before we start I wanted to state that I am aware of not uploading for a long time. I have one answer,School.
Story And Plot (overly summarized)
so, I played this. To be honest it is a ” more than just a game ” title that I recommend everyone to play. To sum things up for people who don’t know what this game is about, it’s about a writer, Alan Wake, who is really famous for his work. Since Alan Wake couldn’t put a word on a page for years due to his “illness” he goes on a vacation with his wife Alice. They decide to go to a shack in the cauldron lake. Suddenly he realizes that his wife wants him to write again, Alan not wanting to do that, he leaves the house. Blackout hits the house and Alice who is extremely afraid of dark, begs for Alan to come back. Alan comes back and sees his wife drowned in the lake. He jumps down, swims to save her but utterly fails.
Cauldron Lake
Now he wakes up in a car, after a crash and remembers that he needs to find her.
Did you get it? yup, it is actually really confusing. The entire story is confusing. a lot of things happen and I try my best to cover them.
But skipping a lot of nonsense and a lot of running shooting and etc etc… you realize that Alan is seeing a lot of things based on his nightmare, and his fears. When he tries to explain his nightmare he says that he had a nightmare where a man with a hatchet who is supposedly in his book, is now here for revenge in his dreams. which throughout the entire game you are facing the same type of enemies. Men who carry Axes and chainsaw, you know, the usual stuff.
The Birds are all going Hitchcock on me”
these being the birds
If you ever saw the movie Birds by Alfered Hitchcock you know what this is about. Alan was a fan of Alfred Hitchcock’s works in the game. Which could mean that he was afraid of them as well. See where I’m going?
There are flying objects in the game. Which Alan refers to as works of Stephen King.
Stephan King is also in the game, or at least his work. Which Alan says that he did in fact love Stephen King’s works too. Meaning he was scared by it sometime.
At the episode called truth, you see Dr. Hartman a mental doctor, telling Alan how crazy he actually is, and how the world isn’t the way he sees it. there are no flying objects, or dark presences that tries to kill Alan. Alan of course doesn’t try to change his mind at all.
Emil Hartman
Alan kinda stays in this sane world that Emil Hartman is in and is trying his best to tell him what is going on, UNTIL ; he touches the typer and starts writing his book. Creating horror from where he is.
So, until now i think you know what we are talking about, TRUTH is the name of the episode, and it features Hartman explaining that Alan is crazy. He is delusional. Why? and what is the consequence?
OK, you have a man who’s work is to create nightmares. Alfred Hitchcock was afraid of his own works subject. He was afraid of crime and the things he made. BUT he as the creator knew how to keep his distance, unlike the readers or viewers. Alfred knows that the nightmare he created will go like the way he wants and it will end the way he wants it, he is the god of the nightmare while the protagonist is the one who is suffering. YOU as the audience will feel the same way as the protagonist, because you two are facing something you haven’t in you’re life and you are both scared. but the creator doesn’t feel like the protagonist, he is only afraid enough of the subject enough to be able to describe it as a scary thing. but that is it. he keeps it UNDER CONTROL.
Alan couldn’t do that. Alan was afraid of the things he wrote to the point he was having nightmares of them. the same way that the reader should feel. And it cost him.
In order to add to the drama of the book Alan decided to make a tragedy, something scary and horrible happen to a loved one; obviously the loved one was no one else but Alice. He didn’t even change her name while writing the manuscript. So lines between reality and fiction start to blur.
He takes scenarios to the point that they seem like a logical deduction of a real-life situation. So further more in his book, he uses reality with a little bit of fiction.
At the end, him experiencing horror all the time, having her wife dying in a car crash (which i think is probably because Alan already had this mental disorder where the book which he wrote that is half reality half fiction, came into his mind and he kept thinking about it all the time and he felt as if he is living it, just like a reader of the book) was the final blow to destroy his mental health.
that being said it caused him this pain that he is now living the horrors of his book.
Thomas Zane
one idea i have is that Alan was reading a book of Thomas Zane and that is what inspired him to write his own manuscript or even come to Bright Falls. But the other thing is that, Alan is just a character in Thomas Zane’s book.
Writers love to make the protagonist something like themselves, Alan and Thomas both have extremely close personalities. So, it is only logical that Alan is just a simple character in Thomas’s book.
It could also be vise versa, you know, Alan is sorta responsible for what happened to Alice. Both in the book and outside of it. Thomas Zane is the character that were there in the past, and recreated his wife with Dark presence and then killed her only because she wanted him to write a book. same thing happened to Alan, Alan wanted to stop writing at New York but then Alice wanted them to go on a vacation and write a new book. Which Alan didn’t like. So it could mean that Alan actually did the car crash on purpose, you know, the whole reason Thomas Zane killed his wife or he just tortured her in his book.
But at the end, i don’t think there is a Thomas Zane and an Alan Wake, there are the same people only with different places in story.
About The Ending
At the end, Alan goes down deep in the ocean to fight the dark presence and release Alice from it. fighting with the words and texts from his own manuscript. But anyway he frees Alice by writing and finishing “Departure” but he himself is now possessed.
The most logical thing I came up with is that Cauldron lake is the symbol of fears in life. They have “deep” roots and they “trap” us inside of them, ruining our live.
For a shrink, there is a possibility of him turning to fear the stuff his patients are afraid of. Because of their horrific explanation of those things or their sensible reasons. Alan was trying to fix Alice; saving her from cauldron lake, from the dark presence, from her phobia.
But it reversed it unto himself. He is now afraid of the darkness and now someone has to release him. Bring him to life.
Alan Wake showed how our fears can manipulate our work, our mind; our relationships and our lives. And i think that is what made Alan Wake such a different game.
there are still tons of mysteries unsolved. Until a sequel comes up. But I think I discovered everything we could from this game. THANKS FOR READING. UNTIL NEXT TIME
Shady Writes 