Alan Wake 2: The Lake House DLC review – an undercooked facsimile, or something more deliberate?
This return to Alan Wake’s horror roots feels a bit missing in comparison with the primary sport, however its examination of AI and artwork’s relationship with science arguably hides its most daring meta commentary but.
After its joyful romp by way of the multiversal lens of its Evening Springs DLC earlier within the 12 months, Alan Wake 2 rounds out its pair of story expansions by going again to what it does greatest: dialling up the horror, switching off the lights, and having all method of shadowy ghouls lurch out of the darkness to provide you a great previous scare. In The Lake House, FDC agent Kiran Estevez lastly takes us past the chain-hyperlink fence of Cauldron Lake’s most secretive, walled-off space – the titular analysis lab the place inside its brutalist, concrete depths lurks an experiment that is gone terribly, terribly unsuitable, and threatens to trigger one other catastrophic occasion that might spell catastrophe for the close by city of Brilliant Falls.
Alan Wake 2 DLC: The Lake House review
However regardless of going down earlier than the occasions of the primary sport kick off in earnest, each the setting and its new protagonist nearly make The Lake House appear more like a heat-up for Treatment’s Management 2 sequel than it does its Alan Wake namesake. This three-hour tour into the lab’s darkish, paint-splattered hallways is a largely tense and spooky affair all through, however one which feels a bit bit missing in what made Alan Wake 2 so particular when it got here out final 12 months – specifically, it has rather a lot more in widespread with Saga’s more pedestrian aspect of the story than it does with Alan’s actuality-bending author’s board sequences.
That is no dangerous factor in and of itself, and it is a completely pleasant standalone set piece for many who have already purchased into the sport’s growth cross. However if you take all of it collectively, with its surprisingly sparse variety of enemy encounters and a veritable truckload of story exposition delivered by way of movie reels, laptop emails and audio log diaries, it may’t assist however really feel such as you’re solely getting half the Alan Wake 2 expertise right here. It is lacking that climatic rocket punch to actually give this daring and bold sport the ultimate, showstopping flourish it arguably deserves – the aural and visible pièce de resistance that ties all of it collectively and leaves you in little doubt that Treatment is a studio on the top of its energy. You need Alan Wake 2 to exit with a bang, not a whimper. However for me a minimum of, The Lake House usually merely fizzled reasonably than igniting something deeper.
Kiran herself is a really affable presence. Her no-nonsense sarcasm and dry wit make her really feel simply as succesful and enjoyable to be round as Saga did in the primary sport, however she additionally has moments of vulnerability that make her extremely empathetic as properly. It provides her a successful, each-girl type of high quality that lets you actually purchase into her ominous retelling of occasions by way of voiceover that that is going to be one horrible day on the workplace.
With the Lake House lab seemingly deserted on arrival, the primary thrust of Kiran’s journey takes the type of acquiring ever-greater safety clearance playing cards with the intention to penetrate the decrease, more harmful ranges of the ability. As she makes her approach down every ground, you will have to make use of some mild deductive work to revive energy to sure areas, get into varied locked doorways, and – as soon as or twice – alter the character of actuality through the use of Management’s energy core switches to get previous obstacles. In Alan Wake phrases, the latter are just about an identical to Alan’s lightbulb lamp, as getting a core from one location to a different and flipping its close by swap will blink new surroundings into existence, opening up new pathways that had been beforehand blocked off. If solely it relied more on these puzzles because the growth went on. Alas, they’re used so sparingly, and are so painfully simple to execute, that they barely really feel like puzzles in any respect.
Fight (above, proper and left) and puzzles (beneath, centre) are fairly scarce in The Lake House, and I at all times wished a bit more from them. | Picture credit score: Eurogamer/Epic Video games
Worst of all, there are nice swathes of The Lake House the place all you are doing is wandering by way of empty corridors with little to no menace on present to spike your adrenaline. There’s quite a lot of doc studying, quite a lot of poking by way of empty drawers searching for ammo and provides to organize you for encounters that by no means appear to materialise, and there have been a number of moments the place I saved wishing something, something, would occur. Like the primary sport, the sound design and mercurial visible results do quite a lot of heavy lifting to maintain gamers feeling tense and on edge, however exterior of its clearly telegraphed battle sequences, it does not take a lot for that uneasiness to start out slipping away, its blasting horns turning into little more than irritations that you simply want would pipe down only a notch whilst you learn this essential case file.
To its credit score, there’s a lot to poke round in contained in the Lake House. One ground, for instance, is completely optionally available, a warren-like maze of library archives that has no actual bearing on the general story, however which comprises a significant tease for what Treatment is cooking up subsequent with its Linked Universe idea. Likewise, there are a number of excessive-clearance rooms on different flooring you’ll be able to return to for additional background lore if you want, however which additionally aren’t important to reaching the tip credit. Even inside its tightly outlined concrete partitions, it is a a lot more freeform setting than any of the locations we visited in the primary sport, and Treatment heads will discover loads to luxuriate in right here – although having learn and listened to all the things on provide right here myself, a good quantity of it felt prefer it had been repeated elsewhere within the facility beforehand, and solely a few of it actually shed new mild on what was actually occurring right here.
You mentioned it, Kiran. | Picture credit score: Eurogamer/Epic Video games
What’s going on right here, although, is kinda completely fascinating to me. Without delay a meditation on the hazards and use of synthetic intelligence within the creation of artwork, and the folly of making an attempt to scientifically quantify the inventive course of, decreasing that uncooked, unknowable spark of emotion to numbers and models that may be measured and predicted on a graph, the underlying arc of The Lake House is a shot of pure Alan Wake meta commentary at its most indulgent. Some will little doubt discover it overly pretentious and obnoxious, immediately lumping it into that very same, cringeworthy bracket as the unique Alan Wake and its supposedly poorly written pastiche of what constitutes modern-day crime writing. However that is additionally exactly the explanation I type of adore Alan Wake 2, because it was Saga’s sections and her infinitely more pure mode of storytelling that uncovered simply how intentionally dangerous Alan Wake’s writerly narration actually was (although I am certain the last decade-odd hole between every sport additionally helped Treatment’s writing workforce mature a bit within the interim, too).
For me, Alan’s clipped and overblown writing model is an intentional and regarded alternative on Treatment’s half, and it is something that actually will get put underneath the microscope as The Lake House unfolds. Throughout two video games, we have all seen the impression Alan’s phrases can have on his setting, and the pinnacle scientists heading up the Lake House lab are totally enthralled by it as properly – even when one in all them believes that work can harness the ability of the interdimensional rift residing on the coronary heart at Cauldron Lake a lot more successfully than Alan’s books. As every competes to refine their work by way of reside (and unlucky) human take a look at topics, a schism begins to type between the highly effective precision of the written phrase and the open, more interpretative nature of conventional artwork.
I am glad Treatment can nonetheless poke enjoyable at itself with these scientific breakdowns of Alan Wake’s writing model. | Picture credit score: Eurogamer/Epic Video games
Admittedly, the work do not fairly do it for me. When Kiran arrives, the artist on the centre of this story has already hit the offended, summary section of his profession, giving us little to carry about how using his work might have modified over time, and the monsters that emerge from like strolling, pastel oil slicks are sadly fairly one-word – if solely as a result of all you are able to do is run away from them for almost all of the growth because of your FBC weapons being completely ineffective towards them. Possibly it is a symptom of its truncated run-time, but it surely by no means appears like Treatment fairly will get its arms round what makes these work totally different to Alan’s writing, and the way they may have an effect on change on the planet in a approach that feels distinctive to the medium.
Alas, we do not ever get one other style of the Alan aspect of this analysis mission – with the person himself clearly lacking in motion, The Lake House, too, suffers from his absence. That mentioned, when one workforce of scientists resorts to making an attempt to recreate his work scientifically, analysing the subject material, content material and variety of phrases per sentence to allow them to feed it right into a particular automated typewriting machine, it does construct to one of many growth’s most eerie and memorable set items. Attempt as they may, nonetheless, they only cannot fairly nail Alan’s model, and the growing desperation that each of its lead scientists really feel at failing to make their very own respective ‘inventive’ breakthroughs bleeds by way of into each a part of the sport – from the exasperated movie reel diaries, the more and more passive-aggressive e-mail chains on their computer systems, and the whiteboards stuffed with questions and frantic scribbles. The rigidity between these two antagonists is as palpable because the menacing and possessed workers members that now stalk the halls of their wake, and so they make for an important pair of villains.
That sound you simply heard was the scream of writers in all places. | Picture credit score: Eurogamer/Epic Video games
Alan Wake 2 accessibility choices
Numerous problem ranges. A number of subtitles and font sizes choices. Seperate quantity sliders for music, sound results and dialogue. Hyperacusis sound filter. On/off toggle for movement blur, movie grain and lens distortion. Adjustable key and controller bindings. Controller and mouse goal help. Choices to tone down audio and visible depth of horror flashes.
After all, it might be an entire and whole cop-out on my half to come back away from The Lake House and simply say, ‘Properly, possibly it is meant to be a poor imitation of the primary sport as a result of that is the entire level it is making an attempt to make about AI and the quantification of artwork’. That may be a pitifully poor excuse for waving away The Lake House’s underlying missteps, to say nothing of simply how unthreatening its new paint monsters are, nor how woefully underutilised its equally novel (and admittedly unbelievable) Ghostbuster-model paint-busting rocket launcher is. Why does it not go tougher on all these items to make it really feel more distinct? As a substitute, it merely opts for what’s protected and acquainted more often than not, and by no means fairly reaches those self same, dizzying heights you understand it may.
In one other actuality, although, you possibly can additionally see this being precisely what The Lake House was, certainly, going for all alongside, and there’s a little a part of me that quietly respects a sport that may feasibly knobble itself creatively, simply so it may stroke its chin a bit bit longer and carry by itself inner dialog with itself. It could be daft within the excessive, but additionally so totally consistent with the Alan Wake-ness of all of it if that was truly what Treatment was selecting to do right here. As a result of let’s face it, if it is prepared to parody the sweet-cane fantasies of a Mills and Boon romance, the bizarre fiction and inane lore of its personal in-sport espresso model, and the surreal, temporal meta of actors and creators in a sport of a sport of a sport – because it did throughout every episode of its Evening Springs DLC – there is a sense that nothing is ever actually out of bounds for Treatment in relation to Alan Wake. And I really like that it is a sport that might even entertain such a dumb and preposterous notion like this. It is the explanation Alan Wake and the Treatment Linked Universe will at all times be a topic of fascination for me, and why The Lake House – whereas flawed and inconsistent – is finally someway nonetheless a becoming finish to this singularly giddy and bananas horror story.
A replica of Alan Wake 2’s Deluxe Version was supplied for review by Treatment Leisure.