Sam Lake Interview page 2

18 Feb 2010 at 13:15:10 by

SL: Not really. There are many games out there that, from the perspective of gamers who are eager to get their hands on them, are delayed - even if that's not really the case. With us, for example, we had never announced the date it would be out. Of course, those dates somehow appear from somewhere, and then the feeling is that the game has been delayed. But I don't think that when the game is then out there, and people get their hands on it, that people really look back and think about how long it took. They're just playing the game and deciding whether they like it or not.

Q: Let's talk about the story. Why Alan Wake, and don't say "Awake"! And please don't say that the plot is going to just be that he's been asleep. Why a hero called Alan, and where do you draw inspiration from when it comes to your story?

SL: With the Max Payne games, we felt that what we do with a Remedy game is a story-driven experience, but also a very character-centric thing. There's a main character, and everything really revolves around him, so it made sense to name the game after the protagonist. And when you have a character who has a name, but you also have a game and you need to have a good name for the game, you need to combine these things - and that naturally limits, or at least directs, the way you name the character. And with Alan Wake, I have to say "Awake" because that's part of the naming of the game, it relates. I said that we wanted an everyman at the same time, and we didn't want to name him so that he sounds like an action hero. We wanted a normal, real person.

Q: But is he actually a normal person? He's quite famous, and famous people live in the public eye...

SL: Well, when I say "a real person" I mean a character who is deeper than characters normally are in action games. And that's what we set out to do, to build Alan Wake into a character who has a background, who has flaws and problems in his life, and he is normal in that sense. That was our goal from the very beginning, to not make him perfect, and not just one-sided.

Q: What's your opinion on the issue of balancing story and gameplay? Heavy Rain is an example of a game which arguably places the former ahead of the latter, and it's been met with scepticism from some corners as a direct result. what's your feeling on that balance?

SL: I definitely feel that there needs to be a balance between the two. You can go either way, and you can have an action game with no story at all, really; I don't think that with action games you can do it the other way around. But the balance is very important, and for the story we are looking for inspiration in pop culture in general, other mediums than video games - movies and TV series and books. We wanted to make a character, and we also wanted to make a story that would be interesting to hardcore gamers but also people who wouldn't normally be playing an action game. That was a very important thing for us, but at the same time there needs to be gameplay and there needs to be depth in gameplay and escalation, and it needs to be interesting for people who play action games. So you need to have both, and it's not easy to keep that balance. It's very easy to go too far into either direction, and it changes along the scope of the game. In the beginning the situation and the balance is different from at the end, because the gameplay and action escalation needs to be there.

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