It’s been seven years since the release of Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, the standalone expansion to Remedy’s supernatural shooter Alan Wake, and Remedy seems to have moved on from the series to create games like Quantum Break and the upcoming Control. No one was quite certain why a full Alan Wake 2 never happened, whether it was thanks to previous rights holders Microsoft not wanting it or some other reason. However, according to Remedy’s long-term writer Sam Lake, the developer tried to get a sequel off the ground, but put the project on hold more than once in order to work on other games.
Sam Lake has been with Remedy since the studio was founded and is the main writer on all of the team’s games, plus was famously the face model for the original version of Max Payne and has made Stan Lee-like cameo appearances in Alan Wake and Quantum Break. He was recently interviewed on IGN, and talked a little about Alan Wake 2. Apart from stating that he still wants to make it, Lake revealed that there have been multiple concepts for Alan Wake 2, which were started within Remedy but put on hold.
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One of these concepts was used for both American Nightmare and Quantum Break, and coming off of the latter game, Lake said that Remedy began work on a “very different” version of Alan Wake 2 to the previously envisioned concept. However, it was a little too different from the original game to make sense as a sequel.
“We were looking at it [and] we were talking about it with potential partners, ultimately we came to the conclusion that it doesn’t quite feel like Alan Wake,” he said. The team decided it would be better as a new IP, and the Alan Wake 2 concept then became Control.
Control is due to release on August 27, and may be the closest we get to Alan Wake 2 for a while. Now that the publishing rights are completely back in Remedy’s hands, hopefully we’ll get a proper sequel.
