Alan Wake, which was released in 2010, ended on a cliffhanger, as the titular hero began writing a new book entitled “Return.” The ending was something of a tease for fans of the game, and while a standalone game, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, was released, people have been waiting for some news on Alan Wake 2. It looks like it may happen sooner than later. A trademark filing was spotted, with the title Alan Wake’s Return, and filed by Remedy Entertainment. Very little is known other than the filing, but it is reassuring to see that Remedy is still active in potential plans for the return of Alan Wake.
A year ago, it was revealed that following the release of Alan Wake, Remedy had already been hard at work on ideas for a sequel and had even tweaked the engine and made a working prototype. Even though Microsoft published the original, Remedy owns the rights, and worked hard at shopping the sequel around. It would appear however that the interest at the time wasn’t quite there for a sequel.
After that, Remedy had moved on to Quantum Break, which has gone gold and is preparing to launch. It would appear that while the two games are very different thematically, the ideas on episodic storytelling that Remedy focused on in Alan Wake are very much at play in Quantum Break. Alan Wake broke each chapter up in episodes, and followed conventional television script structure as to how they plotted out each chapter in the game.
Remedy are great storytellers and with how they paced Alan Wake as connected episodes one wonders if they would with episodic releases. The episodic content release structure has become very popular thanks to Telltale Games, and we have seen the latest Hitman resort to an episodic release structure. We have little to go on other than a name, but when Alan Wake does return, will it be as a full release or as smaller sized chapters?
Source: NeoGAF