When I interviewed Matthew Porretta (the voice of Remedy’s Alan Wake) back in March for TV Pulse Magazine, I asked him what fans could expect from the first Alan Wake ll DLC, Night Springs.
Porretta joked it was high time for an Alan Wake comedy — a throw away remark not to be taken seriously, as he had suggested as much in previous interviews when similarly quizzed. However, June 8th’s release of Night Springs revealed a comedic first act that hinted Porretta may not have been joking after all.
Night Springs is presented in three acts: Number One Fan, North Star, and Time Breaker. Each short chapter represents a ‘what if’ style scenario, with players invited to imagine each as Alan’s previous written attempts to escape the Dark Place. There’s no real need to try to place Night Springs chronologically into the events of Alan Wake l, Control, or even Alan Wake ll, as a cast of familiar characters from all three games appear here as subtly altered versions of themselves with placeholder names filling in for their identities.
Let’s dive in.
NUMBER ONE FAN
Number One Fan is a blush-tinted romantic comedy featuring Rose Marigold and Alan Wake ll’s Scratch (not to be confused with AWAN Mr. Scratch). Here Rose is simply known as The Waitress, Scratch as The Bad Boy, and Alan as The Writer. The plot is simple. The motorbike-riding Bad Boy (wearing a cleaned up Jakko Koskella jacket) has kidnapped The Writer — the object of Rose’s affections — and Rose, armed with her hungry shotgun, must rescue him.
Combat is designed to be fast, furious, and fun, with almost unlimited shells, batteries and health. Having completed Alan Wake ll just four months previously, I died repeatedly in the Chapter’s opening combat scenes before realizing how different the gameplay was to the main game. There’s no need to duck for cover, or conserve ammo here. Have at it. The Taken/critics have never looked so pretty!
Rose/The Waitress pursues The Bad Boy over a series of familiar Alan Wake ll locations as she attempts to face down his worst critics (Taken who deride Alan in a series of insults that feel ripped from the timelines of certain social media feeds) and save her beloved writer from his nemesis’s evil clutches. The Bad Boy taunts both Rose, and the “frail writer in need of assistance,” while openly pondering his life choices, and at one point turning into a werewolf.
The quest presents fans with a light-hearted romp, and it’s one not to be taken too seriously. The script is from Remedy’s Clay Murphy (who was responsible for Rose’s hilarious fan-fiction excerpts in the main game), and absolutely nails the light-hearted and earnest tone of Alan Wake’s online fandom.
At one point The Bad Boy wails about not wanting to be perceived. In Number One Fan Remedy not only perceives the fandom, but writes them a tender love letter, sealed with a sloppy kiss. Hats off to both Porretta for giving voice to Alan Wake’s most hilarious dialogue ever, and to Clay Murphy for bringing all three characters to life in such an unforgettable way. No really.
NORTH STAR
The tone changes significantly in North Star, this reviewer’s least favorite of the DLC’s trio of entries. This chapter features The Sibling, who we are told bears a striking resemblance to FBC Director Jesse Faden. (Spoiler alert: She does!)
This sister is at Coffee World where she has tracked her missing brother, now held captive somewhere inside. North Star returns us to a classic location from Alan Wake 2, and navigating the sinister pathways of the insane theme park is no less intimidating as Jesse than it was as Saga Anderson. The creaking theme park rides, dark branching pathways, and the terrifyingly cheerful Coffee World mascots still carry a massive amount of atmospheric dread.
However, unlike in Control, Jesse’s superpowers as the new Director of the FBC are completely gone, and she must navigate the park as a regular person. No levitation. No telekinesis. No throwing forklifts with your mind. Ugh! Walking! Stripping away her abilities certainly emphasizes the survival horror vulnerability, but for Control fans, it’s hard not to miss the kinetic thrill of her usual toolkit.
Instead, Jesse must run the gamut of Taken/coffee enthusiasts with a standard firearm and solve some coffee-themed puzzles to progress. Sinister coffee themes abound—including an incredibly creepy obsession with “The Cosmic Coffee”—and there’s also a fun sci-fi element we won’t spoil further for you here.
Tim Breaker also puts in an appearance or two. Hi Tim!
However, despite the fantastic locale and the satisfying puzzle mechanics, North Star ultimately struggles to find its own identity. Sandwiched between the brilliant absurdity of Number One Fan and the mind-bending ambition of Time Breaker, this chapter feels a little too lite, a little too linear, and its ending a little too lackluster to truly satisfy. It winds up feeling more like a deleted scene from the main game rather than the wild, reality-bending “what if” scenario it promises to be.
TIME BREAKER
Hello again Tim! Or in this case, Shawn Ashmore.
It’s ok. Remedy fans don’t even bat an eyelid when they see a real-life actor playing a character playing a real-life actor anymore. We’ve learned to just roll with it.
In Time Breaker (yes Remedy, we see what you did there) famous actor Shawn Ashmore discovers he’s just one of many personas across multiple dimensions. In one dimension he’s Shawn. In another he’s Sheriff Tim Breaker. In another he really needs a shave and a haircut. And probably a shower. But regardless of which version of himself he is, he’s still being hunted to death by a sinister presence calling himself The Master of Many Worlds. The Master (David Harewood’s Warlin Door stands in for the character in this chapter) is intent on wiping out all versions of Shawn/Tim (Shim?), across all time and all dimensions.
And so our reluctant protagonist takes on the mantle of the “multiversal hero” as he battles the Master via a series of trippy settings, wildly imaginative backdrops, and extravagantly bleak landscapes. Tim not only battles the Master across the medium of familiar Alan Wake II locations, but also across several game genres from the past.
To say more would only spoil things, but Remedy pulls out all the stops here by fundamentally altering how you play the game from one moment to the next. One minute you’re navigating a traditional 3D environment, and the next you are dropped into entirely different visual mediums. Max Payne-style comic panels even make a cameo at one point, complete with noir-drenched narration. There is an absolute treat of a text-adventure sequence, and even a retro, side-scrolling 8-bit arcade segment that feels like a glorious fever dream. And there’s also a Quantum Break reference for the purists that will have longtime fans pointing at their screens in delight.
Tricky puzzles and locations that loop (or do they spiral?) before our eyes, coupled with our inability to even begin to guess what’s around the next corner make Time Breaker one trippy ride. It serves as a masterclass in pacing, constantly subverting your expectations just when you think you’ve figured out the rules of the dimension you’re in.
Written by Remedy Creative Director Sam Lake himself, this final chapter in the Night Springs DLC is also its most impressive. If Number One Fan is a love letter to Remedy fans, then Time Breaker is surely an dazzling, boundary-pushing love letter to the medium of video games itself.
Platform: PS5, X-box Series X/S, Windows. Release: 6/08/2024.
Studio: Remedy Entertainment. Publisher: Epic Games Publishing.
Night Springs: Night Springs is a hotly anticipated addition to the franchise for fans eagerly awaiting more from Remedy’s Connected Universe. Deeply imaginative, weird, wild, and wacky in all the right ways, Remedy expertly treads the line between giving the audience more of what it wants, and branching out in new and unexpected directions. Those expecting a continuation of Alan, Saga and Casey’s adventures, or even more on Thomas Zane, Agent Estevez, or Casper Darling, might be a little disappointed not to see those dangling plot lines addressed in the 3 chapters on offer. However, in the case of a Remedy game, many fans know to expect the unexpected. The developer is clearly making moves to bring its various franchises closer together now that Control 2 and the Max Payne remake are more firmly embedded in the public consciousness. Even if I couldn’t shake the feeling Night Springs could have been longer — with just three chapters to explore, it often felt like being in a race from point A to B, after which time the chapter came to a sudden and occasionally ambiguous end. (North Star, I’m looking at you!) — a second DLC, The Lake House, expected in October 2024, leaves plenty of room for speculation as to its contents, characters, and direction. Our best bet is that it will tie characters from Control 2 into its narrative in some way. One thing we can guarantee, it probably won’t be what we expected, but we’ll love it anyway. – jgriffin
