10 Ways Your Favourite Video Games Were Almost Radically Different

In development for over six years, the Xbox 360 exclusive Alan Wake went through multiple iterations before becoming the cult classic it is today.

Originally wanting to create an open world game after working on the linear third-person action series Max Payne, Remedy built the town of Bright Falls with the idea that players would be able to freely explore it in mind.

Unfortunately, after trying and failing to make the open world focus of the gameplay work with the linear nature of the storytelling, the devs scrapped the sandbox idea and instead restructured the title around a more focused, episodic design inspired by the studio's TV show influences.

Weirdly enough though, you can still see the open world DNA of original iteration in the final release. The ability to drive from one part of a mission to the next seems like a hangover from the original vision, and might indicate that Remedy didn't scrap their sandbox focus as early in development as they intitially claimed.