No Monsters or Zombies for Alan Wake

Gamers can expect less action in Alan Wake than in Max Payne, says Remedy lead developer Oskari Hakkinen, and despite the spooky atmosphere there won't be any monsters roaming around, either.

Along with the lower action quotient, Hakkinen said in an interview with Gamer.no, Alan Wake will also feature a more involved story than horror games like Silent Hill. The game will be divided into "episodes" similar to a television show, with each having a unique cliffhanger ending. Action won't be entirely absent, of course, and there will even be some gunplay, but players will have no monsters or zombies to contend with even in the "nightmare" sequences.

"Bullet-time," the now-ubiquitous slow-motion action scenes Remedy brought to Max Payne, won't be present in Alan Wake. Instead, the game's new mechanic will be based around light. Hakkinen wouldn't reveal any details but he said day/night cycles will be very important to gameplay. "Light is a very important element in Alan Wake, and it is used in all elements in the game," he said, noting that Remedy is taking an all-new approach to integrating light into the game. A dynamic weather system will similarly affect various aspects of gameplay.

"This is a thriller... We have no monsters and we do not have zombies that jump on you," Hakkinen said in the Google-translated interview. "It is not so simple. We bring something to the psychological game, and it is something new. It is easy to create a game where a zombie scares the life of you, but to make this psychological, you must have the right atmosphere, and you must have people you care about."

He said he hoped the game would be out "very soon" but refused to speculate beyond that. He did say, however, that despite the long development period, Alan Wake would not appear technologically dated when it hit the shelves. Alan Wake is currently in development for the PC and Xbox 360, and will hopefully be released someday.

via: IGN