Alan Wake is a game about a writer trapped in his own story. The events take place in that one town in every American state that looks like it could have been based off the movie Deliverance. The writer goes there with his lady to help shake his writers block. Writers block is the state of being a writer enters when he or she decides it's time to write something, but the body and mind are just not into it.
The writers lady gets stolen by darkness a little bit after they show up, and it's up to him to get her back. The only problem is he still has writers block and has no idea what the fuck is going on. All he knows is something is wrong, the place he is at is weird, and if he tells anybody what he thinks is really going on, it would cause more harm than good.
In the game the darkness can make itself corporeal when light is not around, which sets up a really innovative combat mechanic in the use of light to fight the enemies. It's sort of a slow burn situation where if you keep the light on anything moving in the dark long enough you can shoot it. This mechanic has grounding in real life, and occurs often.
The beginning of the game establishes that the night spooks used to be regular townspeople, rangers, gas station attendants, teenagers, but became entangled in a dark mysterious force after wandering into the dark. After a while the game kind of just stops establishing that they used to be people, hoping that the player will see the enemies lumberjack outfit or hoodie sweater and put two and two together.
It takes a while but the writer finally figures out what's going on and addresses it with the help of friends and former enemies, even though after the events in the game play out the life of characters in the story can never go back to the way things were. The game is out there in the wild now and worth a look, there are even homages to it's innovative play style popping up here and there.
The Protoculture Mixtape V.61 Issue: People: Vacuums
