History VideoGame / AlanWake

* ArtShift: The Alan Wake that appears on televisions (and the other people you see on televisions, generally) are all done in live-action.

** It gets even more meta once you notice the game is formed to resemble a season of TV series.

** The "[[http://www.gametrailers.com/video/super-effective-alan-wakes/728833 Super Effective Sales Trailer]]" ends with Scratch mocking the GainaxEnding of the first game.

* FlingALightIntoTheFuture: Quite literally in the case of [[spoiler:Zane's]] [[XanatosGambit gambit]] involving the Well-Lit Room and [[spoiler:his shoebox]].

* XanatosGambit: Wake saving the day [[spoiler:has been written into the manuscript from the beginning]]. Player fumbles aside, [[spoiler:he's basically predestined to succeed]].

* AxCrazy: Mr. Scratch.

* {{Badass}}: Surprisingly, Alan is upgraded into being one as of American Nightmare, albeit a very polite badass who shows a great deal of concern for people around him caught in his dangerous tale. What makes him badass is how together he is in this game compared to the previous, and how casually he treats fighting the Taken.

** Well yes, Remedy is from Finland. Which means that they are ''the'' right people to consult on how to do design and construct a town like Bright Falls in a state such as Washington in the first place. Finland is extremely well known for its own endless forest ranges, and so is the rest of Scandinavia (Denmark aside). They wouldn't really have to travel halfway around the world to get the idea; they ''were'' in the idea all along, and it truly shows in the game.
*** Culturally Finland is a lot like the Northwestern US too, with pasttime activities such as hunting and fishing, the love of coffee and whatnot. In fact, one should not be surprised if most of those Twin Peaks -like character quirks you see in the game was Remedy simply inserting stuff they see everyday back at home.

[[folder: ''Alan Wake'' contains examples of:]]

* JumpScare: Thankfully this game generally avoids using these, save for when [[spoiler:Barbara Jagger]] appears right infront of the camera in a cutscene. Also unknowingly stepping on a bear trap is guaranteed to send most players leaping out of their seats.

* LockAndLoadMontage: Happens to Barry offscreen (via a manuscript page) in the Bright Falls General Store.

* OneHitKill: Flareguns, especially if fired at a group of tightly clustered Taken, next to shooting the propane tanks, flashbang grenades, and clearing the boiler room at the church's basement in "The Signal". [[spoiler:The lighthouse in "The Writer" on open spaces after clearing away the blocking boulders, and it's very satisfying to see a large group of Taken disintegrate as they try to bumrush Alan. The downside: it's a lighthouse, so the light sweeps. The upside: two beams, so Alan's fine as long he has extra flares, flashbang grenades, and batteries as backup.]]

[[folder: ''Alan Wake's American Nightmare'' contains examples of:]]

* VerbalTic: Nightingale constantly calls Wake [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous famous authors' famous names]]: "Hemingway!", "Stephen King!", "[[OverlyLongName H.P. Lovecraft]]!"

** Played brutally straight in "The Signal" and "The Writer" [[spoiler:where Alan has gone completely insane and self-destructive, and the protagonist is the rational part of his mind trying to bring him back to his senses]].

** May overlap with BigBadWannabe. Mr. Scratch is certainly dangerous but even Alan thinks he's got his {{Doppleganger}} outclassed.

* {{Doppleganger}}: Mr. Scratch.

** May overlap with BigBadWannabe. Mr. Scratch is certainly dangerous but even Alan thinks he's got his doppleganger outclassed.

* [[spoiler:BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind: Both DLC are this, particularly when it's revealed that 'Alan' is actually a manifestation of his own rationality, which has to physically fight its way to the emotionally-distraught Wake to help him.]]

*** Then again, as it is assumed Nightingale will be [[spoiler:the new face of darkness]], he will probably just [[spoiler: switch into tornado mode whenever he shows up]].

* [[spoiler: BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind: Both DLC are this, particularly when it's revealed that 'Alan' is actually a manifestation of his own rationality, which has to physically fight its way to the emotionally-distraught Wake to help him.]]

* BigBadEnsemble: The main antagonists are split between the Dark Presence, Agent Nightingale and [[spoiler: Doctor Hartman]], but the first one has the most weight over the story. And because [[EvilIsOneBigHappyFamily evil is NOT one big happy family]], none of the three are working together. [[spoiler: In fact, it's the Dark Presence that physically kills Hartman and possesses Nightingale.]]

** It's not just that, either. [[spoiler: Rusty, the man with whom she had secret feelings for (and vise versa), was murdered by the Dark Presence.]] And as if that and being MindRaped weren't enough, [[spoiler: she's apparently being haunted by a possessed Agent Nightingale, who had previously had a JerkWithAHeartOfGold moment when he comforted her during an interrogation.]]

* BrokenBird: Fittingly enough, [[spoiler: [[MeaningfulName Agent Nightingale]]. [[AllThereInTheManual Outside reading material]] reveals that he used pretty much the exact opposite of how he is in-game, but the loss of his partner to the Dark Presence turned him into the character we see.]]

** Rose starts babbling like this too [[spoiler: once the Dark Presence is done with her]]. In her case, she goes through the rhetoric of serving a customer.

** Ironically the Novel reveals he was the exact opposite of this trope alongside his partner, to the point where he didn't even touch Alcohol. [[spoiler: His partner was either killed or abducted by the Dark Presence, which turned him into TheAlcoholic CowboyCop we see in the game.]]

** It also becomes apparent that Sheriff Breaker is pretty genre savvy as well. Aside from curbing Nightingale's CowboyCop tendencies, she is also [[spoiler: aware that the lake has some unusual effects on their surroundings, and has plans in place to deal with them.]] Plus, [[spoiler: she doesn't even ask questions when Alan starts talking about the Taken. Her most important question essentially amounts to "How do we kill them?"]]

* InferredHolocaust: Hundreds of townsfolk from the surrounding landscape are Taken and gunned down over the course of the story. However, in "The Signal" Alan states that he wrote a "happy ending" for the town, and we know that the [[spoiler: dead can be resurrected if you know what you're doing when writing a story; the ending implies that Alan brought everyone who was Taken in Bright Falls back to life.]]

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Sheriff Sarah Breaker is pretty reasonable, especially considering the freakish events following Alan around. Her initial reaction to the Dark Presence [[spoiler: snatching Nightingale]] is to ask Wake how to fight the Presence, and she doesn't bat an eye once Wake tells her that they need to find [[spoiler: Cynthia Weaver]].

** Breaker all but outright states that [[spoiler: she knows about the weirdness going on around the town when she has Barry issue the "Night Springs" order.]]

** After the cable car crashes Alan, loses his gun and flashlight and is surrounded by numerous Taken. Suddenly, a flare is dropped into their midst, and the Taken are destroyed in a hail of pinpoint gunfire. Who is Alan's savior? The kidnapper. [[spoiler: Even though technically he's just a con-man.]]

* [[spoiler: BackFromTheDead: Emma, at least twice. She starts to remember her deaths by Act 2, and she and Alan finally figure out how to prevent it in Act 3 by keeping the Taken from knocking out the fuse box to her garage.]]

* [[spoiler: CutsceneBoss: Mr. Scratch.]]

* [[spoiler: EarnYourHappyEnding: Maaaaaaybe? The ambiguity is lampshaded by the narrator. After all, nothing ever is as it seems... in Night Springs.]]

* [[spoiler: GroundhogDayLoop]]: The 'game' Mr. Scratch plays with Alan. [[spoiler: He ends up reliving the same sequence at least three times, and the confrontation between Alan and Mr. Scratch we see at the start of the game is probably the end point of an earlier loop.]]
** Subverted in that [[spoiler: the memory of anyone caught in it gets better and better as the loops occur, which is why in the beginning no one knows each other or anything about what's going on, but by Act 3 Alan and his allies start performing beneficial tasks long before they originally happened. Examples include Emma setting up the oil derrick and Dr. Meadows repairing the telescope before Alan even arrives.]]
* [[spoiler: GroundhogPeggySue: Everyone, really. As noted above, this kind of makes Mr. Scratch's defeat utterly inevitable, since he'll soon be dealing with a small army of four increasingly DangerouslyGenreSavvy individuals, who know the lay of the land and the nature of the enemy, and are coordinating with each other, to boot. Mr. Scratch's whole 'game' isn't looking so fun in hindsight.]]

* MindScrew: How did Alan get from [[spoiler: the Dark Place]] to this desert town?

* SerialKiller: Mister Scratch.
* SlasherSmile: [[spoiler: Mr. Scratch]].

* TheStoner: Emma Sloan's method of dealing with the Taken and [[spoiler: dying twice in a time loop]]? "Herbal supplements".
* SubliminalSeduction: The Old Gods of Asgard's "Balance slays the Demon" has a small section with reversed and sped up lyrics. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRcLYeuK8ZU Play it the right way round]] and you get [[spoiler: "It will happen again, in another town. A town...called Ordinary."]]

* [[spoiler: EarnYourHappyEnding: Maaaaaaybe?]]

* RuleOfDrama[=/=]{{Consistency}}: Brought up between Alan and Dr. Meadows, when she asks why Alan can't just give himself superpowers.

** Well yes, Remedy is from Finland. Which means that they are ''the'' right people to consult on how to do design and construct a town like Bright Falls in a state such as Washington in the first place. Finland is extremely well known for its own unsurpassable mountains and endless forest ranges, and so is the rest of Scandinavia (Denmark aside). They wouldn't really have to travel halfway around the world to get the idea; they ''were'' in the idea all along, and it truly shows in the game.
*** Not so much for the mountains, actually. Finland is quite flat country with its highest peak reaching barely 1,300 metres. But if you think of Scandinavia in general, it still fits. The woods they've got though, oh yes. And climate is pretty much the same. Also, culturally Finland is a lot like the Northwestern US, with pasttime activities such as hunting and fishing, the love of coffee and whatnot. In fact, one should not be surprised if most of those Twin Peaks -like character quirks you see in the game was Remedy simply inserting stuff they see everyday back at home.
** They also got Alan's body model, Ilkka Villi, to appear in the Bright Falls miniseries, and the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIG1xnYdlFo Poets of the Fall video for "War"]], both of which were presumably shot in the US.
*** The music video was shot in Finland, but you really couldn't tell that just by looking at it. Sort of nails the point of Finland and Washington state being alike. '''A lot'''.

* [[spoiler: GroundhogPeggySue: Everyone, really. As noted above, this kind of makes Mr. Scratch's defeat utterly inevitable, since he'll soon be dealing with a small army of four increasingly DangerouslyGenreSavvy individuals, who know the lay of the land and the nature of the enemy, and are coordinating with eachother, to boot. Mr. Scratch's whole 'game' isn't looking so fun in hindsight.]]

** Barry was well. When he isn't able to contact either Alan or Alice for a week, he immediately heads for Bright Falls.

* SmugSnake: Averted. Mister Scratch seems partially aware he's a ''TwilightZone'' rip-off villain. Some of his conversations also indicate that he's aware Alan might be more than he could handle. He just can't help himself.

* TheStoner: Emma Sloan's method of dealing with the Taken and [[spoiler: dying twice in a time loop]]? 'Herbal supplements'.