Summary
Last October, Remedy Entertainment’sAlan Wake 2launched onto the gaming scene and made big waves thanks to its compelling continuation of the complex story from the 2010 original, along with some impressive presentation and production values. Fully embracing the survival horror genre compared to the general action-adventure flair of the first game,Alan Wake 2elevated almost everything about it that had come before, providing one of the best experiences of the year and being regarded as one of the studio’s finest and most polished productions.
Many gamers are now looking expectantly to what andhowAlan Wake 2’s first DLC,Night Springs, will expand on its taleand relate to the current phase of the Remedy Connected Universe, the shared narrative world between all the developer’s titles. With the nature of the story and Remedy’s well-known penchant for working within layered meta frameworks, theories and speculation are picking up, and it’s possible that some of whatNight Springswill entail has been staring fans in the face for over a decade.
Night Springsis the first of two currently plannedAlan Wake 2DLCs, set for a “Spring 2024” release window, with the second,The Lake House, coming later in the year.
Alan Wake 2’s Night Springs DLC Could Have Provided Hints About it 14 Years Ago
Previously on Night Springs in Alan Wake
TheTwilight-Zone-inspired television series has been part ofAlan Wake’s world and loresince day one. Alan himself is known to have begun his illustrious literary career working onNight Springsscripts, and the fictional show has many connections to various elements that work in tandem with the main story. InAlan Wake, fans could find television sets hidden throughout levels that would play a short live-action scene. While these were thought of as mostly optional collectibles, they added a lot of flavor to the world building, increasing immersion and rounding out the setting.
Later in the 2012 spin-off,Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, Remedy took theNight Springsconcept and ran with it. The expansion’s central conceit was Alan finding himself trapped in aNight Springs-like experience, encountering uncanny characters and events repeating in subtle variations within a time loop, as he scrambled to get each narrative element correct and escape it.
How Alan Wake 2’s Night Springs DLC Could Call Back to and Integrate the Original Episodes
Night Springsis ingrained in the history ofAlan Wake,as its scenarios thematically connect in some way to the overarching structure of the story. With Remedy now on the cusp of a turning point in its plans for the RCU, it might be the case that they were always more important rather than interesting ancillary content. It’s not impossible to imagine that the studio has long planned for it to inform aspects of whatAlan Wake 2’sNight SpringsDLC will contain or address as it advances the greater plot. It would be well within Remedy’s style to take the idea to one of its logical conclusions in the DLC by incorporating bits and pieces or more substantial chunks of theNight Springsmaterial seen in the series previously as its core framing device and design.
InAlan Wake 2, Alan literally gets sucked into a TV, as the lines between dreamworld and reality blur, and he must navigate the surreal dimension where they overlap in often dangerous ways - precisely the kind of storyNight Springswould tell. AsNight Springsruns parallel with Alan’s adventures, many interactions seem like they could have come directly from his own imagination. Perhaps there will be levels and story beats composed of fragmented sequences, reshuffled and stitched together to create twisted new versions and vignettes as Alan attempts to unravel them all.
Additionally, a major unresolved thread is Sheriff Tim Breaker’s predicament inAlan Wake 2, which is another avenue pointed to as the possible direction for the DLC’s narrative, as this plot point has also been heavily hinted at leading up toNight Springs. Whatever theDLC may hold in store, though, it’s a safe bet it will seeRemedy pushing the boundaries of its use of live actionin interesting ways when it drops this Spring.
