THE POETRY OF FEAR

Unsettling, gripping, and deliciously frightening, Alan Wake 2 is shaping up to be a sequel worth the wait. Jess Kinghorn interrogates Remedy's usual suspects and cracks the case wide open

- Jess Kinghorn

Have you ever heard a deer bark? It’s a primordial rasp, one that echoes through the dark as a desperate warning – danger draws near. Saga Anderson (played by actress Melanie Liburd), a storied FBI agent with a reputation for cracking complex cases, is on the hunt in Bright Falls. Once a sleepy town shrouded by American Pacific Northwest greenery and the darkness lurking therein, over the past decade or so the community’s been ripped apart by a string of brutal murders. 

Each killing possesses a troubling ritualistic element that has piqued the interest of the bureau. Little do the investigators realise things are about to get a whole lot nastier and weirder. It is happening again.

Saga’s strongest leads are scattered pages of a manuscript for a horror novel that is slowly becoming reality around her. The words on the page outline an ink-splattered trail towards a long-cold disappearance case pertaining to the writer Alan Wake, who vanished from Bright Falls 13 years before.

During our hands-off demo at Remedy’s studio in Finland, enviously watching the developer next to us guiding us through on the DualSense, we see Saga exploring a quiet, almost-abandoned general store in an attempt to see through the manuscript’s latest twist. A deer crashes into frame, giving us the shock of our life, before haplessly galloping away – but silence does not return.

Saga speaks: “Sounds like somebody’s home.”