And then we come up on Alan Wake, willingly trapped in the dark place in exchange for Alice's freedom. Oh shit. He sits at the typewriter and comes to his final conclusion. It's not a lake, it's an ocean. We hear Alice whisper to Alan to wake up. Written by Sam Lake. What the fuck? And that's how they were left hanging for 13 fucking years. 13 years?

2:29:21 Years! It's not a lake, it's an ocean. What does that even fucking mean? Now, there's two pieces of DLC. There's Signal and the Writer that came out right after, and then American Nightmare came out like a year after or so. For the promotional material for American Nightmare, we see Mr. Scratch, where Mr. Scratch goes to the Remedy Offices to terrorize Sam Lake in real life. Of course. And at one point, he goes, it's not a lake, it's an ocean. So. Mox the ending of the game? In world, in canonical promotional pieces, Mr.

2:30:02 Scratch has mocked Sam Lake to his face, and especially the most confusing ending line of a game. It's fucking hysterical. He's also riding a scooter indoors, just like flipping off Alan Wake posters. Like, it's very charming. I've really enjoyed that. And it's on Remedy's YouTube page, if you're curious. I'll drop it in the Discord. But yeah, man, that's Alan Wake. Well, holy shit. Thank you so much. Can you see why this was like a rabbit hole I fell down? I can see entirely. Just in that final chapter, it's almost like a different game. It takes a huge turn. And now going into Alan Wake 2, they were like, that was like a psychological thriller. This is a fucking horror.

2:30:43 And it 100% is a horror. Like they up all of the scares a lot going into the second one. Second one's way fucking scarier, and it's a dual protagonist story. It's really fucking good. Yeah, you said you really enjoyed it. I did. I really did. And also like Spider-Man 2, it's a dual protagonist story, and you work through two different things. It's really fucking fun. I really enjoyed it. I think there are better games. I don't think it was the best game I've ever played, but I think it's certainly one of the most enjoyable, creatively unique pieces of media I've experienced, which a lot of people have agreed to. And you know what? It really made me love Remedy, because I found out Remedy loves musicals, and I love fucking musicals. That's true.

2:31:24 I am a musical theater ass bitch. Oh, that is so true. Thank you so much. That was a ride and a half. And is Sam Lake Alan Wake? I think so, yeah. Is it Sam Ocean? It's not a lake, it's an ocean. Ah, good shit, right? Well, if you enjoyed that, please make sure you like, subscribe, check out our website, theothercastlepodcast.com. That's the othercastlepodcast.com. Over there, you can check out our Patreon, where again, we're gonna have the DLC episodes. Those should be uploaded right now. And as alluded to, there's a lot of Mr. Scratch in the fucking next pieces in the DLC. So if you wanna come hang out with the snarkiest fucking person ever, Mr.

2:32:05 Scratch, it's on the fucking Patreon. It's gonna be fun. Yeah, it's wonderful. And we also just wanna give a shout out to all of the patrons that we have on our Patreon. So we've got Andrew, that Chonky boy, AJ, Paul, Omar, Aaron, Cyrus, Molly, Krisha, Molly Mock, Jackie, and Alan. Thank you all so much. Yes, thank you all. We appreciate you. Again, it's only $2 a month to subscribe to our Patreon. And it's free for like a week or two if you just want to pop in and say what's up. You can hang out on the Discord too without joining the Patreon, that's free. And that's a great way of bullying me into doing games that I love like Alan Wake. So if you have something that you really love that like I might get down on, let me know.

2:32:48 I'm into it. Yeah, follow us on Instagram, all the different places. Yeah, but thank you all so much. And welcome to season eight. We'll be back. We have 10 games this season. So next week, Tom's running a game, and it's gonna be, I forgot what you're doing, but it's gonna be fun. Oh my gosh, this game took me by a fucking storm. Oh shit. I was not ready for how much I was gonna end up loving this game next week. It is one of my favorites, and it is a 2023 game. Yes, it is. I have no idea what you're doing. Will you text me? We're gonna do a deep dive on it. I'll learn everything I need to know about it afterwards. Yes. Do you feel like you know what happens in Alan Wake now that we've done this? Several hours conversation about it, beat by beat. I do, but I'm still confused.

2:33:30 That's valid. That's valid as fuck. I feel left hanging as hell. It's a cult classic, and that you're supposed to. Yeah, Sam Lake was like, haha, fuck you. But 13 year wait, that's just mean. That's some rock star shit. That's some Kingdom Hearts shit. That's, you know, fucking, yeah. I'm excited, but it's super fun, and I'm gonna do Alan Wake 2 eventually. Just give me a minute. I need to stretch. I need to film myself doing the dance. I might put the dance on the discord just cause it is fun. Yeah, please do. It's a short count, like I can do it. It's not a complicated dance. I'll film it. So I don't have to do it. That's fair. And if you want to be our agent, I am looking for a berry.

2:34:13 But thank you all very much. Better get that TiVo to us. Yeah. All right, Goombas, thank you so much. And until next time, this is Tom and Andrea reminding you. In the darkness, look for the light. Oh, fuck, that's the wrong game. And don't skip the cutscenes. I said it too.