And the fact that this ”explaining” would create more questions and confusion to most people haha. I think that’s why they didn’t force it on everyone. I love it tho
its hard to miss tho, you have to pass this cinema and by default it shows up while you are walking down the cinema hall, so the player is warned about the movie but its the player's choice to keep watching it or not.
@@mememachine-386 For me it had subtitles. And if you think deeper into it and put also Alan Wake American Nightmare next to Alan Wake 2, you see some simialarities. Example: The loop or rather spiral of how things are progressing. I am looking forward to the DLC and also more about Saga and Mr. Door.
I love how in one of the echoes Alex questioned how he got to play in this movie without remembering it, but he never questioned how the hell he spoke Finnish
I love that they gave the live action cast a chance to shine, it also makes sense cause they are all Fins! I remember seeing Sam Lake tied to that chair screaming he was just an actor laughing my ass of.
I have a theory that Ahti was “brought” to America (a la “American Gods”-style) by Finnish settlers to Watery and Bright Falls, and due to his nature as a water God, inhabited Cauldron Lake and the surrounding water but was then pushed out by whatever the hell the Dark Presence actually is (Hence his line about losing his work and wanting to get a job at the Federal Bureau of Control, and also kind of supported by the fact he goes on vacation to Watery in the “Control” game and supported even further by his minor breakdown in “Alan Wake 2” when he’s sat in his room and while you play as Saga, he becomes very scared and anxious and keeps saying he doesn’t know what’s happening and just wants to go home and that he feels like he’s lost at sea).
It'd be kind of hilarious if he changed his name legally to Sam Ocean and acted like it's always been that, and is not sure why everyone keeps calling him Sam Lake.
When I stumbled upon this, I genuinely expected to see some trailer featuring “highlights” of the nonexistent movie, one or two minutes tops. I was not expecting to see fully filmed 15 minutes short film. We don’t deserve Remedy
In the world of Ubisoft, FIFA, Call of Duty, Battlefield, and f*Cking StarField making billions+ each year… yes we truly don’t deserve Remedy. This gaming industry is full of idiots. (I didn’t mention Fortnite because that game essentially funded Remedy’s Alan Wake 2)
okay so in the film Alex Casey is playing "The Detective" while Tom Zane is playing "The Writer Alan Wake" and it's worth keeping in mind that both Alan Wake and Tom worked together on the film at some point in an earlier part of the spiral, likely as a method to try and free both of them. I think Tom tricked Alan into making him think that the roles in the film are more or less explicit than they are. The idea being that the various actors in the film aren't necessarily relevant, they're just actors playing a role. So what matters is who ends up filling each role when the film ends up manifesting and changing reality. Earlier in Alan's campaign he kills and takes over the role of Alex Casey going through recreations of cases he presumably investigated in the real world, therefore he becomes the much more vaguely defined role of "The Detective" while the film much more explicitly and literally states "Tom Zane is The Writer Alan Wake" with him playing that role in the film and at least intending to also play the role in reality. Thus I think that the idea is that Tom made the film in such a way that Alan wouldn't be suspicious at the time. Alex Casey is a character he already killed himself in his original novels, and by having Tom play Alan, in a way it made it look like he was trying to free both of them. But the reality is that Tom was tricking Alan into eventually filling the role of Alex, essentially trying to Sacrifice Alan in order to take his place and escape the Dark Place that way. This is further reinforced by how The Detective repeats Alan's line at the end of the game, clearly showing who is truly meant to be playing that role. This seems to fit with how Tom Zane keeps wanting to find some way to take a shortcut to escape instead of writing a full-fledged story. Alan is doing things the "proper" way by trying to write a full trilogy that follows the Hero's Journey, while Zane is simply trying to find ways to sabotage Alan and take his place. In fact apparently Nightless Night is actually supposed to be a movie that Tom made long before going to Caldron Lake before he made the film "Tom the Poet". But this still can make sense if the Nightless Night we see is meant to be a REMAKE of his original film, further reinforcing how Tom is basically creatively bankrupt and is incapable of coming up with any new ideas to try and escape at this point. That explains how it can simultaneously be a much older film while still somehow featuring references to more recent characters and ideas. It's not a perfect 1-to-1 recreation but it is at least an adaptation using what is currently relevant to Tom and Alan's situation. However where Tom went wrong is that he didn't realize that multiple roles could potentially be filled by the same person, especially by the janky shenanigans of the Dark Place, and by defining his own role as Alan Wake so specifically, while still having him also be the detective, he essentially ensured that Alan's looping would double back on itself throughout the game, which combined with The Dark Place's overall disregard for linear time, is why he ends up simultaneously finding a murder scene, being the murder victim, and being the murderer at different points in the game. Which is also reinforced by Alan's stated philosophy of how a writer is a different person whenever they right a new draft because they've gotten older and experienced new things that have changed them, with that idea just being taken literally so that he can fill multiple roles of the movie at once. And many of the films elements ended up manifesting into reality directly or indirectly. The cult and their ritual sacrifices, the fact that Alan re-emerges from the Dark Place, etc. Perhaps the film wasn't enough to work on its own though because of how disjointed everything is. There's not much of a reason given for why the cult's sacrifices lead to "Alan" re-emerging from the lake, which is ultimately why Dark Ocean Summoning is still required to actually free Alan properly. Once again, Tom makes the mistake of basically trying to tell a story where things just happen the way he wants them to instead of providing a meaningful through-line to justify the events of the narrative. Or maybe nothing I just said makes any goddamn sense at all
This is really interesting and I especially like the bit about the roles they play. But I personally don't believe the real Thomas Zane appears in Alan Wake II at all. I think every time we've seen Zane it's been either a manifestation of Alan's or just Scratch. I think it's American Nightmare where you have "Zane" opposite Wake, pressuring him into drinking and writing, and that just seemed so very Scratch to me. Then we have their bender in Alan Wake II, which seems very similar. I think Scratch is trying to confuse and disorient Wake in order to make him easier to control and inhabit, as well as pressure him to keep writing so that Scratch can influence it. I think the film is *Scratch* tricking Alan into creating a story where Scratch escapes and gains power but Alan is "locked in the room", either trapped in the dark place or possessed by Scratch. I think based on what is said to Wake about taking the place of the detective and what Wake says about Casey having fictional aspects since he's been written about means that pushing Wake into a role makes him easier to manipulate, which might be the whole motivation behind the dark place sequences.
When I first saw the movie It got stuck in my mind that it was written Tom Seine is "The Writer Alan Wake" and I remember thinking that it is really weird he created some kind of art where he makes a statement like this right in the first minute, and in that kind of media (film) maybe makes sense to do this, but keeping in mind that things like this can change the reality of the world they're in, really gave me a bad feeling about this. Like when an actor does a villain so well people start to see the villain into the actor itself and get angry about him, this can either turn the actor into the character or give the character such characteristics and likeability that it becomes real. And also I thought how Ahti, Odin and Tor, people who apparently can see beyond the bounds of the story, or could we say see beyond the roles they are playing also call Alan by Tom. I started to think of "Your friends will meet him when you're gone." In Alan Wake 1 the Anderson's act like they knew Alan from before, right from the first meeting, in the Oh Deer Diner, if you listen to the whole interaction they say "Its been a long time, Tom. Good to see you". When we first see Ahti in Alan's route in AW2, Ahti also seems to know who Alan is from before, and call him Tom, but Alan doesn't remember him. Maybe they three were Alan's friends? They now think Alan is just character? Maybe Alan is just a character. They're all gods? Is Alan a god? Because of all of this now they only know about Tom? I dont know, the whole thing just feels really weird. I don't think this is just a mirroring/reference of the story like Remedy likes to do in their games. I really think that this whole movie says a lot more that we can see right now, it was really well made, its a Tom Seine movie, maybe the most mysterious guy in Alan's story. I think in the future we will look at this and see we had the answers right in our faces or maybe some part of them. Also this whole thing and all that happened in the game had me thinking how Alan wrote a story that changed the reality to insert Saga and make her help him (Or Scratch did), Alan could be one of Tom's ways of getting out, maybe he wrote him and all of this is him trying to swap places. After Casey gets shot and Alan takes his gun he said, this felt like he was assuming the role of the Detective. Also, after get shot by Alan, Casey says: "Me and the writer, we are the same." This way, it all will end with happening to Alan the same happens to Casey in the movie. (In an horror story, if it has a hero he has to pay the price). It seems they're just being played like puppets. Scratch is nothing than Alan himself and the major problem all along is Zane.
I completely agree on the way the roles work in the film-- Zane tricking Alan into taking on the role of Detective to trap him in the Dark Place so that Zane can take his place in reality-- but I do think you're missing some important context to make the other pieces fall into place. Zane wasn't originally a filmmaker. This is disputed several times throughout in-universe Remedy CU canon (Jesse Faden in Control and Cynthia Weaver in AW2, for example). It's clear that, for us-- the players, Thomas Zane wasn't always a filmmaker, but this isn't just a retcon: this is a change in the story made by the power of the Dark Place. At the earliest points in the Spiral, Tom was a poet and only a poet; but by this point in the Spiral, that's not true anymore. Now he's a filmmaker. Why the change? What could be the point of changing Tom's preferred media? He was written out of the story, but even the parts that hung around still clung to the idea of him as a poet? Why suddenly a filmmaker? How does that change the story? The answer: the story had already been changed. Alan Wake was part of it now. I believe that, like Scratch, Zane has a doppelganger who desperately wants to leave the Dark Place-- the puppet used by the Dark Presence to escape, taking the form of Barbara Jagger and later Alice Wake in the first game, Zane's own Herald of Darkness to oppose Tom the Diver, the first Champion of Light. But Tom the Diver escaped the story, won the day, rewrote Zane out of reality to trap him in the Dark Place and even placed a guardian into the story to prevent Dark Zane from ever escaping: Alan Wake. The Dark Presence thought it could use Dark Zane to escape, gave Alan the same face, making it easy to confuse the two, so that the Dark Presence could take Alan the same way it took Zane. And Dark Zane went along with it, desperate to escape the Dark Place. But neither Dark Zane nor the Dark Presence understood that Alan wasn't just a character, a mask for them to put on: he was a person, someone with his own darkness and his own light-- the Dark Presence in Alan couldn't be Dark Zane, only Scratch. That works just fine for the Dark Presence, but it does leave Zane behind if they escape. Zane and Wake were just too different, especially in their darkness. I have a hard time believing that Tom the Poet could have ever touched the darkness in Alan Wake bad-boy/hothead. So, Zane needs to bleed back into reality, but not as a poet; he needs to be someone more like Wake, someone who can have a similar reputation, someone who worked with other artists-- not in isolation, someone whose work could not just accompany, but supersede the Escape Plan: Return. So, Zane's history returned to reality, now as an auteur filmmaker who had an artist commune in Bright Falls. These changes weren't wildly out of character for Zane, they didn't strain the story, just tipped it in a very particular direction. Now, Dark Zane and Scratch could work together to escape the Dark Place. With Dark Zane taking the lead, they wrote two pieces of art: Initiation and Return. Initiation was meant to establish a baseline that would allow Yötön Yö to be brought to life by the Dark Place-- a legendary film by the auteur filmmaker Thomas Zane that reflects and echoes the events of Return (likely fooling Scratch and readers into believing it's foreshadowing when in fact it *is* the Shadow) as well as getting Alan into position in the Spiral to be broken enough for Scratch to fully take over. And Return was meant to bring the Dark Place to reality with Scratch as king and master. But the secret final act was Yötön Yö itself, which rewrites the events of both Initiation and Return to be about Dark Zane escaping the Dark Place by swapping places with Alan Wake/Scratch (they are the same person after all). And this is likely what would have happened if not for Alice. Alice's part of the story is what gives Alan the strength, direction, and Light he needs to rewrite the ending of the Return. At first, Alice can't avert the patterns of destruction that live deep within Alan, but she can start to show him the Light, show him another way. At first, all Alan can do is die. Dying resets the loops, plays out the parts of the Spiral that either take you toward destruction or ascension. And so if Return ends with Alan's death, the loop starts back up again: the Dark Presence, Dark Zane, Scratch (and also Alan), they all stay trapped in the Dark Place a little longer-- a cage around infinity. The Final Draft of both Initiation and Return lead the way towards our True Ending: Alan Wake, the Master of Many Worlds-- but importantly, Scratch is gone. There is nothing left for the Dark Presence to puppet, which means there's nothing for Dark Zane to take over. Dark Zane is still trapped in the Dark Place, the Dark Presence is not gone. But they can reach someone else, someone who's already looking for an artist. Someone with a very familiar voice.
@@henriquefolc Tom wrote the Clicker into existence, into Alan Wake's life, long before he came to Bright Falls or entered the Dark Place. I always thought that was a huge hint as to who or what Alan is. Along with your theory, everything points to Alan Wake being a character created by Tom and Tom "playing" as him, which is why he looks the same and the Andersons call him Tom. As a character, you wouldn't know you were created by someone, until you meet. Remember how Tom wrote himself out of existence because he couldn't win against the Dark Presence? It's like Stephen King, writing about writers writing characters XD
And in High On Life, which came out just last year, you can watch: Tammy and the T-Rex (1994), Demon Wind (1990), Blood Harvest (1987) and Vampire Hookers (1978).
I always feel bad how hard Remedy has it trying to get funding and signing deals with bad companies that hurt them. But the fact is they don't make games for general audiences; they make games for *their* audiences. The kinds of people who will go on youtube and wikis and scour in game information for hours and hours and hours after playing the game. I've spent more time researching AW2 than playing it. God bless them for it.
ahti drinking the sugar cube with the coffee from the plate was a really cool addition because it reveals a lot about his character (it's a Finnish tradition of much older generations, placing ahti to be born at least before the 30s and placing this this film around the 60/70s.) My father's granpa drank coffee like that when he was still alive. Nice to see games from my country to gain more attraction worldwide!
The way Ahti is dressed in the posters over the reality-shifting puddles seems to indicate early 1900's as well. As do the ghostly dance-hall flickers you seen while following Ahti's singing on the way to fight Mulligan/Thornton.
FWIW, it's my understand that tea was also drunk this way at one point, and the saucer was supposed to allow you to cool the drink to a comfortable level by creating a lot more surface area to give off heat.
Fun fact. @4:15 the older pair of dancers in the bottom left are Sam Lake's Parents, who also provided the faces for Woden and Horne in Max Payne 1, the face actors for Alex, Mona and B.B from the first game are also dancing extras, but we don't see much of them.
i gotta say... for not initially being a professional actor, Sam Lake is really fucking good. if this video game stuff doesnt work out (lol) he can definitely fall into that :P
I think with Max Payne series, Alan Wake series and Control series he has already proven it works. But I hope they do more stuff like this in the future. Love.👏🏻 It.👏🏻
@@tilehopper oh awesome! side note, i wish it was easier to see stuff from other countries. was trying to find some of Ilkka's other works thru vpn hopping but no luck.
I can't even describe how "It's not a loop, it's a spiral" made me feel. I also can't remember the last time a horror story made me smile as much as AW2 did - not because it's ineffectual horror, but because all the callbacks and worldbuilding are pulled off just perfectly.
If we're talking about Alan's quote, it made me laugh, because it's immediately clicked with the ending of the first game, almost like he intentionally said something similar to end the game
@@CoolSaver I was talking about the ending of Nightless Night, although it made me laugh, as well. It's creepy, sure, and has some wild implications.... but it also, along with the entire movie, comes off as a knock-off made in a different country. Which I'm sure is intentional, Remedy knows what they're doing.
@@CoolSaver It's also genius in that it's similar, but not the same. Because in a loop, everything is the same, going around and around and around. But in a spiral, things change, expand, are altered. The "It's not a X, it's a(n) Y" is the same, but the words themselves and thus the meaning are not.
@@bobjenko my interpretation is that when viewed from above a loop and a 3d spiral can look identical, but only when you adjust your perspective can you become aware of the progress that you’re making, just like how only when alan gets the knowledge and perspective from his past loops can he actually progress idk I think I’m yapping abt nothing
This is art. Art in a video game for fifty bucks. Together with "Herald of Darkness" I cannot believe how much effort Remedy made to make such a video game into a piece of art. Good thing is, Control 2 is already confirmed and being worked on, Alan Wake 2 gets 2 DLCs in 2024 and I guess they're already working on Alan Wake 3.
What I personally still don't understand how some people still cannot see video games as a form of art. In my honest opinion, they are the peak of it because they entail so many professionals from different areas of expertise. All together to create something amazing, together.
@@Jim26D Also because of its digital only distribution and it doesn't deserve that. It's such a good game with poor sales only because Epic wanted to release it digital only.
@@Shrilacklet's be honest, if it wasn't about Alan Wake (and wasn't connected to the actual story of the game), you probably wouldn't understand one bit and therefore wouldn't like it this much
@@CoolSaver I would say it stand on it"s own. The fact that it is connected to the story is a plus but in all honnesty i have seen worse short films in actual film festivals. I would rather sit and watch rather than the creepy shit i have seen from Jodorowsky's brother
I remember watching this in the theater in the Dark Place and I don't remember it being 20 minutes. I was so interested I would've only guessed it was 6 or 7 minutes
It's funny how the names of the opening texts are Finnish versions. Such as: Thomas Zane-Thomas Seine, Aleksi Kesä-Alex Casey, Baba Jakala-Barbara Jagger, etc. And ""Elokuvayhtiö Pimeä Paikka Esittää" is Film company Dark Place Presents in English.
@@videogames584Que todo lo que está pasando en Allan wake puede tener un final, no están atrapados en un bucle igual. Están tirando en un espiral del cual podrán salir eventualmente.
The amount of effort and actual delivery from Remedy is something to be studied. No excuse for billion dollar studios to not be putting this artistic effort into their games
This is reminiscent of Aki Kaurismäki films. Especially the form of speech is very standard and literary finnish rather than the kind of everyday conversational finnish.
Man i loved the game. This is how you make a good sequel. Remedy never fails to impress with their story telling. I was so captivated with this whole moment in the game. A full fleged 15mins long Hollywood quality short movie in a damn game. And you might even miss it
i can't think of any game where after a big climactic encounter rather than going to save, I stood in a game environment theater for 20 mins to watch a movie and cursed not being able to make my character sit down and eat pop corn. also i think you didn't mean never fails to disappoint, maybe impress ?
I love that the subtitles aren't entirely 1 to 1 translation, really rewards being Finnish understander. Like for example when the subtitles in the movie use the common line of this game "this is the ritual to lead you on" the actual Finnish line is more like "this rite will take you to afterlife" Clearly hinting at the ending
@@lifeisnotaproblem It is pretty direct translation of the concept of FBC but the exact wording is changed slightly because Finland is not a federal country. Direct translation of what he says would be like Control Bureau of the State or something like that
There are also fun nods to Finnish literature of which some, to my knowledge, do not have English translations. E.g. when at 8:02 Ahti (Suosalo) says "The Earth is a cyclical song", which in Finnish is "Maa on syklinen laulu", WHICH in turn is a nod to the book "Maa on syntinen laulu" (The Earth is a sinful song), a movie from the 70's, based on Timo K. Mukka's book of the same name. There's not really a correlation between the plot of AW and the plot of that random movie, but the filming style is somewhat the same, as this AW short movie looks like a modernized 70's film. Mostly just a fun play with words.
I doubt you'll see this comment, but is there anything unusual in the 'weather report' on the radio? I feel like there's more important details than what's in the subtitle there.
@@BlazingOwnager That's just a bit recycled from Control. It's a perfectly normal weather report, just read by Ahti. The joke is that he's named after the sea god of Finnish mythology and its a marine weather forecast
the fact that remedy created a whole short film based off a small part of Alan Wake II just shows how dedicated they are to making games and how much they love it
Watching this again after beating the game. I'm speechless. This is in many ways a twisted reflection of the entire games plot. I can't help but keep going deeper into the spiral that is this games story.
It is reflecting the story, but the ending is different, because Alan and Saga managed to change it. But what interesting, the final quote is still being said, but not by the trapped Casey, by the Alan himself. I wonder if it's because he took an inspiration from this film and wrote this into his ending, or he couldn't change the ending entirely, so he just changed the details, like it's him being the one who are trapped in the room, not Casey. I am probably completely wrong, but the fact that Yötön Yö and Alan Wake II both ends with this same quote is interesting. There was also a theme in Alan's story, that he took the role of the detective (Casey), closer to the end one of his visions was even asking him, if he's a fictional character now too because of that, so maybe in the end of that film is actually Alan in the role of Casey.
@@rigoplay yeah, i'm sure this is the original draft. But still, it's not the same thing Scratch wrote. Remember how Alan was talking about movie adaptations of his books? How he feels protective about his story, how the directors have their own vision and how he wants to be more involved in making them. When i heard that replaying the game, i immediately thought about Yötön Yö. This film is much more what Zane wants from Return, not Alan/Scratch. So that may say a thing or two about Zane for us, if you can distinguish his handwriting from Alan's.
Ahti is mentioning that "he might be out of work soon" while talking with Casey, I think that's because since in Finnish folklor, he is a god but by time, his believers are decreasing. A cool detail.
No.....he's referring to Jesse Faden his "Janitor Assistant" who has taken control of the position. She done an excellent job as his protege that he thinks she might be ready to take over his job title as the janitor
I just noticed a very interesting detail that I wanted to shed some light on, because I think it is generally overlooked. When Tom (playing as Alan) emerges from the well, Barbara Jagger says: "At last". To which Tom responds with: "Thank you my love". This is the exact same conversation that Alan has with Alice at the end of the Final Draft when Alan reawakens after being shot by Saga with the bullet of ligth. Alice says to him: "At last". And then Alan responds by saying: "Thank you my love". This has some insane implications and I'm curious as to what you guys think.
The fact that Remedy created an entire short film explaining a ton of lore & which most people probably just missed entirely as they left the theater is simultaneously the biggest flex and the most Remedy thing ever.
When I finished watching this I went "I can't believe they made a whole short film to put in their game." Then I remembered this was a Remedy game and I was like "Actually no, checks out."
I don't know if Sam Lake has read it, but this absolutely has made me think of the book Night Film by Marissa Pessl for the last few days. Such a thick shared seam and tone. If you like books, highly recommend.
This was the most mindblown scene ever in my experience. Wished I could sit down in the Theater Hall when it played but I just Stood there with Alan and watch the whole movie. One of the mindblown scene in the game. The only other non-remedy game that does this that I remember doing so is RDR2 and even that is much shorter.
All those Yoton Yo posters had creeped me the F out at this point, I kept expecting the monster (or the dark presence) to burst out of the screen at the end of every scene, so I was stood not in the theatre, but right at the EXIT lol, ready to start running as soon as needed for the full 20 minutes.
@@OneWingedRoseI was standing under the lights from the top overlooking the theatre. I also felt like some bad shit was gonna go down at the end of the movie so I kept under the light’s sanctuary safely knowing whatever it would be wouldn’t get past it. And if it did then that’s why I stocked up on a bunch of bullets, buckshot, flare ammo and like 8 flash bangs to John Wick myself out of situations like this 🤣.
as someone with a film degree the level of effort and love put into this is astonishing. Sam Lake and Martti Suosalo both did an excellent job. The cinematography and the motifs connecting to the various in game themes, the atmosphere, everything about this makes it one of the best foreign films I've ever seen. They didn't have to make the entire film and could have just used clips and stills as a gimmick in the level but Remedy's absolute love for mixing mediums and experimental game development cannot go understated. Bravo, Remedy Entertainment. Bravo.
The implication at the end of the film is so horrifying and sad man. Alan (or Zane?) created this character in order to get himself out of the dark place and make it a horror narrative. This means that Alex Casey keeps living the same horrifying nightmare over and over and over. His scream and face at the end give me chills.
When I saw the guy lift his plate with the coffee I was like "Are they really gonna do that?" and I wasn't disappointed. Haven't seen people drink like that anywhere outside of Scandinavia (people might do it elsewhere but I haven't seen it personally)
And thats like really old timey thing to do too. Something that isn't custom here anymore but what people who were born and lived their youth in the 1900-1950 were accustomed to do. I love our coffee culture and it's little quirks like this.
Remedy Connected Universe is the best thing ever in video-games the story and events so far is nothing less than spectacular plus all the games are Gems cannot wait for Alan Wake 2 DLC and Control 2
@@CoolSaver the multiverse aspects are only put there so you as a player can understand that Door is supposed to be Hatch and thats the reason hes so keen on Tim Breaker. They wont go much further than that. They cant use the characters from Quantum Break but still want to use the ideas from that game as part of their universe. Its not going to be a gimmicky traditional multiverse like what is portrayed in comic books. Its going to be used to explain alternate realities and planes of existstance like the dark place and astral plane. Not literally alternate earths. The concept used here will be much higher and less utilized. There wont be universe hopping or anything like that. Its a connected universe that houses many worlds (planes and dimensions) not what the traditional overused multiverse. Its also just used as an easter egg to say Max Payne is still a part of this as Alex Casey is the alternate version of Max but that wont be used more than very slight and only eluded easter eggs. The concept is supposed to be more or less beyond our comprehension.
Is it missable? After you finish sequence in the theater it start playing right away. So unless you choice to leave and not watch it , I don't think you can miss it
@@Skulka oh really?. Im pretty sure that when the ep finished i has to transform the cinema to Watch it , and had to get inside the room with the film itself ha maybe it was all coincidental in my case haha
@@Skulka Yeah, but I have already seen people accidentally miss it lol plus, if you're not into it, the plus is you can leave and not watch it. Doesn't force the player which is a plus imo
Tupenrapinat = the sound you get when you unsheathe the knife from your knifeholster aka you're about to get punished or stabbed. Some Ostrobothnian lore for you AW fans.
despite not being an actor I gotta say that Sam Lake is really nice to watch and I think this is the first time every I hear him speaking his native language
Remedy, Sam Lake and the staff are pure genious; there are so many references to so many different things (for Finns at least) that are absolutely brilliant. Thank you for sharing this video.
Honestly, after watching this, I hope that after Remedy Remakes Max Payne 1&2, they give us an Alex Casey stand alone game, instead of working with Rockstar on Max Payne 4, since Casey's character seems a lot more intriguing to develop, rather than following Max Payne after 3.
I was amazed by this. You can totally miss it and it contain major information in the story. It is as if Zane created this to leave the dark place. Alan Wake 2 is such an incredible game
The main characters acting is bit stif but in a way it makes this feel like an 80s or 70s shitty finnish movie that suddenly turns really dark for time to time
I remember playing redfall and turning on a projector for one of the quest. They couldn't even do an animation during that scene, it was just some pictures. This game basically made a whole short movie. I was so impressed by this and looking back at the projector and the light matching the movie, just so much attention to detail that you don't see from other developers.
It probably cost less to make than Redfall too. Sam is a fucking genius at optimizing bang for buck. No CGI, instead of that live action segments, not many and tight environments but still feels like a big game, great soundtrack.
It was so cool to find this in the game, i sat and watched the whole thing. Remedy is a favourite studio of mine now, from control to alan wake. My god its SO DAMN GOOD.
I was always captivated by Adress Unknown in Max Payne 2 like i would genuinly think about this world thats only presented through a slide show of crusty jpegs on tvs you can come across and now they're making full psychological horror shorts I love remedy so much
The fact that they essentially adapted the Address Unknown storyline and then reworked Max Payne to be caught in an ouroboros of creation between Alan Wake and Thomas Zane is the most meta shit I’ve ever seen and peak Remedy.
This was the moment this game became my all time favorite! I love when the studio shows personality through little things… this is why Rockstar was my favorite before but not it’s Remedy. This moment, and Control’s Dynamite by Dr Darling! Idk what it is with random projector scenes in Remedy games but I absolutely fall in love. There is something lovely about the fact that a movie theatre in game… actually plays a movie. I loved it, it felt so real… it felt perfect.
I was an idiot and walked out of the theatre but I went to the back alley and it was playing on the radio in the garage and I sat and listened (read subtitles lol) i didn’t realise it was a film.
It's kinda nuts that the acress for Mona Sax from the original Max Payne game is actually in this. Edit: It's Carol Kiriakos as one of the dancers in Yötön Yö, who did the motion capture for Mona Sax in the first May Payne game.
So Thomas Zane tried to write an excape for himself sacrificing Alex Casey to the darkplace to make it happen I wonder if the cultists and Alex Casey entered Alan's writing because of Thomas Zane's meddling
Sam Lake, playing a detective (*cough Max Payne*) is trapped inside a nebulous Dark Place so Thomas Zane (*cough Alan Wake*) can be reborn. I see you, Remedy.
I got straight chills because I didn’t even know this existed and ONLY saw it AFTER I had beaten the game…. Playing on The Final Draft right now and did not understand where the video even came from… Amazing film, amazing game, just overall a masterpiece!
The beginning and the end both show Alex screaming and covering his eyes from bright light. I know Alex said he's stuck in a loop, but I didn't think he meant it literally. 😰
This was really interesting to watch as a finnish person. It felt a bit more intimate obviously to me since it’s my native language, but at the same time it was a bit funny because they spoke in formal finnish, I completely understand why they chose to do it that way tho
My neighbours might think I'm crazy because I've memorized all the lines and I keep reciting them in the sauna... while drinking Ahma beer of course :)
The fact that you can miss this 20 minute-long short indie film that actually explains a lot of the lore of the game is the most Remedy thing ever
And the fact that this ”explaining” would create more questions and confusion to most people haha. I think that’s why they didn’t force it on everyone. I love it tho
@@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820 For real. It's just amazing.
I didn't miss this, I just didn't understand it because it was all in Finnish and I didn't have subtitles on lol
its hard to miss tho, you have to pass this cinema and by default it shows up while you are walking down the cinema hall, so the player is warned about the movie but its the player's choice to keep watching it or not.
@@mememachine-386 For me it had subtitles. And if you think deeper into it and put also Alan Wake American Nightmare next to Alan Wake 2, you see some simialarities. Example: The loop or rather spiral of how things are progressing. I am looking forward to the DLC and also more about Saga and Mr. Door.
Sam Lake be like: fuck it, lets put a 20 minute short film in our game
the fact that "Herald of Darkness" was under heavy possibility to be cut, but "Nightless Night" wasn't. It's perfect
It was supposed to be full feature length originally, from what I understand, so what we got is a condensed version 😂
They should make full movie, remedy guys are really talented just based on what i have seen in alan wake 2@@hawkins347
@@zhmihlo Because the musical part was not necessary and did not add anything to the plot but to further deconstruct the character of Alan Wake.
@@PiterburgCowboy Sure, it did. It provided essential backstory to the character of Alan Wake, including details from the first game.
I love how in one of the echoes Alex questioned how he got to play in this movie without remembering it, but he never questioned how the hell he spoke Finnish
I always took it as he knew Finnish
@@arran4285 but he's supposed to be an American who has no connection with Finland 😭
@@scottish_guy5 I based on him being a mirror for Max Payne and the City and have a lot of Finnish stuff
@@arran4285 hm, makes sense now, thanks
@@scottish_guy5actually I think in the game he plays himself (Sam Lake) as a finnish actor playing an american character
Sam Lake is truly the Nordic/European Hideo Kojima. A mastermind
That's a very succinct way of putting it yeah.
kojima has never done anything anywhere near this quality or creativeness lmao
@@pingusbabyyy451 That is your opinion, but they have the same kind of style from time to time. Sam Lake is more serious tho
@@roflc0re sure i guess but all i know is, no one can ever explain what makes kojima good. they always just say he is
@@pingusbabyyy451well hes so knowledgable in choreography and cinematography
His ideas of movement wont cross the mind of ordinary people
I love that they gave the live action cast a chance to shine, it also makes sense cause they are all Fins!
I remember seeing Sam Lake tied to that chair screaming he was just an actor laughing my ass of.
I have a theory that Ahti was “brought” to America (a la “American Gods”-style) by Finnish settlers to Watery and Bright Falls, and due to his nature as a water God, inhabited Cauldron Lake and the surrounding water but was then pushed out by whatever the hell the Dark Presence actually is (Hence his line about losing his work and wanting to get a job at the Federal Bureau of Control, and also kind of supported by the fact he goes on vacation to Watery in the “Control” game and supported even further by his minor breakdown in “Alan Wake 2” when he’s sat in his room and while you play as Saga, he becomes very scared and anxious and keeps saying he doesn’t know what’s happening and just wants to go home and that he feels like he’s lost at sea).
Kojima: i make a cameo of me in the game
Sam Lake: i am the games, my last names "is not a lake, it's an ocean"
It'd be kind of hilarious if he changed his name legally to Sam Ocean and acted like it's always been that, and is not sure why everyone keeps calling him Sam Lake.
When I stumbled upon this, I genuinely expected to see some trailer featuring “highlights” of the nonexistent movie, one or two minutes tops. I was not expecting to see fully filmed 15 minutes short film. We don’t deserve Remedy
We really don't, I don't think they'll win goty even though they deserve it but I hope they snag the best soundtrack and best narrative award.
@@Zip-id7pm same. I can bet my ass BG3 will win GOTY, but my personal GOTY is definitely AW2
@@Zip-id7pm The best narrative has to be Alan Wake 2 and probably the art direction.
But for best soundtrack award will probably go to FF16
In the world of Ubisoft, FIFA, Call of Duty, Battlefield, and f*Cking StarField making billions+ each year… yes we truly don’t deserve Remedy. This gaming industry is full of idiots.
(I didn’t mention Fortnite because that game essentially funded Remedy’s Alan Wake 2)
@@son1cc567tbh I really can't remember shit from that game. Would really love for AW2 to win
okay so in the film Alex Casey is playing "The Detective" while Tom Zane is playing "The Writer Alan Wake" and it's worth keeping in mind that both Alan Wake and Tom worked together on the film at some point in an earlier part of the spiral, likely as a method to try and free both of them. I think Tom tricked Alan into making him think that the roles in the film are more or less explicit than they are. The idea being that the various actors in the film aren't necessarily relevant, they're just actors playing a role. So what matters is who ends up filling each role when the film ends up manifesting and changing reality.
Earlier in Alan's campaign he kills and takes over the role of Alex Casey going through recreations of cases he presumably investigated in the real world, therefore he becomes the much more vaguely defined role of "The Detective" while the film much more explicitly and literally states "Tom Zane is The Writer Alan Wake" with him playing that role in the film and at least intending to also play the role in reality.
Thus I think that the idea is that Tom made the film in such a way that Alan wouldn't be suspicious at the time. Alex Casey is a character he already killed himself in his original novels, and by having Tom play Alan, in a way it made it look like he was trying to free both of them. But the reality is that Tom was tricking Alan into eventually filling the role of Alex, essentially trying to Sacrifice Alan in order to take his place and escape the Dark Place that way. This is further reinforced by how The Detective repeats Alan's line at the end of the game, clearly showing who is truly meant to be playing that role.
This seems to fit with how Tom Zane keeps wanting to find some way to take a shortcut to escape instead of writing a full-fledged story. Alan is doing things the "proper" way by trying to write a full trilogy that follows the Hero's Journey, while Zane is simply trying to find ways to sabotage Alan and take his place. In fact apparently Nightless Night is actually supposed to be a movie that Tom made long before going to Caldron Lake before he made the film "Tom the Poet". But this still can make sense if the Nightless Night we see is meant to be a REMAKE of his original film, further reinforcing how Tom is basically creatively bankrupt and is incapable of coming up with any new ideas to try and escape at this point. That explains how it can simultaneously be a much older film while still somehow featuring references to more recent characters and ideas. It's not a perfect 1-to-1 recreation but it is at least an adaptation using what is currently relevant to Tom and Alan's situation.
However where Tom went wrong is that he didn't realize that multiple roles could potentially be filled by the same person, especially by the janky shenanigans of the Dark Place, and by defining his own role as Alan Wake so specifically, while still having him also be the detective, he essentially ensured that Alan's looping would double back on itself throughout the game, which combined with The Dark Place's overall disregard for linear time, is why he ends up simultaneously finding a murder scene, being the murder victim, and being the murderer at different points in the game. Which is also reinforced by Alan's stated philosophy of how a writer is a different person whenever they right a new draft because they've gotten older and experienced new things that have changed them, with that idea just being taken literally so that he can fill multiple roles of the movie at once.
And many of the films elements ended up manifesting into reality directly or indirectly. The cult and their ritual sacrifices, the fact that Alan re-emerges from the Dark Place, etc. Perhaps the film wasn't enough to work on its own though because of how disjointed everything is. There's not much of a reason given for why the cult's sacrifices lead to "Alan" re-emerging from the lake, which is ultimately why Dark Ocean Summoning is still required to actually free Alan properly. Once again, Tom makes the mistake of basically trying to tell a story where things just happen the way he wants them to instead of providing a meaningful through-line to justify the events of the narrative.
Or maybe nothing I just said makes any goddamn sense at all
This is really interesting and I especially like the bit about the roles they play.
But I personally don't believe the real Thomas Zane appears in Alan Wake II at all. I think every time we've seen Zane it's been either a manifestation of Alan's or just Scratch. I think it's American Nightmare where you have "Zane" opposite Wake, pressuring him into drinking and writing, and that just seemed so very Scratch to me. Then we have their bender in Alan Wake II, which seems very similar. I think Scratch is trying to confuse and disorient Wake in order to make him easier to control and inhabit, as well as pressure him to keep writing so that Scratch can influence it.
I think the film is *Scratch* tricking Alan into creating a story where Scratch escapes and gains power but Alan is "locked in the room", either trapped in the dark place or possessed by Scratch. I think based on what is said to Wake about taking the place of the detective and what Wake says about Casey having fictional aspects since he's been written about means that pushing Wake into a role makes him easier to manipulate, which might be the whole motivation behind the dark place sequences.
When I first saw the movie It got stuck in my mind that it was written Tom Seine is "The Writer Alan Wake" and I remember thinking that it is really weird he created some kind of art where he makes a statement like this right in the first minute, and in that kind of media (film) maybe makes sense to do this, but keeping in mind that things like this can change the reality of the world they're in, really gave me a bad feeling about this. Like when an actor does a villain so well people start to see the villain into the actor itself and get angry about him, this can either turn the actor into the character or give the character such characteristics and likeability that it becomes real.
And also I thought how Ahti, Odin and Tor, people who apparently can see beyond the bounds of the story, or could we say see beyond the roles they are playing also call Alan by Tom.
I started to think of "Your friends will meet him when you're gone."
In Alan Wake 1 the Anderson's act like they knew Alan from before, right from the first meeting, in the Oh Deer Diner, if you listen to the whole interaction they say "Its been a long time, Tom. Good to see you". When we first see Ahti in Alan's route in AW2, Ahti also seems to know who Alan is from before, and call him Tom, but Alan doesn't remember him.
Maybe they three were Alan's friends? They now think Alan is just character? Maybe Alan is just a character. They're all gods? Is Alan a god? Because of all of this now they only know about Tom?
I dont know, the whole thing just feels really weird. I don't think this is just a mirroring/reference of the story like Remedy likes to do in their games. I really think that this whole movie says a lot more that we can see right now, it was really well made, its a Tom Seine movie, maybe the most mysterious guy in Alan's story. I think in the future we will look at this and see we had the answers right in our faces or maybe some part of them.
Also this whole thing and all that happened in the game had me thinking how Alan wrote a story that changed the reality to insert Saga and make her help him (Or Scratch did), Alan could be one of Tom's ways of getting out, maybe he wrote him and all of this is him trying to swap places. After Casey gets shot and Alan takes his gun he said, this felt like he was assuming the role of the Detective. Also, after get shot by Alan, Casey says: "Me and the writer, we are the same."
This way, it all will end with happening to Alan the same happens to Casey in the movie. (In an horror story, if it has a hero he has to pay the price). It seems they're just being played like puppets. Scratch is nothing than Alan himself and the major problem all along is Zane.
Remember that this movie is supposed to be the companion piece to Return, as said by Zane.
I completely agree on the way the roles work in the film-- Zane tricking Alan into taking on the role of Detective to trap him in the Dark Place so that Zane can take his place in reality-- but I do think you're missing some important context to make the other pieces fall into place.
Zane wasn't originally a filmmaker.
This is disputed several times throughout in-universe Remedy CU canon (Jesse Faden in Control and Cynthia Weaver in AW2, for example). It's clear that, for us-- the players, Thomas Zane wasn't always a filmmaker, but this isn't just a retcon: this is a change in the story made by the power of the Dark Place. At the earliest points in the Spiral, Tom was a poet and only a poet; but by this point in the Spiral, that's not true anymore. Now he's a filmmaker.
Why the change? What could be the point of changing Tom's preferred media? He was written out of the story, but even the parts that hung around still clung to the idea of him as a poet? Why suddenly a filmmaker? How does that change the story?
The answer: the story had already been changed. Alan Wake was part of it now.
I believe that, like Scratch, Zane has a doppelganger who desperately wants to leave the Dark Place-- the puppet used by the Dark Presence to escape, taking the form of Barbara Jagger and later Alice Wake in the first game, Zane's own Herald of Darkness to oppose Tom the Diver, the first Champion of Light. But Tom the Diver escaped the story, won the day, rewrote Zane out of reality to trap him in the Dark Place and even placed a guardian into the story to prevent Dark Zane from ever escaping: Alan Wake.
The Dark Presence thought it could use Dark Zane to escape, gave Alan the same face, making it easy to confuse the two, so that the Dark Presence could take Alan the same way it took Zane. And Dark Zane went along with it, desperate to escape the Dark Place.
But neither Dark Zane nor the Dark Presence understood that Alan wasn't just a character, a mask for them to put on: he was a person, someone with his own darkness and his own light-- the Dark Presence in Alan couldn't be Dark Zane, only Scratch. That works just fine for the Dark Presence, but it does leave Zane behind if they escape.
Zane and Wake were just too different, especially in their darkness. I have a hard time believing that Tom the Poet could have ever touched the darkness in Alan Wake bad-boy/hothead. So, Zane needs to bleed back into reality, but not as a poet; he needs to be someone more like Wake, someone who can have a similar reputation, someone who worked with other artists-- not in isolation, someone whose work could not just accompany, but supersede the Escape Plan: Return. So, Zane's history returned to reality, now as an auteur filmmaker who had an artist commune in Bright Falls.
These changes weren't wildly out of character for Zane, they didn't strain the story, just tipped it in a very particular direction.
Now, Dark Zane and Scratch could work together to escape the Dark Place. With Dark Zane taking the lead, they wrote two pieces of art: Initiation and Return. Initiation was meant to establish a baseline that would allow Yötön Yö to be brought to life by the Dark Place-- a legendary film by the auteur filmmaker Thomas Zane that reflects and echoes the events of Return (likely fooling Scratch and readers into believing it's foreshadowing when in fact it *is* the Shadow) as well as getting Alan into position in the Spiral to be broken enough for Scratch to fully take over. And Return was meant to bring the Dark Place to reality with Scratch as king and master.
But the secret final act was Yötön Yö itself, which rewrites the events of both Initiation and Return to be about Dark Zane escaping the Dark Place by swapping places with Alan Wake/Scratch (they are the same person after all).
And this is likely what would have happened if not for Alice.
Alice's part of the story is what gives Alan the strength, direction, and Light he needs to rewrite the ending of the Return. At first, Alice can't avert the patterns of destruction that live deep within Alan, but she can start to show him the Light, show him another way. At first, all Alan can do is die.
Dying resets the loops, plays out the parts of the Spiral that either take you toward destruction or ascension. And so if Return ends with Alan's death, the loop starts back up again: the Dark Presence, Dark Zane, Scratch (and also Alan), they all stay trapped in the Dark Place a little longer-- a cage around infinity.
The Final Draft of both Initiation and Return lead the way towards our True Ending: Alan Wake, the Master of Many Worlds-- but importantly, Scratch is gone. There is nothing left for the Dark Presence to puppet, which means there's nothing for Dark Zane to take over. Dark Zane is still trapped in the Dark Place, the Dark Presence is not gone. But they can reach someone else, someone who's already looking for an artist. Someone with a very familiar voice.
@@henriquefolc Tom wrote the Clicker into existence, into Alan Wake's life, long before he came to Bright Falls or entered the Dark Place. I always thought that was a huge hint as to who or what Alan is. Along with your theory, everything points to Alan Wake being a character created by Tom and Tom "playing" as him, which is why he looks the same and the Andersons call him Tom. As a character, you wouldn't know you were created by someone, until you meet. Remember how Tom wrote himself out of existence because he couldn't win against the Dark Presence? It's like Stephen King, writing about writers writing characters XD
First game ever to include an movie and a musical. Remedy never disapoints 👏👏
And it is super artsy fartsy movie even. Remedy really had balls to put this stuff in their high cost AAA-game. 👏👏👏
Remedy just gave us a free game packed with their new short film and musical.
In the Darkness you can watch the entirety of To Kill a mockingbird movie with the main characters girlfriend. That was 2007 by the way
@@db-du5l688neat! I didn’t know that
And in High On Life, which came out just last year, you can watch: Tammy and the T-Rex (1994), Demon Wind (1990), Blood Harvest (1987) and Vampire Hookers (1978).
SAM LAKE IS THE DAVID LYNCH OF VIDEOGAMES. THIS MAN MUST BE PROTECTED AT ALL COSTS
I always feel bad how hard Remedy has it trying to get funding and signing deals with bad companies that hurt them.
But the fact is they don't make games for general audiences; they make games for *their* audiences. The kinds of people who will go on youtube and wikis and scour in game information for hours and hours and hours after playing the game. I've spent more time researching AW2 than playing it. God bless them for it.
@BlazingOwnager good news, Remedy get parnership with anapurna, so, new alan wake and control funding also with a tv show.
@@VCoral I am EXTREMELY happy to hear that. The Epic Games deal was going to slaughter Control 2. Self-publishing is the way to go.
ahti drinking the sugar cube with the coffee from the plate was a really cool addition because it reveals a lot about his character (it's a Finnish tradition of much older generations, placing ahti to be born at least before the 30s and placing this this film around the 60/70s.) My father's granpa drank coffee like that when he was still alive. Nice to see games from my country to gain more attraction worldwide!
The way Ahti is dressed in the posters over the reality-shifting puddles seems to indicate early 1900's as well. As do the ghostly dance-hall flickers you seen while following Ahti's singing on the way to fight Mulligan/Thornton.
@@byrn Still running with the theory that Ahti is in fact Ahti
Kahvin juominen aluslautaselta sokeripalan läpi taitaa olla alunperin ruotsista levinnyt tapa.
Wow! Remedy really goes all out with subtle stuff like that... God I love Finland, definitely visiting it sometime
FWIW, it's my understand that tea was also drunk this way at one point, and the saucer was supposed to allow you to cool the drink to a comfortable level by creating a lot more surface area to give off heat.
You know it’s cool to see Sam lake and Ilkka talk in their native language.
Fun fact. @4:15 the older pair of dancers in the bottom left are Sam Lake's Parents, who also provided the faces for Woden and Horne in Max Payne 1, the face actors for Alex, Mona and B.B from the first game are also dancing extras, but we don't see much of them.
That is so cool
Nicole Horne (Max Payne 1)
You just blew my mind.
i gotta say... for not initially being a professional actor, Sam Lake is really fucking good. if this video game stuff doesnt work out (lol) he can definitely fall into that :P
I think with Max Payne series, Alan Wake series and Control series he has already proven it works. But I hope they do more stuff like this in the future.
Love.👏🏻 It.👏🏻
Sam Lake has theatre and screenwriting background, he has the fundementals lol.
@@tilehopper oh awesome! side note, i wish it was easier to see stuff from other countries. was trying to find some of Ilkka's other works thru vpn hopping but no luck.
@@baileydiss33 The show "Bordertown" should be on Netflix, no?
He said he was scared as hell acting with estabilished finish actors like ahti's actor, which is very well known in finland.
I can't even describe how "It's not a loop, it's a spiral" made me feel. I also can't remember the last time a horror story made me smile as much as AW2 did - not because it's ineffectual horror, but because all the callbacks and worldbuilding are pulled off just perfectly.
If we're talking about Alan's quote, it made me laugh, because it's immediately clicked with the ending of the first game, almost like he intentionally said something similar to end the game
@@CoolSaver I was talking about the ending of Nightless Night, although it made me laugh, as well. It's creepy, sure, and has some wild implications.... but it also, along with the entire movie, comes off as a knock-off made in a different country. Which I'm sure is intentional, Remedy knows what they're doing.
@@CoolSaver It's also genius in that it's similar, but not the same. Because in a loop, everything is the same, going around and around and around. But in a spiral, things change, expand, are altered.
The "It's not a X, it's a(n) Y" is the same, but the words themselves and thus the meaning are not.
@@bobjenko my interpretation is that when viewed from above a loop and a 3d spiral can look identical, but only when you adjust your perspective can you become aware of the progress that you’re making, just like how only when alan gets the knowledge and perspective from his past loops can he actually progress
idk I think I’m yapping abt nothing
This is art. Art in a video game for fifty bucks. Together with "Herald of Darkness" I cannot believe how much effort Remedy made to make such a video game into a piece of art.
Good thing is, Control 2 is already confirmed and being worked on, Alan Wake 2 gets 2 DLCs in 2024 and I guess they're already working on Alan Wake 3.
What I personally still don't understand how some people still cannot see video games as a form of art. In my honest opinion, they are the peak of it because they entail so many professionals from different areas of expertise. All together to create something amazing, together.
Max Payne 1+2 remake also in the works so it'll probably be some time before AW3, which I think is fair
The game has to sell better. It's sold poorly from what I hear
Imagine still believing that to live a good and successfull life you would have to rely on sales numbers alone. I pity you@@Jim26D
@@Jim26D
Also because of its digital only distribution and it doesn't deserve that. It's such a good game with poor sales only because Epic wanted to release it digital only.
This movie alone has more quality than most aaa games. Will support them in future for any game. Probably the best game ever.
But remedy is triple aaa
Absolutely hilarious that they decided to make a fucking 15 minute live action short film and then made it optional to find.
And made it quite the chilling watch too. I have seen worse short films in my years at film festivals. This was just mindblowing.
@@Shrilacklet's be honest, if it wasn't about Alan Wake (and wasn't connected to the actual story of the game), you probably wouldn't understand one bit and therefore wouldn't like it this much
@@CoolSaver I would say it stand on it"s own. The fact that it is connected to the story is a plus but in all honnesty i have seen worse short films in actual film festivals. I would rather sit and watch rather than the creepy shit i have seen from Jodorowsky's brother
It's actually not optional to find.
@@jothain optional is the wrong word but you can literally walk out of the theater as it's playing. A ton of people missed it by leaving immediately.
I remember watching this in the theater in the Dark Place and I don't remember it being 20 minutes. I was so interested I would've only guessed it was 6 or 7 minutes
Time is convoluted in the Dark Place
Ahtis voice is so... Chefs kiss.. I'm entranced
6:50 there’s no reason for Finnish to sound that attractive. It’s probably the voice 😂😭
They put the greatest musical segment and a 20 minutes Finnish Arts film in the game
I fucking love Remedy
It's funny how the names of the opening texts are Finnish versions.
Such as: Thomas Zane-Thomas Seine, Aleksi Kesä-Alex Casey, Baba Jakala-Barbara Jagger, etc. And ""Elokuvayhtiö Pimeä Paikka Esittää" is Film company Dark Place Presents in English.
This Thomas Zane guy seemed like promising filmmaker, it's a real shame what happened to him
He’s still trapped in the Dark Place
@@superiorgaming8086 damn, where's that at? New York?
@@marcosvargasalcon4121 Cauldron Lake in Bright Falls small town near Washington you have to enter it from there
Film maker?
I remember him as a poet!
One of the most beautiful moments of the game. And there are plenty of them.
It's not a loop.
It's a spiral.
It's not a spiral, it's a cinnamon bun.
its not a cinnamon bun, its a bottle of Finnish vodka @@GameVaultGuides
pero que quizo decir con eso ?
@@videogames584Que todo lo que está pasando en Allan wake puede tener un final, no están atrapados en un bucle igual.
Están tirando en un espiral del cual podrán salir eventualmente.
Dude I remember being done in the theatre and this just started playing…talk about an immersive experience this shit transcends
The amount of effort and actual delivery from Remedy is something to be studied. No excuse for billion dollar studios to not be putting this artistic effort into their games
cries in spiderman 2
This is reminiscent of Aki Kaurismäki films. Especially the form of speech is very standard and literary finnish rather than the kind of everyday conversational finnish.
how am I supposed to tell people that my favorite film is an indie short inside a video game ???
I'm beaming with pride for Remedy, this was one of the highlights of the whole game.
For some reason I can't stop seeing Sam Lake as a well-known actor who has appeared in many movies.
Man i loved the game. This is how you make a good sequel. Remedy never fails to impress with their story telling. I was so captivated with this whole moment in the game. A full fleged 15mins long Hollywood quality short movie in a damn game. And you might even miss it
i can't think of any game where after a big climactic encounter rather than going to save, I stood in a game environment theater for 20 mins to watch a movie and cursed not being able to make my character sit down and eat pop corn. also i think you didn't mean never fails to disappoint, maybe impress ?
@@cunning01 yeah even I was like pressing around to see if can sit on chairs 😭, and yes I meant impress, corrected it. Thanks mate.
How do u watch it? I missed it
My game glitched when I got to that part. It played but didn't see it on the wall.
@@somebodyelseathome damn my guy. I think you can watch in your mind place using the TV
I love that the subtitles aren't entirely 1 to 1 translation, really rewards being Finnish understander. Like for example when the subtitles in the movie use the common line of this game "this is the ritual to lead you on" the actual Finnish line is more like "this rite will take you to afterlife" Clearly hinting at the ending
What about when Ahti mentions FBC? Is the name the same in Finnish?
@@lifeisnotaproblem It is pretty direct translation of the concept of FBC but the exact wording is changed slightly because Finland is not a federal country. Direct translation of what he says would be like Control Bureau of the State or something like that
There are also fun nods to Finnish literature of which some, to my knowledge, do not have English translations. E.g. when at 8:02 Ahti (Suosalo) says "The Earth is a cyclical song", which in Finnish is "Maa on syklinen laulu", WHICH in turn is a nod to the book "Maa on syntinen laulu" (The Earth is a sinful song), a movie from the 70's, based on Timo K. Mukka's book of the same name. There's not really a correlation between the plot of AW and the plot of that random movie, but the filming style is somewhat the same, as this AW short movie looks like a modernized 70's film. Mostly just a fun play with words.
I doubt you'll see this comment, but is there anything unusual in the 'weather report' on the radio?
I feel like there's more important details than what's in the subtitle there.
@@BlazingOwnager That's just a bit recycled from Control. It's a perfectly normal weather report, just read by Ahti. The joke is that he's named after the sea god of Finnish mythology and its a marine weather forecast
Sam Lake is a treasure and anything he’s attached to is instant hype
the fact that remedy created a whole short film based off a small part of Alan Wake II just shows how dedicated they are to making games and how much they love it
Fiction withing fiction explaining the primary source. Genius.
I like how they convey the horror through the agonizing scene rather than jumpscares
They need to bring Ahti's song back to Spotify ASAP, I need this on my playlist now!
Watching this again after beating the game. I'm speechless. This is in many ways a twisted reflection of the entire games plot. I can't help but keep going deeper into the spiral that is this games story.
It is reflecting the story, but the ending is different, because Alan and Saga managed to change it. But what interesting, the final quote is still being said, but not by the trapped Casey, by the Alan himself. I wonder if it's because he took an inspiration from this film and wrote this into his ending, or he couldn't change the ending entirely, so he just changed the details, like it's him being the one who are trapped in the room, not Casey. I am probably completely wrong, but the fact that Yötön Yö and Alan Wake II both ends with this same quote is interesting. There was also a theme in Alan's story, that he took the role of the detective (Casey), closer to the end one of his visions was even asking him, if he's a fictional character now too because of that, so maybe in the end of that film is actually Alan in the role of Casey.
@@CoolSaver Maybe this is the original version of Return before Alan chaged it, Scratch and Zane were working on it together.
@@rigoplay yeah, i'm sure this is the original draft. But still, it's not the same thing Scratch wrote. Remember how Alan was talking about movie adaptations of his books? How he feels protective about his story, how the directors have their own vision and how he wants to be more involved in making them. When i heard that replaying the game, i immediately thought about Yötön Yö. This film is much more what Zane wants from Return, not Alan/Scratch. So that may say a thing or two about Zane for us, if you can distinguish his handwriting from Alan's.
@@CoolSaver makes sense
Ahti is mentioning that "he might be out of work soon" while talking with Casey, I think that's because since in Finnish folklor, he is a god but by time, his believers are decreasing.
A cool detail.
No.....he's referring to Jesse Faden his "Janitor Assistant" who has taken control of the position. She done an excellent job as his protege that he thinks she might be ready to take over his job title as the janitor
A masterpiece within a masterpiece
Ahti saying he’s already got an assistant janitor gets me hyped for what’s next.
I think he was referring to Jesse, as this movie talked about him getting the janitor job at the FBC
@@mememachine-386yeah I’ve been playing Control recently and he even calls her the janitors assistant in that.
I just noticed a very interesting detail that I wanted to shed some light on, because I think it is generally overlooked.
When Tom (playing as Alan) emerges from the well, Barbara Jagger says: "At last".
To which Tom responds with: "Thank you my love".
This is the exact same conversation that Alan has with Alice at the end of the Final Draft when Alan reawakens after being shot by Saga with the bullet of ligth.
Alice says to him: "At last".
And then Alan responds by saying: "Thank you my love".
This has some insane implications and I'm curious as to what you guys think.
Im glad I waited in the theater, otherwise I would have missed this masterpiece.
Me too. I was just kind of entranced the whole time. I didn't even care if someone was walking up on me or anything.
Does it not get added to the TV stuff if you don't stay and watch it in the theater?
@@coolsenjoyer theatre experience is always better than watching it on TV ;)
It does@@coolsenjoyer
@wildcardbitchesyeehaw8320 it does get added to the TV in Alan's mindspace.
The fact that Remedy created an entire short film explaining a ton of lore & which most people probably just missed entirely as they left the theater is simultaneously the biggest flex and the most Remedy thing ever.
It’s not a teaser it’s a movie …
It's not a lake, it's an ocean ...
@@ZastosZork I'ts not a game, It's a masterpiece.
@@juanjbrieva5168 it's not a loop, it's a spiral...
Its interesting how the same actor can look so different as tom zane and alan wake
And Darling, too
When I finished watching this I went "I can't believe they made a whole short film to put in their game."
Then I remembered this was a Remedy game and I was like "Actually no, checks out."
I don't know if Sam Lake has read it, but this absolutely has made me think of the book Night Film by Marissa Pessl for the last few days. Such a thick shared seam and tone. If you like books, highly recommend.
Thanks, I put it on the list. :)
what genre is it
i started reading it after i saw this comment, and i wanted to say thanks for recommending it, i'm loving it.
@@vorpalpoet I got it too haha. Yet to start though.
@@vorpalpoetAmazing, I'm glad you're enjoying it.
Only Remedy could do something this crazy
Sam lake is a visionary. Insane what this man can come up with.
This was the most mindblown scene ever in my experience.
Wished I could sit down in the Theater Hall when it played but I just Stood there with Alan and watch the whole movie. One of the mindblown scene in the game.
The only other non-remedy game that does this that I remember doing so is RDR2 and even that is much shorter.
All those Yoton Yo posters had creeped me the F out at this point, I kept expecting the monster (or the dark presence) to burst out of the screen at the end of every scene, so I was stood not in the theatre, but right at the EXIT lol, ready to start running as soon as needed for the full 20 minutes.
@@OneWingedRoseI was standing under the lights from the top overlooking the theatre. I also felt like some bad shit was gonna go down at the end of the movie so I kept under the light’s sanctuary safely knowing whatever it would be wouldn’t get past it. And if it did then that’s why I stocked up on a bunch of bullets, buckshot, flare ammo and like 8 flash bangs to John Wick myself out of situations like this 🤣.
as someone with a film degree the level of effort and love put into this is astonishing. Sam Lake and Martti Suosalo both did an excellent job. The cinematography and the motifs connecting to the various in game themes, the atmosphere, everything about this makes it one of the best foreign films I've ever seen. They didn't have to make the entire film and could have just used clips and stills as a gimmick in the level but Remedy's absolute love for mixing mediums and experimental game development cannot go understated. Bravo, Remedy Entertainment. Bravo.
The implication at the end of the film is so horrifying and sad man.
Alan (or Zane?) created this character in order to get himself out of the dark place and make it a horror narrative. This means that Alex Casey keeps living the same horrifying nightmare over and over and over. His scream and face at the end give me chills.
When I saw the guy lift his plate with the coffee I was like "Are they really gonna do that?" and I wasn't disappointed. Haven't seen people drink like that anywhere outside of Scandinavia (people might do it elsewhere but I haven't seen it personally)
And thats like really old timey thing to do too. Something that isn't custom here anymore but what people who were born and lived their youth in the 1900-1950 were accustomed to do. I love our coffee culture and it's little quirks like this.
I think I saw it on the tv version of Astrid Lindgren's Emil in Lönneberga as a kid@@LeppisProduction1
I've seen older people do it a lot here in Greece. My mom included
@@primordial2.07That's interesting, maybe it used to be a lot more common in Europe, or even worldwide, but went out of style?
Oh, cool! Didn't know that but I can easily imagine it.@@primordial2.07
As a filmmaker this went way harder than it should have! Just brilliant!
Remedy Connected Universe is the best thing ever in video-games
the story and events so far is nothing less than spectacular
plus all the games are Gems
cannot wait for Alan Wake 2 DLC and Control 2
I don't really like where it goes with that multiverse thing, but we'll see. As you said, SO FAR it is amazing.
@@CoolSaver what do you meme
@@CoolSaver the multiverse aspects are only put there so you as a player can understand that Door is supposed to be Hatch and thats the reason hes so keen on Tim Breaker. They wont go much further than that. They cant use the characters from Quantum Break but still want to use the ideas from that game as part of their universe. Its not going to be a gimmicky traditional multiverse like what is portrayed in comic books. Its going to be used to explain alternate realities and planes of existstance like the dark place and astral plane. Not literally alternate earths. The concept used here will be much higher and less utilized. There wont be universe hopping or anything like that. Its a connected universe that houses many worlds (planes and dimensions) not what the traditional overused multiverse. Its also just used as an easter egg to say Max Payne is still a part of this as Alex Casey is the alternate version of Max but that wont be used more than very slight and only eluded easter eggs. The concept is supposed to be more or less beyond our comprehension.
@@DuckysMediaShowcase i hope you're one of the developers and everything will be as you said
Having this be missable is great, and the kind of detail that makes remedy so special
Is it missable? After you finish sequence in the theater it start playing right away. So unless you choice to leave and not watch it , I don't think you can miss it
@@Skulka oh really?. Im pretty sure that when the ep finished i has to transform the cinema to Watch it , and had to get inside the room with the film itself ha maybe it was all coincidental in my case haha
@@Skulka Yeah, but I have already seen people accidentally miss it lol plus, if you're not into it, the plus is you can leave and not watch it. Doesn't force the player which is a plus imo
@@SkulkaJudging from how many streamers missed it; I would say it is missable
It's missable I transformed the room and saw an echo to get this.
Then came right to YT to watch the whole thing
Tupenrapinat = the sound you get when you unsheathe the knife from your knifeholster aka you're about to get punished or stabbed. Some Ostrobothnian lore for you AW fans.
despite not being an actor I gotta say that Sam Lake is really nice to watch
and I think this is the first time every I hear him speaking his native language
I like the idea that McCaffrey's voice is the English dub for a Finnish movie basically
Remedy is setting the bar for future story games for their uses of art and multi-media. It is amazing to witness.
We need a Blu-ray release
Is it just me or should Alan wake 2 be in the discussion of top games of all time?
Remedy, Sam Lake and the staff are pure genious; there are so many references to so many different things (for Finns at least) that are absolutely brilliant. Thank you for sharing this video.
Honestly, after watching this, I hope that after Remedy Remakes Max Payne 1&2, they give us an Alex Casey stand alone game, instead of working with Rockstar on Max Payne 4, since Casey's character seems a lot more intriguing to develop, rather than following Max Payne after 3.
I was amazed by this. You can totally miss it and it contain major information in the story. It is as if Zane created this to leave the dark place. Alan Wake 2 is such an incredible game
The main characters acting is bit stif but in a way it makes this feel like an 80s or 70s shitty finnish movie that suddenly turns really dark for time to time
It's cause it's the main writer of the game - who isn't an actor. But yes it kind of fits with that sort of underground Arthouse horror stuff
Absolute masterpiece. This needs to be shown in every film studies class
I remember playing redfall and turning on a projector for one of the quest. They couldn't even do an animation during that scene, it was just some pictures. This game basically made a whole short movie. I was so impressed by this and looking back at the projector and the light matching the movie, just so much attention to detail that you don't see from other developers.
It probably cost less to make than Redfall too. Sam is a fucking genius at optimizing bang for buck. No CGI, instead of that live action segments, not many and tight environments but still feels like a big game, great soundtrack.
Honestly, anyone that gave the green light for RedFall to ship as is should reconsider their career path
@@Samfooteyou should reconsider your english
why@@roxydzey
@@roxydzey What are you talking about? That's perfectly understandable English sentence
It was so cool to find this in the game, i sat and watched the whole thing. Remedy is a favourite studio of mine now, from control to alan wake. My god its SO DAMN GOOD.
I was always captivated by Adress Unknown in Max Payne 2 like i would genuinly think about this world thats only presented through a slide show of crusty jpegs on tvs you can come across and now they're making full psychological horror shorts I love remedy so much
The fact that they essentially adapted the Address Unknown storyline and then reworked Max Payne to be caught in an ouroboros of creation between Alan Wake and Thomas Zane is the most meta shit I’ve ever seen and peak Remedy.
@@xCarnageV1 Exactly the whole time i just kept getting reminded of Address Unknown it definetely comes from the same place in Sam Lake's brain
This was the moment this game became my all time favorite! I love when the studio shows personality through little things… this is why Rockstar was my favorite before but not it’s Remedy. This moment, and Control’s Dynamite by Dr Darling!
Idk what it is with random projector scenes in Remedy games but I absolutely fall in love. There is something lovely about the fact that a movie theatre in game… actually plays a movie. I loved it, it felt so real… it felt perfect.
I can't be the only one who wished you could earn an achievement for watching the whole film in game right?
Live-action Ahti had me screaming
I was an idiot and walked out of the theatre but I went to the back alley and it was playing on the radio in the garage and I sat and listened (read subtitles lol) i didn’t realise it was a film.
Stuck around thinking it would just be credits and a title screen. This game was insane. Remedy went completely mad with this one.
Holy lol, "Maa on syklinen laulu" is one hell of a reference
I didn't realise 15 minutes went by when I was watching this in the theatre. Awesome game.
thank you for uploading this as a full-scale movie, not a cam-rip quality like other upload this!
It's kinda nuts that the acress for Mona Sax from the original Max Payne game is actually in this.
Edit: It's Carol Kiriakos as one of the dancers in Yötön Yö, who did the motion capture for Mona Sax in the first May Payne game.
And so are Sam's parents Alfred Woden and Nicole Horne
Holy shit
@@Snowpiercer2Holy shit! I never caught that.
This game is nuts.
So Thomas Zane tried to write an excape for himself sacrificing Alex Casey to the darkplace to make it happen I wonder if the cultists and Alex Casey entered Alan's writing because of Thomas Zane's meddling
This short film is such a beautiful tribute to David Lynch (as is the entire game, but still)
Sam Lake, playing a detective (*cough Max Payne*) is trapped inside a nebulous Dark Place so Thomas Zane (*cough Alan Wake*) can be reborn. I see you, Remedy.
Max Payne 1 remade with Remedy's and Sam Lake's current knowledge without any outside influence from Rockstar would be so good.
I was very glad to see Tuula Järvi again. I hope she returns to the role of Nicole Horne in the Max Payne Remake.
Insane how many streamers completely miss this short film
that happens when you run
I demand "Yötön Yö" - the full movie!
I got straight chills because I didn’t even know this existed and ONLY saw it AFTER I had beaten the game…. Playing on The Final Draft right now and did not understand where the video even came from… Amazing film, amazing game, just overall a masterpiece!
I wonder if Hideo Kojima is going to watch/play this game at some point?
He could learn a thing or twenty.
sam lake really need make indie short film of lord and ladies after max payne remake
Dang remedy really gave us our bang for our buck with this game.
Same lake knows exactly how to direct games and movies, he is brilliant
The poem from the beginning is the first seconds of "Sankarin Tango" from control
The beginning and the end both show Alex screaming and covering his eyes from bright light. I know Alex said he's stuck in a loop, but I didn't think he meant it literally. 😰
I wish it had given you the option to sit in the theatre chair instead of standing. I tell ya though for 53 years old Sam Lake is still 🔥🤌🏻🤌🏻
This was really interesting to watch as a finnish person. It felt a bit more intimate obviously to me since it’s my native language, but at the same time it was a bit funny because they spoke in formal finnish, I completely understand why they chose to do it that way tho
I love this. Kaurismäki meets Alan Wake.
My neighbours might think I'm crazy because I've memorized all the lines and I keep reciting them in the sauna... while drinking Ahma beer of course :)
This short gave us shirtless sam lake and I ain’t complaining
😌🤭🤭🤭😏😏😏😏