Journalists were quick to recognise clear allusions to the author Stephen King (who is then mentioned in the game in at least four different places) and John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Darkness. “The sandbox principle makes it impossible to convey the tension.” The developers made no secret of the sources of their inspiration for the game, which is set in the US state of Washington, citing David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Lost and the films of Alfred Hitchcock in particular. The ‘psychological action thriller’ had originally been planned as an open world game, but this was soon dropped due to design considerations (and also, presumably, due to technical constraints). (Consequently, the third part of Max Payne was developed by Rockstar games and was no longer set in a film-noir style New York but mainly in the favelas of Sao Paolo.) The Finnish studio’s next game was to be Alan Wake, which thanks to an exclusive deal with the publisher Microsoft Video Games was to be initially released solely on its own console Xbox 360. The new game, however, failed to live up to the success of the first. As a result of the success of Max Payne, the rights to Max Payne were sold to Take Two (the parent company of Rockstar Games) and Remedy was commissioned to develop a sequel – Max Payne 2. Like its follow-up, the game is set in New York, where the developers shot several thousand photos on location in their research for the game, something they would also do a decade later for Alan Wake. Above all, the game is notable for its film-noir atmosphere, its comparatively elaborate background story and for its aesthetics as well as gameplay, thanks to the developer’s introduction of so-called ‘bullet time’. Remedy Entertainment, a small Finnish game developer with around 30-45 employees, first shot to fame with their critically acclaimed debut shooter game, Max Payne, which according to its distributor Apogee sold over 4 million copies. Gameplay: Third person shooter with puzzle elements I – Production analysis: It is a tale of genius and madness, of brilliant authors and insane psychiatrists.Ĭreators: Miakel Kasurinen (Designer), Olli Tervo (Programmer), Sam Lake, Mikko Rautalahti, Petri Järvilehto (Writer) It is the story, of the quasi all-powerful male hero (here as writer) and his damsel in distress. It is the story of a privileged WASP writer from the city (with a huge apartment in New York) who, as well fighting for survival in the new surroundings of a former mining town which has seen more prosperous times, finds his very identity is under threat. His wife disappears, the novelist loses his memory and in the ensuing battles against poltergeists and the possessed inhabitants it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between reality and fiction. A dark force, or to be more precise, the primeval ‘Dark Presence’ soon destroys the supposed idyll. On the advice of his wife Alice, he goes away with his wife to the picturesque town of Bright Falls on the Pacific coast to stay in a remote cabin to unwind, and to find himself. It is the story of Alan Wake, a young and choleric horror novelist who is suffering from acute writer’s block. In fact, you do spend much of your time during the game in the woods at night pursued by shadowy possessed figures who you are only able to defeat by means of light. The developer enlisted the British theatre company Punchdrunk to get the journalists in the mood for the upcoming release of their new psychological thriller and action game ‘Alan Wake’. Just a perfectly ordinary PR stunt, apparently, by the Finnish games company Remedy. They manage to escape when a flare is let off, which drives their pursuers away. There they are ambushed and threatened by knife-wielding “maniacs driven by dark forces”. In May 2010, a handful of games journalists are led into a forest in the middle of the night.
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