David Lynch's Twin Geeks - Let's Play Alan Wake!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > David Lynch's Twin Geeks - Let's Play Alan Wake!

Accordion Man: Nov 7, 2012; Buglord

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.

While I liked Alan Wake, this kind of goes into one of the big reasons why I think Deadly Premonition is the better game. Both games wear their inspiration on their sleeves; both are heavily inspired by Twin Peaks and as previously stated Alan Wake is Stephen King as hell, but Alan Wake is just content in just emulating them a lot without really doing much of its own thing while DP goes off of Twin Peaks' path and into its own direction. DP is a lot more clever with its narrative conceits as well, what Alan Wake tends to do is just spoil stuff that's going to happen through the collectible script pages, but DP actually messes with the preconceptions of someone who's played video games before when it comes to a certain character.

Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Dec 5, 2016

# ¿ Dec 5, 2016 20:44

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 18:32

Accordion Man: Nov 7, 2012; Buglord

Stormgale posted:

I think the problem with that is twofold: One Quantum break's PC performance is horrendus last time I checked and two: It's very mediocre, it isn't joyously cheesy or good or even bad enough to mock like say Thi4th, it's just there... it's porridge.

The PC performance is fine since they ported it over to Steam instead of leaving it to be condemned to Windows 10 store.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2016 16:28

Accordion Man: Nov 7, 2012; Buglord

chitoryu12 posted:

I really love how Barry is presented in the game. It's so common for the "fat comic relief character" archetype to be a boring stereotype, but he's actually a portrayed as a great guy with a good sense of humor.

Not only that but they really make you think he's just Alan's sleazy agent who's only in it for the money at first, but nope he's actually Alan's best friend and is totally willing to risk his neck fighting phantom lumberjacks to help his pal Al.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 06:15

Accordion Man: Nov 7, 2012; Buglord

Zeniel posted:

If I remember correctly the last mammoths died out around the same time that the Great Pyramids of Giza were finished.

Yeah, a small population of woolly mammoths lived on this Siberian island for a couple millennia until they went extinct around 2000 BC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island#Flora_and_fauna

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 22:59

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