Exclusive: The Real World of Alan Wake
Steve Barton
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Anyone who has seen even thirty seconds of Alan Wake (review here) can pick up on the game’s primary influence, that being the legendary television series “Twin Peaks”. Considering that development studio Remedy is based in Finland, that came as a bit of a surprise. The amount of detail in the world of Bright Falls and its surrounding areas is intense, and it turns out that detail came at quite a bit of cost and effort.
The Remedy team traveled to the Pacific Northwest to research locations for the game, taking over 6,000 photos and countless hours of video to document locales they would blend into Wake’s nightmare world.
Dread Central has been provided with some of those photos so join us now for a brief tour of the real world blending with the fiction of Alan Wake.
The first stop will be familiar to long time “Twin Peaks” fans: Twede’s Cafe in North Bend, WA. Twede’s was used as the stand-in for the Double-R Diner in “Twin Peaks” where Dale enjoyed his cherry pie and damn fine coffee. In the game the diner becomes Bright’s Diner, home of aging rock stars and Harry Nilsson hits.
Sticking to town, here we see the Crab & Seafood Warehouse in Ilwaco, WA and its in-game counterpart. This can be seen in-game when coming into town on the ferry and from another angle when roaming the town later in the game.
Exiting town and the safety of the light of day, we have one of the park ranger lookout stations from the game. In the real world this is the Red Top Lookout in Cle Elum, WA.
Now we have one of the icons of the game, seen in much of the promotional artwork and trailers: the lighthouse with its purifying beam of light. The model for this is the North Head Lighthouse in Ilwaco, WA.
Our last two stops take us into the end of the game and Alan’s ultimate search for light to destroy the darkness. First, we have the exterior of the Bright Falls Light & Power plant, which features a logo that will look very familiar to anyone who has played the game and snooped around for glowing paint markers. In reality this is the Gorge Powerhouse in Newhalem, WA.
The tour ends at one of the final and most important locations of the game: the dam. No hellish tornadoes of darkness exist in the real photo of the Diablo Dam in Rockport, WA, despite the hellish name.
That should give you a glimpse into the amount of effort and artistry that went into the making of Alan Wake. We’ll be revisiting Bright Falls (and Night Springs?) next month when the first ‘episode’ of DLC is released on July 27th. “The Signal” will begin a series of episodes between seasons of Alan Wake, designed to patch the events of the first game (season) to the sequel which we assume and hope will be coming.
You can read more about “The Signal” as the launch date approaches right here on Dread Central!
For a glimpse into the eerie and engaging feel of the game, you can watch the live-action prequel series called “Bright Falls” here.
– Mr. Dark
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Categorized:Horror Gaming
