In anticipation of their upcoming DLC and in honor of the Alan Wake ten year anniversary, writer Sam Lake of Remedy Entertainment had an incredible interview with Game Informer today. Among topics such as working on the writing process for Alan Wake, The Evil Within, and Max Payne, Sam finally discusses the connection between Alan Wake and Control. While some brief documents within Control had already confirmed that the two games took place in the same universe, there wasn’t much explanation into the connection or possible fate of the beloved fictional horror novelist.
If you haven’t played Control, you can read our full review for the game here. And for those who haven’t played Alan Wake… who are you? it’s Remedy’s cult classic horror game. You have to play it. It’s the story of a novelist with writer’s block who goes on a retreat with his wife to the small Twin Peaks-esque town of Bright Falls. Alan’s wife goes missing and he must search through the Bright Falls area for her while fighting ghostlike people called The Taken. This psychological horror game is incredibly mysterious and dreamlike and received critical acclaim.
With today’s interview, Sam Lake confirms that the games are in the same universe. Sam States:
“Now that Control is out, we didn’t want to make big noise about this before its release, but I wanted to build the idea of a connected universe for Remedy in the background. If you play Control and explore, you’ll find things that show Alan Wake and Control exist in the same world. What’s more, it becomes clear that the Federal Bureau of Control that deals with these unexplainable things has been looking into what happened in Alan Wake.
They have actual research and documentation around it. For fans from back in the day who didn’t quite understand what was going on in Alan Wake, like Max Payne, the story was very much one man’s experience or journey. Some things are not explained further than he sees them. Now we have this Bureau that deals with these things and applies science and research to them. We have this opportunity of looking back at what happened in Alan Wake and how does the Bureau see it. Well, there was this otherworldly event that took place in Bright Falls and they suddenly have this terminology. We have people that say, “I loved Alan Wake but I didn’t quite understand what happened, and now I played Control and I understand what happened in Alan Wake!” That’s been really fun and a nice opportunity.“
Vindication! Nine months back, the connection was made between Control and Alan Wake by Dread XP gumshoe Ted, written about in this article. Among other clues that led to this conclusion, last year Remedy bought the rights to Alan Wake, a game that has had almost no update since 2012. This raises the question as to whether or not the series will continue with the story of Jesse from Control or Alan Wake from Alan Wake himself.
Once again, our review for Control can be found here, and our article detailing the connection can be found here. For more information on Control as well as their upcoming DLC content Control: AWE, you can follow this link to their official website. And in celebration of the Alan Wake ten year anniversary, you can buy it on Steam and GOG at 90% off (!!!).
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