It’s not a lake; it’s an ocean. Those infamous words became the undying promise of Remedy’s Alan Wake 2, a sequel more than a decade in the making, off and on. The cult classic thriller is finally getting its follow-up after years of starting and stopping, all while Remedy continues to grow its profile as a leading story-driven studio. With Alan Wake 2 slated for launch in 2023, here’s everything we’ve seen and everything we know so far.
Alan Wake 2 release date
Alan Wake 2 is currently expected to launch in 2023, though Remedy has yet to say more than that. Though delays are common in the gaming industry, Remedy confirmed the game is still on track for a 2023 release date in October 2022.
Alan Wake 2 trailers
The list of Alan Wake 2 trailers is a short one at the time of writing this article, as Remedy promised it would go heads-down and work on the game for a while before we’d see it again following its December 2021 reveal. That gives us just the one trailer embedded below, which uses Alan’s real-life physical actor, Ilkka Villi, along with his voice actor, Matthew Poretta, to deliver a haunting mood piece that sets the stage for a sequel that seems intent to lean further into survival-horror.
Thankfully, there are more than a handful of Alan Wake nerds on the team, so even though we have just the single trailer to go off of for now, we’ve actually already given it tremendous scrutiny as we scanned for clues regarding what the sequel could have in store for us. You can read our findings here, where we broke down 20 clues you may have missed in the Alan Wake 2 reveal trailer.
Alan Wake 2 story theories
Part of the fun around Alan Wake–or really any Remedy game, for that matter–is theory-crafting to solve for its enigmatic universe. Where we last left Alan depends on how much you played, as the main game, its final DLC, its 2012 XBLA spin-off Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, and even the narratively tied-to-the-hip Control all reveal more about Alan’s current whereabouts, as vague as they admittedly each are. Chronologically, it’s assumed that where we see him in Control’s second DLC, titled AWE, marks his last known location.
That location is still seemingly The Dark Place, a metaphysical prison of sorts into which he dove to save his wife Alice at the end of the 2010 original. Alan’s been seeking a way out ever since, and has maybe been growing stronger while he’s searched for an exit. In the Alan Wake 2 reveal trailer, Alan is armed with a magical lamp, emitting light but not plugged in. As he did with his “Clicker” in the original game, Alan seems able to imbue objects with power, though why and how is still yet to be revealed. As he’s been a long-term, uh, “guest” of The Dark Place, it’s likely that he’s grown more accustomed to it and can now make it work in his favor in some ways.
Sadly, his strange and sinister doppelganger, Mr. Scratch, seems to still be going strong too. In the reveal trailer, we hear a lot about “monsters,” perhaps as the game’s way of evoking the boogeyman or the monster under the bed that lurks in darkness, given how obsessed with light versus dark it is. By the end of the trailer, we seem to get a glimpse of the game’s murderous boogeyman, Mr. Scratch, whose name derives from the noise we hear when Thomas Zane first tells Alan that he will be replaced in the real world by the lookalike while he’s in The Dark Place.
What’s Mr. Scratch been doing all this time? Well, assuming American Nightmare is still canon, he was at one point killing people, though time seems to behave differently in The Dark Place, so it’s unclear how long Alan has really been gone.
In Alan Wake 2, we can surmise that players will take on the role of the titular grumpy novelist once more as he works to escape The Dark Place and reunite with his wife. But the tie-ins with Control, the presence of Mr. Scratch, and the unclear fate of Bright Falls–where the first game takes place–all add variables to this currently unsolvable equation. As Jesse Faden said in Control, one can reasonably apply here too; “This is going to be weirder than usual.”
Alan Wake preorders
Alan Wake 2 is not yet available to preorder on any platform. However, we know it’s coming to PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5. It’s not yet clear if it will be an Epic Games Store exclusive, but it’s being published by Epic, so it’s possible–and as an aside, Alan Wake seems destined for Fortnite as a result. As we learn more about the exciting sequel, we’ll be updating this page, so stay tuned–and keep the lights on.
