One of the biggest announcements to come out of Summer Game Fest today was Night Springs, Alan Wake 2’s first expansion.
As of tomorrow, Remedy has also announced the release of a photo mode in tandem with the DLC, as well as a physical edition of the game that is set to hit shelves later this year.
While the shadow drop is somewhat of a surprise, the expansion is not. Night Springs was revealed alongside the second DLC, The Lake House, around the time pre-orders for Alan Wake 2 were announced. The first expansion will see players control three characters from the interconnected Remedy universe within stories framed as episodes from the game’s anthology series. Night springs.
Before the Summer Game Fest announcement GamesIndustry.biz spoke with Game Director Kyle Rowley, Lead Writer Clay Murphy, Level Designer Nathalie Jankie, and Director of Communications Thomas Puha.
Puha says that Remedy decided to time the release of Night Springs around the Summer Game Fest because the event “is a huge platform to bring the news to a large audience.” But he also says it was for the benefit of the fans.
“Marketing campaigns tend to be shorter these days and it’s good to try to do things differently,” he explains.
“We’ve always looked at Remedy for a very long time. The first few months.” [are not] sales oriented; it’s at least the next three years”Tomas Puha
“Together with our publisher Epic, we decided that this time we would announce the expansion right before its release, so that fans would have a short period of time to get their hands on it.”
Promotion for Night Springs has been relatively short compared to the main game, but there have been hints on social media over the past week pointing to its release.
“There’s always debate about how much of the marketing budget should be saved for post-launch, but the thinking tends to be that, especially for a single-player game, getting it right is the most important thing, so it justifies spending at launch,” notes Puha .
Night Springs also doesn’t take long to develop. It started after the release of Alan Wake 2, but the concept was there before the game was finished.
“We’ve always wanted the idea of playing multiple characters,” says Rowley. “In the original concept of the base game, we wanted to have more playable characters than we ended up with. Night Springs as a concept came about when we came up with it. We parked it, and when we finished the game, we wrote some more amazing, crazy stuff. “
Murphy adds, “The writing process was very free and fun – no rules, no barriers. Just pure experimentation and trying to find the fun in each episode and push it as far as it could go.”
He also highlights the collaborative nature at Remedy in that all departments working on the expansion had a hand in shaping the story.
“The writing process was very free and fun – no rules, no barriers. Just pure experimentation.”Clay Murphy
“We’re trying to have fun here and make it bizarre,” he says. “So not every idea comes from the writers, the process definitely involves the team.”
“I think everyone just gritted their teeth and ran with it,” adds Jankie. “It was really fun to see how each department [got involved].”
Rowley says creating this expansion was also “a nice palate cleanser” for the team.
“Working on a horror game for five years is, you know, being stuck in The Dark Place with Alan – we wanted to do something a little bit looser,” he explains.
“There was no ‘Is this too crazy?’ during development it was more like, “Is this crazy enough?” That was the mindset going into it, and it was a nice change of pace.”
It’s always a challenge to determine which parts of the team to use and balance studio resources during production, but that changes significantly with expansion. Especially for Remedy, which has many projects in various stages of development, including Control 2 and Max Payne remakes.
“That’s a constant challenge when you’re working on multiple games in vastly different stages of production,” notes Puha.
“We feel a lot better about it than we did a few years ago. We’ve been scratching our heads on how to do this, but there’s no denying that it’s very challenging to manage teams competing for developers and other resources. We’re all buzzing about the future roadmap for our games.
“We always planned for Alan Wake 2 to have a dedicated post-launch team,” continues Puha.
“It’s a small team, but everyone in it worked on Alan Wake 2, the technology and tools are ready, and it’s easier to create expansions than the main game.”
This isn’t the first time Remedy has worked on DLC content.
Control received two expansions after its release, as did the original Alan Wake alongside the 2012 spin-off American Nightmare. Which is similarly framed as an episode of Night Springs.
“American Nightmare was tonally quite different from the original game,” notes Rowley. “In the same vein, we’re creating a slightly different experience. From a gameplay standpoint, we pushed it for each episode to match the tone. We wanted the game to feel familiar, but also in a slightly different stylization and context.” .”
The time and resources spent creating an expansion like Night Springs is a gamble because not all players of the base game will take to it. But that’s something Remedy was aware of, notes Puha.
“It’s about having realistic expectations, market data and knowing who you’re expanding for and what business purpose it serves,” explains Puha.
He also noted the reception of Alan Wake 2, which has maintained solid momentum since launch thanks to the release of a new game plus mode in December, various patches, developer streams, behind-the-scenes content and fan interaction.
“The response has been incredible,” says Puha. “Alan Wake 2 was a very difficult game to ship. But we always had the plan that once we ship, there are still things we want to talk about beyond this expansion, the photo mode, and the second expansion we’re working on.” on.”
He continues: “At Remedy, we’ve always taken this very long view. It’s not like the first couple of months are focused on sales, it’s at least the next three years – that’s how we look at it.
“We’re doing different bits and pieces that will hopefully keep the game out there. But it really resonated with people in an incredible way.”
Jankie adds: “There is something very contagious and motivating [about its reception]. I’m very grateful because it was well received and now it’s like, ‘Yeah, we can do more.’ It’s a really great feeling.”
“There was no ‘Is this too crazy?’ during development it was more like, ‘Is this crazy enough?'”Kyle Rowley
Like the main game, Night Springs was developed with the fans in mind.
“I’d say there’s quite a bit of fan service,” Rowley notes. “We definitely wanted to make sure we were using characters that players who played our games would resonate with and in some cases want to play again.”
“It’s nostalgia for us, looking at what the fans want,” adds Murphy.
“Remedy fans are engaging with our games in a way that’s really inspiring. To see what they’re interpreting our games or what they think we’re going to do in the future.”
Jankie mentions that the team often looked at what fans were talking about online and what they wanted to see in the expansions.
“That was really nice motivation,” he says. “We saw that we were on the right track and doing something that they would hopefully appreciate and take advantage of like we did.”