So, Alan spends years writing, forgetting, going insane, going sane, rewriting, failing, and then giving up on "Return." Then he forgets he gave up and presumably writes a short-cut version of "Return" - born of his deep-seeded desire to reunite with Alice - in which the quickest and easiest way out of the dark place is to simply let the Dark Presence win. Alan then "Scratches" out his own name and begins writing out of desperation rather than craft. A new Scratch is born; assembled from Alan's basest desires, an id monster. Presumably this is why Nightingale had to be written out, to make room for Alan to be the new vessel for the DP. This is the ritual to lead you on, your friends will meet him when you're gone. It seems like, to me, that the Dark Presence structured the whole thing just waiting for Wake to break on his own failings so it could fill the void left behind.
Good point. also it seems that Alan destroyed the doppelganger version of scratch back in American Nightmare and what you described is the new Scratch manifested from the dark presence and taken control over Alan.
100% i think these are two different Scratched born from different things. But yeah little by little the dark place is chipping away his resolve. Even when he gave up writing an unconscious part of him that desired to write and escape kept working. It is an insane spiraling trap.
I think S̴̘͔̠̥͙̲̘͉̜̰͍̔̔̊̊͛̀̽͆̌c̸͕̦̱̬̯̝̯̖̼̹̮̓̈͛͆͂͜͝ͅͅͅr̶̻͚̝͌̌̑͐͗͂͊͒a̷̢͚̦̜͙̦͔̗͒͑̀́͑̓͋̂͆͑͘̚͜͠͝ẗ̴̻͙̍̾̎͊́̂̆̅̎̅͋̓͘č̶̡̨̛̻̩̪͕̰͕̬̹h̴͕̪̰̞͈̲̦̘͕̄̀̊̔͒͛͑̓͆̃̂̓̕͠͝ is just a constant factor now. As long as Alan is in the Dark Place, the Presence will attach itself to him, being the best and nost powerful creative it has access to. Nightmare/AW1 S̴̘͔̠̥͙̲̘͉̜̰͍̔̔̊̊͛̀̽͆̌c̸͕̦̱̬̯̝̯̖̼̹̮̓̈͛͆͂͜͝ͅͅͅr̶̻͚̝͌̌̑͐͗͂͊͒a̷̢͚̦̜͙̦͔̗͒͑̀́͑̓͋̂͆͑͘̚͜͠͝ẗ̴̻͙̍̾̎͊́̂̆̅̎̅͋̓͘č̶̡̨̛̻̩̪͕̰͕̬̹h̴͕̪̰̞͈̲̦̘͕̄̀̊̔͒͛͑̓͆̃̂̓̕͠͝ is the Dark Presence eroding h8m, showing him what it would do with him to weaken him and gwt what it wants. Its recurrence in AW2 is just pissed off that its host outsmarted it, and now, is doing whatever it takes to not onoy ruin Alan's life, but sprint towards its goal. Alan's a powerful creative, and clearly, a threat.
I think his Scratched out edits are more Alan thinking he's desperately stopping Scratch from winning - as he's under the impression that Scratch wrote Return and wrote a horror story. So his edits are him making Saga the hero of Return instead and trying to write a version to undermine Scratch's story. But he doesn't get to finish it in time before he's shot in the head.
"Monster is not in darkness, but in emptiness", "Your friends will meet him when you're gone". Dark Presence by itself can't do anything, but as soon as Alan gave up, was gone, it used his shell, creating a monster - Scratch. But that could also come true even without some mystical Dark Presence. When he gave up, he was at his lowest point, insane, mad, desperate, angry. At that point, your inner darkness could come out in order for you to survive. He started to write again in this state, to survive, to escape, no matter the cost, no matter how dark the story will be and no matter what would happen next. So the Dark Presence in this case is nothing more than human's darkest bits, his anger, sins, egocentricity, the dark twisted and cruel version of himself. Why i think it's close to true, or at least why Alan might think of it this way now, is the ending of the game. He intentionally let the Dark Presence take him, and while waiting for it to happen, he said "COME HOME". Come home. To me, to my brain, to the place you were born from. Maybe it was a part of the Dark Presence, that was born within him, and the Dark Presence more broadly is an amalgamation of all the people's darkness within or something like that. And you can fight this darkness with light, but you can never completely defeat it, because it's human's nature, and so what to do with this is basically written in the Balance Slays the Demon. "In the end, it's never just the light you need. When balance slays the demon, you find peace". Somehow, you need to accept your Dark Presence to escape, not be swallowed by it completely, but be in control of it, and it seems like Alan already started heading into this direction.
There's a thing about overlaps that I like the most: it's not only overlaps in a "fiction-on-reality" way, but also "draft-on-draft" overlaps. Alan wrote several drafts of "Initiation" about "the detective in New York", but none of them worked well enough. So, when he continued his work, he used his exact ideas in the new draft (which he expected to be "Return", but IT IS actually "Initiation"), but adapted them to the new setting. In the places, where he used those ideas unchanged in their core, but a bit adapted - there's where the overlaps happen. FBI agent killed by the cult in the subway becomes Nightingale; two cops, who killed a kid and hide the body in the well become Mulligan and Thornton; the lady killed in the bath in the hotel becomes Cynthia Weaver. Everything we see as Alan in The Dark Place has never happened and actually wasn't even in a finished book - it was his search for ideas, which led to the Saga's story in the end. The Saga's story is "Initiation". After finishing it, Alan supposedly understands how "the process of writing" works in its core, that it's iterative, so it's a spiral. The whole story is about "creating the perfect work of art", so to say
I like your take on the "draft-on-draft" concept for the overlaps, but isn't Saga's story actually Return with the edits rather than Initiation? Alan going through the "detective in New York" plot in Initiation is what leads him to find Return in the writer's room, which he then edits to include Saga in the story. I do agree that the plot beats are similar between Initiation and Return (especially with the murders), but I thought Initiation was Alan's story to discover Return and add Saga into the story, and ultimately change it to the hero's journey.
At the same time though, Saga during her path of "Return with edits" overlaps with Alan on his path through Initiation, even though Initiation precedes "Return with edits."
I'm really hoping Remedy is going all out and making the New Game Plus a pretty major change to the story. It would be one of the greatest rug-pulls in the history of gaming, and the game in several ways is screaming that it should be done.
This is what I expect. and if they pull it off. Chef's kiss. Especially considering they are making us wait. I don't think it will be radically different but different enough that it is noticeable and relevant.
I found out playing the game again and the intro with Alan is the continuation of the end whenever he gets cut off. I haven’t put them together but it would be nice to know
Something else that goes well with this: When we switch from Alan to Saga or vice versa, it shows a whirlpool. A whirlpool is just a spiral made of liquid. So, as the player, we're going up/down the spiral to switch characters.
On top of this. It may sound weird but I've had rare occasions where I remember what I see when I fall to sleep and into a dream. It looked to be like that spiraling tunnel.
@@GamingUniversityUoG If I recall correctly, spirals are common symbols both in nature and in human culture, so I wonder if the spiral symbolism in the Remedyverse is much larger than it appears to be. Polaris is represented by a spiral, the Writer's Room door has a spiral on it, the spiraling tunnel, etc, it could be a clue as to the inner workings of that universe or reality. I also had an interesting thought: what if we see the spiraling tunnel when changing characters because both Saga and Alan are in the Dark Place in the future? It could be just a game mechanic, but it's interesting because none of the characters bring it up or are really aware of it happening. That, and it is confirmed that the Dark Place can and does affect time to an unspecified degree. It brought Alan to Saga in the past when she used the Clicker in the future. And I think there's something up with the Tom Zane we see, his film "Yoton Yo" has a lot of parallels to the story concludes in almost the same way that the game itself does. I have an idea that he was written into the past to help Alan's past self by someone from the future. We see a glimpse of Zane after being shot by Alan in the hotel that implies he's alive somewhere, somehow. And I don't recall if Zane was ever in American Nightmare at all. He just seems to come into existence between that and Control, with no direct connection I know of. I kinda wonder if a future Alan is writing things into his past to enable him to escape or ascend.
@@dweller132 The spiral is the image of forever, its lines, following their previous trajectories through infinite fractal space, never end. The circle is one thing forever, the spiral is allness, continuous travel towards the untouchable center.
@@GamingUniversityUoGthat's my problem with all of this. Am I supposed to believe you? How do I know that you are not making up this anecdote? And, if you really mean it, how to know that you aren't lying to yourself or "making" false memories about seeing these symbols?
@@MantasticHamsi think you may have misinterpreted something? alan says it "its not a loop, its a spiral" if it were a loop alan couldn't write an ending. spirals are symbols of change and rebirth, not forever (thats what a loop means in aw)
I’m honestly in awe at the shear amount of narrative content in this game has. There’s an endless amount of discussion to be had on any seemingly small aspect. You sure got your work cut out for you.
There is apart of me that is convinced that everything that happens to him in the dark place is a reaction to his writer's block. He is still in a position where he has to write for survival, to save someone. He is not naturally getting past his block so even when he does write, he always goes back behind the block and his comments at the end of the games is him resetting everything to be put back behind the block(Lake->Ocean, Loop->Spiral) and I think a good visualization of this issue is the writers room. To escape the dark place, to beat Mr. Scratch, to save/"avenge" his wife he must go back to the one place his subconscious does not want to be. the games are him forcing himself to write what he needs and not what he wants, which is a good analogy to an actual writers block and then he spirals downwards because he cannot get past his block and the only way he can ascend the spiral is if he gets past his block.
One of the cool things about the first game is the scenario is structured to force him through his writers block. Write or lose your wife. If you do it wrong and make a bad story the world will end.
AW2 also borrowed the "3 loops of 3 acts" structure from American Nightmare for the Initiation chapters. I'm hoping that won't extend into the true ending being New Game++, though the way the beginning of AW2 already strongly hints this isn't the first loop could mean that's already taken care of.
One thing that was discussed yesterday is the fact that Estevez sent a tech out to check out the monitoring station after it went down in 2019. If this was Steven Lin then he got caught up in the loop and it has been occurring for 4 years. Just to give an external timeline on how long this has been occurring.
@@GamingUniversityUoG Something that's really stuck in my mind is just how antiqued just about all the technology is in Bright Falls and Watery. There's hardly anything more recent than what you'd see in or around the 2000's. I don't know if it amounts to anything, or if it's just an aesthetic choice. But it's so ubiquitous and consistent that it seems to invite implication ... you know, beyond that the economy of the area has probably been depressed since the mine closed down.
@@Dream0Asylum I agree and also it is hard for a place like that to grow since they have been dealing with the taken. I kinda believe now the torchbearers didn't want it to grow since it would really fuel the place with the perfect candidates like Alan wake.
@@GamingUniversityUoGThere anything concrete on the rules for the threshold? Accepting that he's been climbing the spiral for years, Estevez mentions the FBC lockdown. Time still seems to be moving, though. Are the FBC still in lockdown looping through the Hiss for years or is it just the Bright Falls area? The threshold seems to travel far enough to hit Saga's family. Feel like I'm waiting until the second DLC for answers unless I missed something in the main game.
you know IDK why i hadnt pondered the low-tech in bright falls, i feel like it was basically that way in the first game as well, but i just considered it a visual motif, but its an important detail in Control, and i feel like theres gotta be something there if its universal throughout these games so far.
Loved it! And kudos to the editor too, it's so visually pleasing and stimulating. On the topic of Scratch, my take on him is that this latest version was created out of the Dark Presence's desire to have Alan write it into reality so darkness can be spread across the world (this was the primary motivation in AW 1 as well). So it makes sense that it came into being when Alan was ready to give up. It then also makes sense it collaborated with Zane to write their joint escape from The Dark Place. I do think there's an extra dimension here to consider that's thematically relevant: it came into being out of Alan's despair at thinking he'd caused Alice's suicide. Throughout the game, we see people being Taken due to their own insecurities, feelings of guilt, doubt, mistakes...the darkness in their own minds, basically. This version of Scratch seems to prey on that. AFAIR the Dark Presence didn't really used to work like that, right? People just got attacked and then became Taken. But now there's this thematic link between possession by Scratch and the darkness in people's minds. Not sure where we're going with this, hope NG+ will bring more clarity. But I found that a really interesting aspect of this game.
Best analysis of AW2 so far. I have never waited to start a NG+ like that. Just waiting for an excuse to replay this masterpiece, and having more elements to the story and hopefully more fulfilling ending is a great excuse to say the least
This is one of the videos I was most looking forward to when playing through this game. I’m fascinated by how Alan has evolved over his time in the Dark Place. To me, it feels like the second version of Mr. Scratch comes, not from the dark ideas that others have about him, but his own dark thoughts about himself. He’s literally fighting his own self doubt.
When I finished the game, I felt pretty confident what "the spiral" was, and what Alice Wake hoped to help Alan through, was analogous to Buddhist reincarnation. Every cycle Alan goes through, Alice wants to help him get a little closer to letting go. She even uses the word "ascend", if I recall. This is in contrast to the man who claims to be Tom Zane, who is shown tempting Alan with an escape, but alcohol and cocaine. Mr Scratch's "perfect" world was the natural conclusion of Alan's obsession over his own writing, his anger, and the hedonism that comes with being a celebrity. The first huge step Alan took is rejecting that world and his own freedom because he knew it would come at the cost of Saga's life. He and those who care about him (Alice, The Old Gods, Ahti, and arguably Mr. Door now that it's clear Alan wouldn't selfishly sacrifice Saga) are helping him strip away all those temptations and stressors over each cycle. Whether his "ascension" means literal escape back to reality , moving to a higher plane like Dr. Darling from Control, or just getting to die, I don't know. My gut is that this is meant to be the end of his story though, and not a declaration of future content. If that's the case I'm perfectly happy with that.
Hi Dean, great video! This is something unrelated, but SPOILER I noticed that in the song "Dark, twisted and cruel" most of the lyrics are taken directly from a Zane's poem (Poem 1 April 09) from This House of Dreams. The poems are referenced only by Zane the director and this song. Also, the poems Alan finds at the end of each overlap talk about Scratch/Alan and all three end with what Zane the Diver said about Scratch at the end of the first one: "Your friends will meet him when you are gone". Not to mention how the Hiss incantation is continuously referenced throughout the game. It's amazing how they inserted all these little details!
I’m only 1:45 in and I have to say that you did a great job explaining the difference in which direction the spiral goes. In a previous video, I think you used a spiral that we looked down upon, and that made it a little difficult to visualize how it might be different depending on the direction. The visual you used here made it crystal clear. Love the video so far!
@@GamingUniversityUoG It’s funny how a slight shift in perspective can change the way you think about a topic (insert thought-provoking metaphor for life here-after driving for 8 straight hours today, the only perspective I can get behind is the one in my bed right now, lol). I’ve been binging your Control videos on your other channel and want to say thanks for all thought you put into your videos, but also into your streams too. I finally got to see the Ashtray maze as it was meant to be, since most streamers edit out/replace the music due to copyright. I understand the reason why and that they make a living off of their videos, but it genuinely was such a pleasure to enjoy the true experience. Same with your Alan Wake 2 videos, and I’ve been telling friends to come check out your videos since I don’t think they realized how amazing the chapter songs are! Anyway, apologies for the long ranting comment after a long drive, I don’t think I’m making much sense. Hopefully I will catch one of your streams live sometime soon! As a literature major and former high school English teacher, I’d love to contribute to the discussions in chat someday. Especially if you ever do a Twin Peaks watch-a-long!
The amount of content on this channel will SPIRAL out of control. After only liking the streams for the algorithm before leaving them immediately, i could not possibly resist the analysis of this game. I'm going to spoil it for me, but i still don't have time for playing this masterpiece myself.
Wow i tought your videos coudn’t get any better, but damnnn the editing, the structure of the video and the graphics are so perfect. You have quickly become one of my favourite youtuber
Was waiting for the first deep dive video on Alan Wake 2! We've got a long way to go until we even scratch the surface of this game and everything it has hidden within
You kind of said something similar here to what I imagine the spiral to be: The ending of the spiral is connected to the beginning. Now, you could use this to describe things happening in each game, but I think its better to look at it from the perspective of all games. The spiral is the symbol for all (probably 3) games and the points where the connection from the ending of the spiral to the beginning intersects, is the ending of one game and beginning of the next. The first descent (the destruction part, as Alice calls it) starts at the outside of the spiral and goes down until it reaches the intersection point, the end of Alan Wake 1. There the second descent starts and moves even deeper in until the next intersection, the end of Alan Wake 2. Now, as for Alan Wake 3, we will again start at the point we left off and we first have to go down until we reach the center. From there we will finally ascend up through the connection and be really free of the Dark Place (or will we just start descending again? Who knows). On the way up we could have flashbacks to the stories that happened at each intersection with the spiral. I immediately thought about this at the end of AW2 because of a game I played aaaaages ago, Uru. It is kind of using the same symbolism, but in a different context: "An ending has been written? You've done all that has been asked. You've traveled the full circle. You have returned to the Cleft through the Fissure. You swam among the stars and saw the remnants of previous journeys. You have returned and the pillars were returned, and now one more of the bahro, the least, has been returned to D'ni. You don't need to understand what that means, only that the hand of the Maker has set it in motion. Now the circle is complete and the tree has begun to grow again. The path is now open, and so the symbol of the Journey must change. Now the beginning is tied to the end. Now you can go where you wish." Im not sure if that made sense in writing, but I hope so, and sorry for the long comment. Also, thank you for all your great videos trying to explain all of this stuff!
Thank you for being the only person I've seen thus far to give American Nightmare its flowers in terms of what it contributes to our understanding of Wake 2. Everyone tends to ignore it because it's a short experience with like 3 campaign levels and Wake/Scratch are the only truly interesting characters in the narrative but I've always thought how that narrative plays out echoed far out into the future, and approximately zero analyses of 2 I've watched bring it up.
Great video Dean. I haven't played American Nightmare so I didn't realize Alan had to perform a serious of rituals just right to get the result he needed. The idea that NG+ might get us a different ending where Alan might be closer to his goal is intriguing. It would definitely be Sam's style
It also links with the Heroine's Journey, A Hero's journey is like a loop and starts again from where it began in the first place, But the heroines journey works in spirals, newer and deeper understanding of the self
Oh boy! Bit of a mindfuck when I think of lighthouse stairs being a spiral and how that first dream sequence in AW1 ends🤔 Thank you. I needed that realization this morning XD It's quite possible you've already made a video on this so I can always be pointed there, but I did some spiral searching a smidge back after playing through Control and becoming obsessed with an RCU. In the original Alan Wake 1, after noclip/freecam scouring the game for any spirals, there was only ever one spiral I could find. It was a spiral that appears on a book face and that book appeared a few times throughout the game(Like a bad Remedy fan, I did not end up getting the AW Remaster so I am unsure if those books are still present or not in there at all). The spiral being so specific to Alan's world in Control, and it being represented on a book, I think it could just possibly dig even deeper into the question of who exactly wrote who. Here's the big question, how much merit is there in the possibility that similar to using influence in the cabin to write his Thomas Zane/Barbra Jagger story, maybe just maybe he could have used the spiral on a book and it's meaning as a writer, to write a bigger and deeper universe where the FBC/all these crazy entities exists?? Could be reaching, but I've had those spiral books in the back of my mind for like 5 years and I have to believe their connected somehow🥲
I think Alan realized that the tone of the first draft didn't really match up with Departure, not to mention he was skipping Initiation altogether. I think he skipped it initially because he just wanted to go home. Then he realized the ending was too cliche and needed to be more ambiguous. So the story became a trilogy.
On top of this ANYTHING he does is confined by the story. So the Clicker was changed to be an instrument causing permanent changes. This was he has his loophole rather than be dragged back into the Dark Place at the end of the story.
A video on Mr. Door is in the cards right, and not just because he might be a variant of Martin Hatch but the face that he might be Saga's father. @@GamingUniversityUoG
The spiral is also demonstrated in Saga's boss fights in the overlap. She sees the same "loop" when she's actually going deeper and deeper down the spiral until she reaches a final point: the boss fight itself.
Honestly, I’m considering not even calling the “Scratch” in AWII by that name, because “he” acts more like Alan’s other half in the first game’s DLC; he’s all of Alan’s negative aspects, given power by the Dark Place, and he even gives Alan headaches! To me, this makes me wonder if Alan, when confronting this manifestation of his Shadow, didn’t incorporate it like he should-which is totally in-character for an author who tries to skip the “initiation” phase of storytelling to get to the “return” part-and, instead, suppressed it; then, when Alan finally gives up and stops writing, “Scratch” comes rearing to the forefront and steals the show, with Alan blind to its machinations. Also, side note: I’ve been entertaining the idea that the Astral Plane and the Dark Place are being presented as reflections of themselves, sort of as Yin and Yang? Yin being “dark/passive”, and Yang being “light/active”, this would align with the ideas that the Astral Plane is a place of conscious/active thought, and the Dark Place one of unconscious/passive thought. Going further…it’s funny how the Board is almost like the spot of “yin” to the Astral’s “yang,” but what would be the spot of “yang” in the Dark Place’s yin? Not Alan, surely…perhaps the “Bright Presence”? Or Zane??
Great video, Dean! Love it! Speaking of Scratch, I'm pretty sure that Mr. Scratch from the first game and American Nightmare is the Finnish director Thomas Zane (Seine), and I have solid proof. You know the story of how Alex Casey investigated the Cult of the Word and its leader Mr. Scratch. The detective met him eventually in Seine's cinema, but we never saw this leader's face. I managed to check the game files and found that his echo is labeled as "zane_scratch". And everything suddenly made sense, you know. The popular celebrity invited to the hotel turned out to be Mr. Scratch, who killed the muse. How Zane's missing lamp ended up in Seine's possession. How Cynthia said Tom reached out to her. And Seine had been living in this very hotel all this time and knew the site of the murder to point it out to Alan. It is believed that Seine, like Thomas Zane, disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1970 and allegedly never escaped the Dark Place, but Alex Casey met him in New York in 2013. This makes sense because Mr. Scratch can move between the real world and a Dark Place. There are also prototypes of phone calls in the game files, in which Seine intentionally introduces himself as Alan Wake, using the intonation of the cult leader's voice. Such calls are signed as "talk_to_zane_at_payphone_scratch". You know, there is a lot going on in the game that substantiates this conclusion, besides Seine's nickname "Dark Doppelganger" on the poster, The Happy Song (with that pulpy tone in general) and the wedding band, although Barbara wasn't Zane's wife in any version. Tom even wears the same clothes! I think when Remedy named the Dark Presence Scratch, they intentionally wanted to confuse everyone and even create the impression that Scratch may have been part of Alan the whole series. That he was his Jung's "shadow". But the Bright Presence knew the truth and said that Mr. Scratch is a separate entity. And I find it very suspicious that they "retconned" Tom's surname into Seine, as if to make the first letter match the Devil's alias. Anyway, I hope I didn't ruin the fun with this digging. I wish you all the best!
5:42 There is a quote from a poem in the game that saga can find in ng+ and alan finds i belive in the cinema overlap that has the excerpt "when night springs, bright falls" and it was talking about the overlaps i think.
You have done a great job along the years , I thank you for that , it's a pleasure to see some of thing you theorized to be true in AW2 , thank you so much Man.
Great video as always! Thank you very much! I think I agree on most points! The Alan Wake universe has such an amazing story and lore. It’s really unbeatable. I really hope we get more story on Alan though in Alan Wake 3, as I’m not a huge fan of dual protagonists :p
I can’t watch this yet bc I’m not done with AWII, but just saw it on the playlist & how high the view count was. Congratulations! Here’s to hoping the older vids get a bump too, bc they help contextualize a ton!
''Diving deep to the surface'' from Herald of Darkness might suggest that the spiral doesn't end in singularity, rather an escape. Here's hoping, for Alan's sake.
I think the Mirror Peak mountain is important, at some point it was a volcano and the volcanic gases are mentioned, it’s kind of explained away as an FBC cover story and Alex Casey jokes about it but I think it’s a misdirection. I think Mirror Peak is literal and somehow the peak of the mountain is the bottom of the lake at the same time, this would fit with the opposing triangle theme in the cult symbols and the Control pyramids. It reminds me of a Penrose staircase, a loop that’s also a spiral, fitting with the paradox/illusion that Mr Door describes of a door exists in two rooms/places at once - there’s a door at the bottom of the lake at it leads to the top of mirror peak. Could Mirror Peak be the ledge that Alice jumps from in one of the final tapes.
Thank you this was one on the main things I needed an explanation for because I was so confused on WTF “it’s a Spiral.” means. I’m so ready for NG+ as well as Nightmare difficulty for AW2.
Finally I found a video that is talking about what I think. It was nice to listen to the same thoughts I have. However, I don't think the story will be concluded with new game plus. This is a huge concept with really peculiar natrative and I do expect more games of this franchise.
Streamed this game for my girlfriend and she loved it. It was a very good game. Love the remedy-verse story and how it’s so intricate and interwoven between games
This narrative is basically tailor-made for new stories and endless potential... They could literally do anything, it could be as realistic and silly as they want. Set in a town, a jungle a colony on mars... As long as they follow the structure of the hero's journey. I can't wait to see what they do with control 2.
Thank you for this video. All through AW2 I just kept thinking how similar it was to AN. You're one of the few people out there that will talk about those connections.
I'd love to see more videos like this about Alan Wake (from your channel and others). Always so engaging to be on the edge of new fan theories and revelations.
Excellent video as always. I can't wait for the NG+ and I really hope it will be the true, final draft of the story and we'll have the proper ending, that would be so cool!
One very minor note, possibly missed? In Control, the door that lead to the Alan Wake DLC in the Lakeview Motel (I think the name was, been a few since I played Control), didn't it have a Spiral on the door?
i've been researching the remedyverse myself the past 2 weeks. I feel i have a pretty good grip on the story by now. I was now looking to see if others came to similar conclusions. Its shocking how many video essayists tried to capture alan wake but either stayed very surface level or got many things wrong. I'm going to enjoy watching the rest of your video's I think. The big thread i'm looking into now is exactly how alan contacted alice through writing those rituals about the cult of the word. It's clear alice was contacted loop upon loop. That's why she says she is haunted every day now. But i'm not 100% sure yet how alan projected himself out to new york in the real world. Perhaps because of all the prep he did with the cult of the word somehow. The story of that summoning and working for mr scratch, even though it was really alan himself creating the cult and so he IS scratch? Something like that? I think you're mistaken about a part of Mr. Scratch. You're fully correct about alice her short film being played being the vocal point of american nightmare. And this shattering Mr. Scratch. Alice playing a similar role in alan wake 2 makes sense too. Here is my problem.. Mr. Scratch is a concept. The concept of the urban legend. You're missing a key part of the puzzle. This key part is barbara jagger. Barbara jagger was created in similar fashion to Mr. Scratch. According to the story of "departure" by alan wake, She was the muse of zane. She drowned. Zane wrote a new version of her into being that came out wrong. I believe this to be a version of scratch. She was based on rumors about the witch. The andersons also call her "the scratching hag" in their song "children of the elder god". Alan resolves the story of the scratching hag in a similar fashion. During the events of signal he puts the clicker inside of her and banishes her with light. We know these kinds of things are metaphorical. Note that this is also the last time we ever saw barbara jagger and tom the poet in their current iteration. It seems to me that alan rewrote their histories and made it real with the clicker. To me this feels like the birth of the filmmaker thomas zane and the witch of cauldron lake that killed the sheriff, which is still jagger. "Retconned" in a way that still makes sense with the overarching narrative of departure. Its just the diver from thomas's film that was guiding alan now. It's become a "collaborative" story. At least.. a deeper layer down. I honestly think alan doesn't just experience loops.. he writes them. Like his projection of alan makes a projection who makes a projection. We see two instances of these projections meeting. The obvious one is when alan kills other alan. The other one is when alan meets "filmmaker zane". If you look closely at the scenes between the two in room 665 you at some points see two alans, and most importantly, at some points you see two zane's. They're the same person. Just aspects of alan. Alan is the writer and the filmmaker. Just like how alan himself wrote the diver in the first game. It's alans plan all along to trick himself to think he needs to get there before scratch. We even see snippets of tom shooting alan like a rehearsal, acting out the scene that happens later when "alan shoots scratch(himself)". This theme is then repeated by alan shooting zane and zane not really being dead. This also mimics the final scene in the game where the spiral goes into its next loop. make note of the spiral in zane's room. Make note of the ending of the scene where zane crawls away, and there being a second/third alan in the room getting out of a chair. Its like a convergence point. Alans from different places in the spiral have met in this room. Alan even mentions at some point he's completely reinvented himself a few times already. This is also the only theory i can come up with that actually makes it so theres a reason for ahti and the andersons calling alan tom. They've lived through many stories and loops. They remember various loops where alan played the role of tom. We don't know how far up and down in the spiral we are at any given time. If this still doesn't make sense to you, remember the story of the dlc "writer". Alan is tortured by an aspect of himself a layer above him luring him into all kinds of traps. the projected alan is the aspect of reasoning. They meet later in the writers room and reunite. I also want to call attention again to the song "children of the elder god". The song is about two ravens who are the "children" of odin. The birds are called memory and thought. This to me sounds like the old gods are describing a form of the astral projection alan went through. They went a little insane because their memory and thought aspects were weakend. Perhaps part of them even left or consumed by the dark place? tor also lost his "storm". And odin physically an eye. Some time after the events of the first game the story was retconned to fit into the new universe where barbara didn't became the scratching hag. And instead this fight took place 10 years later and the one they were facing was Mr. door. So the song is no longer fitting at the alan wake 2 point in the loop. I'm afraid i don't know exactly all the details of what these aspects metaphorically stand for just yet. But you get the point. Alan wrote about himself in the dark place and thus projects himself. Tor and odin created songs based of aspects of themselves that took the form of ravens. They eventually managed to beat back the dark place in a way, though it still grips them. The fact they sound like their younger selves and weaken further after every performance now likely has something to with this process too. its also very interesting that the dark place used birds and storms against alan in the first game. Concepts the dark place picked up from tor and odin maybe. These elements are gone in alan wake 2. Likely because the retcon fight with mr door that just cost odin an eye. So we have 3 scratches. One for every story alan wrote that we interact with. "the scratching hag" "Mr scratch" and now "scratch". The first two follow the pattern of rumors. BUT were also created. Jagger was written into being by zane. It had to be based on something in reality. And since the real barbara was dead, it was the rumors. American Nightmare seems to have been created specifically to deal with the version created during signal. The one zane the diver tried to sweep under the rug and didn't want us to think about. The third.. very similar but more convoluted... I think alan is just misleading us in the story. It was he himself who haunted alice and scratched out the manuscript. We know this for sure. I think alan at various points in the spiral worked with himself to set this up and dupe the alan furthest along in the spiral to think its scratch haunting alice. The scratch we encounter then in the real world is the scratch born from the rumors of alice's exhibition. The new face of the dark presence. But this time not a body double. Because this time it was alan himself that created these rumors. It was a collaborative work with alice. the rumors were real. The outward appearance not so, but the man inside the photographs was really alan so to speak. And thus scratch manifested himself inside alans actual body as the dark presence. All for the purpose of saga being able to shoot it with the bright bullet (which is a metaphor for potentially damaging truth alan was scared of, but turned out to be that alice is actually alive).
Alan Wake has been such an awesome new experience for me. I remember when I was younger, I couldn't get too much into the first AW since it was really boring gameplay wise, but now the story is just mindblowing to me. And I like it most of all because it has inspired me to be a better person. Along with watching an anime that taught me the value of compassion, AW has only solidified that value in me, and also has brought me up from a dark time in my life. You see Alan, an angry yet regretful man being cast into an absolute hell because of his actions, and it is through the story being told that he goes from a hard headed and troubled man who can't control his anger to... I don't know, to be honest. The series isn't over, and we don't know what exactly he is thinking. But I like to think he is changing for the better throughout all this. I think my favorite moments from AW2 was when we realize Scratch is Wake and vice versa, and the ending where we learn 'it isn't a loop; it's a spiral.' I like the Scratch/Wake dilemma because, for most of the series, we were lead to believe Scratch was some entity conjured up by the darkness to impersonate Wake and also demoralize him, as he does evil deeds. He was not Wake; he was a tangible enemy, something to fight and kill (this is how I saw it at least). But by 2, we come to learn that Scratch is Wake, just his dark side: his anger and all other flaws of Wake brought out into the real world. There's also this line in 'Herald of Darkness' where Door mentions Wake's 'Made up furies' which I didn't at first get. Throughout the first Alan Wake, I pretty much thought Wake was understandable: he didn't like pushy fans, he didn't like that his wife went behind his back and had them go to Washington for Hartman, and he didn't like that, despite the mental block, Alice still insisted in mentioning writing to him with the typewriter gift. But, as I thought about this line more, I realized something. We are all responsible for how we deal with our anger and our emotions, at the end of the day. We see through the events of the first game that he didn't understand that and he let them run loose: he didn't appreciate his fans nearly as much as he disliked them, he punched Hartman at the first mention of Alice contacting him bc of Alan's block and then ended up not getting any help, and finally stormed out when he saw Alice's gifts. Despite the fact that these things may have touched his nerves at the moment, he failed to understand that they were done for his betterment and out of love by Alice, and he lets his anger overcome him. When it is revealed Scratch is Wake, it is essentially a metaphor that Alan's anger is like his enemy and his responsibility at the same time, and that ultimately, he could have controlled his anger, but we don't even know if Alan sees it that way, or if he is still blind to his harmful ways. But what gives me hope is the spiral bit at the ending. Personally, I have been through moments like Alan where it all seems lost: like the situation is so hurtful and feels so useless that you can't do it anymore. You want to give up and end the cycle of depression, then a glimpse of hope, then disappointment and just have peace. But when Alice's message reaches Wake, there is almost a brightness in his eyes as he wakes up and says those words. It's like he's found something to latch onto in the darkness, and he's ready to advance the spiral now with newfound hope in his heart. I know you've covered the theory of the archetypal writer, but I personally hope it may be less of him just becoming a better writer, but also a better person as well. One who learns to appreciate Alice and his fans and his friends, and he learns that his reality-changing writing is doing more harm than good and he tries to write with the wellbeing of others in mind, and when or if he comes back from the dark place, he learns to get on with life and be a better man at the same time. This is more than likely a bit of projection, but I can't help but hope that Alan escapes the Dark Place with Alice and lets go of his harmful ways so that he may have a more fulfilling and loving life- all because the Dark Place held up a mirror to him and showed him the truth and error of his ways.
man, I am playing all remedy games again after i finished alan wake 2. i have to feel all the referencies so i can return and play for the second time alan wake 2
Stephen King did something similar in The Dark Tower series. (Spoiler warning!) “Ka is a wheel,” gets repeated throughout the books, but at the end the Gunslinger begins to ascend the Tower only to end up back in the desert where the story began before he can reach the top… except this time he has his friend’s horn, which he forgot/left behind previously, indicating that this time ‘round he knows more and is better prepared, getting closer to reaching his goal.
God I Fucking love the Dark Tower and AW seems to be taking the same path with each spin along the spiral causing our Hero to become a better and better person. Makes sense that a series so inspired by King would follow the same conclusion as King's Opus.
In part. The one that started working with Zane to write the initial draft feels like the part of Alan that rebelled against his desire to stop writing. Alan kept calling him Scratch the whole time. Despite not being possessed yet.
Its ironic that Alice is the reason Alan beats Mr Scratch in American Nightmare. In AW2 she's also the reason Saga gets the Clicker, essentially helping him again.
The part of rituals makes me remember how in Control the Oldest House respond to certain rituals and procedures based in dream logic. The FBC records and catalogs theses "rituals" to make them standard in how they operate. These match the description of the writings of Alan Wake (a overlap it is a threshold in Control terms). The Dark Place has its own rituals About Scratch, I think in AW2 it is another thing entirely, only borrowing the name for Scratch from American Nightmare. In AW2 Scratch is just Alan Wake with the Dark Presence in him, they use that name because both are a evil version of Alan, but in American Nightmare it is just another creation of the Dark Place
Thank you for shedding some light (ha) on American Nightmare and the themes it introduced. I watched some videos going over the story of each game and its dlcs and expansions and their take away was basically "writing hokey, game bad" and while I generally agree that it wasn't great, there were good things in it, things of value that were carried forward.
They made it more for the arcade combat part of the game. But story wise it is a good basis for what evolved into AW2. Plus it gave us more world building for the dark place.
It’s so small, but I miss how American Nightmare would “pronounce” Mr. S(r@t(h. Granted, considering how important he was to this story, I see why censoring his name would be impractical, but it added so much to him. Anyways, GREAT video!!
@@yellowbat79Hell Yeah! 🤜 I hope you keep that up!!! Also, FANTASTIC editing, now that I got you. Dividing the video with appropriate chapter title splashes was also very choice.
@thechevyferrari9559 aw thanks alot man❤️ I'm glad you enjoyed it this time the script was divided by Chapters and I think it really helped the pacing, Dean deserves all the critic for that one
That was really noticeable for me too! They stopped cutting out his name here. I need to double check to see if it was only in reality that thet said it. Seems only The Bright Presence and the original version of Return cut out his name.
Excellent video :). It's interesting that even with a seemingly infinite spiral, we the audience only see the rituals repeated in threes, where the 3rd is Alan's major success. American Nightmare was repeated 3 times, Saga goes into 3 overlaps then can pull out Alan, Alex Casey novels rewritten as the Cult of the Word rewritten as the Cult of the Tree, etc. We've seen only two drafts of 'Return', in American Nightmare and in Alan Wake II, which implies the 3rd time will work.
I love that you never say/let someone else say Scratch. It’s a rather simple device, but in practice it’s just awesome. I am very new to your channel. How long have you been making Remedy centered content?
I really want to see someone compare completely American nightmare and AW2, listing all these things that were already though 13 years ago and just more fleshed out and developped in AW2.
Late to the party... But here goes anyway! Played through at launch, then played other games for a while. Just finished my Final Draft playthrough. I don't think that Mr. Scratch and Scratch are the same antagonist in a literal sense, and I think Alan spells out that distinction when he describes Mr. Scratch as "a caricature of all the tabloid headlines, etc." about Alan. Mr. Scratch is the sum of all those stories as Alan sees them. He is what Alan imagines those tabloid stories must see when they see him. In contrast, Scratch in Alan Wake II is Alan's own personal insecurities. The distinction is subtle, but essentially Mr. Scratch's personality does not include Scratch, but Scratch includes Mr. Scratch. Scratch in AWII is a much more comprehensive set of all the worst things Alan secretly believes about himself. The things plausible enough to be real. And given the nature of the spiral here where Alan is Scratch in AWII... that means that Alan subconsciously believes they are truly the same person. Whereas he was able to keep some personal distance from Mr. Scratch, and recognized Mr. Scratch as something to absurd to be real. Which incidentally lead to Alan actually confronting Mr. Scratch and performing a ritual that prevented Mr. Scratch from becoming part of the real world.
I personally see points where the two are very different. Thresholds do not require a ritual to be opened, and their effect is way more physical (a chunk of another dimension finds its way into the Oldest House) while Overlaps feel like they affect your perception of an area, not the area itself. Thresholds are constant, once they're there, they are there. while Overlaps activate when the Ritual is done and after they briefly connect the two worlds, they disappear.
Thresholds are just pathways between other realities. Overlaps specifically are between the Dark Place and reality crossing over one another. All dogs are mammals but not all mammals are dogs.
I dont know where else to type this, but in the herald of darkness performance at the VGA's, did we get the "Real" old gods to perform? I noticed in Dark Ocean summoning in the game and in the official herald of darkness music video, Odin had the eyepatch on his left eye. But everytime we see the real odin, its on his right away, just like in the VGA performance. god i love Remedy
Young Odin had it over one eye for his stage performances. However, in 1988 Mr. Door officially took his eye and took the other one. That's when his eye patch moved over.
I do wonder how much will be changed in NG+ like will the plot remain the same and small things will be changed or will it be major changes. Alan always says the most confusing things when the game ends (from ‘Its not a lake, it’s an ocean’ to the now ‘it’s not a loop, it’s a spiral’) I really hope he actually gets out of the Dark Place. Something I’m also curious on is Saga’s role, especially in NG+ if there are going to be new things. I wonder if she will be aware of these new changes (I think most likely) and if she is aware now how much will she try to change to ensure that the stuff that happened last time won’t happen again. Gosh there’s so many theories running through my head! One thing the Remedy Games are good at is making you have so many theories and interpretations of things. Makes me even more excited for future games they are making! Can’t wait for the Max Payne remakes and Control 2! Also I do kinda miss whenever you said Mr Scratch’s name that a scratching noice plays.
@@GamingUniversityUoGI think I know which character you’re talking about because I too have heard stuff about a specific character. Can’t wait for the DLCs and NG+
I also wanted to comment on the idea of the Dark Place flowing like water (lake/ocean/etc.), because it reminded me of this bit: "What I'm looking for when I'm a player is full immersion. I don't want the experience of being a 'storyteller' when I'm a PC, and that's a little bit of a different thing, like a lot of indie games want a flat hierarchy around the table where everybody takes turns as the storyteller; I don't want that when I'm a player. When I'm a player I want to be living in a story, immersed into a character that is not, to their knowledge, living in a story. Like Evan Kelmp said in Misfits & Magic, 'I'm not a character,' right? I don't want to play a character that's thinking about their fucking narrative arc. I want to play a character that wants to save the world as quickly and efficiently as possible, right? But I, the player, want the arc. So, me and my character exist at odds, because I want the deep immersion, I want the fucking Mount Doom, Frodo's quest, all that shit, but I want to play a character that doesn't want that. I want to play a character that gets the Ring as quickly as possible to Mount Doom, because that's the immersion I'm looking for. So, what does that mean if I want to provide that experience to a player? Players are like water. They are going down the hill as fast as they can, seeking the path of least resistance. That's what the character is like, water, but the player wants anything other than a straight line. So, my job as 'rails' is irrigating a path down that, that lets the water always have taken the fastest route towards its goal, but at the end of it, the shape is the most convoluted and pleasing. Right? That, like, you achieved the shape of a story, while you were trying your hardest to go in a straight line." -- Brennan Lee Mulligan, "Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable" Alan wants out of the Dark Place, he wants to save Alice and the world, and he wants to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible (if it is possible), but as a writer he also knows that the reader/player won't be satisfied without complications and internal consistency, and those complications are also necessary for preventing the Dark Place from spilling out into the world... which it also wants as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Hey Gaming University, I don't really usually leave a comment, but I just wanted to share a thought with you. Knowing how much Sam Lake is a Stephen King fan, don't you think reading The Dark Tower (especially the end) could be interesting because the spiral even if it's not mentionned could be considered as a reccuring theme and put some event under a new light. To me the remedy connected universe could be a reimagining of the stephen king dark multiverse, Jesse Faden could be considered a Breaker ( shining user), Alan as a writer can be considered as Stephen King himself and as a character could be seen as Roland because he is following a man first seen dressed in black (Mr scratch) to confront him. You could also argue that the oldest house can be as an analogy of the dark tower, and the main antagonist of the dark tower is the Scarlet King waiting in front of the tower, scarlet is the color of the hiss and it remains in the oldest house, I won't list more things because it'll make my comment more tedious but I guess you can see where I'm coming to with all these elements. Anyway take care and thank you very much for your content.
This is really good, there's a lot of compelling stuff here. Something I still can't piece together is why Zane (I believe as the Light Presence) tells Alan "Don't mind him, he's Mr. Scratch. Your friends will meet him when you're gone." Why would the Light Presence be so non-chalant about it, considering he's a form of the Dark Presence and intends to do harm? Also, Scratch mentions letting Alice get glimpses of him in American Nightmare. Can American Nightmare Scratch appear in the real world and that's what Alice reports seeing in AWE, or is that supposed to be Alan who from a later version of Return as revealed in Alan Wake 2?
The thing is we have no idea what 665 really means. Sam used it as a joke back in Max Payne 1. But at this point it is either a running gag or a fingerprint of someone
Would love to see your view on the subject of Alice Wake and her ultimate fate. I think that we can tell with pretty certainty that shes in the dark place. She crossed the threshold to it second time to help Alan escape. In the final draft ending she tells Alan, that she came into contact with the organisation which looking into what happened around Cauldron Lake in 2010. The player is led to believe that she’s referring to the FBC, especially since we know from the AWE dlc to Control that she went to the oldest house some time after the events of the first Alan wake game. But, from the collectibles we know, that the FBC in the common fashion of secrecy didn’t actually help Alice, didn’t told her anything. What I think is that the organisation she’s referring to could be Blessed Organisation. Could be interesting story of future game content or even dlc with Alice as protagonist. She even could have her own game mechanics with her fotos and their influence on reality and the Dark Place.
nice vid. the seed\idea concept is interesting. it almost alludes to the fact the story is getting further and further away from the original idea with each go round of the spiral. idk if that will be a good or bad thing tho
Its funny because American Nightmare kind of goes against Alan's philosophy about how a Story is a beast of its own and wants to tell its own story. At the Seed of Return he had an end goal. Escape and rejoin Alice. Everything he did was in service of that end goal. But as a result he controlled his story to force the ending. Hence why it didn't work well. He had to let the story get away from him and become what it wanted. But by keeping it in a spiraling loop he could ensure even failures didn't mean the end. He could still make adjustments to push the story into a more favorable position.
I love the analogy between the spiral and the development of a story from idea to completion. It didn't occur to me that the spiral was also a reference to the notion of drafts. I have some additional thoughts about the idea of the spiral as narrative progression within the context of the meta-narrative itself. The game plays out with "loops within loops" - a fractal spiral, it seems sometimes. The whole game is a spiral (each time it's played will be at least a little different based on the choices of the player), each time Alan restarts a new draft of Initiation is a spiral, and different based on what he learns, and even within the various specific gameplay sections are little loops which aren't actually loops (as they change over time: thinking of Saga in the bunker, for example). We really only have a few layers, but it's possible that there are more, larger layers.
Ah! i see you possibly read my "SPIRALS GO DOWN!" rantings that i've been posting everywhere lol! I do suppose a tree spirals upward in some sense, thats one possibility, i still see spirals as symbolically leading towards their center though. Even if the seed of growth is there, its more of an end point for all the objects interacting with the spiral. For the spiral, its center may be its beginning, and the outer edge its end, but to anyone interacting with a spiral, the natural tendency is to end up at its center, whether tracking with your eyes or exploring somehow, if you're in a spiral, you realize at the center, not at the edge. The on other important thing to consider is the 3rd option: not end, not beginning, forever, same as the loop. In purely abstract space, unhindered by the granularity of human physical or visual limitations, the spiral can move towards the center forever, fractally, and never arrive. I lean towards the other interpretations because i feel like the story is steering us towards its end-point, so naturally i want to assume the spiral ends. But to counter that statement once more, the endings of AW1 and AW2 lead me to conclude we may well end AW3 with another "Its not X its Y" moment that could easily be "it goes on forever... its not an end its a beggining"
If Alan's been trapped in a spiral all these years, would you consider Remedy's scrapped sequel canon? Alan portraying himself like an action hero after knowing how the dark place worked? Only to fail and rewrite a new scenario that would eventually become "American Nightmare"
Amazing video Dean like always, i have a question, what is the difference between a threshold and an overlap? are they the same thing with different names?
So far the Overlap is specifically a cross section of the Dark Place and Reality. Thresholds are an umbrella term for whenever there is a path to other realities. So I would argue Overlaps are a Threshold but not all Thresholds are Overlaps. That's my understanding as of right now.
I think I disagree: this terminology gives us a better handle on different kinds of Thresholds we see in Control. The Mold, for example, feels like an Overlap: it's clearly the Oldest House architecture, for the most part, but infested by the Mold. Two dimensions intersecting. The Black Rock Quarry, on the other hand, is clearly elsewhere, outside the Oldest House -- a Threshold but not an Overlap. I don't think it needs to involve the Dark Place specifically.
Do thresholds also need ro be related to the myths and lore of the places where they happen? The ones we saw in control (Quarry, Mold) didn't really seem to be, but they're inside the Oldest House, so it might be different there
Thinking about it, perhaps each 'loop' which has happened before had a 'finished' Initiation, which in the next loop Door shows to Alan to remind him about it. But the loop before the one we play is different. Instead of ██████████ being the protagonist of Return, like he had tried many, many loops ago, after seeing Saga in an Overlap, he has the idea to write in Saga as the protagonist instead of ██████████, which he does after his 'third draft' of Initiation (which becomes the version Door shows) has been completed. Of course, because in that loop, ██████████ is still the protagonist, it's them who shoots the Bullet of Light that ends the loop... And brings us into the loop we play. In this loop, Mr. Warlin Door ends up learning about how Saga Anderson was written into the story when Alan edits her into it in this loop, which is why the next time they meet during Masks, he warns the writer that the next time that they meet (which would be the first chapter of NG+ Initiation), he better play his part or keep out of his way. One thing I suspect which will happen in NG+ Initiation is that there will be one less encounter with Door - in that what was the first mini loop will be skipped and instead their first meeting would be what was the one with Sam Lake who's playing the role of Alex Casey. Perhaps here, so long as Alan 'plays his role', Door will drop a hint that it was his daughter's life he was messing with, and that the prior ending of 'Return' wasnt quite enough (because she was still trapped in the Dark Place along with Alex) to try and guide him to getting to the true ending he would want for her. The second meeting would remain as We Sing, and would either remain as Hearld of Darkness... Or would be a different song (maybe Balance Slays the Demon or a new song that's yet to be released?) And then the third and final meeting... Well, that depends on a few things, but if Door is unhappy about how Return is turning out... We may have a new boss fight on our hands.
Also, thinking about it, the encounters with Zane will also be different as Alan would remember everything, that is if he needs to visit him during the 'second' draft of Initiation of that cycle. The 'third' draft visit though would most likely still be needed for the ticket though.
The thing with spirals though is that with each full pass you get further from the origin, further from the original idea. The term spiraling out of control comes to mind. The simple fact is that this seems to have all started with Thomas Zane but we cannot be sure of that since Alan Wake is the result of Zane rewriting his own history in an attempt to undo the mistake of trying to write his dead wife back into existence. We then have Alan Wake writing the FBC and Jessie Faden into existence to deal with The Darkness. In the space of three loops we've seen a shift from the original concept. This descent into absolute chaos with conflicting reality rewrites becomes even more apparent in AW2 where even more revisions are made to attempt to fix the problems introduced in previous drafts. The only way out of this is to write Thomas Zane completely out of existence so that the origin of the spiral is destroyed. It's not a spiral, it's a house of cards.
![Alan Wake | Two Thomas Zanes? [Theory]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_sOsMK25MZ8/mqdefault.jpg)
![There'll Be Nothing Left But Dying Embers. | Starting New Game+ in Armored Core VI! [Part 10]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SxRqjqvk5iY/mqdefault.jpg)
So, Alan spends years writing, forgetting, going insane, going sane, rewriting, failing, and then giving up on "Return." Then he forgets he gave up and presumably writes a short-cut version of "Return" - born of his deep-seeded desire to reunite with Alice - in which the quickest and easiest way out of the dark place is to simply let the Dark Presence win.
Alan then "Scratches" out his own name and begins writing out of desperation rather than craft. A new Scratch is born; assembled from Alan's basest desires, an id monster. Presumably this is why Nightingale had to be written out, to make room for Alan to be the new vessel for the DP.
This is the ritual to lead you on, your friends will meet him when you're gone. It seems like, to me, that the Dark Presence structured the whole thing just waiting for Wake to break on his own failings so it could fill the void left behind.
Good point. also it seems that Alan destroyed the doppelganger version of scratch back in American Nightmare and what you described is the new Scratch manifested from the dark presence and taken control over Alan.
100% i think these are two different Scratched born from different things.
But yeah little by little the dark place is chipping away his resolve. Even when he gave up writing an unconscious part of him that desired to write and escape kept working. It is an insane spiraling trap.
I think S̴̘͔̠̥͙̲̘͉̜̰͍̔̔̊̊͛̀̽͆̌c̸͕̦̱̬̯̝̯̖̼̹̮̓̈͛͆͂͜͝ͅͅͅr̶̻͚̝͌̌̑͐͗͂͊͒a̷̢͚̦̜͙̦͔̗͒͑̀́͑̓͋̂͆͑͘̚͜͠͝ẗ̴̻͙̍̾̎͊́̂̆̅̎̅͋̓͘č̶̡̨̛̻̩̪͕̰͕̬̹h̴͕̪̰̞͈̲̦̘͕̄̀̊̔͒͛͑̓͆̃̂̓̕͠͝ is just a constant factor now. As long as Alan is in the Dark Place, the Presence will attach itself to him, being the best and nost powerful creative it has access to.
Nightmare/AW1 S̴̘͔̠̥͙̲̘͉̜̰͍̔̔̊̊͛̀̽͆̌c̸͕̦̱̬̯̝̯̖̼̹̮̓̈͛͆͂͜͝ͅͅͅr̶̻͚̝͌̌̑͐͗͂͊͒a̷̢͚̦̜͙̦͔̗͒͑̀́͑̓͋̂͆͑͘̚͜͠͝ẗ̴̻͙̍̾̎͊́̂̆̅̎̅͋̓͘č̶̡̨̛̻̩̪͕̰͕̬̹h̴͕̪̰̞͈̲̦̘͕̄̀̊̔͒͛͑̓͆̃̂̓̕͠͝ is the Dark Presence eroding h8m, showing him what it would do with him to weaken him and gwt what it wants. Its recurrence in AW2 is just pissed off that its host outsmarted it, and now, is doing whatever it takes to not onoy ruin Alan's life, but sprint towards its goal. Alan's a powerful creative, and clearly, a threat.
I think his Scratched out edits are more Alan thinking he's desperately stopping Scratch from winning - as he's under the impression that Scratch wrote Return and wrote a horror story. So his edits are him making Saga the hero of Return instead and trying to write a version to undermine Scratch's story. But he doesn't get to finish it in time before he's shot in the head.
"Monster is not in darkness, but in emptiness", "Your friends will meet him when you're gone". Dark Presence by itself can't do anything, but as soon as Alan gave up, was gone, it used his shell, creating a monster - Scratch. But that could also come true even without some mystical Dark Presence. When he gave up, he was at his lowest point, insane, mad, desperate, angry. At that point, your inner darkness could come out in order for you to survive. He started to write again in this state, to survive, to escape, no matter the cost, no matter how dark the story will be and no matter what would happen next.
So the Dark Presence in this case is nothing more than human's darkest bits, his anger, sins, egocentricity, the dark twisted and cruel version of himself. Why i think it's close to true, or at least why Alan might think of it this way now, is the ending of the game. He intentionally let the Dark Presence take him, and while waiting for it to happen, he said "COME HOME". Come home. To me, to my brain, to the place you were born from. Maybe it was a part of the Dark Presence, that was born within him, and the Dark Presence more broadly is an amalgamation of all the people's darkness within or something like that. And you can fight this darkness with light, but you can never completely defeat it, because it's human's nature, and so what to do with this is basically written in the Balance Slays the Demon.
"In the end, it's never just the light you need.
When balance slays the demon, you find peace".
Somehow, you need to accept your Dark Presence to escape, not be swallowed by it completely, but be in control of it, and it seems like Alan already started heading into this direction.
There's a thing about overlaps that I like the most: it's not only overlaps in a "fiction-on-reality" way, but also "draft-on-draft" overlaps. Alan wrote several drafts of "Initiation" about "the detective in New York", but none of them worked well enough. So, when he continued his work, he used his exact ideas in the new draft (which he expected to be "Return", but IT IS actually "Initiation"), but adapted them to the new setting. In the places, where he used those ideas unchanged in their core, but a bit adapted - there's where the overlaps happen. FBI agent killed by the cult in the subway becomes Nightingale; two cops, who killed a kid and hide the body in the well become Mulligan and Thornton; the lady killed in the bath in the hotel becomes Cynthia Weaver. Everything we see as Alan in The Dark Place has never happened and actually wasn't even in a finished book - it was his search for ideas, which led to the Saga's story in the end. The Saga's story is "Initiation". After finishing it, Alan supposedly understands how "the process of writing" works in its core, that it's iterative, so it's a spiral.
The whole story is about "creating the perfect work of art", so to say
I like your take on the "draft-on-draft" concept for the overlaps, but isn't Saga's story actually Return with the edits rather than Initiation? Alan going through the "detective in New York" plot in Initiation is what leads him to find Return in the writer's room, which he then edits to include Saga in the story. I do agree that the plot beats are similar between Initiation and Return (especially with the murders), but I thought Initiation was Alan's story to discover Return and add Saga into the story, and ultimately change it to the hero's journey.
At the same time though, Saga during her path of "Return with edits" overlaps with Alan on his path through Initiation, even though Initiation precedes "Return with edits."
I'm really hoping Remedy is going all out and making the New Game Plus a pretty major change to the story. It would be one of the greatest rug-pulls in the history of gaming, and the game in several ways is screaming that it should be done.
This is what I expect. and if they pull it off. Chef's kiss. Especially considering they are making us wait. I don't think it will be radically different but different enough that it is noticeable and relevant.
Normally I don’t play New Game Plus, I like to experience the game from level 1 and make my way up, but in this case I’ll make an exception.
I found out playing the game again and the intro with Alan is the continuation of the end whenever he gets cut off. I haven’t put them together but it would be nice to know
I hope for a nier: automata type of new game plus
The Armored Core games have also been doing the same thing since either 4 or For Answer
Something else that goes well with this:
When we switch from Alan to Saga or vice versa, it shows a whirlpool. A whirlpool is just a spiral made of liquid. So, as the player, we're going up/down the spiral to switch characters.
On top of this. It may sound weird but I've had rare occasions where I remember what I see when I fall to sleep and into a dream. It looked to be like that spiraling tunnel.
@@GamingUniversityUoG If I recall correctly, spirals are common symbols both in nature and in human culture, so I wonder if the spiral symbolism in the Remedyverse is much larger than it appears to be. Polaris is represented by a spiral, the Writer's Room door has a spiral on it, the spiraling tunnel, etc, it could be a clue as to the inner workings of that universe or reality.
I also had an interesting thought: what if we see the spiraling tunnel when changing characters because both Saga and Alan are in the Dark Place in the future? It could be just a game mechanic, but it's interesting because none of the characters bring it up or are really aware of it happening. That, and it is confirmed that the Dark Place can and does affect time to an unspecified degree. It brought Alan to Saga in the past when she used the Clicker in the future.
And I think there's something up with the Tom Zane we see, his film "Yoton Yo" has a lot of parallels to the story concludes in almost the same way that the game itself does. I have an idea that he was written into the past to help Alan's past self by someone from the future. We see a glimpse of Zane after being shot by Alan in the hotel that implies he's alive somewhere, somehow. And I don't recall if Zane was ever in American Nightmare at all. He just seems to come into existence between that and Control, with no direct connection I know of. I kinda wonder if a future Alan is writing things into his past to enable him to escape or ascend.
@@dweller132 The spiral is the image of forever, its lines, following their previous trajectories through infinite fractal space, never end. The circle is one thing forever, the spiral is allness, continuous travel towards the untouchable center.
@@GamingUniversityUoGthat's my problem with all of this. Am I supposed to believe you? How do I know that you are not making up this anecdote? And, if you really mean it, how to know that you aren't lying to yourself or "making" false memories about seeing these symbols?
@@MantasticHamsi think you may have misinterpreted something? alan says it "its not a loop, its a spiral" if it were a loop alan couldn't write an ending.
spirals are symbols of change and rebirth, not forever (thats what a loop means in aw)
I’m honestly in awe at the shear amount of narrative content in this game has. There’s an endless amount of discussion to be had on any seemingly small aspect. You sure got your work cut out for you.
Challenge accepted! We still havent gotten to the end of Control yet
I’m in AWE too
@@GamingUniversityUoGlook into the Triskelion, it seems related to this video
There is apart of me that is convinced that everything that happens to him in the dark place is a reaction to his writer's block. He is still in a position where he has to write for survival, to save someone. He is not naturally getting past his block so even when he does write, he always goes back behind the block and his comments at the end of the games is him resetting everything to be put back behind the block(Lake->Ocean, Loop->Spiral) and I think a good visualization of this issue is the writers room. To escape the dark place, to beat Mr. Scratch, to save/"avenge" his wife he must go back to the one place his subconscious does not want to be. the games are him forcing himself to write what he needs and not what he wants, which is a good analogy to an actual writers block and then he spirals downwards because he cannot get past his block and the only way he can ascend the spiral is if he gets past his block.
One of the cool things about the first game is the scenario is structured to force him through his writers block. Write or lose your wife. If you do it wrong and make a bad story the world will end.
AW2 also borrowed the "3 loops of 3 acts" structure from American Nightmare for the Initiation chapters. I'm hoping that won't extend into the true ending being New Game++, though the way the beginning of AW2 already strongly hints this isn't the first loop could mean that's already taken care of.
One thing that was discussed yesterday is the fact that Estevez sent a tech out to check out the monitoring station after it went down in 2019. If this was Steven Lin then he got caught up in the loop and it has been occurring for 4 years. Just to give an external timeline on how long this has been occurring.
@@GamingUniversityUoG
Something that's really stuck in my mind is just how antiqued just about all the technology is in Bright Falls and Watery. There's hardly anything more recent than what you'd see in or around the 2000's. I don't know if it amounts to anything, or if it's just an aesthetic choice. But it's so ubiquitous and consistent that it seems to invite implication ... you know, beyond that the economy of the area has probably been depressed since the mine closed down.
@@Dream0Asylum I agree and also it is hard for a place like that to grow since they have been dealing with the taken. I kinda believe now the torchbearers didn't want it to grow since it would really fuel the place with the perfect candidates like Alan wake.
@@GamingUniversityUoGThere anything concrete on the rules for the threshold? Accepting that he's been climbing the spiral for years, Estevez mentions the FBC lockdown. Time still seems to be moving, though. Are the FBC still in lockdown looping through the Hiss for years or is it just the Bright Falls area? The threshold seems to travel far enough to hit Saga's family.
Feel like I'm waiting until the second DLC for answers unless I missed something in the main game.
you know IDK why i hadnt pondered the low-tech in bright falls, i feel like it was basically that way in the first game as well, but i just considered it a visual motif, but its an important detail in Control, and i feel like theres gotta be something there if its universal throughout these games so far.
Loved it! And kudos to the editor too, it's so visually pleasing and stimulating. On the topic of Scratch, my take on him is that this latest version was created out of the Dark Presence's desire to have Alan write it into reality so darkness can be spread across the world (this was the primary motivation in AW 1 as well). So it makes sense that it came into being when Alan was ready to give up. It then also makes sense it collaborated with Zane to write their joint escape from The Dark Place. I do think there's an extra dimension here to consider that's thematically relevant: it came into being out of Alan's despair at thinking he'd caused Alice's suicide. Throughout the game, we see people being Taken due to their own insecurities, feelings of guilt, doubt, mistakes...the darkness in their own minds, basically. This version of Scratch seems to prey on that. AFAIR the Dark Presence didn't really used to work like that, right? People just got attacked and then became Taken. But now there's this thematic link between possession by Scratch and the darkness in people's minds. Not sure where we're going with this, hope NG+ will bring more clarity. But I found that a really interesting aspect of this game.
Best analysis of AW2 so far.
I have never waited to start a NG+ like that.
Just waiting for an excuse to replay this masterpiece, and having more elements to the story and hopefully more fulfilling ending is a great excuse to say the least
It will be the greatest form of New Game plus just from the mets narrative change for WHY we are replaying it. I flipping love Remedy.
This is one of the videos I was most looking forward to when playing through this game. I’m fascinated by how Alan has evolved over his time in the Dark Place. To me, it feels like the second version of Mr. Scratch comes, not from the dark ideas that others have about him, but his own dark thoughts about himself. He’s literally fighting his own self doubt.
When I finished the game, I felt pretty confident what "the spiral" was, and what Alice Wake hoped to help Alan through, was analogous to Buddhist reincarnation. Every cycle Alan goes through, Alice wants to help him get a little closer to letting go. She even uses the word "ascend", if I recall. This is in contrast to the man who claims to be Tom Zane, who is shown tempting Alan with an escape, but alcohol and cocaine. Mr Scratch's "perfect" world was the natural conclusion of Alan's obsession over his own writing, his anger, and the hedonism that comes with being a celebrity. The first huge step Alan took is rejecting that world and his own freedom because he knew it would come at the cost of Saga's life. He and those who care about him (Alice, The Old Gods, Ahti, and arguably Mr. Door now that it's clear Alan wouldn't selfishly sacrifice Saga) are helping him strip away all those temptations and stressors over each cycle. Whether his "ascension" means literal escape back to reality , moving to a higher plane like Dr. Darling from Control, or just getting to die, I don't know. My gut is that this is meant to be the end of his story though, and not a declaration of future content. If that's the case I'm perfectly happy with that.
Hi Dean, great video!
This is something unrelated, but SPOILER
I noticed that in the song "Dark, twisted and cruel" most of the lyrics are taken directly from a Zane's poem (Poem 1 April 09) from This House of Dreams.
The poems are referenced only by Zane the director and this song. Also, the poems Alan finds at the end of each overlap talk about Scratch/Alan and all three end with what Zane the Diver said about Scratch at the end of the first one: "Your friends will meet him when you are gone".
Not to mention how the Hiss incantation is continuously referenced throughout the game. It's amazing how they inserted all these little details!
One of these days I'll get back to look at all the poems we saw in This House of Dreams. His work is starting to become more relevant
I’m only 1:45 in and I have to say that you did a great job explaining the difference in which direction the spiral goes. In a previous video, I think you used a spiral that we looked down upon, and that made it a little difficult to visualize how it might be different depending on the direction. The visual you used here made it crystal clear. Love the video so far!
Glad it was clearer for this one! Yellowbat chose the assets for this one when he was doing the editing. I agree it is easier to see this way.
@@GamingUniversityUoG It’s funny how a slight shift in perspective can change the way you think about a topic (insert thought-provoking metaphor for life here-after driving for 8 straight hours today, the only perspective I can get behind is the one in my bed right now, lol).
I’ve been binging your Control videos on your other channel and want to say thanks for all thought you put into your videos, but also into your streams too. I finally got to see the Ashtray maze as it was meant to be, since most streamers edit out/replace the music due to copyright. I understand the reason why and that they make a living off of their videos, but it genuinely was such a pleasure to enjoy the true experience. Same with your Alan Wake 2 videos, and I’ve been telling friends to come check out your videos since I don’t think they realized how amazing the chapter songs are!
Anyway, apologies for the long ranting comment after a long drive, I don’t think I’m making much sense. Hopefully I will catch one of your streams live sometime soon! As a literature major and former high school English teacher, I’d love to contribute to the discussions in chat someday. Especially if you ever do a Twin Peaks watch-a-long!
The amount of content on this channel will SPIRAL out of control.
After only liking the streams for the algorithm before leaving them immediately, i could not possibly resist the analysis of this game. I'm going to spoil it for me, but i still don't have time for playing this masterpiece myself.
I hope you get the chance to play it soon!
U should try this game, it blow my mind and twisted every moment, and the gameplay- never seen a gameplay like that, this game is a true of art
Wow i tought your videos coudn’t get any better, but damnnn the editing, the structure of the video and the graphics are so perfect. You have quickly become one of my favourite youtuber
Yellowbat tried out a bunch of new stuff editing wise for this one. Loved how it all turned out!
10:04 I think being caught in the loop with Alan is why Scratch is angrier in II than he was in American Nightmare.
Was waiting for the first deep dive video on Alan Wake 2! We've got a long way to go until we even scratch the surface of this game and everything it has hidden within
I don't think we know how many layers we have. No joke I am picking up new stuff every day
You kind of said something similar here to what I imagine the spiral to be:
The ending of the spiral is connected to the beginning. Now, you could use this to describe things happening in each game, but I think its better to look at it from the perspective of all games. The spiral is the symbol for all (probably 3) games and the points where the connection from the ending of the spiral to the beginning intersects, is the ending of one game and beginning of the next. The first descent (the destruction part, as Alice calls it) starts at the outside of the spiral and goes down until it reaches the intersection point, the end of Alan Wake 1. There the second descent starts and moves even deeper in until the next intersection, the end of Alan Wake 2. Now, as for Alan Wake 3, we will again start at the point we left off and we first have to go down until we reach the center. From there we will finally ascend up through the connection and be really free of the Dark Place (or will we just start descending again? Who knows). On the way up we could have flashbacks to the stories that happened at each intersection with the spiral.
I immediately thought about this at the end of AW2 because of a game I played aaaaages ago, Uru. It is kind of using the same symbolism, but in a different context:
"An ending has been written? You've done all that has been asked. You've traveled the full circle. You have returned to the Cleft through the Fissure. You swam among the stars and saw the remnants of previous journeys. You have returned and the pillars were returned, and now one more of the bahro, the least, has been returned to D'ni. You don't need to understand what that means, only that the hand of the Maker has set it in motion.
Now the circle is complete and the tree has begun to grow again. The path is now open, and so the symbol of the Journey must change. Now the beginning is tied to the end. Now you can go where you wish."
Im not sure if that made sense in writing, but I hope so, and sorry for the long comment. Also, thank you for all your great videos trying to explain all of this stuff!
This video is spectacular! Thank you for this! Also thank you for having the scratch over Scratch's name, it adds so much to him!
Thank you for understanding! I've seen some confusion as I why i do it
Thank you for being the only person I've seen thus far to give American Nightmare its flowers in terms of what it contributes to our understanding of Wake 2. Everyone tends to ignore it because it's a short experience with like 3 campaign levels and Wake/Scratch are the only truly interesting characters in the narrative but I've always thought how that narrative plays out echoed far out into the future, and approximately zero analyses of 2 I've watched bring it up.
LETS GOOOOOO ALAN WAKE 2 VIDEOS ARE FINALLY HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So excited it is time to talk about AW2!
Great video Dean. I haven't played American Nightmare so I didn't realize Alan had to perform a serious of rituals just right to get the result he needed. The idea that NG+ might get us a different ending where Alan might be closer to his goal is intriguing. It would definitely be Sam's style
It also links with the Heroine's Journey,
A Hero's journey is like a loop and starts again from where it began in the first place,
But the heroines journey works in spirals, newer and deeper understanding of the self
Oh boy! Bit of a mindfuck when I think of lighthouse stairs being a spiral and how that first dream sequence in AW1 ends🤔 Thank you. I needed that realization this morning XD
It's quite possible you've already made a video on this so I can always be pointed there, but I did some spiral searching a smidge back after playing through Control and becoming obsessed with an RCU. In the original Alan Wake 1, after noclip/freecam scouring the game for any spirals, there was only ever one spiral I could find. It was a spiral that appears on a book face and that book appeared a few times throughout the game(Like a bad Remedy fan, I did not end up getting the AW Remaster so I am unsure if those books are still present or not in there at all). The spiral being so specific to Alan's world in Control, and it being represented on a book, I think it could just possibly dig even deeper into the question of who exactly wrote who.
Here's the big question, how much merit is there in the possibility that similar to using influence in the cabin to write his Thomas Zane/Barbra Jagger story, maybe just maybe he could have used the spiral on a book and it's meaning as a writer, to write a bigger and deeper universe where the FBC/all these crazy entities exists?? Could be reaching, but I've had those spiral books in the back of my mind for like 5 years and I have to believe their connected somehow🥲
I keep being reminded of the "Rule of 3" from Control
I think Alan realized that the tone of the first draft didn't really match up with Departure, not to mention he was skipping Initiation altogether. I think he skipped it initially because he just wanted to go home. Then he realized the ending was too cliche and needed to be more ambiguous. So the story became a trilogy.
On top of this ANYTHING he does is confined by the story. So the Clicker was changed to be an instrument causing permanent changes. This was he has his loophole rather than be dragged back into the Dark Place at the end of the story.
A video on Mr. Door is in the cards right, and not just because he might be a variant of Martin Hatch but the face that he might be Saga's father. @@GamingUniversityUoG
So happy Alan Wake is out because I get to hear your expert analysis on everything.
Working on some more right now! We have years of things to talk about.
wow, the production quality of this video is above and beyond!
The spiral is also demonstrated in Saga's boss fights in the overlap. She sees the same "loop" when she's actually going deeper and deeper down the spiral until she reaches a final point: the boss fight itself.
Honestly, I’m considering not even calling the “Scratch” in AWII by that name, because “he” acts more like Alan’s other half in the first game’s DLC; he’s all of Alan’s negative aspects, given power by the Dark Place, and he even gives Alan headaches!
To me, this makes me wonder if Alan, when confronting this manifestation of his Shadow, didn’t incorporate it like he should-which is totally in-character for an author who tries to skip the “initiation” phase of storytelling to get to the “return” part-and, instead, suppressed it; then, when Alan finally gives up and stops writing, “Scratch” comes rearing to the forefront and steals the show, with Alan blind to its machinations.
Also, side note: I’ve been entertaining the idea that the Astral Plane and the Dark Place are being presented as reflections of themselves, sort of as Yin and Yang? Yin being “dark/passive”, and Yang being “light/active”, this would align with the ideas that the Astral Plane is a place of conscious/active thought, and the Dark Place one of unconscious/passive thought. Going further…it’s funny how the Board is almost like the spot of “yin” to the Astral’s “yang,” but what would be the spot of “yang” in the Dark Place’s yin? Not Alan, surely…perhaps the “Bright Presence”? Or Zane??
Love the production style of this video! Amazing work
Appreciate it! I'm really lucky to be working with an awesome editor.
Love the new editing style!
Glad you enjoy! I like how it turned out too
ahh the EDITING in this. top notch i love it
Great video, Dean! Love it!
Speaking of Scratch, I'm pretty sure that Mr. Scratch from the first game and American Nightmare is the Finnish director Thomas Zane (Seine), and I have solid proof.
You know the story of how Alex Casey investigated the Cult of the Word and its leader Mr. Scratch. The detective met him eventually in Seine's cinema, but we never saw this leader's face. I managed to check the game files and found that his echo is labeled as "zane_scratch".
And everything suddenly made sense, you know. The popular celebrity invited to the hotel turned out to be Mr. Scratch, who killed the muse. How Zane's missing lamp ended up in Seine's possession. How Cynthia said Tom reached out to her. And Seine had been living in this very hotel all this time and knew the site of the murder to point it out to Alan.
It is believed that Seine, like Thomas Zane, disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1970 and allegedly never escaped the Dark Place, but Alex Casey met him in New York in 2013. This makes sense because Mr. Scratch can move between the real world and a Dark Place.
There are also prototypes of phone calls in the game files, in which Seine intentionally introduces himself as Alan Wake, using the intonation of the cult leader's voice. Such calls are signed as "talk_to_zane_at_payphone_scratch".
You know, there is a lot going on in the game that substantiates this conclusion, besides Seine's nickname "Dark Doppelganger" on the poster, The Happy Song (with that pulpy tone in general) and the wedding band, although Barbara wasn't Zane's wife in any version. Tom even wears the same clothes!
I think when Remedy named the Dark Presence Scratch, they intentionally wanted to confuse everyone and even create the impression that Scratch may have been part of Alan the whole series. That he was his Jung's "shadow". But the Bright Presence knew the truth and said that Mr. Scratch is a separate entity.
And I find it very suspicious that they "retconned" Tom's surname into Seine, as if to make the first letter match the Devil's alias.
Anyway, I hope I didn't ruin the fun with this digging. I wish you all the best!
5:42 There is a quote from a poem in the game that saga can find in ng+ and alan finds i belive in the cinema overlap that has the excerpt "when night springs, bright falls" and it was talking about the overlaps i think.
so excited the Alan wake 2 lessons are starting. With the new lore and info we have, I think we're in for such a treat!
Looking forward to your chapter song analysis. Great video as always. Love the addition of the "Tom Zane" film reel style. *Chef's kiss.*
9:29 ur giving me ptsd from teh game 💀
Haha! my bad
It was legit a scary game. I remember when I realized I was scared while playing it 😰
You have done a great job along the years , I thank you for that , it's a pleasure to see some of thing you theorized to be true in AW2 , thank you so much Man.
I very much appreciate it. Frankly I didnt think I'd still be doing YT four years ago. But here we are.
This was awesome brother. American Nightmare was so underrated, nice to see some analysis of it! Thanks for making and keep up the good work.
I love your editing in your videos ,are you gonna do more psychonauts related videos?
Sooner than you think
Great video as always! Thank you very much! I think I agree on most points! The Alan Wake universe has such an amazing story and lore. It’s really unbeatable. I really hope we get more story on Alan though in Alan Wake 3, as I’m not a huge fan of dual protagonists :p
Fantastic video as always! And the editing is awesome... as always!!! 😆
You're awesome thank you
Great video @10:23 the scratching was so sick
I can’t watch this yet bc I’m not done with AWII, but just saw it on the playlist & how high the view count was. Congratulations! Here’s to hoping the older vids get a bump too, bc they help contextualize a ton!
''Diving deep to the surface'' from Herald of Darkness might suggest that the spiral doesn't end in singularity, rather an escape. Here's hoping, for Alan's sake.
I think the Mirror Peak mountain is important, at some point it was a volcano and the volcanic gases are mentioned, it’s kind of explained away as an FBC cover story and Alex Casey jokes about it but I think it’s a misdirection. I think Mirror Peak is literal and somehow the peak of the mountain is the bottom of the lake at the same time, this would fit with the opposing triangle theme in the cult symbols and the Control pyramids. It reminds me of a Penrose staircase, a loop that’s also a spiral, fitting with the paradox/illusion that Mr Door describes of a door exists in two rooms/places at once - there’s a door at the bottom of the lake at it leads to the top of mirror peak. Could Mirror Peak be the ledge that Alice jumps from in one of the final tapes.
Thank you this was one on the main things I needed an explanation for because I was so confused on WTF “it’s a Spiral.” means. I’m so ready for NG+ as well as Nightmare difficulty for AW2.
I'll need to practice before nightmare difficulty. Game was a toughy for me.
Amazing video and analysis... and incredible editing 🔥🔥
There are already a lot of thresholds in RCU that we must solve and figure out...
Finally I found a video that is talking about what I think. It was nice to listen to the same thoughts I have. However, I don't think the story will be concluded with new game plus.
This is a huge concept with really peculiar natrative and I do expect more games of this franchise.
Oh 100%. We have 3 new games already in the works. Technically 5 if we count the Max Payne remakes.
Babe wake up, Gaming University has started dropping Alan Wake 2 content
Lol real
Streamed this game for my girlfriend and she loved it. It was a very good game. Love the remedy-verse story and how it’s so intricate and interwoven between games
I love whenever he says “Mr. Scratch” it says like ur skipping a radio stations :)
This narrative is basically tailor-made for new stories and endless potential... They could literally do anything, it could be as realistic and silly as they want. Set in a town, a jungle a colony on mars... As long as they follow the structure of the hero's journey. I can't wait to see what they do with control 2.
Thank you for this video. All through AW2 I just kept thinking how similar it was to AN. You're one of the few people out there that will talk about those connections.
Great video man! Subscribed
Appreciate it dude! Glad you enjoyed
I'd love to see more videos like this about Alan Wake (from your channel and others). Always so engaging to be on the edge of new fan theories and revelations.
Excellent video as always. I can't wait for the NG+ and I really hope it will be the true, final draft of the story and we'll have the proper ending, that would be so cool!
One very minor note, possibly missed? In Control, the door that lead to the Alan Wake DLC in the Lakeview Motel (I think the name was, been a few since I played Control), didn't it have a Spiral on the door?
Not missed just not related to the specific thesis here. More an Oceanview Topic.
@@GamingUniversityUoG Okay, thanks. I thought it might be a hint, or somehow related, to AW2.
I love the graphics in this one looks great
I'm blessed to be able to work with an amazing editor who likes to play around with new graphics. He did a great job!
i've been researching the remedyverse myself the past 2 weeks. I feel i have a pretty good grip on the story by now. I was now looking to see if others came to similar conclusions. Its shocking how many video essayists tried to capture alan wake but either stayed very surface level or got many things wrong. I'm going to enjoy watching the rest of your video's I think. The big thread i'm looking into now is exactly how alan contacted alice through writing those rituals about the cult of the word. It's clear alice was contacted loop upon loop. That's why she says she is haunted every day now. But i'm not 100% sure yet how alan projected himself out to new york in the real world. Perhaps because of all the prep he did with the cult of the word somehow. The story of that summoning and working for mr scratch, even though it was really alan himself creating the cult and so he IS scratch? Something like that?
I think you're mistaken about a part of Mr. Scratch. You're fully correct about alice her short film being played being the vocal point of american nightmare. And this shattering Mr. Scratch.
Alice playing a similar role in alan wake 2 makes sense too. Here is my problem.. Mr. Scratch is a concept. The concept of the urban legend. You're missing a key part of the puzzle. This key part is barbara jagger. Barbara jagger was created in similar fashion to Mr. Scratch. According to the story of "departure" by alan wake, She was the muse of zane. She drowned. Zane wrote a new version of her into being that came out wrong. I believe this to be a version of scratch. She was based on rumors about the witch. The andersons also call her "the scratching hag" in their song "children of the elder god". Alan resolves the story of the scratching hag in a similar fashion. During the events of signal he puts the clicker inside of her and banishes her with light. We know these kinds of things are metaphorical. Note that this is also the last time we ever saw barbara jagger and tom the poet in their current iteration. It seems to me that alan rewrote their histories and made it real with the clicker. To me this feels like the birth of the filmmaker thomas zane and the witch of cauldron lake that killed the sheriff, which is still jagger. "Retconned" in a way that still makes sense with the overarching narrative of departure.
Its just the diver from thomas's film that was guiding alan now. It's become a "collaborative" story. At least.. a deeper layer down. I honestly think alan doesn't just experience loops.. he writes them. Like his projection of alan makes a projection who makes a projection. We see two instances of these projections meeting. The obvious one is when alan kills other alan. The other one is when alan meets "filmmaker zane". If you look closely at the scenes between the two in room 665 you at some points see two alans, and most importantly, at some points you see two zane's. They're the same person. Just aspects of alan. Alan is the writer and the filmmaker. Just like how alan himself wrote the diver in the first game. It's alans plan all along to trick himself to think he needs to get there before scratch. We even see snippets of tom shooting alan like a rehearsal, acting out the scene that happens later when "alan shoots scratch(himself)". This theme is then repeated by alan shooting zane and zane not really being dead. This also mimics the final scene in the game where the spiral goes into its next loop. make note of the spiral in zane's room. Make note of the ending of the scene where zane crawls away, and there being a second/third alan in the room getting out of a chair. Its like a convergence point. Alans from different places in the spiral have met in this room. Alan even mentions at some point he's completely reinvented himself a few times already. This is also the only theory i can come up with that actually makes it so theres a reason for ahti and the andersons calling alan tom. They've lived through many stories and loops. They remember various loops where alan played the role of tom. We don't know how far up and down in the spiral we are at any given time.
If this still doesn't make sense to you, remember the story of the dlc "writer". Alan is tortured by an aspect of himself a layer above him luring him into all kinds of traps. the projected alan is the aspect of reasoning. They meet later in the writers room and reunite. I also want to call attention again to the song "children of the elder god". The song is about two ravens who are the "children" of odin. The birds are called memory and thought. This to me sounds like the old gods are describing a form of the astral projection alan went through. They went a little insane because their memory and thought aspects were weakend. Perhaps part of them even left or consumed by the dark place? tor also lost his "storm". And odin physically an eye. Some time after the events of the first game the story was retconned to fit into the new universe where barbara didn't became the scratching hag. And instead this fight took place 10 years later and the one they were facing was Mr. door. So the song is no longer fitting at the alan wake 2 point in the loop. I'm afraid i don't know exactly all the details of what these aspects metaphorically stand for just yet. But you get the point. Alan wrote about himself in the dark place and thus projects himself. Tor and odin created songs based of aspects of themselves that took the form of ravens. They eventually managed to beat back the dark place in a way, though it still grips them. The fact they sound like their younger selves and weaken further after every performance now likely has something to with this process too. its also very interesting that the dark place used birds and storms against alan in the first game. Concepts the dark place picked up from tor and odin maybe. These elements are gone in alan wake 2. Likely because the retcon fight with mr door that just cost odin an eye.
So we have 3 scratches. One for every story alan wrote that we interact with. "the scratching hag" "Mr scratch" and now "scratch". The first two follow the pattern of rumors. BUT were also created. Jagger was written into being by zane. It had to be based on something in reality. And since the real barbara was dead, it was the rumors. American Nightmare seems to have been created specifically to deal with the version created during signal. The one zane the diver tried to sweep under the rug and didn't want us to think about. The third.. very similar but more convoluted... I think alan is just misleading us in the story. It was he himself who haunted alice and scratched out the manuscript. We know this for sure. I think alan at various points in the spiral worked with himself to set this up and dupe the alan furthest along in the spiral to think its scratch haunting alice. The scratch we encounter then in the real world is the scratch born from the rumors of alice's exhibition. The new face of the dark presence. But this time not a body double. Because this time it was alan himself that created these rumors. It was a collaborative work with alice. the rumors were real. The outward appearance not so, but the man inside the photographs was really alan so to speak. And thus scratch manifested himself inside alans actual body as the dark presence. All for the purpose of saga being able to shoot it with the bright bullet (which is a metaphor for potentially damaging truth alan was scared of, but turned out to be that alice is actually alive).
Finally! An Alan Wake II lore video!!!
Working on a few things as part of my first round of AW2 content
@@GamingUniversityUoG Can't wait!
Alan Wake has been such an awesome new experience for me. I remember when I was younger, I couldn't get too much into the first AW since it was really boring gameplay wise, but now the story is just mindblowing to me. And I like it most of all because it has inspired me to be a better person.
Along with watching an anime that taught me the value of compassion, AW has only solidified that value in me, and also has brought me up from a dark time in my life. You see Alan, an angry yet regretful man being cast into an absolute hell because of his actions, and it is through the story being told that he goes from a hard headed and troubled man who can't control his anger to... I don't know, to be honest. The series isn't over, and we don't know what exactly he is thinking. But I like to think he is changing for the better throughout all this.
I think my favorite moments from AW2 was when we realize Scratch is Wake and vice versa, and the ending where we learn 'it isn't a loop; it's a spiral.' I like the Scratch/Wake dilemma because, for most of the series, we were lead to believe Scratch was some entity conjured up by the darkness to impersonate Wake and also demoralize him, as he does evil deeds. He was not Wake; he was a tangible enemy, something to fight and kill (this is how I saw it at least). But by 2, we come to learn that Scratch is Wake, just his dark side: his anger and all other flaws of Wake brought out into the real world. There's also this line in 'Herald of Darkness' where Door mentions Wake's 'Made up furies' which I didn't at first get. Throughout the first Alan Wake, I pretty much thought Wake was understandable: he didn't like pushy fans, he didn't like that his wife went behind his back and had them go to Washington for Hartman, and he didn't like that, despite the mental block, Alice still insisted in mentioning writing to him with the typewriter gift. But, as I thought about this line more, I realized something. We are all responsible for how we deal with our anger and our emotions, at the end of the day. We see through the events of the first game that he didn't understand that and he let them run loose: he didn't appreciate his fans nearly as much as he disliked them, he punched Hartman at the first mention of Alice contacting him bc of Alan's block and then ended up not getting any help, and finally stormed out when he saw Alice's gifts. Despite the fact that these things may have touched his nerves at the moment, he failed to understand that they were done for his betterment and out of love by Alice, and he lets his anger overcome him. When it is revealed Scratch is Wake, it is essentially a metaphor that Alan's anger is like his enemy and his responsibility at the same time, and that ultimately, he could have controlled his anger, but we don't even know if Alan sees it that way, or if he is still blind to his harmful ways.
But what gives me hope is the spiral bit at the ending. Personally, I have been through moments like Alan where it all seems lost: like the situation is so hurtful and feels so useless that you can't do it anymore. You want to give up and end the cycle of depression, then a glimpse of hope, then disappointment and just have peace. But when Alice's message reaches Wake, there is almost a brightness in his eyes as he wakes up and says those words. It's like he's found something to latch onto in the darkness, and he's ready to advance the spiral now with newfound hope in his heart. I know you've covered the theory of the archetypal writer, but I personally hope it may be less of him just becoming a better writer, but also a better person as well. One who learns to appreciate Alice and his fans and his friends, and he learns that his reality-changing writing is doing more harm than good and he tries to write with the wellbeing of others in mind, and when or if he comes back from the dark place, he learns to get on with life and be a better man at the same time. This is more than likely a bit of projection, but I can't help but hope that Alan escapes the Dark Place with Alice and lets go of his harmful ways so that he may have a more fulfilling and loving life- all because the Dark Place held up a mirror to him and showed him the truth and error of his ways.
man, I am playing all remedy games again after i finished alan wake 2. i have to feel all the referencies so i can return and play for the second time alan wake 2
Stephen King did something similar in The Dark Tower series.
(Spoiler warning!)
“Ka is a wheel,” gets repeated throughout the books, but at the end the Gunslinger begins to ascend the Tower only to end up back in the desert where the story began before he can reach the top… except this time he has his friend’s horn, which he forgot/left behind previously, indicating that this time ‘round he knows more and is better prepared, getting closer to reaching his goal.
God I Fucking love the Dark Tower and AW seems to be taking the same path with each spin along the spiral causing our Hero to become a better and better person. Makes sense that a series so inspired by King would follow the same conclusion as King's Opus.
Are we really sure that this new Scratch is a splitted part of Alan? Because to me it seemed like he was just Alan possessed by Darkness
In part. The one that started working with Zane to write the initial draft feels like the part of Alan that rebelled against his desire to stop writing. Alan kept calling him Scratch the whole time. Despite not being possessed yet.
I've been hyped to see your thoughts on AW2 so thanks for this!
Its ironic that Alice is the reason Alan beats Mr Scratch in American Nightmare. In AW2 she's also the reason Saga gets the Clicker, essentially helping him again.
I'm really happy that Alice is getting a bigger role in these two games. We don't see her but her presence is felt.
The part of rituals makes me remember how in Control the Oldest House respond to certain rituals and procedures based in dream logic. The FBC records and catalogs theses "rituals" to make them standard in how they operate. These match the description of the writings of Alan Wake (a overlap it is a threshold in Control terms). The Dark Place has its own rituals
About Scratch, I think in AW2 it is another thing entirely, only borrowing the name for Scratch from American Nightmare. In AW2 Scratch is just Alan Wake with the Dark Presence in him, they use that name because both are a evil version of Alan, but in American Nightmare it is just another creation of the Dark Place
One could say that the Remedyverse is
*Drumroll*
...spiraling out of Control!
Controlled chaos
Thank you for shedding some light (ha) on American Nightmare and the themes it introduced. I watched some videos going over the story of each game and its dlcs and expansions and their take away was basically "writing hokey, game bad" and while I generally agree that it wasn't great, there were good things in it, things of value that were carried forward.
They made it more for the arcade combat part of the game. But story wise it is a good basis for what evolved into AW2. Plus it gave us more world building for the dark place.
It’s so small, but I miss how American Nightmare would “pronounce” Mr. S(r@t(h. Granted, considering how important he was to this story, I see why censoring his name would be impractical, but it added so much to him.
Anyways, GREAT video!!
I missed it too, at least in the manuscripts, that's why I made sure to still follow the tradition while editing this video :)
@@yellowbat79Hell Yeah! 🤜 I hope you keep that up!!! Also, FANTASTIC editing, now that I got you. Dividing the video with appropriate chapter title splashes was also very choice.
@thechevyferrari9559 aw thanks alot man❤️ I'm glad you enjoyed it
this time the script was divided by Chapters and I think it really helped the pacing, Dean deserves all the critic for that one
That was really noticeable for me too! They stopped cutting out his name here. I need to double check to see if it was only in reality that thet said it. Seems only The Bright Presence and the original version of Return cut out his name.
Excellent video :). It's interesting that even with a seemingly infinite spiral, we the audience only see the rituals repeated in threes, where the 3rd is Alan's major success. American Nightmare was repeated 3 times, Saga goes into 3 overlaps then can pull out Alan, Alex Casey novels rewritten as the Cult of the Word rewritten as the Cult of the Tree, etc.
We've seen only two drafts of 'Return', in American Nightmare and in Alan Wake II, which implies the 3rd time will work.
The entrance of the Ocean View Motel in Control follows the law of 3 as well
I love that you never say/let someone else say Scratch. It’s a rather simple device, but in practice it’s just awesome. I am very new to your channel. How long have you been making Remedy centered content?
A long time, years. See his channel!
The games themselves also censored out his name before AW2 so I kept the routine going. I started I want to say early 2019.
@@GamingUniversityUoG keep up the good work. You seem very creative and intelligent
Been waiting for these videos. Hopefully more soon
this is so going to be how new game plus works.
I heard it is called, "Final Draft"
I really want to see someone compare completely American nightmare and AW2, listing all these things that were already though 13 years ago and just more fleshed out and developped in AW2.
Late to the party... But here goes anyway!
Played through at launch, then played other games for a while. Just finished my Final Draft playthrough.
I don't think that Mr. Scratch and Scratch are the same antagonist in a literal sense, and I think Alan spells out that distinction when he describes Mr. Scratch as "a caricature of all the tabloid headlines, etc." about Alan. Mr. Scratch is the sum of all those stories as Alan sees them. He is what Alan imagines those tabloid stories must see when they see him.
In contrast, Scratch in Alan Wake II is Alan's own personal insecurities. The distinction is subtle, but essentially Mr. Scratch's personality does not include Scratch, but Scratch includes Mr. Scratch. Scratch in AWII is a much more comprehensive set of all the worst things Alan secretly believes about himself. The things plausible enough to be real. And given the nature of the spiral here where Alan is Scratch in AWII... that means that Alan subconsciously believes they are truly the same person. Whereas he was able to keep some personal distance from Mr. Scratch, and recognized Mr. Scratch as something to absurd to be real. Which incidentally lead to Alan actually confronting Mr. Scratch and performing a ritual that prevented Mr. Scratch from becoming part of the real world.
5:03 "The Overlaps were first given a name in Alan Wake II" So we're ignoring the Thresholds concept/name in Control then?
I personally see points where the two are very different.
Thresholds do not require a ritual to be opened, and their effect is way more physical (a chunk of another dimension finds its way into the Oldest House) while Overlaps feel like they affect your perception of an area, not the area itself.
Thresholds are constant, once they're there, they are there. while Overlaps activate when the Ritual is done and after they briefly connect the two worlds, they disappear.
Thresholds are just pathways between other realities. Overlaps specifically are between the Dark Place and reality crossing over one another. All dogs are mammals but not all mammals are dogs.
I dont know where else to type this, but in the herald of darkness performance at the VGA's, did we get the "Real" old gods to perform?
I noticed in Dark Ocean summoning in the game and in the official herald of darkness music video, Odin had the eyepatch on his left eye.
But everytime we see the real odin, its on his right away, just like in the VGA performance. god i love Remedy
Young Odin had it over one eye for his stage performances. However, in 1988 Mr. Door officially took his eye and took the other one. That's when his eye patch moved over.
Ah thanks for clearing that up. I got a Lotta knowledge gaps since I only came back in alan wake 2 ❤
I do wonder how much will be changed in NG+ like will the plot remain the same and small things will be changed or will it be major changes.
Alan always says the most confusing things when the game ends (from ‘Its not a lake, it’s an ocean’ to the now ‘it’s not a loop, it’s a spiral’) I really hope he actually gets out of the Dark Place.
Something I’m also curious on is Saga’s role, especially in NG+ if there are going to be new things. I wonder if she will be aware of these new changes (I think most likely) and if she is aware now how much will she try to change to ensure that the stuff that happened last time won’t happen again.
Gosh there’s so many theories running through my head! One thing the Remedy Games are good at is making you have so many theories and interpretations of things. Makes me even more excited for future games they are making! Can’t wait for the Max Payne remakes and Control 2!
Also I do kinda miss whenever you said Mr Scratch’s name that a scratching noice plays.
I know they mentioned new manuscripts, new story, and I heard a rumor of an old character returning. Not positive on the last one though.
@@GamingUniversityUoGI think I know which character you’re talking about because I too have heard stuff about a specific character. Can’t wait for the DLCs and NG+
When you think about it, the spiral is also a perfect description of both the Overlaps and the Dark Place levels.
It really is
I also wanted to comment on the idea of the Dark Place flowing like water (lake/ocean/etc.), because it reminded me of this bit:
"What I'm looking for when I'm a player is full immersion. I don't want the experience of being a 'storyteller' when I'm a PC, and that's a little bit of a different thing, like a lot of indie games want a flat hierarchy around the table where everybody takes turns as the storyteller; I don't want that when I'm a player. When I'm a player I want to be living in a story, immersed into a character that is not, to their knowledge, living in a story. Like Evan Kelmp said in Misfits & Magic, 'I'm not a character,' right? I don't want to play a character that's thinking about their fucking narrative arc. I want to play a character that wants to save the world as quickly and efficiently as possible, right? But I, the player, want the arc. So, me and my character exist at odds, because I want the deep immersion, I want the fucking Mount Doom, Frodo's quest, all that shit, but I want to play a character that doesn't want that. I want to play a character that gets the Ring as quickly as possible to Mount Doom, because that's the immersion I'm looking for. So, what does that mean if I want to provide that experience to a player? Players are like water. They are going down the hill as fast as they can, seeking the path of least resistance. That's what the character is like, water, but the player wants anything other than a straight line. So, my job as 'rails' is irrigating a path down that, that lets the water always have taken the fastest route towards its goal, but at the end of it, the shape is the most convoluted and pleasing. Right? That, like, you achieved the shape of a story, while you were trying your hardest to go in a straight line."
-- Brennan Lee Mulligan, "Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable"
Alan wants out of the Dark Place, he wants to save Alice and the world, and he wants to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible (if it is possible), but as a writer he also knows that the reader/player won't be satisfied without complications and internal consistency, and those complications are also necessary for preventing the Dark Place from spilling out into the world... which it also wants as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Scratch can literally mean "from scratch" in the beginning of every loop in Spiral he writes a new version of story as a Scratch
Hey Gaming University, I don't really usually leave a comment, but I just wanted to share a thought with you.
Knowing how much Sam Lake is a Stephen King fan, don't you think reading The Dark Tower (especially the end) could be interesting because the spiral even if it's not mentionned could be considered as a reccuring theme and put some event under a new light.
To me the remedy connected universe could be a reimagining of the stephen king dark multiverse, Jesse Faden could be considered a Breaker ( shining user), Alan as a writer can be considered as Stephen King himself and as a character could be seen as Roland because he is following a man first seen dressed in black (Mr scratch) to confront him. You could also argue that the oldest house can be as an analogy of the dark tower, and the main antagonist of the dark tower is the Scarlet King waiting in front of the tower, scarlet is the color of the hiss and it remains in the oldest house, I won't list more things because it'll make my comment more tedious but I guess you can see where I'm coming to with all these elements.
Anyway take care and thank you very much for your content.
This is really good, there's a lot of compelling stuff here. Something I still can't piece together is why Zane (I believe as the Light Presence) tells Alan "Don't mind him, he's Mr. Scratch. Your friends will meet him when you're gone." Why would the Light Presence be so non-chalant about it, considering he's a form of the Dark Presence and intends to do harm? Also, Scratch mentions letting Alice get glimpses of him in American Nightmare. Can American Nightmare Scratch appear in the real world and that's what Alice reports seeing in AWE, or is that supposed to be Alan who from a later version of Return as revealed in Alan Wake 2?
Will you be doing a video on the meaning on the number 665? I watched one of your “CONTROL” videos and was shocked to hear The Board say it.
The thing is we have no idea what 665 really means. Sam used it as a joke back in Max Payne 1. But at this point it is either a running gag or a fingerprint of someone
Remember everyone, we still have TWO DLCs to look forward to as well as NG+, so this story is far from over
I cant wait for the dlcs and ng+
Would love to see your view on the subject of Alice Wake and her ultimate fate. I think that we can tell with pretty certainty that shes in the dark place. She crossed the threshold to it second time to help Alan escape.
In the final draft ending she tells Alan, that she came into contact with the organisation which looking into what happened around Cauldron Lake in 2010. The player is led to believe that she’s referring to the FBC, especially since we know from the AWE dlc to Control that she went to the oldest house some time after the events of the first Alan wake game.
But, from the collectibles we know, that the FBC in the common fashion of secrecy didn’t actually help Alice, didn’t told her anything.
What I think is that the organisation she’s referring to could be Blessed Organisation. Could be interesting story of future game content or even dlc with Alice as protagonist. She even could have her own game mechanics with her fotos and their influence on reality and the Dark Place.
nice vid. the seed\idea concept is interesting. it almost alludes to the fact the story is getting further and further away from the original idea with each go round of the spiral. idk if that will be a good or bad thing tho
Its funny because American Nightmare kind of goes against Alan's philosophy about how a Story is a beast of its own and wants to tell its own story. At the Seed of Return he had an end goal. Escape and rejoin Alice. Everything he did was in service of that end goal. But as a result he controlled his story to force the ending. Hence why it didn't work well. He had to let the story get away from him and become what it wanted. But by keeping it in a spiraling loop he could ensure even failures didn't mean the end. He could still make adjustments to push the story into a more favorable position.
@@GamingUniversityUoG May seem silly, but this is probably the best explanation I've seen yet for why Return/Alan's escape hasn't worked. GG
I love the analogy between the spiral and the development of a story from idea to completion. It didn't occur to me that the spiral was also a reference to the notion of drafts. I have some additional thoughts about the idea of the spiral as narrative progression within the context of the meta-narrative itself.
The game plays out with "loops within loops" - a fractal spiral, it seems sometimes. The whole game is a spiral (each time it's played will be at least a little different based on the choices of the player), each time Alan restarts a new draft of Initiation is a spiral, and different based on what he learns, and even within the various specific gameplay sections are little loops which aren't actually loops (as they change over time: thinking of Saga in the bunker, for example). We really only have a few layers, but it's possible that there are more, larger layers.
I just realized that Polaris in control has a spiral
Famously, also, a DRILL is a spiral. Turn it and you go forward.
Im really curious on your take with the references to the Blessed Organization in Alan Wake II and the FBC and if it could be a possible video
Ah! i see you possibly read my "SPIRALS GO DOWN!" rantings that i've been posting everywhere lol! I do suppose a tree spirals upward in some sense, thats one possibility, i still see spirals as symbolically leading towards their center though. Even if the seed of growth is there, its more of an end point for all the objects interacting with the spiral. For the spiral, its center may be its beginning, and the outer edge its end, but to anyone interacting with a spiral, the natural tendency is to end up at its center, whether tracking with your eyes or exploring somehow, if you're in a spiral, you realize at the center, not at the edge. The on other important thing to consider is the 3rd option: not end, not beginning, forever, same as the loop. In purely abstract space, unhindered by the granularity of human physical or visual limitations, the spiral can move towards the center forever, fractally, and never arrive. I lean towards the other interpretations because i feel like the story is steering us towards its end-point, so naturally i want to assume the spiral ends. But to counter that statement once more, the endings of AW1 and AW2 lead me to conclude we may well end AW3 with another "Its not X its Y" moment that could easily be "it goes on forever... its not an end its a beggining"
If Alan's been trapped in a spiral all these years, would you consider Remedy's scrapped sequel canon? Alan portraying himself like an action hero after knowing how the dark place worked? Only to fail and rewrite a new scenario that would eventually become "American Nightmare"
Amazing video Dean like always, i have a question, what is the difference between a threshold and an overlap? are they the same thing with different names?
So far the Overlap is specifically a cross section of the Dark Place and Reality. Thresholds are an umbrella term for whenever there is a path to other realities. So I would argue Overlaps are a Threshold but not all Thresholds are Overlaps. That's my understanding as of right now.
I think I disagree: this terminology gives us a better handle on different kinds of Thresholds we see in Control. The Mold, for example, feels like an Overlap: it's clearly the Oldest House architecture, for the most part, but infested by the Mold. Two dimensions intersecting. The Black Rock Quarry, on the other hand, is clearly elsewhere, outside the Oldest House -- a Threshold but not an Overlap. I don't think it needs to involve the Dark Place specifically.
Do thresholds also need ro be related to the myths and lore of the places where they happen? The ones we saw in control (Quarry, Mold) didn't really seem to be, but they're inside the Oldest House, so it might be different there
Awesome analysis!
I have a dumb question. Is Dr. Darling and Alan distinct characters besides we got the awesome Mathew Porreta as voice actor?
Thinking about it, perhaps each 'loop' which has happened before had a 'finished' Initiation, which in the next loop Door shows to Alan to remind him about it. But the loop before the one we play is different.
Instead of ██████████ being the protagonist of Return, like he had tried many, many loops ago, after seeing Saga in an Overlap, he has the idea to write in Saga as the protagonist instead of ██████████, which he does after his 'third draft' of Initiation (which becomes the version Door shows) has been completed. Of course, because in that loop, ██████████ is still the protagonist, it's them who shoots the Bullet of Light that ends the loop... And brings us into the loop we play.
In this loop, Mr. Warlin Door ends up learning about how Saga Anderson was written into the story when Alan edits her into it in this loop, which is why the next time they meet during Masks, he warns the writer that the next time that they meet (which would be the first chapter of NG+ Initiation), he better play his part or keep out of his way.
One thing I suspect which will happen in NG+ Initiation is that there will be one less encounter with Door - in that what was the first mini loop will be skipped and instead their first meeting would be what was the one with Sam Lake who's playing the role of Alex Casey. Perhaps here, so long as Alan 'plays his role', Door will drop a hint that it was his daughter's life he was messing with, and that the prior ending of 'Return' wasnt quite enough (because she was still trapped in the Dark Place along with Alex) to try and guide him to getting to the true ending he would want for her.
The second meeting would remain as We Sing, and would either remain as Hearld of Darkness... Or would be a different song (maybe Balance Slays the Demon or a new song that's yet to be released?)
And then the third and final meeting... Well, that depends on a few things, but if Door is unhappy about how Return is turning out... We may have a new boss fight on our hands.
Also, thinking about it, the encounters with Zane will also be different as Alan would remember everything, that is if he needs to visit him during the 'second' draft of Initiation of that cycle. The 'third' draft visit though would most likely still be needed for the ticket though.
The thing with spirals though is that with each full pass you get further from the origin, further from the original idea. The term spiraling out of control comes to mind.
The simple fact is that this seems to have all started with Thomas Zane but we cannot be sure of that since Alan Wake is the result of Zane rewriting his own history in an attempt to undo the mistake of trying to write his dead wife back into existence. We then have Alan Wake writing the FBC and Jessie Faden into existence to deal with The Darkness. In the space of three loops we've seen a shift from the original concept. This descent into absolute chaos with conflicting reality rewrites becomes even more apparent in AW2 where even more revisions are made to attempt to fix the problems introduced in previous drafts.
The only way out of this is to write Thomas Zane completely out of existence so that the origin of the spiral is destroyed. It's not a spiral, it's a house of cards.