9 Awesome Video Game Moments That Didn’t Need To Happen

After a 13-year wait, we finally got a sequel to Remedy’s hit game Alan Wake with Alan Wake 2 in 2023. And wow – what a sequel we got!

Trapped in The Dark Place under Cauldron Lake after saving his wife Alice, Alan resided there for all of this time and left fans wondering just what had happened to him. 

Thanks to the shared universe between Alan Wake and Remedy’s 2019 game Control, fans finally started receiving hints and an eventual confirmation of Alan making his return.  

Playing as FBI agent Saga Anderson, you are sent to the town of Brightfalls to investigate some ritualistic murders with her partner Alex Casey (AKA Remedy’s own Sam Lake himself!) 

As you search around Cauldron Lake you come upon a washed-up Alan, who you take back to an inn and listen to him recount his time within The Dark Place. 

Saga’s gameplay is a more straight forward detective and investigation affair as you find clues and piece together information in her ‘mind palace’ to solve the case around the mysterious Cult of the Tree. 

Once you begin to play as Alan, however, things are drastically darker and much more experimental by comparison. Alan navigates a twisted Dark Place version of New York City as he attempts to free himself from this alternate reality. 

He moves between the Talk Show Studio, a hotel and the darkened streets of New York with the ability to change the environment by absorbing light with the Angel Lamp (with shadows yelling “Wake! Alan Wake” at him at any given moment.) 

But when you reach the chapter ‘Initiation 4’ midway through the game, experimentation hits an all-time pinnacle.

You begin in the green room of the Talk Show Studio and the TV within plays a video showing Mr. Door, Alex Casey and Alan himself, with Mr. Door announcing a new segment including the band Old Gods of Asgard's new song, "Herald of Darkness." 

Once you interact with the TV, you are transported to a new version of the Talk Show Studio, which now includes large screens and colourful set lighting. 

As you navigate through the studio and fight the shadowy enemies along the way, the screens are lit up with Mr. Door, Alex Casey, Alan and the band members from Old Gods of Asgard as they perform and dance to the song Herald of Darkness.

Now don’t let me undersell this section – it is a full-on musical performance and it’s absolutely glorious. The song is an epic banger, the dancing is invigorating and you can’t help but smile as you watch everyone giving it their all and having the best time whilst doing it. 

The lyrics to the song recount the story of Alan himself and how he became a storyteller and the ‘champion of light’ who battles the darkness.

This section could have played out very differently in a more straight forward approach to tell the story of Alan. As seen in other Remedy games, we could have learnt this from finding chapters of a novel, watching a show on various TV screens or reading files littered throughout the game. 

But Sam Lake is a master of adopting all mediums of entertainment in his storytelling and this is his prime example of using music and performance in an otherworldly yet beautiful way. It’s insane to think that Lake had to fight to keep this section from being cut from the game entirely! 

And if that had happened, well the game could have still played out as normal, but it would be criminal to have missed out on arguably the game’s best section.  If The Game Awards 2023 performance of Herald of Darkness is anything to go off, this section is beloved by many!

Alan Wake 2 further cements Sam Lake as being ‘THAT’ guy – the genius who explores how stories can be told in video games in groundbreaking and innovative ways. 

Effectively incorporating and mixing together different mediums of entertainment to bring something fresh and original? Yeah, we have a guy for that – and THAT guy is Sam Lake.