The holiday season is past and now video game developers are ready to discuss the future rather than current games that need to rack up sales. Remedy, creators of Max Payne, are gearing up to unveil their next game. Rather than break into another property it appears that the company isn’t done with its horror series Alan Wake.
Remedy updated its official Alan Wake Facebook page on Monday, announcing that both Alan Wake and its downloadable sidestory Alan Wake’s American Nightmare are on sale on Steam. It teased “greater Remedy news to come in 2013.” That alone isn’t enough to point towards a new game, but Alan Wake writer Sam Lake took to Twitter that day teasing more. “In 2013 we can finally start revealing what we’ve been up to,” said Lake, “Can hardly wait. It’ll be cool.”
Lake has been teasing a proper sequel to Alan Wake since June. Back then he Tweeted, “It’s all true. It will happen again, in another town, a town called Ordinary. It’s happening now.” That in turn linked to a blog titled House of Dreams that mimicked much of the original Alan Wake’s story.
Other members of the Alan Wake staff have hinted at an Alan Wake 2 in the past. “There will be more Alan Wake, if we have anything to say about it,” said writer Mikko Rautalahti, “It’s a bigger story than just one game, and we want to make it very weird and scary and wonderful. We have a very definite story arc and the weird and horrible things that happen to him, and what he needs to do in the end to put things right. Then he needs to do something else. We’ll get to that when the time comes.”
It’s been quite a while since the last time Microsoft published a brand new intellectual property intended for core gamers rather than the family-oriented Kinect crowd. It’s hard to blame them since Alan Wake was not exactly a runaway success. After a prolonged, troubled development, Alan Wake sold just 2 million copies over the course of two years. That would be enough to justify a sequel for many independent companies, but Microsoft is in the Halo and Gears of War business, expecting upwards of 5 million copies sold within a year of release.
