Alan Wake 2: Night Springs Squeezes As Many Genres As Possible Into A Tiny DLC

This article contains spoilers for Alan Wake 2's Night Springs DLC.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Alan Wake 2’s Night Springs DLC came out two weeks ago, surprise launching in the early days of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Summer Game Fest. In the wake of its release, I applauded Remedy for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网𝄹:doing its best to keep single-player DLC ✅alive in a market that has largely moved away from it. At the time, I had only played the first of three episodes contained i🔯n the expansion. With all three now under my belt however, I can more confidently say that Night Springs exemplifies many of the re﷽asons that DLC is worth pursuing (even if it doesn’t sell especially well).

Three Episodes Of Night Springs, But Many More Ideas

Though each episode of Night Springs mainly takes place in locations players saw in the main game, Remedy changes up the mechanics significantly throughout the experience. In the first outing, you play as Oh Deer Diner waitress Rose Marigold as she goes John Wick for Alan Wake. On the surface, this level looks like a straight reuse of the main game’s mechanics, but playing it feels completely different. Rose’s weapon of choice is an automatic shotgun she fires with reckless abandon. Whereas Alan and Saga would need to conserve ammunition, Rose’s level is positively loaded with shotgun rounds. It transforms Alan Wake 2 from survival horror into straight-up action. It's like Remedy was doing its version of Dead Space and Dead Space 3 in the same game.

Rose Marigold from Alan Wake 2 covered in blood with a TV and red stage curtain in the background

𝓰 Props To Remedy For Keeping Single-Player DLC Alive

With Night Springs, Alan Wake 2 has story DLC within a year of re✨lease, and that's increasingly rare.

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The second episode is the least inventive, and mostly feels notable for tamping down 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Jesse Faden&rsquo⛎;s powers so that she plays exactly like Saga. This mission was my least favorite, in large part because it ends on a frustrating stealth section. But, more generally, it just doesn’t add much to the Alan Wake 2 experience aside from the fun of seeing Jesse turn up in the world ܫof Alan Wake. For Remedy Connected Universe fanatics, that’s probably worth the price of admission.

Shawn Ashmore's Time Breaking Adventure

The best of the bunch stars Shawn Ashmore as Sheriff Tim Breaker… and as himself. This is the most meta of the episodes, with Ashmore appearing on a video game shoot set and discussing the metaverse with Sam Lake, who also plays himself. From there, Ashmore gets a supernatural device and begins hopping between dimensions, which leads to some genre-hopping, too. This section lulls you into a false sense of security with some boilerplate𒊎 Alan Wake 2 gameplay as Ashmore points his flashlight and pistol at enemies in the woods.

Genre-Bending Interludes From Alan Wake 2: Night Springs

But, he soon finds himself in a black-and-white version of the Ocean View Hotel. From there, the DLC gets more interesting, as he warps into♋ a motion comic, a desolate rocky wasteland, a sidescrolling ‘90s shooter, and a text adven💮ture game. All of these interludes are fairly brief — I finished the episode in about an hour — but provide something that’s bothfun and fresh for the player, anduseful for Remedy.

Remedy has always been interested in multimedia storytelling. The 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Max Payne games separate levels with comic book panel stories, Quantum Break combines traditional gameplay with episode-length live-ac♏tion cut scenes, and most of its games include FMV to some degree. Night Springs is taking this further, branching out into a wide variety 🎶of video game genres, and likely providing experience to members of the team who had not worked on those kinds of games before.

The benefit is that Remedy is now better equipped to fold in whatever it needs in the future. Would a portion of Jesse Faden's story in Control 2 be best told through a 2D shooter level? Remedy can do that now. Could Alan Wake 3 play into Alan's profession with text-based missions? Remedy can do that now. Would a motion comic be the best way to catch players up for their next big entry in one of their major franchises? Remedy can do that now.

As an outsider, it's exciting to see a studio I like trying new things, acquiring new skills like a snowball rolling down a mountain. Experimentation is the lifeblood of this medium, but triple-A development costs often preclude getting too risky. In the base game, and now in its DLC, Remedy is still taking those chances.