Alan Wake 2 Interview: Sam Lake Didn't Want to go 'Neck and Neck' With Spider-Man 2 | gamescom 2023

ign.com:

Remedy Entertainment has come a long way since the original Alan Wake released on Xbox 360 way back in 2010. In the intervening 13 years, Remedy has released Control, built up a universe, and fully established itself as one of gaming's sharpest and most ambitious big-budget developers.

With Alan Wake 2 set to arrive in October, we took a moment to sit down with creator Sam Lake at gamescom 2023 to talk horror instructions, not wanting to go neck and neck, and the need for a little bit of comedy in your horror games. Read on for the full interview, and make sure to check out our hands-on preview as well as our recap of all of our gamescom 2023 coverage so far.

Sam, Alan Wake 2 looks incredible. We got a brand new trailer last night, which really messed me up because it actually took me a bit to figure out what was live action and what was in-game. So bravo. Tell me about how that came together, the decisions behind using real footage and in-game footage. It all melted together. I loved it.

Sam Lake, Director: Thank you. Yeah. We have used different mediums for storytelling in our games in the past and live action in particular, I really, really like using live action. And this time around, we were looking for stylization and ways to integrate it seamlessly into the experience. The Dark Place is this shifting dream reality, kind of a layered place where Alan Wake is churning through these layers and it just felt very suited for switching the medium to keep you off balance. And he's confused. You are confused. And we are going into seeing some live action and then jumping back into the game and-

You're trying to keep the audience on their toes a bit there, right?

SL: Well, it's very much overall survival horror, but the Dark