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View Full Version : Horror Inspiration: Alan Wake



Leliel
2010-05-21, 04:17 PM
Well, a lot of you seem to know about Alan Wake. You know, the vaporware game that looked really cool but you were sure would not be as good as the previews when it finally did come out...

Well, it did. Come out, I mean. And you know? Your position, while scientifically sound, was happily wrong.

The lowest professional score the game got on the Wikipedia page is a 7/10, which pretty much puts this in the "Exception That Proves The Rule" category of vaporware to begin with, and while I haven't played the game, I have watched it on YouTube, and just from where I'm sitting, it's almost as scary as Silent Hill (which isn't the highest of compliments from me, as I don't find Silent Hill that scary at all, but I can see why other people think it is. I just have an iron gut for horror games).

What I particularly enjoyed was the main villain, the Dark Presence. Besides hitting all the "cosmic horror" points with me, I also like the fact that it doesn't have the personality one usually ascribes to Elder Gods-there's a very human malevolence upstairs, and it embraces that fact. Admittedly, this is more implied than shown, but that's fine-the notion of playing to a sadistic game orchestrated by a monster who chose to be that way is one of the scariest atmospheric qualities I can think of. Plus, it's essentially an evil TV Tropes editor, which is always appreciated (the reason why I say that is a spoiler, but think of why the target of it's schemes is a writer...)

So, yeah, good RPG horror material, at least in my opinion. Good for use Troper addicts too, given how we know a story is built and the game revolves around the concept of literary rules.

So, how would you be inspired by Alan Wake?