After we got a detailed look at Saga’s detective work, here is a complete overview of her chapter Local Girl Based on this, we can deduce quite a bit about the atmosphere and combat in Alan Wake 2.
Last week, IGN shared a whopping 11 minutes of the chapter Local Girl with its community. For the following review post, editor Matt Purslow even travelled to Finnish developer Remedy for a full gameplay experience of Alan Wake 2.
As was already clear in the last clip, Remedy uses the interplay of light and shadow to create an eerie atmosphere. Thus, enemies emerge from the darkness and scurry back into the darkness of another corner.
In order for Saga to do any damage at all, she must first use the light of her torch to melt the dark aura of the enemies. After that, the enemies can be wounded with shots and taken out.
As Purslow explains, Remedy is going for a new level of intensity in the combat sequences in Alan Wake 2. This is partly due to the fact that the enemies are built to be more resistant and fights are correspondingly longer.
In addition, instead of many waves of enemies, you can expect smaller, more sparsely sown combat situations, which, however, increases the intense combat feeling accordingly.
This reminds me of the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us, which also relied on less violence to make the brutal scenes seem more intense.
Difficult detective work
Away from the combat situations, we experience quite a bit of puzzle work and detective work in her mind space with Saga in Alan Wake 2. This is also what appears to be Purslow’s only criticism. As the IGN employee notes, the mind space is not yet completely intuitive, so that the combination of some clues feels more like a lively guess than puzzle fun. So we should pay special attention to this when the game is released on 17 October.
You can still pre-order the title on the (official website)
