A Late Look: Alan Wake 2 - Article
by Mark Nielsen , posted on 04 December 2025 / 1,898 Views
Alan couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A Late Look follow-up within a timely fashion? Was it a trick? Was he still stuck in the Dark Place? Maybe it was a loop. He recalled how he’d read just the other day that ‘A Late Look’ was a series of articles where a certain talented writer took belated looks at video games from yesteryear and assessed them in retrospect, with his sharpened intellect and acquired palate, and yet here it was again on the page. For how long had he been reading the same series of articles? He could no longer remember, but he knew he had to escape its alluring hold if he wanted to save Alice… maybe just one more paragraph before that.
And it came to pass in those days (in 2023) that Alan Wake received a sequel. 13 years after the original, in both fictional and real-world time (always a nice touch), this story of a writer that ended so fittingly on a cliffhanger would finally get a continuation. One that was very long in the writing and quite determined not to play it safe. Keep in mind that this review contains some very minor spoilers that are somewhat necessary to talk about the game.
Strength: The Mind Place(s)
Right off the bat, Alan Wake 2 makes it clear that it’s bringing a lot of new stuff to the table - a new protagonist, a new goal, and a new major mechanic: The Mind Place. This fictional room that you can seamlessly switch in and out of throughout the whole game is a very unique idea - a visualization of everything going on in the character’s head. For our new protagonist, FBI agent Saga Anderson, that specifically means her efforts to solve the mysterious murders that are happening in the same location where the first game ended 13 years ago, and that involves everything from making deductions based on clues to trying to get a read on the characters you interact with - whether or not they’re telling the truth.
Essentially it's detective work gamified, and it’s both well-fitting and compellingly implemented, but the Mind Place doesn’t stop there; it also doubles as a sort of game menu (that you can walk around in), with upgrades for your character, the pages of writing that you’ve found, and even a TV & Radio for reviewing quality clips or listening to the great soundtrack. If you can criticise it for anything, it’s that it does perhaps give you a few too many clues, including rather trivial ones, but often you can still progress without deducing every little thing if you don’t want to, and it might simply reveal itself through the story. Overall, it’s a very positive mechanic and one of the most interesting combinations of menu and gameplay I’ve ever seen. And that’s all without speaking of the other Mind Place.
Weakness: Inventory Management
Moving on to the game’s weaknesses, we once again start on the gameplay front, though with something that was wholly absent from the first title. Alan Wake 2 expands on the gameplay of the original with more weapons, the addition of healing items, and, likely in order to accommodate this, an inventory. So far so good; an inventory isn’t a terrible thing, but it isn’t guaranteed to be a good one either. The issues with it in Alan Wake 2 boil down to essentially two things: managing it can get cumbersome, given how many items you find (and weapons that take up multiple slots in the good old Diablo style); and, unlike the first game, which had pre-defined hotkeys for changing between weapons, you have to quick slot them manually this time around. I can see how that would be a positive in theory - assigning items any way you want - but in reality, with the game switching between two characters with two inventories (as we shall get to), it instead had the effect of confusing me over where it’d put stuff for a large part of the game - if I’d remembered to quickslot it at all, that is.
In the end, the small increase in gameplay complexity just isn’t worth the large increase in management time (from essentially nothing to, well, something). If you count out all the items that exist in the game, I’m fairly certain you’ll only come up with a few more than can fit in the quick slots - or the seamless invisible inventory of the first game. If nothing else, while you can argue for or against the inventory (it does give some ammo management considerations), in my book it's preferable to have a pre-defined quick slot layout, like in the first game, and then give players the option to rearrange it if they so wish.
Strength: ALaN WaKE!
So, here’s where the minor spoiler that was forewarned - or foreshadowed - comes into play because, yes, despite how it starts, the titular character is actually in the game, not dead, and is playable. And by god is that a good thing, because of how incredibly powerfully those sections stand out. For one thing, Alan Wake goes from being a relatively mild horror franchise to diving right into the deep end of the pool with this title, mainly thanks to these sections. This isn’t your garden variety survival-horror that’s just a shooter with enemies that've been lying in the sun a little too long - it’s the real deal. And, beyond their creepy atmosphere, Alan’s sections also take part in a whole different reality, with different rules, a different ‘Mind Place’, and different enemies, that'll have you tiptoeing around and questioning what’s real. Everything about these parts just comes together so strongly - you're inside his writing, inside the mystery, and, unlike Alan, that’s exactly where you want to be.
Weakness: Parts of Saga’s Sections
A weakness is relative to a game’s strengths, so even though our other protagonist Saga’s sections are definitely good, particularly at the beginning and end, parts of them can’t help but fall a little short compared to the titular characters' slices of the adventure. Ultimately, this boils down in large part to gameplay issues, just like it did in the first game, because while Alan’s part of the game offers something more unique in this regard, if you look past the (quite strong) story, Saga’s part of the game essentially plays a lot like a weaker Resident Evil, with the aforementioned relatively annoying inventory management. It also encourages you to do a weirdly large amount of backtracking, with large flooded areas that become available later and places you can only access with new tools; while all this is optional, it doesn’t feel like something that fits the genre particularly well, at least not to this extent.
With that being said, I did write “parts” of Saga’s sections for a reason, as they do also contain some really great elements, just like Alan’s do, they're just a bit further spaced out. It would still have made for a solid enough game on its own - on par with the original - but what makes the sequel truly shine is definitely the parts with the titular torchbearer.
Strength: The Surprises Along the Way
Other than the generally strong writing one could expect from a writer working 24/7 for 13 years (inside a lake that’s also an ocean), one of the things that really sets this sequel apart from the thousands and thousands of other games out there is how full of surprises it is. Obviously going into any detail about said surprises would be counter-intuitive for those who have yet to experience it, but let's just say that even after an already unconventional first game, Alan Wake II subverts the expectations more than a little. It’s the surrealism of video games, and I’m pretty sure the late David Lynch is in the credits if you look hard enough.
Conclusion
In retrospect it’s not hard to see why some people were insistently raving about this game at the end of a year as star-packed as 2023, because even among that pack it stands out as, if perhaps not the best, then certainly the boldest. Its gameplay is what it is - sometimes great, sometimes a bit underwhelming compared to everything else - but its writing and atmosphere (and soundtrack) are simply exceptional, and it’s certainly a game that has to be experienced by any longtime fans of storytelling in games.
Personal Verdict: 4.5 Exceptional Writers out of 5
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Let the record reflect: I did not give Mark money to be placed in the 'Exceptional Writers' rating; instead, I bribed him with tasty baked goods. Honestly though, had I known about the nod I would've reverted to my old Star Wolf avatar. Because I noticed you had to expand my 'This is an Xbox' version and white out the green background.
Anyways...
[SPOILERS}
I'm with you 100% on its surprises. I remember internally asking myself "is this the best game of this gen?" after the Sam Lake/Alex Casey theater sequence. Everything from the build up to the avant-garde short film running in the background is insane to think about - just from a logistical standpoint. Epic showered Remedy with millions for them to go as meta as The Stanley Parable. That shouldn't happen in today's market... and yet it did.
I kind of wanted to try something a little different and start taking suggestions for 'A Late Look' moving into the new year. Preferably pretty much any game with semi-cult status that isn't 100 hours long. I'll still mix in any games I play on my own that feel fitting but could be fun if anybody has some good ideas.
(Also don't know if anybody else remembers but I haven't forgotten about MH Rise, just... put it off a bit)
A helpful guide could be to look for cult/semi-cult status games with upcoming anniversaries: 5-year, 10-year, etc.
2016 for example has some good candidates ripe for examination: Firewatch, INSIDE, etc.
I've played INSIDE previously so that clashes with the concept a little, but I'll keep the others in mind.
Great game. I can see why so many hated it but I loved every second of it and got the plat.
No fcken away is the inventory and saga parts the weakness of the game
I just platinumed it a month ago and it was extraordinary!
Alan wake 2 is a fancier version of resident evil
As someone who was originally very anti-Saga going into the game...
Saga was the best part of the game IMO
Very classic AW gameplay and scary af on the first playthrough
I skipped aw1 halfway thru coz it was a bit of a snooze fest,
Aw2 broke the mold and is a fcken masterpiece!
Adding Saga was a genius move by remedy an absolute work of art
Didn't enjoy my time with the game at all, and the Mind Place is one of the reasons for that haha.
I'll never understand why this game wasn't a 10 million seller out of the gate
I was skeptical going into the game but omg what a freaking masterpiece of a horror game
It wasn't perfect... but it was soooooo close
