Or rather, you won’t like it if you expect overwhelming content from a gameplay point of viewwith only its depth sufficient to justify the purchase of the deluxe upgrade of the Remedy title (which you can now finally find on Amazon).
Because it is better to specify that right from the start Night Springs It aims to tell a storyor rather three stories, and Sam Lake and Remedy have to and want to do it at the expense of everything.
If we had to judge Night Springs in terms of pure gameplay, it would be almost insufficient.
The freedom of original exploration is limited, given that the three storylines are extremely linear with a few moments of broader scope, and on some occasions we fall back into constructs and expedients that are too scholastic, especially when compared to what has been offered Alan Wake 2.
There are some new weapons, moreover, but it is certainly not in the gameplay that we need to look for the profound identity of Night Springs.
Self Alan Wake 2 it was anything but a trivial gamenor exactly for all types of gamers and it must be said, Night Springs proceeds on that same path by offering the type of experience that we can expect from what Remedy has demonstrated so far.
Alan Wake 2 it was a story about telling stories, and the three stories of the TV series from the world of Remedy Entertainment they keep doing the same thing.
And all of it is summed up in the iconic phrase that Jesse Faden said to herself and to the players at the beginning of Controlas well as in the episode of Night Springs dedicated to her.
«Fair warning: this is gonna get weirder than usual»
Night Springs it’s exactly the TV show we saw in the first one Alan Wake. A revival of “The Twilight Zone”, or “The Edge of Reality”, the historic program in which they came tell science fiction stories with pulp and weird notesharbingers of a pioneering type of genre fiction that has today expanded and merged into the various entertainment mediums we know.
In Alan Wake 2the three episodes contained in the DLC are canonically written by Alan Wake himself and introduced by Warlin Door who, like the good actor that he is, gives spectators/players the narrative and thematic subtext needed to best enter the atmosphere of the story.
Each of the episodes brings with it four new trophies or achievements, adding a total of 12 new challenges for trophy hunters and completionists. The stories are numbered, they last less than 2 hours each about, and they can be played in any order.
However there I highly recommend using the order suggested by Remedy because, after the initial estrangement, at the end of the third episode all the others will take on a different meaning.
The only one thread in the madness of Night Springs is linked to the events of Alan Wake 2: the writer is looking for someone to help him get out of the Dark Place.
I will try to describe the three episodes without spoilers (or few, at least), even if it is a crime, because it is right in the screenplays of the tales that reside there genius Of Night Springs.
Attention: from this point the review includes some minor spoilers from the contents of the expansion from Alan Wake 2.
Episode one is “Number One Fan”in which the protagonist is The Waitress: that is Rose Marigold, waitress at the Oh Deer Diner. Alan Wake’s number one fan who, in his episode, she will be called upon to save in a story that is literally a fanfiction come to life.
Rose is the classic fanfiction author who writes stories where everything revolves around her. Everyone loves her, she is the absolute protagonist of completely absurd scenes (she literally has an armory in the back of the diner), and her dream is that Alan Wake notices her and loves her madly.
In a scenario colored by a very high pink filterRose defeats enemy after enemy, namely Alan Wake haters who shout insults about her novels when they attack the waitress, while she giggles and makes jokes about having to reload her weapon every now and then.
There difficulty is non-existent because you will be inundated with healing and bullets, and exploration is not necessary because you will face a path outlined on some occasions by flames left by the tires of the antagonist’s motorbike (I told you it was weird). That is, Scratch, or Alan’s alter ego, who in the end will find himself in the classic cliché of the conversion of bad into good, complete with confession of his feelings as a typical romance novel with happy ending.
All is completely and deliberately absurd. The writing is designed to be cheesy and corny with some scenes, but of absolute aesthetic vigor. One of these sees Rose, covered in blood from head to toe, looking dreamily at the sky after speaking to a deer who has Alan’s voice, thinking of the moment when she will see her beloved writer again.
In the second episode, “North Star”, Jesse Faden makes his return from Control playing The Sister, called into action once again with the aim of searching for her brother.
With a beginning that mirrors the first cut-scene that precedes the exploration of the Oldest House in the 2019 title, after the same perpendicular camera movement Jesse will be called to explore the Coffee World already seen in Alan Wake 2.
An obviously distorted and revised version, where Jesse will find himself vanquished a strange coffee cult that plagiarizes people’s minds with a particular blend. The director of the Federal Bureau of Control will find herself, gun and torch in hand, investigating the oddities of the coffee-themed amusement park, facing shadow creatures and mascots dressed as giant thermoses who want to kill her.
Even in this case the difficulty is non-existent and, of the three episodes, “Stella Polare” is the one that uses the least brilliant expedient of all in terms of play. Essentially you will find yourself going back and forth in some areas of the Coffee World to find clues, completely arbitrary, in order to unlock the final area.
It would have been enough to be able to reward the player for exploring before continuing with the main objectives, allowing him to discover the clues in advance and use them for the final section of the episode.
However, there are documents that describe the game world (which, as you know, are often very useful) that are not obtained simply by advancing linearly, therefore replayability in this case it is a little incentivized.
In this episode Remedy begins to create a real narrative setup by also introducing Tim Breakerthe sheriff of Bright Falls played by Shawn Ashmore (protagonist of Quantum Breakwhich Remedy will evoke in the third episode), as Jesse’s shoulder.
The episodes of Night Springshowever absurd and surreal, begin to make sense and it is the third episode that represents, in fact, the third act of what can be considered a unique story.
In the third episode “Time Breaker”the protagonist is the Actor, that is Shawn Ashmore.
Literally Shawn Ashmore, because in “Time Breaker” (which has only one more “e” than Tim Breaker) Remedy turns over the cards and so does Sam Lake.
The fictional(ish) Poison Pill Entertainment is creating a video game starring Shawn Ashmore in the role of the protagonist, complete with FMV and travel through time and the multiverse in which the detective will have to discover how to save time and defeat the Master of Many Worlds, with some light suggestions to Doctor Who complete with a sonic screwdriver clone.
Does it remind you of anything?
With the third episode of Night Springs, Remedy retrains the unfortunate person Quantum Break making him pass through the back door. He is never mentioned directly, but it is clear that he is being referred to because the director tells Ashmore that he is “not the first superhero” he has played (referring to his Iceman in X-Men by Bryan Singer), and that “detectives will be the new superheroes”.
The screenplay by Alan Wake 2 expands further and begins to provide some answers to the questions left unanswered by the latest Bright Falls story, from the events of Controland not only.
All in a sequence of events that raises the stakesbrings him back to the field horror and a ruthless and brutal hunt, while Remedy retraces the definition and structure of a video game, leading the player to experience, among other things, also a horror text adventure.
Night Springs creates a sixth wall, where the limit between video game and reality becomes increasingly thin.
Warlin Door, Marlin Hatch, clones, versions, drafts and scripts. We talk about the multiverse and we do it with clarity that Remedy Entertainment has shown in all its stories, especially in that of Alan Wake 2.
Night Springs create a sixth wallwhere the limit between video games and reality becomes increasingly thin and imperceptible, we reflect on the nature of stories and how we can playing with archetypes without ever departing from narrative coherence.
It is not an exercise in style as an end in itselfbut a way to create a complex, layered, but fascinating and satisfying plot when you are (more or less) made aware of what is really happening.
Needless to say, for some answers that come there are other questions which are left open, which Remedy will surely write more stories about to go even deeper into spiral. Which it really isn’t.
