CJacobs posted:

Thanks. It's all in the name of quality.



By the way, here's the overhead shot of the island that Kibayasu mentioned. Alan even has a blurb to say about the island and the lake being on top of a volcano

Technowolf posted:

Is Bright Peaksmouth supposed to be in the northeast U.S. or the northwest U.S.? 'Cause I don't think there are many caldera in loving Maine.

(Fun side note: Yellowstone National Park is the caldera of a supervolcano, which is a volcano massive enough that its eruption would seriously threaten all life on Earth!)

Apep727 posted:

Also, I really want to see some of those extracts or whatever of his writing.

Clay Steward's Description posted:

Alan Wake’s first published story, “Errand Boy,” a long out-of-print horror tale, was written when Wake was only eighteen, and previously available only in dog-eared copies of Dark Visions magazine. Clearly, Wake was concerned with the same battle between good and evil that he would explore in his more popular crime fiction.

Errand Boy, Excerpt One posted:

Scalding Coffee posted:

Like further cooling of the Earth or NOOOOO! on the Earth?

Scalding Coffee posted:

A large number of islands have been created by volcanoes. If the cabin from built on anything but an extinct volcano, I would be very worried.

Like further cooling of the Earth or NOOOOO! on the Earth?

CJacobs posted:

Quoting this again to say that I have recut and re-uploaded the cut commentary version of the first episode. It now has much less talking over the characters. In later episodes of the LP (and episodes of Alan Wake) this will not be as much of a problem because it's mostly Alan by himself, but the game's introduction and other parts where you're just walkin' around Bright Falls are pretty full of dialogue for us to jabber over. So I have rectified the issue by cutting/changing some of the commentary to not be in the way of the game anymore.

CJacobs posted:

As I mentioned in the video, The Alan Wake Files contains some of Alan Wake's actual in-universe writing. There's a full short story, and an excerpt from one of his novels. You can look it up to read it all right now if you want, but I'll be drip-feeding it as we go on. To start us off, here is the beginning of Alan's career as a published author!





Rereading this one, Alan's overuse of commas is fuckin killing me here holy crap. There are seven commas in the fourth sentence of the drat thing.

I'll post the rest in a couple episodes' time. I also plan on transcribing these to text at some point for people browsing on mobile.

Aishlinn posted:

this is the first Alan wake let's play that hasn't bored me to death within the first 20 minutes. looking forward to this.

Fish Noise posted:

Well, under those 20 layers of clothing and his seemingly-human skin, Alan is actually a manifestation of coffee that has forgotten itself. At the end of the last LP Convergence, he was sundered and isolated in thermoses and this Alan shell, and the darkness in his nightmares is his true black coffee self seeking to destroy his human identity and reassert itself. The Alan persona fights back with creamer in the form of shining light into the darkness but he is also unknowingly restoring the coffee with his thermos collecting.

Mr. Highway posted:

I love Alan Wake in a weird way. My favorite part of this game is probably accidental in the production of it. I'll concede that some of the gameplay gets samey (like CJacobs said, Nightmare difficulty is a slog), though that never really bothered me. I enjoyed the story, setting, and the writing (as part of the atmosphere). However, this game has an interesting subtext that people tend to overlook either because of it being called a horror game but not being all that scary, or being a third person shooter.

Also, I enjoy the subject of Alan Wake being a good or bad writer. This game's story presents him as both with the player, who will be probably biased based on personal preference, as a final judge. On one hand, I believe the game attempts to portray Alan as a good writer, although not great, but then suffers from a number of genre limitations. One of these, and most ready for discussion after one episode, is that the game writer's are not good writers. (Even though Sam Lake is the easiest name to name, I think the creation of a video game by a full team will have a lot of editing voices). Although the game has a good story overall, as did Max Payne 1 and 2, this does not transfer to the game writers being good writers. Their construction of prose lacks polish. His internal dialog, the most writey part so far, isn't exactly bad, just not good. It mirrors what a lay person would think of good writing, such as girth=quality or complexity=seriousness. These writers rely mostly on stereotypes of good writing, which are formed off a misunderstanding. Essentially, Alan Wake isn't writing as much as he is emulating. He doesn't just emulate Stephen King. He emulates what someone thinks Stephen King must sound like. When Alan must show his chops, the "good" writing is filtered through a bad or an average writer. These writers rely mostly on stereotypes of good writing, which are formed off a misunderstanding. Essentially, Alan Wake isn't writing as much as he is emulating.

I could really go on and on about this subject, but might wind up in spoiler territory.

chitoryu12 posted:

They did some neat live action stuff with Ilkka that I don't want to post yet for risk of spoiling the game.

CJacobs posted:

Alan's character design is just weird. The game doesn't make any real mentions of how it's cold, or anything like that. It does take place in September I believe, but that's not 2-jackets-and-3-t-shirts levels of cold. It's not even that cold yet right now where I live!



It actually used to be even worse. In the beta, Alan was wearing 2 jackets, a sweater, and a scarf!

CJacobs posted:

Also god he's SO HANDSOME. How can someone be this handsome???

Skippy Granola posted:

Ah put it away his handsomeness is taking the focus from this excellent LP

chitoryu12 posted:

I was curious about where Alan got his sweet tweed jacket, and someone on a forum said they thought they remembered hearing that the jacket for the model was bought at H&M. H&M did at one point offer this extremely similar tweed blazer, so I imagine at some point that jacket did get sold to quite a few people who are inadvertently wearing a video game character's costume.

Fish Noise posted:

The C stands for What A Cool Guy Who Is Also Not An Overly Loquacious Jerk Like Alan.

It is a versatile letter.

White Coke posted:

WACGWIANAOLJLAJacobs. It all makes sense now.

Kopijeger posted:

Then go for his American nightmare look instead.

Mr. Highway posted:

Also, I enjoy the subject of Alan Wake being a good or bad writer. This game's story presents him as both with the player, who will be probably biased based on personal preference, as a final judge. On one hand, I believe the game attempts to portray Alan as a good writer, although not great, but then suffers from a number of genre limitations. One of these, and most ready for discussion after one episode, is that the game writer's are not good writers. (Even though Sam Lake is the easiest name to name, I think the creation of a video game by a full team will have a lot of editing voices). Although the game has a good story overall, as did Max Payne 1 and 2, this does not transfer to the game writers being good writers. Their construction of prose lacks polish. His internal dialog, the most writey part so far, isn't exactly bad, just not good. It mirrors what a lay person would think of good writing, such as girth=quality or complexity=seriousness. These writers rely mostly on stereotypes of good writing, which are formed off a misunderstanding. Essentially, Alan Wake isn't writing as much as he is emulating. He doesn't just emulate Stephen King. He emulates what someone thinks Stephen King must sound like. When Alan must show his chops, the "good" writing is filtered through a bad or an average writer. These writers rely mostly on stereotypes of good writing, which are formed off a misunderstanding. Essentially, Alan Wake isn't writing as much as he is emulating.

I could really go on and on about this subject, but might wind up in spoiler territory.

Nice piece of fish posted:

Well, without spoiling anything, I think this question is really answered in this next episode:

Cut Version Uncut Version

CJacobs posted:

Also god he's SO HANDSOME. How can someone be this handsome???

CJacobs posted:

Nice piece of fish posted:

Well, without spoiling anything, I think this question is really answered in this next episode:

Cut Version Uncut Version

Mr. Highway posted:

I love Alan Wake in a weird way. My favorite part of this game is probably accidental in the production of it. I'll concede that some of the gameplay gets samey (like CJacobs said, Nightmare difficulty is a slog), though that never really bothered me. I enjoyed the story, setting, and the writing (as part of the atmosphere). However, this game has an interesting subtext that people tend to overlook either because of it being called a horror game but not being all that scary, or being a third person shooter.

Also, I enjoy the subject of Alan Wake being a good or bad writer. This game's story presents him as both with the player, who will be probably biased based on personal preference, as a final judge. On one hand, I believe the game attempts to portray Alan as a good writer, although not great, but then suffers from a number of genre limitations. One of these, and most ready for discussion after one episode, is that the game writer's are not good writers. (Even though Sam Lake is the easiest name to name, I think the creation of a video game by a full team will have a lot of editing voices). Although the game has a good story overall, as did Max Payne 1 and 2, this does not transfer to the game writers being good writers. Their construction of prose lacks polish. His internal dialog, the most writey part so far, isn't exactly bad, just not good. It mirrors what a lay person would think of good writing, such as girth=quality or complexity=seriousness. These writers rely mostly on stereotypes of good writing, which are formed off a misunderstanding. Essentially, Alan Wake isn't writing as much as he is emulating. He doesn't just emulate Stephen King. He emulates what someone thinks Stephen King must sound like. When Alan must show his chops, the "good" writing is filtered through a bad or an average writer. These writers rely mostly on stereotypes of good writing, which are formed off a misunderstanding. Essentially, Alan Wake isn't writing as much as he is emulating.

I could really go on and on about this subject, but might wind up in spoiler territory.

CJacobs posted:

I get what you mean, yeah. I think this game's plot is awesome, but their attempts to make Alan sound like an artsy poseur kinda just come across as the game's writers writing like artsy poseurs. Skippy and I have a chat about what "bad writing emulating good writing" sounds like in a future episode.

mandatory lesbian posted:

like seriously read Salem's Lot there's like 15 chapters describing what people are doing in the town, or describing the town (i like those parts of Salem's Lot and most of his books tbh, i'd read a Stephen king atlas)