The Story of the Review of Alan Wake 2

The Writer woke up with the worst hangover he'd possibly ever had. The light from his phone screen burned at his eyes, so he turned back over and let the darkness heal him. His pillows were damp, smelling of salt. There'd been an argument, but his attempts to remember the night were met with daggers of pain shredding at the insides of his skull.

He stewed in the darkness, emotions congealing into a broth of humiliation and frustration, but he remained quiet. He didn't like to raise his voice; didn't like feeling angry. It was an ugly emotion he struggled to keep in check.

Time never passed coherently under the pressure of a hangover. It was diluted, distorted, stretched, contorted, all at once. There was no telling how long he spent laying in the dark before he eventually got up. He messaged his brother, the Musician;

"We're finishing Alan Wake 2 today. Be ready."

"Okay?" came the reply.

Before long, the pair were sitting on a sofa in the front room of their parents' house. The Writer booted up his PlayStation 5 while the Musician prepared themselves a coffee. He sat down beside the Writer, handing him two paracetamol and a glass of water. They were near the end of the game, but still did not know how the game was going to end. They played through the rest of the game until the credits rolled, only stopping for food or a toilet break (one brother needed to make more stops than the other).

They sat in stunned silence for a while, before both firmly agreeing that Alan Wake 2 was one of the best games ever made. It was an exquisite multimedia masterpiece unlike anything they'd seen before. A masterclass in storytelling with multiple layers of meta-narration that they could spend years thinking about, peeling them back one at a time to find what else lay beneath the surface of the Lake that wasn't a Lake.

It inspired the Writer. He needed a break from his novel, and his ventures in poetry had run their course for now. Later in the evening, removed from the hangover but not the emotions it drenched him in, the Writer locked himself in his bedroom and opened his laptop. He typed out the title: "Alan Wake 2 is One of the Best Sequels Ever Made". He started as he always did, quick jokes and simple statements. Things to reel all five of his fans in, and maybe a couple of members of his extended family.

He'd been excited about the game for a while, knowing the lengths its developer Remedy Entertainment had to go to just to get the game made had the Writer's expectations were high. He'd played their previous title, Control, to which it directly connected Alan Wake 2 and its prequel, and expected them to take things up a notch from its unashamedly weird presentation.

As it turned out, Alan Wake 2 took it up several notches in to the realms of the best games ever made. The Writer knew this; the Writer agreed with this. But he couldn't type a thing. Yet, his hands refused to type any more words on the page. His enthusiasm waned and his desire to create came to a halt. Tiredness was eluding him for the time being, but he didn't want to write. Too much on his mind, too many conflicting thoughts crashing into one another like the waves against rocks in a storm.

He was waiting for a text, but he didn't know if it would ever come. The Writer stayed up late, later than what he thought the hangover would allow. He could not, and did not, want to sleep. What if he got that text? Every interaction with his family had an air of caution, as if they were worried about making him feel more upset than he already was. The sentence "how are you feeling now?" never sounded worse than when you're already feeling like crap. He knew they wanted to help, but his muted depleted responses told them not to push further.

After hours of playing Spider-Man 2 to keep himself awake long after everyone else, the Writer gave in. He took himself to bed, burying himself amongst the pillows and the duvet wrapping himself up like a burrito in the sheets, seeking warmth to an almost hellish extent. The article would have to wait for another day. The Writer wouldn't fall asleep for almost an hour, even with quiet music coming from his earbuds.

He woke in the dark again. The little sleep the Writer got was restless. Voices crept in the surrounding shadows. He didn't mind. That was where they lived liked to be. They gave him ideas sometimes. Ideas of where to take his article. Ideas of how to fix his life. They weren't all that helpful.

Sometime later in the morning, the Writer was sat in front of his article once again. He'd lost count of how long he'd watched the bar on the screen blink in and out of existence where he'd left off. Perhaps it was ironic that The irony was not lost on the Writer; he seemed to be dealing with writer's block when trying to talk about a game whose title character was dealing with that very thing. To such an extent Alan Wake had spent 13 years trapped in a twisted dimension known as the Dark Place, a nightmarish reality fueled by his fears as he tried to write his way out of it. He'd even spawned an evil doppelgänger, compromised composed of all his ego and worst impulses.

The Writer wasn't all that pleased with how much he had in common with Wake, and also with the fact that one of their key differences was that Wake was successful. Thankfully, the Writer wasn't about to compare himself to a fictional character. He was miserable, but not enough to stoop to that. He had to keep writing.

Perhaps he should continue with a the plot summary. He'd got Wake's part done, but he made sure he gave the game's dual protagonist, FBI agent Saga Anderson, equal coverage.

She arrives in Bright Falls, the Twin Peaksian town from the first game, to investigate a string of ritualistic murders with her case partner, Alex Casey. The man whom not only shares the same name as the protagonist in Alan's series of crime thriller novels that catapulted him to stardom, but also bears a striking resemblance to how Alan envisaged him. The Writer also made a note of how his face model was actually the Creative Director for the game, Sam Lake, a brilliant oddball who was also the original face model for the title character of Remedy's breakthrough game, Max Payne.

The Writer liked loved that Saga's side of the story was a perfect gateway to players who may not have played the first game. To him, at least, Saga's story was a perfect blend of that classic David Lynch/Twin Peaks oddity with the more grounded, sinister styling of True Detective.

In fact, the entire game felt like a film student's dream dissertation piece. It was stuffed so full of interesting ideas, cinematography and strong character writing that even the Writer himself felt inspired to write a series of essays on it. But one thing at a time, he reminded himself.

The article was coming along nicely, but the Writer was yet to feel fully satisfied remained unsatisfied with the words he was typing out.

What was wrong? What was missing?

He'd covered the plot, trying desperately to avoid anything that could be a spoiler (except for mentioning that the chapter titled "We Sing" was one of the greatest gaming moments he'd ever experienced). Had he gotten bored with reviews? No, he thought, he'd written some great ones reviews over the years. Reviews he had thoroughly enjoyed writing.

What was different here? Why would the words not flow?

The Writer looked out his bedroom window - the streetlights were on and the day had descended into night. Paralysed at his computer for hours without writing a single word, the Writer had irritated himself. He hadn't disassociated like that for months. Months. How was a video game that he loved adored more than anything stumping him?

It would have to wait. Tiredness hit him like a brick to the temple.

The voices in the shadows crept closer that night. Even while he slept, the Writer could feel them. They sunk their tendrils into his dreams, within which he met a woman. He knew her, but couldn't figure out where from. She was tall, almost as tall as the Writer. Auburn hair flowed down past her shoulders from under a black veil.

"I can help you finish it," she said.

"Finish what?" the Writer asked.

"I can help you make the story a masterpiece."

She held out her hand, it looked distinctly more weathered than what he could make out of her face. Hesitant, the Writer took it. A dark, spiralling vortex enveloped his vision. Lightning struck somewhere in an unknowable distance.

The dream felt so vivid as he awoke. It felt as real as his bedroom around him. The Writer could hear the woman in his head, as though she was in the room too.

"...Make the story a masterpiece."

What had she meant by that?

He wasn't writing a story, he was writing a review, unless... That was it? The Writer's eureka moment had come. The reason he was struggling to write it was because it wasn't supposed to be a review -- it was supposed to be a story. Fiction was his preferred medium when it came to writing, so why had he been denying himself working where he felt the most comfortable?

He could almost feel the woman guiding his hands across the keyboard. He knew what he was going to do; create a short story about his struggles writing a review for Alan Wake 2. He hadn't wrote something that meta before, but if ever there was a game to create metafiction around, Alan Wake 2 was certainly the one for it.

The Writer kept typing away. He could recount the last few days, mould them to fit into the story. Smear the truth into the fiction. Just enough reality to get people talking. Include the hangovers, the memories of confrontation. Remember it all and then smudge it like vaseline over a camera lense.

Engagement was key to modern writers; he knew that. Clicks, reposts, replies; key ingredients to being successful sharing his work on social media. Alan would hate it, but the Writer could not get enough of it.

He treated expressing the previous days like therapy, except without the hefty bill come the end. Good writers could bleed across the page without spilling a drop. Would this make him a good writer, finally? Was this story going to give him the attention he desired craved? Or, was it merely an excuse to indulge in his ego, his delusions of grandeur?

Maybe, he thought, if it got enough attention, Sam Lake would see it. That would make the Writer's day.

"Focus."

The voice of the veiled woman commanded his attention return to the writing. He didn't mind having a new voice to guide him, it was more constructive than his usual internal monologue. It always second guessed every word choice, the placement of punctuation marks. The veiled woman was much more softer on his mind. A guiding hand to help his own dance across the keyboard as though he were the mannequin to her puppet queen.

The Writer begun the section where he stumbled over discussing the plot and the gameplay. The story was taking its shape. It felt as much an exercise in arrogance as it was an exercise in calling himself out for his own shortcomings that he was chronically aware of. The way his mind wandered; the feverish hunger of his ego; the dichotomy of taking himself too seriously and not seriously enough.

The bedroom light flickered for a moment, causing the Writer to pause. The rest of his house was quiet. It was a Sunday afternoon, the Musician was probably on his computer and their parents had definitely fallen asleep watching something on Netflix. Once the light sorted itself, the Writer returned to his story.

It seemed silly now, thinking about it, that the Writer hadn't gone with this direction from the get go; but he knew all too well that the first attempts were never going to be as good as the Final Draft. This would be the one, he knew it, he could feel it. With the help of the woman he could write clearly. The mistakes stopped tumbling out of him. No more corrections, no more adjusting, he was writing the right thing.

The night had bled across the sky outside, the Writer kept on typing. He was in the zone, focused solely on the story he was crafting. The Musician had come in sometime earlier in the afternoon with a flask of coffee for him. He took one last sip from the flask, amazed it was still the perfect drinking temperature. Had they always had that flask? The Writer didn't remember seeing it before. Surely he'd remember a pale blue flask with a pure white cup on the top, right?

Focus.

The Writer returned to his work, but realised something strange. He'd finished recounting the events for the story... and was now narrating his actions in real time. He didn't remember writing the last few passages, but he wrote that down. Then he wrote that down. He wrote that down too.

And that.

And that.

And that...

He stopped. It was getting too strange, even for him. The Writer wrote the words "The End" and saved the changes to the page. He'd become aware of a sound he hadn't been hearing previously. He only seemed to hear it when he was typing, something beyond the click-clack of the keys on his keyboard, yet still remarkably similar.

A... typewriter?

The Writer assumed he was hearing things. Sometimes the Musician had a typewriter sound effect play on the laptop when he was typing... But the Writer always, always muted it whenever he was working.

He ignored it. He needed to mock up a thumbnail for the story so he could publish it online. The Writer opened up his photo folder, perhaps he had a couple of good screenshots from Alan Wake 2 that he could edit. Except, there was a file already titled "AW2 Short Story Thumbnail". He didn't remember making that file either. The Writer opened it -- it was simply a photo of hands at a keyboard.

But... they were his hands.

It was unmistakable. The tattooed ferns on his right forearm crept out the top of a barely-rolled sleeve. His watch strap wrapped around his left wrist, that sleeve was rolled up to the elbow. The Writer looked down, his sleeves were just like that. He didn't remember rolling them up. Odd. He looked at the photo again, there was a copy of House of Leaves on his desk with the front cover facing down. He looked to his left, there it was, cover face down and everything.

Why was the book face down? He never lay books face down, that was damn near criminal. He turned it so the cover was facing up, the embossed spiral shimmering in the light.

The Writer's attention returned to the thumbnail photo. Had he simply forgotten about it? Had the Musician taken it? It didn't matter, it was good enough and he needed to get the story published.

He made two quick adjustments; he dragged the brightness down a smidge, and flipped the photo so it was upside down. Once he clicked "save", something else felt odd. The Writer was certain that his bedroom light had dimmed.

Then, beyond any rational reasoning, he felt as though the room had flipped -- he was upside down. None of his furniture fell to the ceiling, he couldn't feel the blood rushing to his head. Maybe the Writer had spent too much time soaking his thoughts in the sauce of Alan Wake 2, these things couldn't be happening the way he was perceiving.

They couldn't.

He attached the thumbnail to his short story. Saving the changes one final time, the Writer hit Publish.

Well done, clever boy.

His laptop died almost immediately after. The lights flickered for a few seconds before they too died. Floorboards creaked from downstairs, coupled with muffled, incoherent voices. Beyond that, the world went quiet. The Writer turned in his chair to look out the window. The streetlights were wrong. The light they emitted was somehow grey, weak. He couldn't see the houses across the street now, they were smothered in rippling shadows. The floorboards upstairs were now creaking.

There was a thump at his bedroom door.

"Show me the Champion of Light!"

It was the Musician, clearly still as addicted to the game's soundtrack as he was.

"Haven't you gotten sick of that song, yet?" the Writer asked.

There was no reply. The thumping started again. Harder, more urgent.

"What the--"

The Writer got up to see what his brother wanted when the door burst open, sending him flying back onto his bed. The Musician stood in the doorway, shrouded in shadows.

"I'll show you the Herald of Darkness!" the Musician said, voice distored and pained. In each hand, he held a short-handled axe.

The Writer looked down at his own hands... in the left was a flashlight, the right a revolver. Where did they came from? He didn't own a gun, he didn't own this flashlight either. The Musician snarled as he lurched forward. The Writer shone the flashlight at him, the light burned the shadows away.

Then it all made sense. Lines between worlds, between reality and fiction, had blurred. He didn't know how, but the Writer had stepped into a different dimension, a nightmare realm.

A Dark Place.