Alan Wake

New trailer's over at Shacknews

Looks superb (their direct linking stuff doesn't work, unsurprisingly)

Is there still a slim hope that this might actually be great?

No, no chance.
There'll be terrible AI, lots of QTEs and zombies. No tearing, though.

You've read it here first.

Edit: I should put a smily somewhere in here, otherwise it might get taken seriously.

Wasn't this originally announced as a Spectrum game - alongside Bandersnatch? :D

:)

(that was psyclapse as you well know. Somewhere in the loft I've still got a psyclapse T shirt oddly enough)

Wasn't sure. Almost put Bandersnatch/Psyclapse to cover my arse, but.... meh :)

Nice, my mind is full of possible twists and turns. I hope it's a clever story or i'll be miffed!

I have no idea why but whenever I see the name I want to sing Alan Wake, Alan Wake riding through the glen...

... damn. I can hear that now. YOU SOD

Lives in a house, right by a lake
Alan wake...Alan wake, alan wake!

:)

Scares the local kids with his trousersnake,
Alan wake...Alan wake, alan wake!

Direct link to the HD trailer.

/dribbles

Got to say something of Remedy, they make take their sweet time with things but usually come up with something a bit special with it.

So in three years there's been absolutely zero progression then? I love the look of it but FFS show some gameplay and give us a date!

/wants to play this
/can't play this
/bets PC version is going to be canned

PC?

That's that MMO & 3DMark platform, isn't it?

>__>

and porn, don't forget porn and sometime next year a bit of Alan Wake i hope.

Just watched the HD trailer and i'm sold, count me in. Much better than the one on slacknews earlier. Nice.

People still hold out hope for Alan Wake? How quaint.

Has there been any signs or rumours this game is going to suck?

There haven't actually been any rumours about the game per se. Other than it's going to look pretty nice.

No idea whether it's supposed to be a big explor-a-thon or what...No signs of any monsters or supernatural stuff in the trailers so it could just be "Silent Hill without the nasty bits"

I can see what you mean but to me it's reminiscent of The Shining, Misery, Silent Hill so i think there's going to be a supernatural element to it. It's too Stephen King from what little i've seen for there not to be.
On the HD version after the end credit there's a little snippet of what looks like Alan Wake in a field/cemetary surrounded by people shambling towards him.

/ crosses fingers

Someone on EG mentioned Twin Peaks, can't really remember enough of it to say but i can see what they mean.

It's the Northern Rockies lumberjacking feel it has to it that makes it look like Twin Peaks.

I hope so. I mean I can cope with there not being any "in your face" supernatural stuff, if it works on the remoteness of the setting and interaction between the characters it could be all the better for it - and would certainly make it stand out amongst the usual horror dreck the industry seems obsessed with.

I'm mildly optimistic this isnt going to be horrible. But that's a looooong dev time. And very few games survive a long dev time and come up smelling of roses (I guess STALKER did)

4 years (give or take) doesn't seem like that long a time for a game this gen, especially for a relatively small team. MGS4 took nearly as long, and Konami seemed to throw an endless stream of people and money at it.

Being a psychological horror action title that invokes feelings of Twin Peaks, Silent Hill, etc, this game is going to have to be catastrophically bad for me not to like it.

Well the long dev time as because they went through about 4 engines didn't they?
Same as DNF but they released a statement saying they have had issues which is why they hadn't been showing it off for two years.
I just hope they've been working on content as well as the engine, i'm sick of good-looking games that turn out to be just tech demos with a crappy story bolted on. Seems they've had the concept since the start so hopefully the technology was built to support the story and not viceversa.

Hear hear. My initial excitement about Heavy Rain pretty much turned to a wet weekend in Bognor as soon as I saw the E3 trailer. Looked pretty much like style over substance to me.

too many devs are turning out story-centric crap now, where it's designed to be played maybe once or twice (i.e. the usual 'be evil'/'hard mode locked on first playthrough' endings), and putting gameplay second (or third behind the graphics).

if the first bullet point on the feature list is the gritty storyline it's best to just ignore it imo.

I think many western devs don't get that jrpg gameplay is a much better fit than action-based stuff for this kind of thing. A slow progression that complements the story, rather than merely being interrupted by it.

I still need to see intelligent writing, or at least something (character, setting or storyline) that I give a shit about. It's the main reason why I'm blitzing through SR2 at the moment. Skipping every cut-scene because the storyline is just so cliched and tedious.

Something like Bioshock, I'll actually play several times regardless of the story being polarised just because the setting is so beautifully done.

sure it needs a story, otherwise we might as well just play quake 3.

but too much story/wanky terrible story with a game glued to it is about as good as what Uwe does in the cinema with game licenses.

I'd agree that the thing would need to be handled by writers. Shoot me for saying so but Remedy Entertainment haven't exactly won me over with their previous games. I thought Max Payne one was an ace shooter but the storyline got right on my boak. MP2 was alright but again, felt horribly cliched and trying too hard to be some game-ified hollywood movie.

If AW gooes for the psychological horror approach it'll be ace.

Yeah, the fact that it was supposed to come out during the mesozoic era is what's worrying me the most. The second worry that I have is that I've seen nothing to suggest it will actually be any good apart from some swanky tech demos.

I just want to drive around the little town and surrounding country that they've created.

GOTY, right there. ;)