History WMG / AlanWake

The song is also a reassurance to Alan Wake that he doesn't fight alone and that Zane is beside him as well through all of his struggles.

Even so, they would still blame each other for being a bad influence on Alan. If he is given a SadisticChoice to save either of them, the one who is not chosen will sacrifice his/her life when the Dark Presence attacks. This starts a TearJerker where Barry and Alice finally forgive each other, and either of them who is dying tells one to take care of himself/herself and Alan.

The "he" refers to Zane himself; he owned Bird Leg Cabin when he was alive. The "ocean" is a greater portion of the Dark Presence, hence the "darker". The "deeper" means that it also grants the user more power. This is an extension of the ending line: "It's not a lake; it's an ocean." The "waves" are wilder because the Dark Presence, being more powerful, can bend artists to its will easier, but "more serene" because an intelligent, possibly GenreSavvy artist can use its power in more ways, allowing Zane to survive in the Dark Place at the end for almost forty years. Zane has been to "its ports" to influence the world in different ways, such as writing at least part of Alan's life, such as the clicker. Later in the series, we'll see other ways Zane influenced the world.

[[WMG: Alan Wake 2 has...]]

[[WMG: The ending of Alan Wake 2 will be...]]

* The beginning of Alan Wake 1
** Dun dun duuun!

[[WMG: The ending of Alan Wake 2 will be...]]

After all, you are always heading towards the "light".

Tom wrote himself out of existence. But the Dark Presence warped this desire so that Tom became a 'fictional' character that exists only in a realm of fiction... which includes TVland and dreams. As well, the DP made it so that Tom (or a part of him) became Alan, again, so it had a way 'out'. So Alan and Tom only exist in disjointed fragments - the parts that show up on TV to others, the parts in a dream, the parts to each other, the parts in the lake, and the parts in the game itself (the game being the story written with a self-aware character, rather than 'reality' proper).

The lake has given self-awareness to a part of itself; it knows only Bright Falls and such and took the form of things that Thomas write for it. The game itself is not reality but simply scenes within the lake. Thomas, as suggested by his poem, is trying to 'teach' the lake how to do things constructively, to see things beyond itself since, as a reality warper, there's no real incentive to see things outside of its own experiences.

Let's assume that the straight interpretation of the game is what happens: Alan Wake goes to an idyllic mountain town, gets roped into helping a malevolent entity, rebels against it and so on and so forth. Basically, everything is taken at face value. So, once he's rewritten the events, and Alice emerges from the lake but he doesn't, would that mean that the people who were taken or killed by the Dark Presence are restored? Or, would they remain dead or in its thrall, since Alan spoke of balance and only had one life to trade for one person (himself for Alice)? If that's the case, then would the town be wracked overnight with mass disappearances?

The "he" refers to Zane himself; he owned Bird Leg Cabin when he was alive. The "ocean" is a greater portion of the Dark Presence, hence the "darker". The "deeper" means that it also grants the user more power. This is an extension of the ending line: "It's not a lake; it's an ocean." The "waves" are wilder because the Dark Presence, being more powerful, can bend artists to its will easier, but "more serene" because an intelligent, possibly GenreSavvy artist can use its power in more ways, allowing Zane to survive in the Dark Place at the end for almost forty years. Zane has been to "its ports" to influence the world in different ways, such as writing at least part of Alan's life, such as the clicker. Later in the series, we'll see other ways Zane influenced the world.

** But perhaps the Andersons being ordinary people was written into the story by the Dark Presence to remove their power and shrivel them from gods into relatively harmless old men. It makes sense that Thomas Zane would assume there was a mundane explanation to the Andersons' resemblance to the gods and write it in without a thought for the greater implications, not knowing he was a huge XanatosSucker.

Brightfalls is actually the resting place of the Lasombra Antediluvian. It summoned Alan, an awakened Mage (who is unaware of his true power) to warp reality in order to free it. The human and animal taken are Ghouls that have been altered irrevocably by drinking an antediluvian's blood, which explains the shroud of Obtenebration around them and their vulnerability to light.

[[WMG: The Darkness is Ahriman from Prince of Persia (2008)]]

One theory is that Alan was a struggling writer, with a girlfriend named Alice, who decided to go to a small town in the middle of the nowhere. They stay at cauldron lake, and trigger the dark spirit who was killed Alice. (Or he could've been alone, and just made contact with the Dark Presence) And sensing Alan's writing ability the presence it used Alan to write a story that it would use to gain power, or acted like a Djinni and promised Alan it would grant a wish (that Alan could create a story that would come to life) but would use it for it's own ends. Alan decides to write a wish-fulfillment story, where he is a successful writer with lots of fans, and revives his girlfriend who becomes his wife (or created her whole cloth), and has a good friend who would risk his life for him. But realizes that the dark presence would use his story for it's own ends, and creates a horror story so that it can turn the dark presence into a physical being that he can defeat. The creation of Thomas Zane is used to help make the story more compelling, creating a history for the dark presence and also creating several twists throughout the story, and to help fill some plot-holes (i.e. manuscript pages). Thus it wasn't Thomas who created Alan, but rather Thomas was created to help Alan. He also wrote in his Dream so that he could give himself the knowledge that could help him defeat the Darkness (and to fill a plot hole).

By the time of the second game or some of the later DLC, Bright Falls and the neighboring areas will wake up to the fact that about 200 or so of their number plus several dozen tourists have gone missing without a trace and very, VERY disturbing rumors about what happened, with some people even packing up and fleeing elsewhere with no corresponding inflow back in because Bright Falls and the general countryside gains the reputation of a DoomMagnet, making it even HARDER to repair the damage incurred by the next bouts while the toll on manpower likely means that more and more people run headfirst into the Dark Presence and its minions and either die or GoMadFromTheRevelation, futher screwing things up for the town as urban legends become widespread rumors become well-known knowledge. And since a modern town depends on connection with the rest of the world to obtain goods and other services and the surrounding area becomes more and more taboo and isolated, the plight of the locals grows even more as the area faces first ecconomic collapse and then simple demographic extinction. By the end of the game, the region around Bright Falls will effectively be a giant wasteland populated by a few hardy and lucky survivors scared of their own shadows and afraid of so much as walking in the Dark or getting near the surrounding woods with a fifty foot pole and who are effectively trapped amongst the hordes of the Darkness and are slowly picked off, which will double as a wonderful warning about exactly what would befall the world if the Dark Presence managed to actually escape.

His reactions seem typical of most men watching the film. "IT'S IN MY BRAIN!" "IT BURNS!"

By the time of the second game or some of the later DLC, Bright Falls and the neighboring areas will wake up to the fact that about 200 or so of their number plus several dozen tourists have gone missing without a trace and very, VERY disturbing rumors about what happened, with some people even packing up and fleeing elsewhere with no corresponding inflow back in because Bright Falls and the general countryside gains the reputation of a DoomMagnet, making it even HARDER to repair the damage incurred by the next bouts while the toll on manpower likely means that more and more people run headfirst into the Dark Presence and its minions and either die or GoMadFromTheRevelation, futher screwing things up for the town as urban legends become widespread rumors become well-known knowledge. And since a modern town depends on connection with the rest of the world to obtain goods and other services and the surrounding area becomes more and more taboo and isolated, the plight of the locals grows even more as the area faces first ecconomic collapse and then simple demographic extinction. By the end of the game, the region around Bright Falls will effectively be a giant wasteland populated by a few hardy and lucky survivors scared of their own shadows and afraid of so much as walking in the Dark or getting near the surrounding woods with a fifty foot pole and who are effectively trapped amongst the hordes of the Darkness and are slowly picked off, which will double as a wonderful warning about exactly what would befall the world if the Dark Presence managed to actually escape.

By the time of the second game or some of the later DLC, Bright Falls and the neighboring areas will wake up to the fact that about 200 or so of their number plus several dozen tourists have gone missing without a trace and very, VERY disturbing rumors about what happened, with some people even packing up and fleeing elsewhere with no corresponding inflow back in because Bright Falls and the general countryside gains the reputation of a DoomMagnet, making it even HARDER to repair the damage incurred by the next bouts while the toll on manpower likely means that more and more people run headfirst into the Dark Presence and its minions and either die or GoMadFromTheRelevation, futher screwing things up for the town as urban legends become widespread rumors become well-known knowledge. And since a modern town depends on connection with the rest of the world to obtain goods and other services and the surrounding area becomes more and more taboo and isolated, the plight of the locals grows even more as the area faces first ecconomic collapse and then simple demographic extinction. By the end of the game, the region around Bright Falls will effectively be a giant wasteland populated by a few hardy and lucky survivors scared of their own shadows and afraid of so much as walking in the Dark or getting near the surrounding woods with a fifty foot pole and who are effectively trapped amongst the hordes of the Darkness and are slowly picked off, which will double as a wonderful warning about exactly what would befall the world if the Dark Presence managed to actually escape.