The developers discussed the community’s response to Alan Wake 2 and shared insights into the development of Night Springs.
A couple of days ago, journalists from GamesIndustry.biz spoke with Alan Wake 2 director Kyle Rowley, lead writer Clay Murphy and PR director Thomas Pooh.
Highlights from the interview:
The development of Night Springs commenced following the launch of Alan Wake 2, although the concept was conceived prior to the completion of the game.
We’ve always wanted to be able to play as multiple characters. In the original concept of the main game, we planned for a larger number of playable characters than we ended up with. The concept of Night Springs emerged during these discussions.
Kyle Rowley, Director of Alan Wake 2.
The writing process [for the DLC] was very free and fun – no rules, no restrictions. Just a pure experiment and an attempt to find interesting moments in each episode.
Clay Murphy, Lead Writer
Rowley mentioned that developing the expansion served as a “palate cleanser” for the team following the main game.
Five years of working on a horror movie is like being stuck in Dark Cloister with Alan, we wanted to do something more free.
Kyle Rowley
During the development of the DLC, there were no questions “Is this too crazy?”. Rather, on the contrary, it all boiled down to “Is this crazy enough?” That’s the attitude we approached the work with, and it was a nice change of pace.
Kyle Rowley
Thomas remarks on the favorable reception of Alan Wake 2, which has continued to build momentum following its release, bolstered by the introduction of New Game +, numerous patches, and developer broadcasts.
The “response” was incredible. Alan Wake 2 was very difficult to release. But we’ve always had a plan | after the game’s release, there are still a lot of things we “want to talk about,” including Night Springs, Photo Mode, and the second DLC we’re working on right now. At Remedy, we’ve always had a very forward-thinking view.
Thomas Pucha, Director of Public Relations
It’s not about focusing on sales in the first couple of months, it’s about thinking about at least the next three years – that’s how we feel about it. We’re doing different things that we hope will keep the game engaged. But it really found an incredible response from people.
Thomas Pooha
Kyle mentions that Night Springs was created considering the fans’ “wishes,” much like the main game.
We can say that there is quite a lot of fan service in Night Springs. We definitely wanted to make sure that we were using characters that would be relatable to players who had played our games, and in some cases, players would want to play them again.
Kyle Rowley
It’s interesting to see how fans interpret our games, what they mean by them, or what they think we’re going to do in the future.
Kyle Rowley
