Dear people,

We feel we owe you all a small heads up, and our apologies for lack of updates. This is just part of our psychological thriller, is it all real or imagined…
Seriously, yes, we’re still here and working hard on getting Alan Wake for you to enjoy. Sure, we’ve been in development for a long time and if everything had gone perfectly smoothly there probably would be a game out for you guys to play already. But designing a completely new game can be hard, and sometimes you need to take a detour to find the best route forward.

We want to entertain you guys in the best possible way and our team is putting in every effort possible in order for that to happen. That is the way Remedy wants to do things. I’m sure you will enjoy Alan Wake when we’re done.

Just follow the light…

- Mika

Link

Stay tuned to BrightFalls.net for all information regarding Alan Wake.

The winner who goes by the nickname “duffty” on the Alan Wake forums posted about his experience over a year ago on the 2nd of July 2007:

“I want to thank remedy for showing myself and my mate round their offices a couple of weeks back. They are exactly what you expect.. friendly,hard working, fun, finnish, and bloody clever paople. Thanks again mika and the team who gave us their valuable time.
ps. use my ugly face as you wish. mark”

Recently this promotion resurfaced and was posted on some major gaming news sites and blogs and caused quite a stir due to a comment in the promotion which many people confused as confirmation that Alan Wake will be shown at the 2008 Tokyo Game Show. The comment was “Let the games begin with a trip to Finland to be digitally mastered into Alan Wake’s world, then jet off to Tokyo to the 2008 Tokyo Games Show to be on the scene and on the screen!”

Markus Maki, Director of Development at Remedy Games, recently posted squashing this rumour stating:

“The Microsoft Vista promotion referring to TGS took place in 2007, and is old news - we’ve had the winner over for taking the pictures already.

Sorry for the confusion and possible disappointment, but this was not an annoucement that Wake would be shown at TGS 2008. Remedy’s team is just getting back from a bit of holiday and we haven’t had time to chat with Microsoft on upcoming shows/showings yet.”

I can safely say that Remedy is hard at work on Alan Wake and when they are ready to show information you’ll see it here. The game is not cancelled or abandonware.

For all currently known information you can check our extensive collection of quotes in our Alan Wake FAQ which is updated whenever new information is confirmed by Remedy.

Unfortunately we don’t have a translation of the article but Kotaku had a paragraph of the article translated where Ilkka mentions that being in a production this huge in Finland is the closest to being in Hollywood that he’ll ever get. If you are able to translate the article for us please contact us. Huge thanks to Nils (and also Henna Lehto) for providing translation to the original article. Click the ‘read more’ link below to view the article.

Alan Wake Interview (via Kotaku) |

Alan Wake is actually Ilkka Villi

Original article by Juha-Matti Mäntylä on 20.6.2008
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/doc.te?f_id=1380012&s=r

Translated by Nils (a.k.a. supernaut), from SteamPowered Forums. Extra translation provided by Henna Lehto.

Actor Ilkka Villi puts his right hand forward and points his finger towards the camera. Eyebrows frowning and the corners of the mouth slightly downward, he is Alan Wake reincarnated.

And exactly how it’s supposed to be, the videogame character was modeled after him.

Villi is a 32 year-old Finnish freelance-actor, who has recently worked at Savonlinna’s Citytheater. He has played in such films as Ilkka Vanne’s “Promise” (”Lupaus”), in Åke Lindman’s “Tali-Ihantala” (”Tali-Ihantala”) and in Liisa Helminen’s “Pelican-man” (”Pelikaanimies”).

Alan Wake, on the other hand, is a computer game, which is developed by a Finnish game development house, Remedy Entertainment. Alan Wake, which has been in development since 2004, is highly and impatiently anticipated.

The Max Payne-games that were finished in 2001 and 2003 respectively, sold over 7 million copies worldwide, and the success from that gave the small game studio the opportunity to focus on the next project without time constraints. According to recent unconfirmed rumors the game’s release would not happen until 2009. Remedy hasn’t commented on the possible time of release at any stage,
which then has added to the agony of the gaming community.

So far we’ve only seen screenshots and videoclips of Alan Wake. A couple of years ago the game was demoed at the Intel Developer Forum as part of CEO, Paul Otelli’s keynote.

Alan Wake’s characteristics as an author has been searched through different styles of effects says Ilkka Villi who adds “even the stubble is used for this purpose”.

A Posing job

Ilkka Villi tells us he had some Mario Bros-like thoughts (or preconceptions), when he was first contacted by the Alan Wake team. He didn’t have deeper knowledge regarding playing nor the expectations concerning Remedy’s game.

He went to the audition through a casting agency, and when the developers said they liked him, Villi got the gig. They gave him the first Max Payne game to take home with.

“I tested it quickly at first and a couple of months later I was hooked. I understood how strong the atmosphere can be in a video game. I got the chills going through my spine many times.”

The first time Villi went to the shoot was at the start of 2005, and since then he has visited Remedy several times. The last session was in Spring of last year.

The production of a video game can’t be compared to a traditional acting job. The shoots were done with regular still-cameras in front of a bluescreen.

“Basicly it was a posing job. I was spinning around in a chair and my face was scanned from every angle. In addition to that they needed different emotions for different situations - for example if the character were in a tight spot or if there’s a threat of danger”, says Villi.

The difficulty was the unknowing of what that tight spot or danger was, while being filmed. You couldn’t build a contact with another actor opposite of you.

“There’s the absence of the essence of acting, which is born from the interaction of two people. Somehow you feel only giving a shell of a performance”, Villi admits.

On the other hand he ensures being extremely satisfied, for being able to observe the ambitious project.

“You don’t get to follow a production this huge in other entertainment business here in Finland. Finnish movies in no way meet this size of distribution.”

If everything goes well with Alan Wake, Ilkka-Alan’s animated features will be known to millions of gamers.

“I saw the Alan Wake posters for international game conventions a few years back. I realized this is the closest to Hollywood I’m ever going to get.”, he laughs.

Villi is the only Finnish actor in Alan Wake. Other characters, and even Alan Wake’s voice, will be played and voiced by actors from the US.

A writer’s nightmare

In most newspaper stories they say that there’s apparent connections between the Alan Wake story and Stephen King’s work, and how the small town of Bright Falls, as a setting, is straight out of Twin Peaks.

Villi discussed the character of Alan Wake and the world he lives in, with the game’s writer, Sami Järvi (Sam Lake). Järvi was also good to have a conversation with, because it was him who gave his face to the first Max Payne.

Recalling from Järvi’s interview to Helsingin Sanomat, Max Payne was a John Woo-style Matrix action fused with film noir storytelling. The end result was an unprecedented cinematic action game, which progressed linearly towards the finale.

This time it’s approached as if a TV-series. The concept of the game is like a season, the day and night cycle show the change between episodes. Not like the linear Max Payne, Alan Wake is an open world playground.

The details of the game are a carefully kept secret, and not even Ilkka Villi has seen the script. He does understand quite well what a considerable job it must have been to write it, because of himself being familiar with writing through a TV series that ran a few years ago and a moviescript currently under development.

“If writing a straightforward movie is a huge task, then writing a story for something that’s freely progressing on such a wide area, must be an immense task”, he wonders.

The size of the Bright Falls area is in the movie industry’s class. Villi estimates that in the future there could be even more demand for actors. He tells us that he wants to be versatile as a freelance-actor. That’s a guarantee of things to come.

Ilkka Villi tells a story how he once rushed to a video game shoot just after playing Pipi Longstockings horse at the city theater of Savonlinna.

As you can expect Microsoft to be the primary marketer for the game, they should be including Alan Wake in their showcases whenever they feel the game is ready to be shown to the public. Their list for this year’s expo includes anticipated titles such as Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Halo Wars and Too Human.

Before coming to quick conclusions, IGN points out, the list includes every videogame that has been “officially confirmed” and that there is always the chance that companies will be keeping their surprises a secret until the show actually starts. We will just have to wait and see…

- IGN’s E3 List 2008 -

“When you can announce a game and get people really excited about it, the last thing you want to do is show it before it’s ready. Alan Wake is pretty ambitious, in terms of what it’s trying to do. It’s taking a very different approach to storytelling and gameplay and it’s taking a lot of work to get it right.”

You can read the rest of the interview right here. Thanks Dennis for the heads up.

Also since BrightFalls.net is not a fansite and the site is and has always been a news site dedicated to the game we thought we need to focus more on the news than on other sections like that.

Now having said all that the screenshots (and videos) have all been back posted in the news archives and can be viewed by using our handy topic filters on the right side (Screenshots, Videos). You can view all the screenshots (and videos heh) ever released through those filters, if you simply want to check out the latest media releases then head over to the official Alan Wake site.

Now that that’s happened we needed a focus on galleries within news post, which we have updated for you. All screenshots now have a handy navigation system embedded into the site, which will allow you to navigate through each gallery specific to the news post.

Eventually we aim to allow commenting on each image exactly like you can comment to news posts, but one step at a time people ;)

Questions? Comments? Let me know in the comments.

Anyway now that’s out of the way onto the “news”. The Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Game Studios, Shane Kim recently answered 10 questions for gaming website Game Daily. In there he still mentions Alan Wake as one of the games that we can look forward to “later this year and beyond”, note the word beyond there.

You can head over here to read the interview.

One quick announcement, the brightfalls.com and alanwakefaq.com domains will no longer point to the site. It is our next step in the transition to the brightfalls.net domain name. If you still use either of those I suggest you update your bookmarks!

Thanks!

… “it is an ambitious, different kind of game. It’s exactly like the conversation we just had about Too Human. We’ve got to be careful about how we unveil that, right, so that we build on the excitement that people have and we don’t do any damage there. The good news is that it remains one of our most anticipated titles. Everybody’s asked me about it, which is awesome. Remedy’s a great partner for us. I think we’re going to have a huge hit on our hands.”

Read the rest over at Wired.

In a recent interview by Sith Gamer Robbie said this:

SG: One thing you talked about are the games- so far I think the 2008 year seems to be lacking. Especially when put up against the PS3 or Wii.
RB: Well were saving a lot of stuff for GDC, which is where we plan on showing off some big titles such as Halo Wars and Alan Wake.

Now I don’t know how accountable a site like Sith Gamer is, especially for a web blog hosted at wordpress.com, so take this with grain of salt for the time being. Also GDC is the Game Developer’s Conference held on the 18th to 22nd February this year.