In Alan Wake 2, you will never feel safe

theverge.com:

Horror drowns in symmetry: evil twins, two souls occupying one body, light and dark creating shadow, the Other Side, the Dark Place, the Upside Down. It is part of the cascading telemetry of fear utilized by our best horror artists, weaving nightmares out of pleasant dreams, whittling hell from the bones of our heavens.

Remedy Entertainment has created not only one of their best games to date but one of the best games of this already incredible year. Indeed, it is my game of the year. Alan Wake 2, Remedy’s first full-on third-person survival horror, is the culmination of everything the studio has been building toward and playing with, as ideas and mechanics, since Max Payne.

The first Alan Wake, released in 2010 for the Xbox 360, starred the titular character gradually being drawn into a dark mystery in the Twin Peaks-esque town of Bright Falls: complete with a diner, a lamp (rather than log) lady, and a world-weary sheriff. After losing his wife to a Dark Presence, Alan fought to bring her back, sacrificing himself to the Dark Presence in the Dark Place. (It’s very… dark.) Alan discovered he could turn his fiction into reality through writing in the Dark Place. The Dark Presence wanted to use his talents and creativity to make the world in its image.

Or something. It was always a bit unclear.

Canonically, Alan has been stuck in the Dark Place since 2010. As such, to give some grounding to reality, we have a second protagonist in Alan Wake 2. More twos, more doubles.

This is Saga Anderson, who is notable for being Remedy’s first Black protagonist. Those familiar with the first game should recognize the surname immediately. Saga is an FBI agent, accompanied by her more senior partner Alex Casey, who is basically Max