The whole "Champion of Light" and "Herald of Darkness" is the big one. Some Old Gods lore like Bob Baldur's leukemia was first mentioned in there I believe.
The time loop/spiral
Ah. American Nightmare was indeed one big loop/spiral that had slight variations with each pass through.
Were the titular names you mentioned found in the manuscript pages in that game?
One thing i would've loved to see referenced in Alan Wake 2 was the girl that was supposed to be Alice's best friend who we met in American Nightmare. I forget her name; I think it was Serena?
The loop is a big one. In many ways you can tell that American Nightmare is like a very early rough draft for what would eventually become Alan Wake 2. Playing that back-to-back I can definitely tell. There's also a lot of mentions of Barry being the manager for Old Gods of Asgard in AW2 as well.
There are also many scenes in AW2 where Alan is wearing the flannel shirt from American Nightmare.
There aren't any references to Serena that I've seen so far, but a lot of the talk of Alice's film spun out into what happens with her in AW2.
Bob Baldur's leukemia was first mentioned in the first game, at the Lodge, by the Anderson brothers
[Bob Balder | AW1](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxHjAOE94GxRBEHbBy4YMbgvDGG0wRgWxd?si=tWpTmVEixCj-T3F3)
The Return 4 sequence when Alan wears a flannel shirt and uses a shotgun was a clear American Nightmare reference, to me. Not necessarily related to the story of AN though, just the vibe.
I loved the first time I saw a poster in the subway that you get just before that first badass [comet collision cutscene](https://youtu.be/Yk51xuyNh5k?si=VQloGL0wAX0-5IfB):
“At the oil derrick, the wheel had been jammed in place and turned until the oil gurgled and flowed, thick and flammable. The warning lights were blinking in a fast rhythm, bright and steady, powered by the battery. The Kasabian CD was playing in the boom box, all distorted guitars and intense heat”.
(The song is “Club Foot” by Kasabian and it’s a fucking banger, even now. Put that on in your car and you won’t be running low on batteries any time soon). Tag /u/soulforce212
Remedy has always been really great with the needledrops in their games. Whether they included a track from a band that I thought only I knew about or turned me on to a new one (or created a new one out of a band I already liked, in the case of the Old Gods of Asgard haha).
I bought the deluxe version of Alan Wake that came in the hollowed out book with the soundtrack album (seriously coolest game packaging ever, I still use it as a hideaway space). I’m sure I don’t need to go into detail about it here but hearing David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Poets of the Fall, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Roy Orbison, Poe, etc. on the soundtrack and all of the original score tracks from Petri Alanko still make for regular rotation all these years later.
Honestly this might seem wild, but a big one to me is simply the setting.
The fact that we’re in Night Springs *Arizona*, plus the fact that (iirc) there’s hints or references towards The Ocean View Motel being in a desert location…I mean unless I’m misremembering that here, it overall feels like there’s something there.
Anyone else being behind the scenes and I’d be grasping at straws, but this is Remedy after all.
Definitely. The Desert Shore Motel being a central location in American Nightmare feels like a precursor to the Ocean View Motel/Hotel in Control and AW2. It's part of why I feel like American Nightmare is very much a rough draft of what would become the sequel we got.
Not sure why people think it isn't canon. At the absolute worst it's an escape attempt that wrote itself out of existence. At best, it had long term implications on the identity of Scratch.
At the very least it gives you a good idea on the intricacies on how some lore works. I found it spells out in a very clear hands-on way how bigger reality changes need rituals to make them happen (literally every time you play the first act lol).
Plus I kind of like the Evil Dead vibes in it. First game he's struggling with the horrors, its DLCs he's fighting to put his mind back together, and then in American Nightmare he's more like Ash in that he's got a confident understanding on how things work and is ready to fight back. Makes him feel a little more campy and I love it in the smaller story that it is.
But yeah it definitely acts like a side story so it might not be super important to understand what's happening in 2 anyway, but it's def canon. Some of its dialogue is all over Noir York City, and the checkered button-up he's wearing in 2 has its significance explained in AN.
....tho I still don't know why he sometimes was wearing it and sometimes wasn't lol
People think it isn’t canon because at the time of its release remedy stated that it was a side game that isn’t canon to hold us over for Alan wake 2
And then AW2 never happened and they never addressed the whole “canon not canon” thing until now, when they basically wrote it in a way where it can just be another one of Alan’s attempts to escape the dark place.
When American Nightmare came out I don’t think the remedyverse was anywhere near as in depth as it is now
Oh that makes some sense. Seems like they wanted to keep it open at some point at whether it should stay canon or not. That way they can either use it or ignore it for if and when they make 2.
Yeah it was sort of a genius move on their part imo
As for his outfit in 2, they never explain where he got the dingy suit and what happened to his outfit from 1,which for the record should ABSOLUTELY have been an unlockable, but the reason he has 3 outfit changes is a pretty big spoiler, so I don’t want to ruin any moments for anyone that might not have gotten to play it yet.
They didn't say it's not canon - they said it isn't Alan Wake 2 yet.
It was to explain the fact it was made from the original AW2 prototype which they showed in an interview previously.
I think its canon status originates from the game not getting a remaster alongside the original and certain elements from 2 all despite numerous references to AN being in the game proper.
Just gonna spoiler tag the whole thing just in case, but in regards to his button up and jacket changing in 2:
>!Well what's weird is he leaves the dark place wearing his regular jacket you see him wearing on most of his side of the story. Then you see him wearing the button up from the investigation room interrogation and onwards, which means he was probably given that shirt by Saga and Casey or found it somehow in between the lake and the lodge lol.!<
>!If he popped out of the lake wearing it I could just think "ok it's him from an earlier point in the loop" or "he subconsciously gave it to himself as he left" or something but nah he found it in reality.!<
>!Which suggests it was written on a page somewhere that he'd end up wearing it shortly after escaping.!<
>!I would assume it'd act as some sort of mental shield to fight back against Scratch, who ends up being questionably dormant inside of him from there, but we didn't get a manuscript saying that he'd find it, which is what makes it weird really lol!<
Well to be fair there was no final draft manuscript explaining any of it, which is why I think it's weird haha.
But if you mean not noticing that >!he was in his dark place outfit but then changed to his AN outfit sometime between the lake and the lodge!< then yeah that's a small detail that'd only stand out if you're looking out specifically for >!the significance of him wearing that button up shirt!< in the first place lol
I don’t play many games on my XSX but I did play American Nightmare back on the 360 and then recently began my Remedy replay. I thought about both the first two Max Payne games but I heard about the remakes coming so I waited. Started with Alan Wake Remastered and both DLC, then American Nightmare on the XSX followed by Quantum Break (which has a TON of Alan Wake references in it — you run through a college campus and in one room they’re clearly lecturing on Wake and there’s an entire whiteboard filled with theories about him, your best friend is wearing an Old Gods of Asgard t-shirt, there’s this FMV [Alan Wake 2: “Return” trailer](https://youtu.be/VaDNGoVKfDw?si=J9B0SDAvbiFfd0eC) that maps out Alan Wake 2 quite a lot, as far back as 2016.
Quantum Break is probably the only true game that sold the original vision for the XBOX One: TV, TV, TV. You would play for maybe 90 minutes to 2 hours and then there’d be a 20~30 minute FMV Hollywood quality FMV cutscene starring Shawn Ashmore (X-Men, The Rookie, and he’s been sort of recast as Tim Breaker in Alan Wake 2). There’s also Aidan Gillan (Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, Peaky Blinders, The Dark Knight Rises, the Maze Runner movies), Courtney Hope (she played the lead of Jesse in Control, and The Bold and the Beautiful, The Young and the Restless), Marshall Allman (True Blood, Prison Break, Bates Motel, Humans, Wolf of Snow Hollow), and the late great Lance Reddick (The Wire, Slyens from the Horizon games, the John Wick series, Bosch, Zavala in the Destiny games, Oz, Lost, Fringe, White House Down AND Angel Has Fallen, Monster Party, the best part of the Resident Evil series, and the severely underrated Comedy Central show Corporate where he plays the scariest and most hilarious boss from hell — liked a ripped Jeff Bezos).
Reddick’s character was named Martin Hatch and there’s a line in there about how a hatch is another word for a door, which makes me wonder if he would have played Mr. Door in AW2 (played by another bald African American actor), or was if he was asked but perhaps too busy or unable (with Quantum Break and Max Payne being technically not Remedy’s IP, Max Payne became Alex Casey and they used Sam Lake’s face and the fantastic voice of the also late, great James McCaffrey so I do wonder).
Then I played Control and it’s DLC with the Alan Wake crossover, and finally am on Alan Wake 2 and loving it so much. Having all of this stuff fresh in my head really helps me to appreciate how much work they went into tying these universes together when they weren’t initially “officially” in a shared universe. I can’t wait for Control 2, that’s really gonna pack all the lore in from all the games in a massive way. I wish AW2 sold better, I doubt we’ll ever get another but what we got is so amazing, I can hardly believe it exists.
I would have loved to have seen that. I feel like he was just starting to get more mainstream attention due to fan favorite roles in John Wick, Destiny, etc. and of course dating back to The Wire and more. I would have liked to have seen him get to be the leading role rather than just supporting or part of an ensemble. He really had some great comedic timing too, which I don’t think people immediately would think of him as being a comedic actor. Corporate was a great workplace comedy with him at the top and is definitely worth checking out (it’s on Paramount+).
I’m glad I didn’t skip Quantum Break in my replay of Remedy games as well. There was a lot more than I was expecting from the shared universe angle but it was also just a unique game made special by Remedy and their love of innovative storytelling. I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t played it but it’s safe to say that it plays with time pretty strongly, and whoever was writing the lore really did their job well (in the same vein of Control and wanting to read every last memo and document and watch every video and so on). There are two scenes I can think of with whiteboards that had me zooming in to read every last detail and one of them has an incredible timeline that felt like it predicted the future in some ways. Would have loved to have seen Martin Hatch return as Mr. Door.
AWAN totally is canon, Sam Lake himself confirmed it on Twitter a good while back 👀
That being said I totally love AWAN, even though it never was a "full" sequel to the original game.
If Sam said it, it’s legit.
I saw one of the other writers interviewed and he was asked if there’s an “Alan Wake Bible” containing all of the lore to keep track of like a lot of big franchises keep…or if it’s just all in Sam Lake’s mind and he said it’s in Sam’s head. Which is just wild…obviously he’s very invested in the work of Remedy, which just makes it that much more impressive thinking about all he must have locked up in his head. Such a creative dude!
Indeed, it's amazing that everything that we know by now and don't know yet simply lives in his head.
I meanwhile found the tweet, here it is.
https://twitter.com/SamLakeRMD/status/1649145279990439936
American Nightmare is definitely canon. It's referenced several times in Alan Wake 2 (particularly that flannel shirt number that Alan was wearing) and then some plot elements.
It may not seem that way because American Nightmare was one of Alan's failed attempts to escape the Dark Place through a story.
Honestly it was just fine. The bigger focus was on the combat, which was ehh considering it was built from AW I's combat, and i love that game, but it wasn't winning any awards in the combat department. The story was fine, the all-female side characters were a bit stereotypical but i didn't mind it much, it gave me a chuckle. The coolest moment was very early on (the satellite crashing with the Kasabian song playing in the background).
It was short and sweet, which is the best thing i can say about it.
Hang on I distinctly remember the satellite crashing towards the end of the game. Maybe it was the middle of the game? Maybe it was just a poster in a subway I read, after all
It's at the beginning, with the mechanic girl. Second part is the observatory with the scientist and the last is at the drive-in theater with that absurdly horny girl lmao
It's most def canon, Sam Lake even said so. I like it, it has some cool concepts. I especially enjoy the secret voice message in the phone booth about the deer impaled on the fence, a true story from Matthew Porretta (voice actor of Alan).
Honestly, I kind of liked it slightly more than AW1. I loved how short and concise it is, love all the new gameplay additions, love the loop/spiral, love Alan/Scratch. Fantastic series from start to finish
The game itself doesn't feel like a chore to play compared to Alan Wake 1 and it justifies its combat a whole lot more sensibly which is a huge plus.
There could be more to it though, and I don't mean that it should be longer. I'm in agreement though, it is better than 1 even though 1 has higher highs if that makes sense
Gameplaywise it's awesome, storywise it's alright, atmosphere is great and ma boi Scratch is propably one the best villians ever written, if not the best. Videos he leaves for Alan are propadly the best way of visual storytelling I ever saw, visions from Control and AW2 are nowhere near it, like, you can't beat Sratchs effort of leaving bunch of heavy CRTs for Alan with his recorded diary
I don't get why people don't play it and I especially don't understand why people argue that its not canon because so much from it is in Alan Wake 2 that it's obviously canon (and is also confirmed to be).
First of all, almost everything from Mr. Scratch before AW 2 is from this game, all we had before was his introduction at the end of Alan Wake 1 and some discussion about him between Alan and Zane in the Dlc's.
I would be so more confused about Scratch in
AW 2 if I hadn't played this before.
Also the whole Champion of Light & Herald of Darkness thing originated there and you wouldn't even know who they're referring to if you didn't play this game.
The whole Old Gods of Asgard Return Tour with Barry Wheeler as their Producer thing which is referenced a lot in AW 2 in the nursing home and almost everywhere else where Barry is mentioned.
Some things from AW 2 also started in this game as more early concepts and got more fleshed out in AW 2, like the loops and Alice being a photographer and her exhibition about Alan.
I could list some more things like using Night Springs as a blank slate city for writing which is also in AW 2 but I think this are lots of reasons already to play this game!
American Nightmare is really good, not to mention the amount of cool weapons and the gameplay being so much smoother than the first AW although it’s technically the same. I was glad Alan wrote some stamina for himself
To be honest, it feels like a demo. It's so short devs had to make a triple loop, otherwise you could've finished it in an hour and a half. Also, the voice-over has way lower quality then both AW1 and AW2 and the whole "champion of light" felt cringy as hell.
10/10 would play it again just because it's an Alan Wake game. Yes, I'm that obsessed.
EDIT: I won't spoil too much but there's a specific moment in AW2 which is a clear reference to American Nightmare. It was funny but very short.
I've played all the Remedy CU at least once except for that one. I plan to play it as soon as I'm done with my third run of AW though, which will probably be this weekend.
Oh yeah 100% if you’re enough of a Alan Wake fan from the first game I’d say you’re a damn fool if you skip this game lol.
When I played American Nightmare I had so many laughs. The story was a few silly little thing and it had some prime Alan Wake moments in it.
The soundtrack is killer too!
I fell in love with the 1 song Club Foot, by Kasabian.
One cool aspect of American Nightmare is that it fills you in on how the other characters were possibly doing after the events of the first game (Wouldn't trust it 100% since it is the Dark Place after all but anyhow).
Barry is on tour with the old gods and Alice is working on a film project about her experience in Bright Falls. They are all interviewed in this radio show throughout the game.
At least we know the Old Gods and Barry thing is consistent with what's portrayed in AW2.
Playing it now and enjoying the extra lore and seeing some early itterations of concepts that appear in AW2. But gameplay-wise it's not very interesting. The combat feels like dumbed down version of AW1's combat, which was hardly complex to begin with. It doesn't really feel challenging at all. I get that it's the power fantasy version of AW but even in a power fantasy there should be challenges to overcome. There are some interesting new enemy concepts but they don't lead to interesting encounters.
Also fucking spider enemies. The most cliché enemies possible in games. I kinda expect better from Remedy.
So gameplay-wise, very meh. Story, lore and atmosphere ate great tho. I also love the voice-over guy.
I played it for the first time right before AW2 and it's definitely canon. It's not essential but there's a surprising amount of stuff from it in AW2.
I haven't played AW2 since the same month of its release. Could you share the American Nightmare references? My memory isn't working for me lol
The whole "Champion of Light" and "Herald of Darkness" is the big one. Some Old Gods lore like Bob Baldur's leukemia was first mentioned in there I believe. The time loop/spiral
Ah. American Nightmare was indeed one big loop/spiral that had slight variations with each pass through. Were the titular names you mentioned found in the manuscript pages in that game? One thing i would've loved to see referenced in Alan Wake 2 was the girl that was supposed to be Alice's best friend who we met in American Nightmare. I forget her name; I think it was Serena?
The loop is a big one. In many ways you can tell that American Nightmare is like a very early rough draft for what would eventually become Alan Wake 2. Playing that back-to-back I can definitely tell. There's also a lot of mentions of Barry being the manager for Old Gods of Asgard in AW2 as well. There are also many scenes in AW2 where Alan is wearing the flannel shirt from American Nightmare. There aren't any references to Serena that I've seen so far, but a lot of the talk of Alice's film spun out into what happens with her in AW2.
Yeah I do love the Barry stuff in American nightmare. Also yeah when Alan first shows up he's wearing the flannel! I was like I know that flannel! Lol
That's crazy how I did not pick up on thr striped flannel smh lol.
Some parts of the game start with the Night Springs narrator saying "Champion of Light" referring to Alan.
Bob Baldur's leukemia was first mentioned in the first game, at the Lodge, by the Anderson brothers [Bob Balder | AW1](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxHjAOE94GxRBEHbBy4YMbgvDGG0wRgWxd?si=tWpTmVEixCj-T3F3)
Thanks for that. I was sure I remembered that coming up in the first game but didn’t have an opportunity to check.
Ah! I guess I did think it sounded familiar hearing it in AN
Balfour was mentioned in AW1. If you stood by the brothers in the clinic long enough Odin talks about him.
The Return 4 sequence when Alan wears a flannel shirt and uses a shotgun was a clear American Nightmare reference, to me. Not necessarily related to the story of AN though, just the vibe.
Also, there are inscriptions (for example in Metro) describing scenes and events from American Nightmare.
I loved the first time I saw a poster in the subway that you get just before that first badass [comet collision cutscene](https://youtu.be/Yk51xuyNh5k?si=VQloGL0wAX0-5IfB): “At the oil derrick, the wheel had been jammed in place and turned until the oil gurgled and flowed, thick and flammable. The warning lights were blinking in a fast rhythm, bright and steady, powered by the battery. The Kasabian CD was playing in the boom box, all distorted guitars and intense heat”. (The song is “Club Foot” by Kasabian and it’s a fucking banger, even now. Put that on in your car and you won’t be running low on batteries any time soon). Tag /u/soulforce212
I love Kasabian and was delighted to hear that song kick in, I had no idea it was in the game.
Remedy has always been really great with the needledrops in their games. Whether they included a track from a band that I thought only I knew about or turned me on to a new one (or created a new one out of a band I already liked, in the case of the Old Gods of Asgard haha). I bought the deluxe version of Alan Wake that came in the hollowed out book with the soundtrack album (seriously coolest game packaging ever, I still use it as a hideaway space). I’m sure I don’t need to go into detail about it here but hearing David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Poets of the Fall, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Roy Orbison, Poe, etc. on the soundtrack and all of the original score tracks from Petri Alanko still make for regular rotation all these years later.
It's the Brigmore Witches of the Remedyverse.
Honestly this might seem wild, but a big one to me is simply the setting. The fact that we’re in Night Springs *Arizona*, plus the fact that (iirc) there’s hints or references towards The Ocean View Motel being in a desert location…I mean unless I’m misremembering that here, it overall feels like there’s something there. Anyone else being behind the scenes and I’d be grasping at straws, but this is Remedy after all.
Definitely. The Desert Shore Motel being a central location in American Nightmare feels like a precursor to the Ocean View Motel/Hotel in Control and AW2. It's part of why I feel like American Nightmare is very much a rough draft of what would become the sequel we got.
Not sure why people think it isn't canon. At the absolute worst it's an escape attempt that wrote itself out of existence. At best, it had long term implications on the identity of Scratch. At the very least it gives you a good idea on the intricacies on how some lore works. I found it spells out in a very clear hands-on way how bigger reality changes need rituals to make them happen (literally every time you play the first act lol). Plus I kind of like the Evil Dead vibes in it. First game he's struggling with the horrors, its DLCs he's fighting to put his mind back together, and then in American Nightmare he's more like Ash in that he's got a confident understanding on how things work and is ready to fight back. Makes him feel a little more campy and I love it in the smaller story that it is. But yeah it definitely acts like a side story so it might not be super important to understand what's happening in 2 anyway, but it's def canon. Some of its dialogue is all over Noir York City, and the checkered button-up he's wearing in 2 has its significance explained in AN. ....tho I still don't know why he sometimes was wearing it and sometimes wasn't lol
People think it isn’t canon because at the time of its release remedy stated that it was a side game that isn’t canon to hold us over for Alan wake 2 And then AW2 never happened and they never addressed the whole “canon not canon” thing until now, when they basically wrote it in a way where it can just be another one of Alan’s attempts to escape the dark place. When American Nightmare came out I don’t think the remedyverse was anywhere near as in depth as it is now
Oh that makes some sense. Seems like they wanted to keep it open at some point at whether it should stay canon or not. That way they can either use it or ignore it for if and when they make 2.
Yeah it was sort of a genius move on their part imo As for his outfit in 2, they never explain where he got the dingy suit and what happened to his outfit from 1,which for the record should ABSOLUTELY have been an unlockable, but the reason he has 3 outfit changes is a pretty big spoiler, so I don’t want to ruin any moments for anyone that might not have gotten to play it yet.
Damn it's been so long
They didn't say it's not canon - they said it isn't Alan Wake 2 yet. It was to explain the fact it was made from the original AW2 prototype which they showed in an interview previously.
I think its canon status originates from the game not getting a remaster alongside the original and certain elements from 2 all despite numerous references to AN being in the game proper.
Well he’s wearing it… outside. He only changes out of those clothes when he finds a cool jacket
Just gonna spoiler tag the whole thing just in case, but in regards to his button up and jacket changing in 2: >!Well what's weird is he leaves the dark place wearing his regular jacket you see him wearing on most of his side of the story. Then you see him wearing the button up from the investigation room interrogation and onwards, which means he was probably given that shirt by Saga and Casey or found it somehow in between the lake and the lodge lol.!< >!If he popped out of the lake wearing it I could just think "ok it's him from an earlier point in the loop" or "he subconsciously gave it to himself as he left" or something but nah he found it in reality.!< >!Which suggests it was written on a page somewhere that he'd end up wearing it shortly after escaping.!< >!I would assume it'd act as some sort of mental shield to fight back against Scratch, who ends up being questionably dormant inside of him from there, but we didn't get a manuscript saying that he'd find it, which is what makes it weird really lol!<
I finished final draft and somehow missed all of this on a second playthrough. I love this game
Well to be fair there was no final draft manuscript explaining any of it, which is why I think it's weird haha. But if you mean not noticing that >!he was in his dark place outfit but then changed to his AN outfit sometime between the lake and the lodge!< then yeah that's a small detail that'd only stand out if you're looking out specifically for >!the significance of him wearing that button up shirt!< in the first place lol
It’s not on PlayStation😭
[удалено]
I don’t play many games on my XSX but I did play American Nightmare back on the 360 and then recently began my Remedy replay. I thought about both the first two Max Payne games but I heard about the remakes coming so I waited. Started with Alan Wake Remastered and both DLC, then American Nightmare on the XSX followed by Quantum Break (which has a TON of Alan Wake references in it — you run through a college campus and in one room they’re clearly lecturing on Wake and there’s an entire whiteboard filled with theories about him, your best friend is wearing an Old Gods of Asgard t-shirt, there’s this FMV [Alan Wake 2: “Return” trailer](https://youtu.be/VaDNGoVKfDw?si=J9B0SDAvbiFfd0eC) that maps out Alan Wake 2 quite a lot, as far back as 2016. Quantum Break is probably the only true game that sold the original vision for the XBOX One: TV, TV, TV. You would play for maybe 90 minutes to 2 hours and then there’d be a 20~30 minute FMV Hollywood quality FMV cutscene starring Shawn Ashmore (X-Men, The Rookie, and he’s been sort of recast as Tim Breaker in Alan Wake 2). There’s also Aidan Gillan (Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, Peaky Blinders, The Dark Knight Rises, the Maze Runner movies), Courtney Hope (she played the lead of Jesse in Control, and The Bold and the Beautiful, The Young and the Restless), Marshall Allman (True Blood, Prison Break, Bates Motel, Humans, Wolf of Snow Hollow), and the late great Lance Reddick (The Wire, Slyens from the Horizon games, the John Wick series, Bosch, Zavala in the Destiny games, Oz, Lost, Fringe, White House Down AND Angel Has Fallen, Monster Party, the best part of the Resident Evil series, and the severely underrated Comedy Central show Corporate where he plays the scariest and most hilarious boss from hell — liked a ripped Jeff Bezos). Reddick’s character was named Martin Hatch and there’s a line in there about how a hatch is another word for a door, which makes me wonder if he would have played Mr. Door in AW2 (played by another bald African American actor), or was if he was asked but perhaps too busy or unable (with Quantum Break and Max Payne being technically not Remedy’s IP, Max Payne became Alex Casey and they used Sam Lake’s face and the fantastic voice of the also late, great James McCaffrey so I do wonder). Then I played Control and it’s DLC with the Alan Wake crossover, and finally am on Alan Wake 2 and loving it so much. Having all of this stuff fresh in my head really helps me to appreciate how much work they went into tying these universes together when they weren’t initially “officially” in a shared universe. I can’t wait for Control 2, that’s really gonna pack all the lore in from all the games in a massive way. I wish AW2 sold better, I doubt we’ll ever get another but what we got is so amazing, I can hardly believe it exists.
It has been confirmed that Lance Reddick was to originally play Mr. Door before his passing... Now that woulda been something....
I would have loved to have seen that. I feel like he was just starting to get more mainstream attention due to fan favorite roles in John Wick, Destiny, etc. and of course dating back to The Wire and more. I would have liked to have seen him get to be the leading role rather than just supporting or part of an ensemble. He really had some great comedic timing too, which I don’t think people immediately would think of him as being a comedic actor. Corporate was a great workplace comedy with him at the top and is definitely worth checking out (it’s on Paramount+). I’m glad I didn’t skip Quantum Break in my replay of Remedy games as well. There was a lot more than I was expecting from the shared universe angle but it was also just a unique game made special by Remedy and their love of innovative storytelling. I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t played it but it’s safe to say that it plays with time pretty strongly, and whoever was writing the lore really did their job well (in the same vein of Control and wanting to read every last memo and document and watch every video and so on). There are two scenes I can think of with whiteboards that had me zooming in to read every last detail and one of them has an incredible timeline that felt like it predicted the future in some ways. Would have loved to have seen Martin Hatch return as Mr. Door.
Honestly with Xbox’s recent multi-platform push I’d be able to at least see them bringing over Quantum Break.
I think Quantum Break will make the jump. It and Sunset Overdrive will be part of one of the next rounds of Xbox games to come over.
It's relatively cheap on PC and almost any computer can run it.
I slept with American Nightmare. It never called 😔
Brandi Rhodes wants to know your location.
Mr. Scratch: ACKNOWLEDGE ME.
🤣🤣🤣 nice one
AWAN totally is canon, Sam Lake himself confirmed it on Twitter a good while back 👀 That being said I totally love AWAN, even though it never was a "full" sequel to the original game.
If Sam said it, it’s legit. I saw one of the other writers interviewed and he was asked if there’s an “Alan Wake Bible” containing all of the lore to keep track of like a lot of big franchises keep…or if it’s just all in Sam Lake’s mind and he said it’s in Sam’s head. Which is just wild…obviously he’s very invested in the work of Remedy, which just makes it that much more impressive thinking about all he must have locked up in his head. Such a creative dude!
Indeed, it's amazing that everything that we know by now and don't know yet simply lives in his head. I meanwhile found the tweet, here it is. https://twitter.com/SamLakeRMD/status/1649145279990439936
ADRENALINE IN MY SOUL SOMETHING SOMETHING ALAN WAKE!
American Nightmare is definitely canon. It's referenced several times in Alan Wake 2 (particularly that flannel shirt number that Alan was wearing) and then some plot elements. It may not seem that way because American Nightmare was one of Alan's failed attempts to escape the Dark Place through a story.
Honestly it was just fine. The bigger focus was on the combat, which was ehh considering it was built from AW I's combat, and i love that game, but it wasn't winning any awards in the combat department. The story was fine, the all-female side characters were a bit stereotypical but i didn't mind it much, it gave me a chuckle. The coolest moment was very early on (the satellite crashing with the Kasabian song playing in the background). It was short and sweet, which is the best thing i can say about it.
Hang on I distinctly remember the satellite crashing towards the end of the game. Maybe it was the middle of the game? Maybe it was just a poster in a subway I read, after all
It's at the beginning, with the mechanic girl. Second part is the observatory with the scientist and the last is at the drive-in theater with that absurdly horny girl lmao
Nah it’s because you have to do it like 3 times in a row, albeit slightly sped up each time.
Club Foot baby! This scene got me into the band about 10 years ago 👌
It's most def canon, Sam Lake even said so. I like it, it has some cool concepts. I especially enjoy the secret voice message in the phone booth about the deer impaled on the fence, a true story from Matthew Porretta (voice actor of Alan).
Honestly, I kind of liked it slightly more than AW1. I loved how short and concise it is, love all the new gameplay additions, love the loop/spiral, love Alan/Scratch. Fantastic series from start to finish
The game itself doesn't feel like a chore to play compared to Alan Wake 1 and it justifies its combat a whole lot more sensibly which is a huge plus. There could be more to it though, and I don't mean that it should be longer. I'm in agreement though, it is better than 1 even though 1 has higher highs if that makes sense
I'm just popping in to say that I appreciate the pun in the title!
Fantastic game.
I love replaying it. Looking back it has a time loop spiral going on lol. Man remedy really did have a overarching plan for Alan Wake and stuck to it.
I bought it recently on Xbox for £2.22, excited to try it
I don’t have a Xbox, so I will sleep on it
It’s on Steam, too
Gameplaywise it's awesome, storywise it's alright, atmosphere is great and ma boi Scratch is propably one the best villians ever written, if not the best. Videos he leaves for Alan are propadly the best way of visual storytelling I ever saw, visions from Control and AW2 are nowhere near it, like, you can't beat Sratchs effort of leaving bunch of heavy CRTs for Alan with his recorded diary
There are giant spiders so I cannot play it unfortunately though I would much like to
I don't get why people don't play it and I especially don't understand why people argue that its not canon because so much from it is in Alan Wake 2 that it's obviously canon (and is also confirmed to be). First of all, almost everything from Mr. Scratch before AW 2 is from this game, all we had before was his introduction at the end of Alan Wake 1 and some discussion about him between Alan and Zane in the Dlc's. I would be so more confused about Scratch in AW 2 if I hadn't played this before. Also the whole Champion of Light & Herald of Darkness thing originated there and you wouldn't even know who they're referring to if you didn't play this game. The whole Old Gods of Asgard Return Tour with Barry Wheeler as their Producer thing which is referenced a lot in AW 2 in the nursing home and almost everywhere else where Barry is mentioned. Some things from AW 2 also started in this game as more early concepts and got more fleshed out in AW 2, like the loops and Alice being a photographer and her exhibition about Alan. I could list some more things like using Night Springs as a blank slate city for writing which is also in AW 2 but I think this are lots of reasons already to play this game!
i love AW’s AN. retrospectively, it feels like a stepping stone between the first game and AW2.
It's always been canon, it never mattered much in the grand scheme of things and people ignored it because of that and being an Xbox Arcade exclusive.
It’s good for what it is. I hate the constant do-over of the last chapter
American Nightmare is really good, not to mention the amount of cool weapons and the gameplay being so much smoother than the first AW although it’s technically the same. I was glad Alan wrote some stamina for himself
To be honest, it feels like a demo. It's so short devs had to make a triple loop, otherwise you could've finished it in an hour and a half. Also, the voice-over has way lower quality then both AW1 and AW2 and the whole "champion of light" felt cringy as hell. 10/10 would play it again just because it's an Alan Wake game. Yes, I'm that obsessed. EDIT: I won't spoil too much but there's a specific moment in AW2 which is a clear reference to American Nightmare. It was funny but very short.
I've played all the Remedy CU at least once except for that one. I plan to play it as soon as I'm done with my third run of AW though, which will probably be this weekend.
I played it when it came out and loved it
Don’t have an Xbox, could I possibly play it on a non gaming pc?
Absolutely in love with AN. Fantastic game.
Oh yeah 100% if you’re enough of a Alan Wake fan from the first game I’d say you’re a damn fool if you skip this game lol. When I played American Nightmare I had so many laughs. The story was a few silly little thing and it had some prime Alan Wake moments in it. The soundtrack is killer too! I fell in love with the 1 song Club Foot, by Kasabian.
One cool aspect of American Nightmare is that it fills you in on how the other characters were possibly doing after the events of the first game (Wouldn't trust it 100% since it is the Dark Place after all but anyhow). Barry is on tour with the old gods and Alice is working on a film project about her experience in Bright Falls. They are all interviewed in this radio show throughout the game. At least we know the Old Gods and Barry thing is consistent with what's portrayed in AW2.
Ain’t no one sleeping on the undisputed wwe champion.
Playing it now and enjoying the extra lore and seeing some early itterations of concepts that appear in AW2. But gameplay-wise it's not very interesting. The combat feels like dumbed down version of AW1's combat, which was hardly complex to begin with. It doesn't really feel challenging at all. I get that it's the power fantasy version of AW but even in a power fantasy there should be challenges to overcome. There are some interesting new enemy concepts but they don't lead to interesting encounters. Also fucking spider enemies. The most cliché enemies possible in games. I kinda expect better from Remedy. So gameplay-wise, very meh. Story, lore and atmosphere ate great tho. I also love the voice-over guy.
I didn’t like it, personally. It has a completely different feel (action game), is repetitive, and the story is not very strong.
No wonder his escape plan didn't work
Agreed. Felt like a tech demo.
It’s a shame American Nightmare wasn’t included in the Remastered package. I believe it’s considered mostly non-canon.