Alan Wake 2 being a digital-only horror game gives the team more time to polish it on all platforms, developer Remedy says. While the talk of no physical disc upset many, at least there’s some light in the dark regarding that decision for Alan Wake 2, which releases later this year.
“Yeah, it is digital only, and kind of coming to this idea, both from Remedy and Epic’s perspective, that’s our current thinking. It just felt it makes sense for this, and the timing felt right,” creative director Sam Lake tells Eurogamer.
Game director Kyle Rowley provided some more information following Lake’s statement, saying “As creatives obviously, by going digital-only it does allow us more time to polish the game. Like, a significant amount of weeks actually. Because otherwise, the game that goes on the disc, obviously it has to be playable without a patch.”
“We didn’t want to release something that we weren’t proud of basically, and that we didn’t want players to play,” Rowley continues. “So hopefully this way we can give you a better version of the game.”
The first proper bit of ‘raw, unedited’ Alan Wake 2 gameplay also made an appearance at Summer Game Fest recently, giving us a good look at the split campaign on offer. You’ll be jumping between the titular Wake and FBI agent Saga Anderson. “You can opt to play Alan Wake in the dark place as he’s trying to find his way out, and you can keep on playing as Saga in the Pacific North West as the investigation goes on,” the trailer explains.
Remedy has always been known for pushing the boundaries of videogame storytelling, so this split campaign will likely culminate in some interesting narrative ideas.
As mentioned by Lake and Rowley above, Alan Wake 2 is set to be cheaper on PC by $10 because of the lack of a physical release. Nevertheless, THQ Nordic previously offered to help create physical copies of the game itself.
While we all wait for Alan Wake 2 to come out though, we’ve got a look at both the best upcoming games and story games available on PC right now.
