Trivia / Alan Wake II

• Acclaimed Flop: The game's budget reportedly stands at around €70 million (~$75 million USD), which is relatively cheap for an early 2020s AAA video game, but is so high for Finland that it's considered one of the most expensive cultural products in the country's history. Despite generally glowing reviews and being Remedy's fastest selling game ever at 1.3 million units sold by the end of February 2024, during a business review by the Remedy CEO released about 5 months after launch, it is stated that the game has yet to make a profit as of the end of April 2024. With that said, this is common for the studio, and they're pleased with the current sales figures- Remedy's games are fairly niche, and so they tend not to do super well at launch, and sell steadily over the course of multiple years.
• Acting for Two:
  • Ilkka Villi portrays Alan and Scratch physically, as well as Thomas Zane.
  • Sam Lake appears both As Himself and as the physical model for Alex Casey.
  • Matthew Porretta provides Alan's voice, while also appearing as Dr. Casper Darling in live action.
  • Peter Franzen portrays both of the Koskela brothers.
• Actor-Inspired Element: It's been stated in multiple interviews that this game's version of Thomas Zane, in basically every aspect except for his role in the plot, was heavily inspired by actor Ilkka Villi's own suggestions for the character. As Villi himself stated, because he was going to be playing both Alan Wake and this other character, the new character needed to be a strong contrast in personality and appearance against Alan.
• Blooper: During Alan and Zane's drunken montage, which was filmed in live-action, there are several instances of parts of the actors' bodies vanishing or getting cut off, especially if they pass the midline of the frame- one example is this shot of Alan's right arm vanishing. Many shots in this montage really consist of two shots composited and stitched together to include actors that couldn't be together on set. Fortunately, the shots are heavily edited and the montage cuts between them quickly enough that most of these aren't easily visible unless the viewer is actively looking for them.
• The Cast Showoff: For the first time, trained singer Matthew Porretta gets to show off his impressive vocal capacities during Alan's sections of "Herald of Darkness".
• Content Leak: In a May 2023 interview for the Monsters, Madness, and Magic podcast, Matthew Porretta accidentally leaked the release month for the game a couple days ahead of the official release date announcement from Remedy. Remedy even contacted the podcast to see if the episode could be edited, but by that point, the cat was already out of the bag and it was all over the gaming news.
• Defictionalization:
  • In the lead up to Alan Wake II, a collaboration with the Finnish company Airam to produce the Oh Deer Diner thermos in real life was announced.
  • Tornion, a Finnish brewery, has started brewing Ahma Sauna Beer in real life.
• Descended Creator:
  • Writer-Director Sam Lake plays at least two different characters, depending on how you count them- FBI Agent Alex Casey (and his Dark Place counterpart, who is more like Alan's fictional version), an actor named Sam Lake who portrays Alex Casey in the in-universe film adaptations of Alan Wake's Alex Casey novels, and "Aleksi Kesä" in the "Yötön Yö" short film. As the American Alex Casey, he is dubbed by James McCaffrey.
  • Live-action cinematics director Anssi Määttä has a few vocal cameos as Tapio Annala, a quirky Watery resident who appears as a caller on a few radio broadcasts and as a customer testimonial in a Koskela brothers' commercial.
• Development Gag:
  • Among Rose's momentos of Alan in the Valhalla Nursing Home is a photo of him in a red scarf and green jacket. This outfit was part of Alan's original design for the first game, seen in the earliest trailers but removed from the final game.
  • When Alan is asked about Sam Lake's casting as Alex Casey on Mr. Door's talk show, Lake does the infamous "Max Payne" face for a moment.
• Dummied Out
  • An older temporary ad for Mr. Door's talk show was found in the game's files from when Lance Reddick was set to play him.
  • Dataminers digging around in the game's files have found several unused audio clips of Alan and Alex Casey's physical actors Ilkka Villi and Sam Lake, respectively, delivering dialogue in their own voices in-character before being dubbed over by their respective voice actors. In particular, there's audio from the mocap session for the scene when Alan first meets Casey in the Dark Place, as well as multiple versions of the "Drowning" monologue delivered by Villi.
• Fake American: British actresses Melanie Liburd and Christina Cole both play American characters Saga Anderson and Alice Wake, respectively, with fairly good generic American accents, although Liburd has a tendency to miss the rhotic American "r" sound when pronouncing her character's surname.
• Follow the Leader: Just as Alan Wake was inspired by Resident Evil 4, Alan Wake II's inspirations come from Resident Evil 2 (Remake).
• In Memoriam: The game is dedicated to the memory of actor Lance Reddick, who worked with Remedy on Quantum Break (and for whom the role of Mr. Door was intended); Brett Madden, the first voice of Alice Wake; and Remedy co-founder Sami Vanhatalo, who worked on the original Alan Wake as well as American Nightmare.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: The game is available for purchase in two separate editions: the "standard" edition, which contains simply the game, and the "Deluxe Edition", which contained both DLCs free of additional charge, additional skins for the playable characters and their weapons, and the unique Lantern Charm for Saga.
• Meme Acknowledgment: When the announcement trailer was first released, many commented on Alan's changed appearance compared to all of his past appearances, likening his longer hair, full beard, and dark suit to many other actors, particularly Keanu Reeves's portrayal of John Wick, as well as Jake Gyllenhaal, Bradley Cooper, and even Jared Leto's portrayal of Morbius. Some didn't even realize that he was portrayed by Ilkka Villi, the same physical actor that Alan Wake has always had since the earliest demos of the first game going back nearly two decades. In this anniversary update video from Remedy, Villi pokes fun at this a little.
  Vida: "You were in the trailer, with the lamp, and you looked amazing, in all that CGI."
  Ilkka: "Was it... was it me, actually? Or was it Jake Gyllenhaal? Was it Keanu Reeves, or some of the other fifteen actors...?"
  Sam: "There was a lot of speculation."
  Ilkka: "Yeah... so I'm still not sure."
• The Other Darrin: The entirety of the first game's cast has been replaced, with the only exception being Alan himself. Some of the cast has passed away, while the other replacements are apparently for the purpose of having all of the major cast be portrayed by the same actor in likeness and voice, averting a Same Language Dub outside of Alan.
  • Rose Marigold is now played by Jessica Preddy, replacing Benita Robledo.
  • Tor and Odin Anderson are now played by Stuart Milligan and Harry Ditson, replacing Lloyd Floyd and Cliff Carpenter, the latter of whom passed away in 2014. However, their younger selves (and their singing voices) remain the same, being played by members of Poets of the Fall.
  • FBI Special Agent Robert Nightingale is now played by Doug Cockle, replacing Timothy McCracken.
  • Deputy Sheriffs Mulligan and Thornton are now played by Mark Heenehan and Todd Boyce, replacing Bill Buell and Bill Lobley.
  • Cynthia Weaver is now played by Linda Marlowe, replacing Linda Cook, who passed in 2012.
  • Pat Maine is now played by James Carroll Jordan, replacing R.J. Allison.
  • Alice Wake's original voice actress, Brett Madden, unfortunately died of a brain tumor in 2020. Alice is now played by actress Christina Cole.
  • Thomas Zane was voiced by Remedy mainstay James McCaffrey in Alan Wake but in this game, he's both played and voiced by Ilkka Villi, Alan's live-action model. The change is potentially justified by Zane the Poet/Diver being a character made by Zane the Filmmaker.
• Permanent Placeholder: According to this developers' livestream, live-action cinematics director Anssi Määttä's vocal cameo as Tapio Annala started out as just Määttä needing a placeholder voice while he was editing the Koskela brothers' "parade float" ad, and deciding to just record it himself at his home so he could get on with editing. Then Sam Lake happened to hear it and liked Määttä's "old man" vocal impression, and asked him if he'd like to just keep doing the voice, and the rest is history.
• Pre-Order Bonus: Prior to the games release, an additional bonus for pre-order was available, providing players with the Ornate Revolver for Alan, and a set of disposable healing items and survival tools for Saga.
• Production Posse: In addition to Matthew Porretta and Ilkka Villi reprising their shared roles as Wake and Mr. Scratch, with the former making a brief cameo as Dr. Casper Darling and the latter as Thomas Zane, you have Shawn Ashmore, who previously appeared in Quantum Break; the voice of Max Payne James McCaffrey; and Poets of the Fall returning with multiple new songs, both as themselves and as the Old Gods of Asgard.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: According to various interviews, the game wasn't originally intended to have as much live-action footage as the final product; more of these scenes were originally conceived as rendered cinematics. However, rendering so many cutscenes presented a production issue for the CG artists and animators, so it was decided that building a couple physical sets and shooting them normally with the actors in costume would be simpler. Most of the live-action footage outside of content on in-game screens and films is associated with paranatural phenomena such as psychic visions or the Dark Place, and having it directly alongside the nearly photorealistic in-game CG gives those things a distinctly uncanny quality.
• Real-Time Timeskip: The game was released thirteen years after the original and takes place thirteen years later.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • The semi open-world aspect of this game was the original plan for Alan Wake, but had to be scrapped in order to save that game from Development Hell.
  • Taken Animals were considered for the original game, but were ultimately cut because the AI didn't work properly; Taken Wolves appear as an enemy in this game.
• Real-Life Relative: Writer-director Sam Lake's parents, Markku and Tuula Järvi, appear in the "Yötön Yö" short film as background extras slow-dancing to Ahti and the Janitors.
• Release Date Change: The game was first announced to be released on October 17, 2023. To mitigate competition with other major games in the month (Marvel's Spider-Man 2 chief among them) the game was delayed 10 days to the 27th of the same month.
• Saved from Development Hell: Alan Wake II had been in Development Hell status for a while, which was all a matter of "time, money, and resources." Remedy did always intend for there to be a sequel, but it was put on hold as Alan Wake reportedly underperformed and left them insufficiently funded, and Microsoft pushed them to pursuing new projects such as Quantum Break (though some of their loose ideas were able to make it into Alan Wake's American Nightmare). They attempted to re-jumpstart the project in 2017, but that went nowhere as all focus was put towards Control, though they were still very clearly interested in it as Control makes very liberal crossovers with Alan Wake. By 2019, Remedy had bought out the publication rights to Alan Wake from Microsoft, and with Control becoming a bigger financial success, the way to Alan Wake II was paved, and it was officially announced in late 2021 for a 2023 release.
• Sequel Gap: The first Alan Wake was originally released May 14th 2010. Due to diminishing returns, Remedy had to postpone making the official sequel^note American Nightmare, released in 2012, being more of a spin-off until October 17, 2023, making a 13 year gap.
• Throw It In!: In an interview, Ilkka Villi said that when shooting Alan's part of the scene where he meets Thomas Zane, which was shot separately and composited with the other character's part due to Villi playing both parts, he improvised this character crawling away on all fours by having Alan look down at the floor and follow his crawling, essentially forcing himself into having to do several takes of going down on his hands and knees when he shot the other half of the scene a few days later.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Sam Lake mentioned that initially part of the "Yötön Yö" short film would have had Alex Casey naked running through the woods to parallel Nightingale's opening section. However, he forgot that HE was Alex Casey and chickened out after realizing he would have to strip in front of the entire Remedy cast and filming crew. When he nervously asked cinematics director Anssi Määttä if he really had to be naked, Määttä incredulously reminded Lake that he's the one who wrote that. The final scene has Casey shirtless and wearing trousers.
  • Inversely, producers wanted to cut out the musical number which takes place during "We Sing", but Lake was adamant it remain in, and the final game does keep it in.
  • One piece of concept art that was released showed an elderly Taken in a flooded room with knitting needles. This seems to imply that Mandy-May was originally planned to be the Taken Saga faces in the Valhalla Nursing Center overlap before it was changed to Cynthia.
  • According to games journalist Jason Schreier, the role of Mr. Door was originally intended for Lance Reddick, cementing him as a counterpart to Reddick's Quantum Break character, Martin Hatch. After Reddick's untimely death, the role went to David Harewood.
  • The first official Alan Wake 2 Dev Livestream shows a piece of concept art depicting three different designs for Thomas Zane, all of which have a very different style and appearance from the game, showing him with a Porn Stache, soul patch, sideburns, 1970s-style aviator glasses, heavier jackets, and very little visible jewelry. According to Remedy Communications Director Thomas Puha, Zane changed radically once his actor started playing around with the character, leading to the artsy, oft-shirtless, Jim Morrison-inspired poet-slash-rockstar look seen in the final game.
• Word of Gay: Ilkka Villi said on the Behind the Voice podcast that in contrast to Alan, who he considers stiff and masculine, he played Thomas Zane as very fluid and free, not only in his movements, but also in who he might choose to love and how he expresses himself, very literally stating that he's In Touch with His Feminine Side.
  "Alan is pretty stiff, so Zane would be pretty relaxed, very sort of... fluid in his moves. And Alan is very sort of... masculine, I think? And so I thought Zane would be more... very In Touch with His Feminine Side as well, and sort of just free. 'Cause, you know, Alan is captured. He's a prisoner of the Dark Place. But Zane is just free- he can do anything, he can, you know, love anyone. He can be just out there and do whatever."
• Working Title: According to this Playstation Blog post written by writer-director Sam Lake, the game was known as "Project Big Fish" internally, due to its importance to the studio and the fact that they had to dive deeper than ever before for a "fish" of this magnitude.

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