Alan Wake Preview at HS.fi

Rajatapauksia blog blog over at Helsingin Sanomat has a preview of Alan Wake from a couple of months ago. Unfortunately, we don’t have a translation of the article at this stage, though from the looks of things, its just recapping information we already know.

Thanks to wakefan for noticing the link on the Wikipedia page.

Update: manywhere from the Alan Wake forums has posted up a translation of the article. Click the read more link to check it out. Thanks manywhere!

Remedy and Alan Wake — the uncensored story

Original article by Rajatapauksia blog
Translated by manywhere

I went to Espoo to do a story on Remedy Entertainment and their next game Alan Wake. The story was published in the newspaper [Helsingin Sanomat] on Tuesday 13th of June. All the material didn’t fit, so I decided to put some more here. If something would be of interest.

Well, nothing here is uncensored. But didn’t I get you to read, using that title.

From these two pictures you can see what was discussed in the story – the use of dynamic lightning.

The first small detail is that before Remedy, F-secure used the same office space, another Finnish IT success-story.

The building’s spaces are divided into two floors with a simple logic. “Coding is done on the first floor, graphics and gameplay on the second floor”, creative director Petri Järvilehto told.

The mocap-studio [motion capture studio] was impressing, although the Remedians did remind that is only was a small studio. There were cameras in rows along the top of the ceiling. The floor had an area marked out by tape, where one could film. I noticed myself standing in the middle of it. “Here [we] have been doing demos and even some final draft material, but mostly one person scenes” AD Saku Lehtinen told. The most work for “The Fall of Max Payne” game was done in New York.

Lots of photographs are taken in the studio
“Max Payne were the first games where photos were used directly as materials” told Lehtinen. He showed as an example a pair of sneakers. The shoes were photographed and the texture could be moved as one to a game character’s shoes.

Remedy uses as a game developer unusually much photographs as source material. A group from the company went in September - October 2004 to Washington state photographing source material for the game. “In a week, [we] drove 3000 kilometers and took over 30 000 photographs and lots of video” counts Lehtinen.

Remedy went to Washington photographing source and reference material.

“Max Payne happened in New York and we did it with Rockstar Games from New York. Microsoft is in Washington, like Bright Falls. That’s why we don’t do scifi games – where would our publisher then be?” the main writer Sami Järvi [aka. Sam Lake] jokes.

Alan Wake’s place of action, the small town of Bright Falls, has a Twin Peaks atmosphere. The presentation of the game starts with a camera following a car driving through the forest filled slopes. The scene immediately brings into mind the start of the movie “The Shining”. The figures coming after Wake in the end [of the demo] are reminiscent of characters from “The Village”. This and all other references are planned. Noticing them brings forth known sensations, which the makers do want to produce.

In this screenshot, you can see how the game’s visual environment has been built from the base of the concept art.

On the walls in main writer Sami Järvi’s work room are plot-structure-diagrams for Alan Wake. The bookshelves have got literature on writing convincing characters. Järvi tells that he like more to write on paper than using machine.

Alan Wake is a nice change. Max Payne had become too familiar to Järvi. “Quite a lot of years became spent together with the guy. Max became too much of a powerful character, so that after 7 years one would know what it [Max Payne] does”

Järvi did in fact borrow his face to the character Max Payne in the first game.

In Max Payne the game’s story was carried forward with cartoon-like intermissions. The base of them were real photographs. The pictures were taken in Järvi’s rented apartment [with “one” room*]. The landlord got to portray a mafia boss.
The sequel was done more professionally. Järvi spotted in “Sex and the City” an actor named Timothy Gibbs. He asked from his associates to find “a guy like Gibbs”. “They then dragged Gibbs away from early retirement, that is from selling real-estates, and back to acting” laughs Järvi.

The face to Alan Wake was given by a Finnish actor named Ilkka Villi. Villi acts in the movie [Finnish movie] “Lupaus”. Villi has been used to get a feeling and attitude for the character of Alan Wake and for testing some clothing for the character, amongst other things.

Another representative Finnish force is the music maker for Alan Wake, Petri Alanko.

The lighthouse has a central role in the game Alan Wake.

And finally the most important. The interviewed trio’s favorite games at this moment:

Petri Järvilehto: Guitar hero
Sami Järvi: Oblivion
Saku Lehtinen: Zuma

* = FYI one roomed apartment is in Finland basically one room and the kitchen and bathroom are usually included in the same apartment where the kitchen might be included in the same big room and the bathroom is a seperate smaller room.