While it seems like Remedy is masterfully gesturing at the next game before it comes out - Alan Wake 2 was teased at the end of the 'Altered World Event' DLC for Control - there are plenty more story hooks sprinkled throughout its games. These breadcrumbs are intentional, part of the decades-long story the studio is telling. Ultimately, each Remedy game carefully lays groundwork for the next. 'Remedy has grown quite a bit and we have multiple projects and multiple opportunities as well,' Lake said. Remedy confirmed last November that Control 2 was in the works, and Lake's affirmation suggests it's progressing. 'We are keeping the lens given that we are working on a sequel to Control,' Lake said. But as Lake described it, returning to the smaller scope of Alan Wake doesn't mean they're abandoning Control or its world the studio is doing both.

The Federal Bureau of Control contains so many storytelling possibilities as players tackled side stories that felt like supernatural mystery, science weirdness, zombie alienation, psychological horror and more. While I have personally enjoyed all of Remedy's games and respect how the company has tackled new storytelling strategies and genres in all of its games, I thought the studio hit jackpot with Control. (Heck, Wake's in-universe character that he writes about in his series of books, Alex Casey, bears a striking resemblance to another death-wishing former cop from a Remedy game series - Max Payne.) Remedy long ago confirmed that Control and Alan Wake are in the same universe, so it shouldn't surprise players that bits of Control will leak into Alan Wake 2. Alan Wake 2 straightforwardly carries on the title character's story from where it left off and includes parts from other Remedy games besides.Īstute Remedy fans may have noticed some references to Alan Wake in the time-traveling Quantum Break, and its next game Control featured references aplenty (and an entire DLC) adding more story to the world around Alan Wake. Scratch, who impersonates Wake with violent results. The original Alan Wake ends with the titular character trapped in a limbo dimension called the Dark Place, and the follow-up game Alan Wake's American Nightmare expounds on his efforts to escape as a malevolent doppelgänger, Mr. Remedy Entertainment Alan Wake, Control and the Remedy games multiverse Remedy Entertainment continues to blend gameplay and live-action footage in intriguing ways. While I didn't see nearly enough to guess whether Remedy has upped the puzzle difficulty alongside gameplay, it seems like the studio wants players to think through difficult situations. In this case, I had to match a character's job title with their archetype description, which proved challenging.

While Alan Wake had its own gameplay tests and the most recent Remedy game Control had in-game puzzles, the early Alan Wake 2 gameplay had at least one brain teaser that had to be solved by logic. You can also set up to eight items as shortcuts (two for each cardinal direction on a d-pad) for quick access, which is handy in a fight.Īnd then there are the puzzles. If you've played other survival horror games, the difficulty won't be too grating, and the new inventory system will be familiar with its Resident Evil-style grid. The sequel is by no means the breezy action game that its predecessor was. I died and reloaded multiple times to get the timing of a fight down and frantically tossed flares and flashbangs to force enemies back and give myself breathing room. You'll still have to train your flashlight on Taken enemies until they're corporeal enough to shoot, and during climactic moments in the segments I played, half a dozen enemies rushed me at once - far too many to make vulnerable with my flashlight.

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