Microsoft turned down Alan Wake 2 pitch with TV-style episodes for Quantum Break instead
Alan Wake 2 arrives this October more than than 13 years after Remedy's original game, and after a number of false starts at getting the sequel made.
Much of developer Remedy's original pitch for the sequel eventually worked its way into Alan Wake's American Nightmare, the action-heavy 2012 standalone spinoff which, while not unanimously loved by critics, went on to be one of the cult hits of the old Xbox Live Arcade days.
Remedy has continued to work on ideas for a full sequel ever since, through the period where it released Quantum Break — the Xbox One exclusive that mixed time-bending action and shooting with live-action TV episodes — and then the fellow «Remedy connected universe» entry Control.
But as creative director Sam Lake explained to Eurogamer at Summer Games Fest earlier this month, both of those games started out as ideas for Alan Wake 2. At one point, Lake actually pitched a version of Alan Wake 2 that would have Quantum Break-style «live-action mini episodes», only for Microsoft to turn down this pitch as it felt linear single-player games were, in Lake's words, «are a thing of the past».
Despite that, Microsoft liked the idea of a video game with live-action sections — and so the unique idea for Quantum Break was born.
«So, we were creating a concept of Alan Wake 2, we were showing it to Microsoft — but other publishers as well at the time — and it was maybe slightly awkward timing as, you know, the industry shifts and changes along the way,» Lake said.
«It was at the time where clearly there was feeling that linear single player games are a thing of the past. Well, single-player story obviously is huge these days, but at the time, it felt like nobody was really interested.»
«And as a detail,» he said,
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