Alan Wake was a survival horror game a long time in development (it was first revealed in E3 2005) but it ultimately met most critical expectations. Despite early expectations that it would have more of an open world, Remedy’s managing director Matias Myllyrine was generally pleased with how the game came out.
“I’m really happy with some of the things; for example in terms of the mood and the story and the setting, I think we did achieve what we went for,” said Myllyrine. “We were very close to what we had in the beginning in terms of feel, mood and atmosphere. We had these three central themes from the very beginning. One was a strong sense of character in the writer. The writer felt like a natural choice because we’d used that in-game monologue before, and the writer’s a natural storyteller so it’s like his story.”
On the sacrifice of a larger world for more concentrated narration, Myllyrine noted, “It’s better to land where we landed than [get a] lukewarm response. There’s a Bill Cosby quote – he said something along the lines of he doesn’t know the key to success but he knows the key to failure is to try and please everybody. I think, luckily, we certainly didn’t land there.”
Still, the game only sold 145,000 units in its first month, a sign that the game may have had promotional issues. “I think we could have benefited from maybe being able to have an even crisper communication of what the game does, and we should have probably backed that up with stronger advertising about what’s unique about this game,” said Myllyrine.
Source: IGN
