The Tragedy of the Muse

“There’s an old town wrought with mystery of

Tom the Poet and his Muse

And the magic which gave a life

To the words the Poet used”

The word Muse has been dragged through the mud,put up at auction, and sold to the lowest bidder lately. It feels like everyone describes “muse” as the model depicted in an art piece. A real muse serves as an inspiration for the art. A real muse creates a space an artist can create and innovate on ideas. A muse is more than just a tag on social media, it’s an unspoken collaborator on the project. 

“Now the Muse, she was his happiness

And he rhymed about her with grace

And told her stories of treasures

Deep beneath the blackened waves”

At time of writing, I’ve been playing through the Alan Wake series and I gotta tell y’all: they’ve got a great story. Alan Wake 2 just recently won Best Narration at The Game Awards and they’ve for sure earned it. I’m currently around 13 hours in or so and I’m not sure if I’ve ever played a story that immerses you into the black waves of this detective story drenched in horror. 

If you’ve never played Alan Wake, it tells the story of the titular writer who travels to a small northwestern town with his wife, Alice. Alice brought Alan out to Bright Falls in order to help him out of a writer’s block, keeping him from continuing his infamous Alex Casey series about a grizzled, pessimistic, but ultimately likable FBI Agent of the same name.

When the couple arrive in Bright Falls, Alice is almost immediately kidnapped and Alan is forced to combat a darkness under the lake that wants to escape into our world. Currently, it settles for just infecting the residents with its darkness, making them violent and erratic. When Alan is attacked, he notices that using the light of his nearby flashlight can strip the darkness away, allowing him to finish the undead off with his pistol. With these two safety nets in hand, Alan treks across Bright Falls in order to save his wife.

“‘Til in the stillness of one dawn

Still in its mystic crown,

The Muse, she went down to the lake, 

And in the waves she drowned”

The story explores the tried and true themes of light and dark to a terrifying degree. Sending you into bright landscapes and immediately thrusting you into dark corners of a pacific northwestern forest. Every time you feel you have an adequate understanding, Remedy pulls the rug from under you and watches you sink into the depths of their story. Alan later finds that the lake in Bright Falls makes any art created real, so his stories have taken a life of their own, and he’s in the main character. 

For the unfamiliar, Remedy is responsible for the classic Max Payne series, where its principal writer, Sam Lake, served as the model for the titular character. Those games are heralded as grim, noir flavored stories about a drug addicted New York detective on a quest for revenge. That original trilogy somewhat dipped its toes into unsettling its audience with the timely forays into Max’s broken mind. Unfortunately, they sold that IP to Rockstar after making the second entry. Rockstar eventually made the (still good) Max Payne 3, and shuttered the franchise. In the wake of that, Alan Wake was born.

The first Alan Wake was an immediate cult classic (bit of an oxymoron, but true). An action adventure third person shooter that requires you to use your flashlight to blast the darkness off enemies, before you could shoot is memorable if nothing else. The game released in 2010 to a metacritic score of 83, so not bad but not anything that would push the genre forward...yet.

“He searched in vain for his treasure lost

And too soon the night would fall

And only his own echo

Would wail back at his call”

In interviews, Sam explains that for a good while, the idea of doing a sequel for the original Alan Wake was off the table while they were making Quantum Break.Though during the process, the team found themselves wanting to create more Alan Wake. Even in small ways like teaser trailers and little notes in QB, the desire to return to that story eventually won out, and we’re all the better for it.

Alan Wake 2 is a markedly different game from the original, which we could tell from the very first gameplay trailer. Notably, the inclusion of a second protagonist and the heroine of the story, Saga Anderson. At this point, I hadn’t played the original but as soon as I saw a black woman protagonist, I locked in. I’d watched a bit of gameplay from the original, and from its (not) sequel, American Nightmare, but it wasn’t enough to make me seek out the game. After seeing a black woman in an FBI jacket and knowing it’s a horror noir story, and you’ve at least got my curiosity piqued. 

“And when he swore to bring back his love

By stories he'd create

Nightmares shifted endlessly

In the darkness of the lake”

I started the original game last October, while I interviewed my friend, G.N. Jones (Wavy)  about his debut horror story, Hecatomb of the Vampire. Wavy is an avid fan of the first game, and kept asking me to try it for myself, even though I knew the story already. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of some of the gameplay loop, there’s no denying that narrative. The idea of taking something easy to understand, like the concept of light and dark, and weaving it into a complex narrative is always gonna hit if done with care. That’s the crux of why this article was written, it’s obvious this was done with a ridiculous amount of care and planning.

“In the dead of night, she came to him

With darkness in her eyes

Wearing a mourning gown

Sweet words as her disguise”

Alan Wake 2 immediately sets out to unsettle you with its opening act, before it allows you to feel some sort of normalcy with Saga. The game strips you naked and immediately gives you a taste of its oppressive fear. As you meet Saga and her partner, Casey (Not Max Payne) you immediately empathize with Saga and feel her respect for Casey. The game does an amazing job of setting your expectations and then utterly shattering them. As the tale spun on, I felt myself put off balance, not just because of fright, but also because of the consistent narrative feints. Out of fear of spoiling, I can’t give examples the way I want, because everyone should have the same experience as I did.

“He took her in without a word

For he saw his grave mistake

And vowed them both to silence

Deep beneath the lake

Personally, I’ve been in a bit of a rut with my personal writing for a couple years now. Originally, when I started this site, I was pumping out an article a month or something close to it. I’ve got plenty of ideas, but when it comes time to put fingers to keyboard my brain blanks out on the start. Alan Wake 2 as a written story inspired me tremendously. I’m not sure of any piece of fiction recently that moved me to this degree, (save, y’know Hecatomb of the Vampire). The sheer depth of the story, and the team’s belief in their own work to double and even triple down on their concepts and ideas have stuck with me. Since finishing, I’ve even found myself talking about loops and spirals, even dreaming about them on occasion. The simple idea that doing the same thing over and over can be so scary is extremely relatable in my everyday life. I think all of us were afraid to end up like Squidward in that one episode of Spongebob where he was initially living his “dream” and the mundane reality of the same day over and over wore him down to the bone. For me, writing and reading breaks that monotony for me, but somewhere I lost my drive to just sit and write. Writing being a central mechanic to the game that would literally shape the world around Alan, while mine may not have that same power, inspired me again to put pen to paper. With that said, of course it’s easy to see why Alan Wake 2 wass my game of the year for 2023.

“Now if it's real or just a dream

One mystery remains

For it is said, on moonless nights

They may still haunt this place”

“And now to see your love set free

You will need the Witch's cabin key

Find the lady of the light gone mad with the night

That's how you reshape destiny”

Thanks for y’alls patience. Every kind word about my site since the last article fueled me to want to get back to it. Here’s to more in the future.

2025 Addendum: By the time I posted this i’d beaten AW2 twice, got the real ending, and finished all of the story dlc. If you’d like a larger article about my experiences with these, I’d be happy to. Rereading all of this only reinforces

-E.