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Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Main Game

  • The reason Jesse is at the Oldest House and the Bureau in the first place? Her brother Dylan, whom she's been looking for the past 17 years.. In particular when she speaks with Emily and Marshall and they confirm he's in the Oldest House, she sounds just so relieved to be so close to finally being reunited with her twin.
  • Jesse's relationship with the Control agents especially when you consider the circumstances: Jesse first and only encounter before the game was when they showed up to clean up the Ordinary AWE. There they took her brother, her only remaining family, and she was left on the run for nearly two decades. Yet she gets along famously with the agents, including not batting an eye at this random person out of nowhere being their new Director.
    • Compared to Northmoor (an arrogant A God Am I Pointy-Haired Boss) and Trench (who grew bitter, controlling, and paranoid during his career), Jesse is a straight-up A Mother To Her Men Frontline General Benevolent Boss who cares about the people placed under her command. At one point, she outright says (in her Internal Monologue) that they shouldn't so blindly place their faith in her cause Jesse feels she always fails people.
      • A recurring Random Event that pops up is having Jesse back-up agents who are fighting against the Hiss; completely contradicting her belief that she's a Failure Hero while reinforcing their belief in their new Director.
  • The first person she meets is Ahti whose physical appearance might put some people off under normal circumstances, let alone when he's the only person so far in a creepy seemingly-abandoned office building. One Jesse knows is headquarters to the secret government agency that kidnapped her brother when they were kids. Yet the young woman is not scared at all and even decides that Ahti has "a friendly face", helped by her own past experience means she knows that those who work night shift can come off as odd.
    • After being made Director and meeting again in Maintenance, Ahti congrats her on getting the job (its implied that "Janitor assistant" is the same thing as Director) and tells her that Jesse's going to do great. Jesse for her part displays her Humble Hero nature by noting in her Internal Monologue that she'd prefer the janitor's assistant job to Director.
    • One of the Ahti's missions for Jesse tasks her with talking to the plants to re-energize them from their wilted state. She privately admits that small talk isn't her strong suit, and she sounds adorably shy and awkward around the flora as a result.
    "I wish my leaves were as pretty as yours."
    • This one especially, which doubles as a slight Tear Jerker:
      "Do you have a family? I have a brother. I miss him a lot."
    • And afterwards she kind of wishes that there were more plants for her to talk to.
    • Ahti's So Proud of You moment for Jesse when all is said and done:
      Ahti: I knew I picked good assistant.
    • Honestly, everything with Ahti. Though weird and a little rough around the edges, he is the only mysterious entity who doesn't seem to have any kind of ulterior motive or hidden scheme (unlike the Board or FORMER); he is always supportive of Jesse, and just pure goodness, even lending her an Object of Power to get through the Ashtray Maze and encouraging her as she fights her Hiss-enduced nightmare towards the end of the game.
  • Dr. Casper Darling, the Adorkable bow-tie wearing Mad Scientist Head of Research is full of this.
    • Despite working for the Bureau for decades, Casper is every bit as enthusiastic about his work as a bright-eyed new hire made evident by the various presentations found throughout the Oldest House. While a Tear Jerker to see him in the videos leading up to the Hiss invasion, tired and disheveled, it speaks to how hard he was working on the HRAs to protect as many of the agents as possible.
    • Darling's cheesy music video "Dynamite" when Jesse is in the Oceanview Motel as she's escaping her Battle in the Center of the Mind, especially after finding the Apocalyptic Logs depicting his increasing despair and Sanity Slippage in the upcoming Hiss invasion. While Jesse notes it could've been just her own mind that created it, it comes off as too much like the doc not to have been him giving the new Director some last minute encouragement as she went to put the Hiss down for good.
      • Given that Trench, of all people, cameos in the same video, it also comes off as a bit of an apology and attempt at making-right from the two people who could be reasonably argued to be most responsible for the Hiss incursion — Darling for pursuing the Slidescape-36 exploration in the first place, and Trench for being the one to ultimately let them in.
      • This also puts when his presentations would start up all by themselves in a new light with the implication that the good doctor was trying to give Jesse an orientation into some of the basics about the Bureau.
    • There's also his implied fate as he Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence given he spent his whole career studying Altered Items, O.o.P.s, psychic abilities, and other dimensions. Emily points out that given Darling's outlook on the Bureau's research, wherever, whatever dimension he's in, the doctor's probably having the time of his life exploring his new existence.
  • Fred Langston is a socially awkward man and the overseer for the sector where the FBC contains Altered Items, Objects of Power, and Dylan. While his appearance, including the scar on his lip, have all the classic signs of him being revealed as Evil All Along, he's shown to have Undying Loyalty to the Bureau and turns out to be a steadfast (if slightly annoying) ally.
    • A postgame conversation with Langston has him asking Jesse to get rid of the Hiss as quickly as she can, because he wants to get home to his cat. Later in AWE its revealed that his elderly neighbor takes care of his cat when he's stuck at work. Langston notes will have to get her a fruit basket or something in gratitude.
    • After defeating The Third Thing and thus reclaiming the Investigations Division, Jesse offers him the job as its new supervisor. Fred's of course too Genre Savvy about the place he works at and turns it down, but it's the thought that counts. Especially since conversations and collectables found around the Bureau reveals that one of his main grievances was being viewed as the No-Respect Guy Butt-Monkey and being Locked Out of the Loop from Trench's inner circle.
  • Dylan's interactions with Jesse, while definitely creepy, can also be sweet as he's much more polite towards her than Polaris. His opinion of her has soured greatly since their childhood, but it seems he never blamed Jesse for his capture.
    • While Dylan thinks Polaris never helped him, the way a recording plays out implies she tried to contact him and was showing him images of Jesse. Dylan took it the worst possible way, turning it into a Tear Jerker, but given Jesse never stopped looking for him, the more likely explanation is Polaris was trying to show him Jesse had never stopped trying to save him. Despite what Dylan thinks, Polaris cares for both siblings.
  • Polaris is a resonance-based lifeform making her an Eldritch Abomination by default and yet is one of the rare examples where she's benevolent and friendly when it comes to humans, especially Jesse and Dylan.
    • When Jesse arrives in Dimensional Research and learns that "Hedron" is the physical form of Polaris brought in from Slide-36, she's ecstatic at the idea that of seeing her. Then when the Hiss attack, she goes full-blown rage-mode as she works to save Polaris, every time she cleanses one of the nodes telling the Hiss to stay the fuck away from her friend.

The Foundation DLC

  • The Board initially gets angry with Jesse for taking the second power when she was permitted to take only one, calling her "Reckless/Disobedient." After she demonstrates that both powers are necessary to fix the Nail, they calm down and concede that their previous anger was a mistake and that she can keep both powers. They add that this is because she is "Director/Favorite."
    • Additionally, right after granting Jesse access to the second power, FORMER pulls her to its dark, faraway corner of the Astral Plane, actively responding to her request for an explanation. Its first response? Welcoming her to its home, and stating how happy it is to finally have a visitor since its exile from the Board long ago. Then it expresses gratitude for her actions opening a "tunnel", presumably a way to more directly interact with the physical world, and politely requests to speak with her. If you oblige, it will teleport you back to the Foundation without a fight after some conversation, and send Astral Copies to help you fight the Final Boss. Just by peacefully conversing with the creature, Jesse assuages its loneliness, and gains herself a solid ally for the final act of the DLC.

AWE DLC

  • In one Easter Egg Hotline Call Wake talks about Barry Wheeler and the Anderson brothers following the events of Alan Wake —specifically, Barry arranging, then cancelling, the Gods of Asgard comeback tour because he doesn't want Tor and Odin dying on him from overexertion. Especially after Wake's disappearance on his watch. Shortly afterwards Barry helps found a retirement home for the brothers to spend the rest of their days in peace in.
    • This is especially heartwarming as, since you see Alan writing about it in the Dark Place, it implies he, though desperate to escape and half crazy, still took some time to give his friends a happy ending.
  • The Eagle Limited AWE involves a train that was sabotaged by a group of paranatural terrorists who were trying to turn it into an Altered Item. It worked, but now the train is trapped in a loop, replaying the events leading up to the crash, not unlike a PTSD sufferer having flashbacks. By communicating with it and understanding what happened, Jesse is finally able to give it peace.

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